Why Using a Ready-Made e-Commerce Site Is Better Than Building Your Own
There are certainly compelling arguments for building a custom e-commerce site. After all, when you’re finished with building your own site, you’ll have a store that’s configured to your exact requirements.
Your store will have the precise throughput you’ll need to deliver outstanding results for your users. You’ll have an environment in which every aspect of your business is supported. If you do things right, your store will have strong performance and easy integration. You’ll be able to expand your store if and when you need to.
So, with all of that said, how could anyone convince you that using a ready-made e-commerce site is better than building your own?
RELATED ARTICLE: HOW TO KNOW WHEN YOU’RE READY TO LAUNCH YOUR ECOMMERCE STORE
1. Cost
Even if your site is built upon a preexisting content management system (CMS) engine, the time and expertise required to customize it to your specific needs will come at a price.
In addition to monetary expenditures, you’ll also be looking at time and opportunity costs. Coding takes time, so you’ll need to allow for that while your site is being built, tested and debugged. Granted, you can always use this interval to get other aspects of your business in order. But the fact of the matter is your store will take longer to go live when you choose to build your own.
Further, the financial and human resources you allocate to building your site might be used more effectively in another area. For example, to get started with your marketing.
2. Redundancy
You’ll spend several days mapping out the tasks your custom site will need to deal with. Then, you’ll convey all of that to your developer, who will then design your platform accordingly.
Meanwhile, software providers for the best ready-made e-commerce sites have had years of experience in dealing with the requirements of a wide variety of enterprises. Odds are, whatever you’re going need, they’ve already run across the issue and incorporated a solution. Why should you pay to create something that already exists?
3. Complexity
Yes, if you build your own site you will get you a platform that’s configured precisely to your needs. However, once it’s built, you’ll likely need to go back to your developer for updates, security fixes, added functionalities and the like. That is, unless you’re an experienced coder with the time to deal with such matters on your own.
Meanwhile, ready-made enterprise commerce platforms have the functionalities you’re most likely to need—and they’re already built in. For any of those functionalities a ready-made e-commerce site doesn’t have, you’ll find a robust selection of applications that are designed to work with that platform. In most cases, all you’ll need to do is download the apps and install them.
4. Easy Security Updates
Security breaches are a fact of life in e-commerce. Criminals work night and day to find new ways to overcome security protocols. If you’re using a ready-made e-commerce site, every time the bad guys find a new way to plunder it, the development team comes up with a countermeasure and issues a software update.
However, your custom system will be on its own. If hackers figure out a way to pillage it, you’ll have to go back to your developer to implement a fix, incurring an additional expense every time. With ready-made e-commerce software, security updates are generally offered gratis because they are part of the service.
These are but 4 of the many reasons why using a ready-made e-commerce site is better than building your own. Yes, when you go with a custom configuration you will have a site built specifically for your needs. But in all frankness, the site you need probably already exists.
