We explored the anatomy of a Finnish, customised online shop and the competitive advantages of customisation.
Magento, Shopify, Woocommerce, and Hybris are popular ready-made online shop platforms. Their basic functionalities are comprehensive and can also be customised and expanded according to needs.
The market share of customised online shops in Finland remains year after year at ten percent. Why is this, even as the range and features of ready-made platforms continue to grow?
The Anatomy of a Customised Online Shop
What components do an average customised online shop consist of?
To find the answer, I went through five sources: Paytrail's Great Online Platform Report 2019 and 2020, as well as our experts’ extensive experiences with Magento and Shopify ready-made software, and online shops developed on the Crasman Stage platform.
I found five factors that unify customised online shops.
The turnover of the online shop exceeds 1,000,000 euros annually. According to Paytrail’s 2020 report, for online shops exceeding one million euros, their own platform is as popular or more popular than any individual ready-made software.
The online shop is integrated with other systems that serve as the primary source of information.
Order transfer and/or processing in an enterprise resource planning system
Product information maintenance in a product management system
Inventory balance maintenance in an inventory management system
Customer information maintenance in a loyalty system
Campaign management and marketing automation with, for instance, HubSpot, Mailchimp, or Salesforce software
Reporting system
The purchasing process involves several stages, such as initial situation assessment, product configuration, financing application, appointment booking, and payment. Features that would nevertheless require significant customisation when implemented with ready-made software.
The need to sell real-time inventory balances or share inventory with brick-and-mortar stores.
The online retailer has a strong vision for e-commerce and a desire to actively develop their online shop in the desired direction.
The revenue of customised online shops is at the top end of the market in Finland. Most often, the platform is supported by other back-end systems, bringing significant overlap with the features of ready-made software.
Advantages of a Customised Online Shop
An online shop designed and implemented from start to finish has everything it needs and nothing superfluous.
Modifying ready-made online shop implementations is, of course, possible, but it may become more expensive than a completely customised implementation, and lead to a poorer user experience. Customising a ready-made platform can also complicate the implementation of version updates.
A customised online shop is, as the name suggests, tailored to fit the necessary systems and processes.
When using ready-made software, the situation is the reverse: processes must be adapted to the forms allowed by the software.
An example of customised online shop functionality is Intersport’s ski package calculator. The customer enters the required information into the calculator and receives ski, binding, boot, and pole recommendations tailored to their preferences. The final price of the ski package depends on the choices made by the user and also considers installation services.
A Customised Online Shop Evolves with the Market
The development opportunities for a customised online shop are limitless – the retailer has full control over their service and the ability to adapt it according to business strategy needs.
It is advisable to base the service, where applicable, on general application frameworks, software components, and microservices. Ready-made components and microservices reduce development costs and speed up the timeline.
The initial cost of a customised online shop is typically at least 75,000 euros. It is advisable to allocate 1–5% of the online shop’s turnover annually for continuous development.
Ongoing small-scale development ensures that the online shop continually meets business objectives, market changes, and customer wishes.
Crasman Ltd
19 Apr 2021
