Platforms · Custom ecommerce
Custom ecommerce when no platform fits the way you sell
Ordering systems built around rules a platform can’t express: prices calculated from measurements, trade and retail customers on one site, deliveries chosen by weight and dimensions, and connections to systems no connector knows.
Fit
When custom-built is right, and when it isn’t
Appropriate when
- The rules are the business: pricing, configuration or ordering that no platform models without contortion
- Workarounds on a platform would cost more to build and maintain than the platform saves
- The ordering system must sit inside, or directly on top of, internal systems
- You’re prepared to own a system and fund its upkeep
Not appropriate when
- A platform covers most of it and the rest can be built as extensions
- The motive is a design a theme could deliver
- There’s no budget for ongoing security updates and development
- Nobody will still understand the system in five years
What’s customised
Where custom ecommerce usually earns its place
Price calculation
Made-to-measure and configured products priced from dimensions, materials and options in real time, rather than as thousands of pre-built variants.
Retail and trade in one system
Different prices, ordering screens and documents for trade buyers and retail customers, from one catalogue.
Logistics rules
Carriers and services chosen by destination, weight and dimensions, with freight handled differently from parcels.
Internal systems
Ordering that reads and writes directly to the systems the business already runs, including ones with no API.
Risks we design out
The problems with custom platforms, and how we avoid them
- One person’s knowledge. Documentation, code in your repository and conventions another developer will recognise.
- No updates. Frameworks and dependencies kept current as routine work, not as a crisis every few years.
- Security as an afterthought. Card payments handled by the payment provider’s hosted or embedded components, so card data never touches your servers.
- Reinventing the basics. Established components for search, email, payments and tax, with custom code reserved for the parts that make the business different.
Migration
Leaving, or replacing, a custom system
Many businesses come to us with a custom platform built years ago that nobody now understands. The first job is to find the business rules buried in it; only then can anyone decide whether to modernise it, rebuild it or move to a platform. Replatforming and ecommerce rescue cover both routes.
In practice
What this work typically involves
A custom ecommerce project starts with the rules: how prices are calculated, which customers see which prices and ordering screens, and what has to happen behind each order. Those rules are written down and agreed before the build begins.
Typical elements are a single view of stock, orders and fulfilment across sales channels; different prices, ordering screens and documents for trade and retail customers from one catalogue; quick reorder by product code; instant prices for made-to-measure products; courier options chosen by destination, weight and dimensions; and documents such as proforma invoices generated automatically.
Next step
Requirements no platform handles well?
Describe how you sell and what has to happen behind each order.