All the studies and industry insiders seem to prove that the e-commerce market is and will be consistently growing in the coming years. In early 2020, Statista reported that in 2022 the global e-com market will be worth even around 6.54 trillion dollars. That’s about twice the worth in 2019! And if this number will change, it will be most likely go up — this is because the COVID-19 pandemic boosted the e-commerce market as people were forced to stay home and do their shopping online.
But the growth of the e-commerce market means that it also gets more crowded and less welcoming to new players. Because of this, entrepreneurs try to approach the online shopping boom in multiple different ways. These include:
- Individual stores
Stores selling products of a single brand or, eventually, a few related brands. An individual online store can be a separate site itself or even a single page within a bigger website. Nowadays, such online shops are usually based on popular e-commerce platforms, like Shopify — they make setting up the store easy even for a non-developer, however, their functionalities can be later expanded upon by an experienced professional.
- Single-vertical marketplaces
Bigger online stores offering products within one industry. The delivery can be later performed either by the owner of the marketplace or by companies offering their products on it. Examples include Zalando (Europe’s top fashion marketplace) or Etsy (the global leader in selling handmade crafts).
- Multivertical marketplaces
Marketplaces offer virtually everything. Think Amazon, eBay, AliExpress. Deliveries can be fulfilled by the marketplace owner, but in many cases, it’s left up to the seller.
Individual stores are most often focusing on B2B or B2C sales; marketplaces, on the other hand, can exist only by allowing individuals or other businesses to offer products on their platform, therefore aiming for the C2C model.
Whatever type of e-commerce strategy you will end up choosing, you will need to hire e-commerce developers who can build the store or marketplace for you. What kind of experts you should be exactly looking for and how to onboard them fast? We focus our guide below on answering these questions.
What kind of e-commerce development services you might be looking for?
There are a huge number of developers experienced in e-commerce solutions but not all of them might be the best fit for your project. Depending on your needs, you might need to onboard different types of devs. Who exactly should be of your interest?
- Web developers
The most standard choice. Web developers can build your small online store, implement an online store in your existing website, or build a marketplace. Depending on the scale of your project, you might choose a full stack web developer (knowledgable in all areas of web development) or a combo of front-end and back-end developers. Front-end equals everything that the client/user sees, back-end focuses on server-side operations (e.g. ensuring the site is accessible at all times).
- Mobile developers
Just like the overall e-commerce market, the m-commerce (mobile e-commerce) sector is also rapidly growing. In 2017, almost a third of global retail sales came through mobile apps, and mobile sales are projected to double between 2018 and 2021.
In such a situation, investing in m-commerce is a must. You can achieve it by either adapting your current website to phones and tablets or building a separate mobile app that will power up your sales and keep your customers more dedicated to your brand. Such a mobile app can be built by mobile developers — these will differ depending on your needs and budgets.
On one hand, you can separately hire e-commerce developers focused on iOS (utilizing the Swift programming language) and Android (utilizing Java, Kotlin, or another Android-recommended language). Alternatively, you can hire e-commerce developers experienced in cross-platform mobile app development — by using tools like React Native or Flutter, they can build software for Android and iOS simultaneously and at a lower cost.
- Platform-related developers
If you want to speed up the development process, you can also use one of the reputable e-commerce management platforms, such as Shopify, BigCommerce, or WooCommerce. While these are relatively easy to use and even to set up by a non-developer, you might still want to hire e-commerce developers experienced in the platform of your choice to make sure everything works top-notch. These developers can also later add features to your store that are not available in the platform’s vanilla version.
- Machine learning engineers and AI experts
Implementing machine learning and AI can additionally improve your sales. You can hire e-commerces developers experienced in these technologies to build for you recommendation algorithms or chatbots. Such solutions are especially useful for marketplaces.
What hard skills are the foundation of e-commerce development services?
To deliver results continuously and efficiently, your e-commerce developers should be savvy in multiple areas of web and app development. We list the most important ones below.
- Web languages
HTML, CSS, and JavaScript — a must for every e-commerce developer, whatever their specialty is.
- Additional programming languages
Depending on the unique project requirements. For example, native mobile development might require the knowledge of Swift (iOS) and/or Kotlin (Android), while Shopify developers will also need to know the unique Liquid templating language.
- Experience with relevant frameworks and libraries
These speed up the development process significantly by providing quick solutions to common problems and requests.
- If applicable, experience with relevant platforms
Developing with Shopify, WooCommerce, or other e-com platforms requires additional knowledge, such as understanding of the platform’s unique API.
- Understanding of best design practices
Even if your design will be built by separate web or mobile designers (which is highly encouraged), your developer should still be able to provide relevant suggestions and implement the design according to best practices.
The power of soft skills
A set of specific soft skills can highly power up cooperation and innovation within your company. When you want to hire e-commerce developers, look for experts with specifically the following soft skills:
- Self-management skills
To prioritize tasks well and be able to adjust one’s daily plan when an unplanned problem occurs.
- Creativity
To effectively assist designers by providing relevant ideas.
- Understanding of the customer’s perspective
To provide UX that answers the user’s needs.
Assessing experience in providing e-commerce development services
To ensure your e-commerce development team works as efficiently as possible, check also how your candidates utilized their skills in the past.
Firstly, consider the product fit. Try to hire e-commerce developers who have worked on e-com solutions as similar to yours as possible. Do you have a Shopify store in mind? Look for people experienced with this specific platform. Do you prefer a custom online store? Find someone who has build one from scratch in the past. Planning a marketplace? The same story — find developers who have already worked on one.
Product fit will guarantee the members of your e-commerce development team will deliver the final results faster thanks to their prior experience. An even higher boost like this can be achieved by looking also at the industry fit — experts who have worked within your business vertical know your customer group and solutions useful uniquely to companies like yours.
Who else should you include in your e-commerce development team?
Developers will provide the technological backbone for your project but this might not be enough to grab the attention of customers. To improve your chances of success, you should also invest in experts like digital designers, IT project managers, business analysts, and data scientists.
Don’t have time to look for all these yourself? We can help! At Ideamotive, we run a unique network of top IT talents from all across the industries. With us, you can easily and swiftly hire e-commerce developers of all types (including Shopify developers and machine learning engineers) as well as all other aforementioned experts. And we don’t just find anyone for you — we carefully review your company profile and look for the best matches.
Get in touch with us today and start winning on the e-commerce market.
