eCommerce site development:
Bespoke or boxed?

CHRIS BARLING, CEO OF ACTINIC & SPECIALIST IN ECOMMERCE SYSTEMS FOR SMES, TALKS US THROUGH WHETHER IT’S BEST TO GO BOXED OR BESPOKE

Ten years ago, if you needed to develop an online shop, you were on your own. There were few commercial solutions available, development was long-winded and costly and entirely based on hand-coding.
Web designers who had the knowledge and skills to do it were in the minority, and retailers who could afford it were even fewer. Today, eCommerce is part of almost every web designer’s portfolio. There’s a plethora of ‘shop-in-a-box’ packages, hosted shopping cart solutions and open-source scripts available. Often the biggest challenge is deciding which solution to use.
Hosted solutions are mainly split between low-cost entry level and high-cost enterprise systems. For the average eCommerce application, the choice is usually between a boxed solution and bespoke development using a library of scripts. Many web designers are fiercely loyal to their familiar script libraries. But the tide is turning. A series of surveys conducted by PFA Research have found increasing numbers of web designers turning to packaged solutions for their eCommerce development. What are the attractions and shortcomings of modern eCommerce packages?
In application development generally, we see a pattern of migration from the starting point of bespoke development towards the use of packages. For example, no one today would think of writing a new word processor. Microsoft Word incorporates millions of pounds worth of code that can do pretty well anything you want, and is available for less that £100. Wherever packaged solutions emerge, they eventually dominate, and do so for a number of reasons.

REDUCED DEVELOPMENT TIME
Using a packaged eCommerce solution, all the functionality that most users will require is available out of the box. It just has to be configured to the individual user’s specification and tailored to their design. This eliminates a lot of laborious and repetitive coding, and dramatically reduces the lead time to deployment. The outcome is a more satisfied customer and a less stressed designer!
Jez Wilson, CEO of west London-based web design firm ProSite, is one who has made the shift from bespoke eCommerce development to off-theshelf software. He’s seen a dramatic reduction in development time as a result. “It takes us a month tops with a packaged solution, instead of the three to four months it took for a purely bespoke site.”

ECOMMERCE WITHOUT CODING
ProSite employs a mix of graphic designers and web programmers who work in a variety of development environments, including ASP, Microsoft .NET, PHP/SQL and Actinic.
In contrast, Chris Lamle, a partner in Northstar Design, based in Lancashire, cheerfully admits that there are no coders at all in his three-person outfit: “We’d been an established graphics design company for eight years when in 1999 we simply transferred our design skills online. Web design now represents around 40 per cent of our total work.”
The existence of shop-in-a-box solutions made it possible for Northstar to take on eCommerce as well as straightforward web design. The company’s initial experience was not a happy one, however. “Our first e-store was based on a Javascript cart,” recalls Chris. “It was extremely hard work. I’m not a programmer, which is why I struggled. Then in 2000, we were introduced to some boxed eCommerce software, which made life much easier. Now, if a customer needs bespoke elements, we can always call upon associates to provide the necessary coding.”
Most web designers already use a package for the majority of their work, and very few code entirely by hand anymore. So it’s a small step to adopt a package for delivering eCommerce, especially if it integrates easily with your preferred web design application. Look at your options and you could save time and money.

LOWER COST
Packaged solutions reduce the cost per site deployed because the cost of development is spread across thousands of users. According to PFA Research, the average cost of deploying an eCommerce site fell by almost 25 per cent between 2004 and 2005 alone, and it’s hard not to believe that the spread of packages has contributed to this. This downward pressure on price puts web designers at a competitive disadvantage unless they at least have a package to fall back on for their more price-sensitive clients.
Fortunately, the cost of professional eCommerce design packages is also falling. This year, for example, Actinic slashed the entry cost in this market from £1250 to £350 with the release of Actinic Designer. Others are bound to follow. As prices fall, custom-designed trading sites come within the reach of more and more businesses, fuelling further demand. Which is obviously good news for everyone concerned!

GREATER SOPHISTICATION
As costs are spread and packages mature, they provide access to more sophisticated functionality than most users could afford by themselves. This is becoming increasingly important as the market itself matures and expectations rise.
According to Mike Sharpe of Smart Decision Dot Net, SMEs have become increasingly sophisticated in their requirements. “In the early days it was more about just getting online and selling the product any-old how,” he recalls. “Now, our customers want eye-catching sites that deliver information quickly.” Mike believes the availability of affordable but powerful eCommerce functionality out of a box has made online trading an easier sell. Such are the advantages of using packaged products that most developers accept the inevitability of their eventual dominance.
But that doesn’t mean there won’t be a place for manual coding. ProSite’s Jez Wilson believes: “Bespoke coding enables the developer to match defined user requirements exactly. Which methodology we use really depends on what the customer is after.” However, as eCommerce packages continue to mature, hand-coding will be used as a means of extending them rather than being used instead of them.