We explored the anatomy of a Finnish, customised online store and the competitive advantages of customisation.
Magento, Shopify, WooCommerce, and Hybris are popular ready-made e-commerce software solutions. Their basic functionalities are comprehensive and can be customised and expanded as needed.
The market share of customised online stores in Finland remains at ten percent year after year. Why, even though the range and features of ready-made platforms continue to grow?
Anatomy of a Customised Online Store
What components does the average customised online store consist of?
To find the answer, I reviewed five sources: Paytrail's Comprehensive E-commerce Platform Report 2019 and 2020, as well as our experts' extensive experiences with Magento and Shopify-software solutions and e-commerce platforms developed for the Crasman Stage platform.
I identified five factors that unify customised online stores.
The online store's revenue exceeds €1,000,000 per year. According to Paytrail's 2020 report, a self-hosted platform is as popular, if not more so, than any single off-the-shelf software in online stores turning over more than one million euros.
The online store is integrated with other systems that act as the primary sources of information.
Order transmission and/or processing in an enterprise resource planning system
Product information management in a product management system
Inventory balance maintenance in an inventory management system
Customer data management in a loyalty program system
Campaign management and marketing automation using, for example, HubSpot, Mailchimp, or Salesforce
Reporting system
The purchasing process involves multiple steps, such as an initial situation assessment, product configuration, financing application, appointment scheduling, and payment. Features that would require significant customisation of off-the-shelf software.
Need to sell real-time inventory balances or share inventory with brick-and-mortar stores.
The e-commerce operator has a strong vision for online business and wishes to actively develop their online store in the desired direction.
The revenue of customised online stores in Finland is at the upper end of the market. Often, other backend systems support the platform, which brings a lot of redundancy with the features of ready-made software.
Advantages of Customised Online Stores
An online store that is designed and implemented from start to finish has everything necessary and nothing superfluous.
Modifying ready-made e-commerce implementations is certainly possible, but it may become more expensive than a fully customised implementation and lead to a poorer user experience. Customising a ready-made platform may also complicate the implementation of version updates.
A customised online store is, as the name suggests, tailor-made to fit the necessary systems and processes.
When using off-the-shelf software, the situation is the opposite: processes must be adapted to the forms allowed by the software.
A concrete example of customised e-commerce 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 the installation service.
A Customised Online Store Evolves with the Market
The further development opportunities for a customised online store are limitless – the merchant has full control over their service and can adapt it to suit the needs of their business strategy.
The service should be based, where applicable, on general application frameworks, software components, and microservices. Ready-made components and microservices reduce development costs and accelerate the timeline.
The initial cost of a customised online store is typically at least €75,000. It is advisable to allocate 1-5% of the online store's annual revenue for ongoing development.
Continuous incremental development ensures that the online store always meets business objectives, market changes, and customer expectations.
Crasman Ltd
19 Apr 2021
