What Do You Need to Consider During the Development of eCommerce Software

The eCommerce market is highly competitive. There is a battle between the e-retailers who want to have the #1 place on the market. A similar situation is between the eCommerce software providers who want to gain success and popularity among the online sellers and get better results than their competitors.

eCommerce software is the backbone of an online store, which allows the retailers to automatically and easily manage inventory, orders, customer and product data, delivery, calculation of taxes, and more such operations. Therefore, as a B2B eCommerce software vendor, developing a highly-organized and sophisticated product is a quintessential requirement.

To create a functional and seamless eCommerce software, the process of development is paramount. Until a defined set of rules and practices govern the process, the product lacks efficiency and the required productivity. This article describes the various steps involved in the effective development of eCommerce software. Let’s take a closer look at them.

How to develop a successful eCommerce software?

The successful development of eCommerce software involves a seven-step process. Now we are going to explore each of its stages in detail and highlight their main points.

Planning

Every product development starts with brainstorming ideas and planning the complete project, and eCommerce software development is no exception. A software vendor must have a clear product idea along with a detailed execution plan.

The vendors have to answer the following questions during the planning phase:

• What is the scope of the project?
• Will the software meet the requirements of both the retailers and their customers?
• What should be the estimated time and budget for the project?
• What are the risks that could arise during the development process?
• Analysis of requirements and software performance

Requirement analysis is an indispensable part of the development of eCommerce software. Before executing the plan, software providers need to understand and study the requirements of the product thoroughly. From software and hardware requirements for implementation to have a dedicated team for the project — every aspect needs analysis.
A software vendor should also study the requirements of their clients — what are the problems associated with their current system and how the product can be the best solution for them.

Design of interface

The user interface is another important aspect of product development. It incorporates the look, style, and overall functionality of the product which the end-user is going to deal with. During the development of eCommerce software, the developers need to create a customized software design and a final prototype of the product, keeping in mind the previous steps.

When the final prototype is ready, it’s time to actually implement the design and execute all the processes. That is, next comes the actual development process.

Development and coding

Development and coding involve writing structured codes for the eCommerce software while following the design documents, software requirements specifications, stakeholder requirements, and everything else that was planned in the first step. While writing the software code, it must be ensured that the code meets the defined project standards and fulfills the purpose of product development.
Testing
The software vendors need a quality assurance (QA) team to ensure that the eCommerce software meets the highest quality standards and can work correctly with no bugs. From system login to performing all the desired operations and withstanding system failures, testing involves a thorough examination of the working software. The testers use a variety of testing approaches to check if the software is complete and robust to use under multiple circumstances.

Followed by different testing methods, verification and validation of the software are employed to test the system across various test cases.

Implementation and deployment

The next step in the development of eCommerce software is the final stage, where the product is installed to move it to production. The eCommerce software is now deployed to system analysts and end-users to actually try its features. The product release can be of two types — straightforward for a simple project and staggered (in multiple stages) for a complex project.

If the product is an entirely new project, it is deployed with all the data and components, but if it is a next release or update, only the changes will be handed over to the production team for deployment.
Maintenance and regular updates

When the eCommerce software is exposed to the real-world environment, certain issues become a part of its operation. Regular updates and maintenance are the important steps in software development as they help to improve the software as the problems unfold. During these phases, the product is thoroughly polished and enhanced to meet the newly proposed user requirements.

Maintenance allows the software vendors to make their product more productive and efficient because that’s the time it’s tested for real problems.

The development of the integration with eCommerce platforms

The development of eCommerce software is incomplete without the integration with multiple eCommerce platforms. But why are the integrations required? eCommerce integration streamlines the functionality of the SaaS applications while adding some advanced features to perform more complex tasks. The development of the connection with Magento, Shopify, WooCommerce, and the other similar platforms enables to access and manage the data related to the products, orders, customers, etc., from e-stores built on them.

That said, eCommerce software vendors need a trusted and reliable partner to build their integrations. Since there are many pitfalls associated with in-house integration development, API2Cart has come up with a unified API for connections between various shopping platforms and different types of eCommerce software.

https://youtu.be/r8Ailt2D6cw

The robust API provided by API2Cart allows software vendors to seamlessly integrate their solutions with more than 40 eCommerce platforms at once. The list includes Magento, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, eBay, Amazon, and many more. API2Cart also offers a 30-day free trial period that helps its clients actually use the product before the purchase.

Conclusion

The development of eCommerce software is a comprehensive process, and it is successful only when it is followed in an organized manner. From planning the product to maintaining its performance and releasing further updates, every step has its own importance and contributes to product performance.