apHarmony offers online store development.  Whether you are looking to build a new online store, add an online store to an existing site, or maintain and support a store, we will be happy to bring our team to your software project.  Please feel free to give us a call at 630-855-7522 for a free evaluation and quote.

The explosion of online stores over the past fifteen years has created new billionaires, caused many age-old retailers such as Sears significant financial problems, and overall revolutionized how shopping is done.  Well-built online stores save their customers time, provide opportunities for cross-selling and increased sales, as well as bring immediate exposure to a much wider market than can be achieved through traditional brick-and-mortar sales.

While many online store platforms exist, the two most successful implementations are Magento stores for standard stores, and custom shopping cards for stores with more complex requirements.  Magento is the most popular and well-supported online shopping platform, currently owned and maintained by eBay.  Through a large variety of plugins, Magento can be customized for specific implementations, and provide a resilient and viable platform for online sales.

In applications with complex product options and configuration, custom stores may provide the best user experience.  Since custom stores are built for a single specific purpose, they can often achieve faster speeds than Magento, and also provide for a more streamlined user experience.  The drawback to custom stores is cost and configurability, as the custom stores often cost more to develop, and have less “out of the box” features than the stock Magento installation.

Depending on the size of the stores and yearly transaction volume, retailers will have different development and maintenance requirements.  Small, start-up retailers will often look for the most functionality at the least cost, to enable them to run a working store on a tight budget.  Medium-size retailers will often look for more advanced development to help them beat their competitors in a specific niche.  Large retailers will require systems integration with supply-chain and accounting software, and have more opportunities for viability testing and implementation of new technologies.

For a free evaluation and quote on an online store development project, please feel free to give us a call at 630-855-7522.