If you are searching for a website for your business and run into a lot of adds for an ecommerce developer you may be confused. Why? Because most shopping cart platforms talk about how easy they are to use and setup. Marketing at its best will make it sound like anyone can simply register and launch without any additional help. While most competitive shopping carts have made it easy to be average to really stand out, you need an ecommerce developer.
Why do you need an ecommerce developer? Well, let’s take for example your website design. Often when you get a website it gives you a template. You can use the controls within the website editor to change some parts of how it looks like colors. However in order to make real changes, you need to inject code into your website. This requires some basic web development understanding with not hard to know skills but unless you want to learn them, you need an ecommerce developer. Languages like HTML, CSS or even Javascript become needed to really customize how your website looks even within hosted shopping cart platforms.
Additionally, just because a website comes with an editor this does not mean anyone can really design a good website. Do you have a creative streak in you? Are you able to really create a great looking modern website? If not, again, hire an ecommerce developer to customize your website to make it look how you want in your head but just do not have the skills to do on your own.
This really focuses so far on the customization and improvement of a website that is offered really hosted and with an editor like BigCommerce or Shopify. However if you go into WooCommerce, Magento or older carts like Zencart, you will really need an ecommerce developer to get up and running. While anyone can host a site, install and run the shopping carts things can go wrong and you need to know how to fix them. You will want to expand your features and install plugins and again, unless your a PHP developer you will want one nearby.
Once you have your website up and running again you may want an ecommerce developer for more than just ecommerce website development but to do integrations. Do you have many websites and maybe even sell on marketplaces? Do you want a platform that plugs them together? Do you know how APIs work? If not, get an ecommerce developer to help. Additionally one of the most complicated business models like dropshipping where you want to automate data from suppliers to sales channels requires a lot of technical work to get setup. An ecommerce developer can really help with this setup.
Now keep in mind an ecommerce developer is not generic. You will want to find a specific ecommerce developer that matches the specific needs you have as often like any job skills they will specialize in a specific platform or area and you need to ensure that aligns to what your needs are.
