Website Development

E-commerce Web Development in Houston | Custom Online Store Solutions

By Tyler Clay • December 30, 2024

E-commerce Web Development: Sweeten Your Online Store in Houston 🍬

We are not new at all to the e-commerce game and know just how brutal it can be. How can you close sales on your website if you have no visitors? We are here to help you fix that.
We specialize in creating custom e-commerce solutions for businesses in Houston, then work relentlessly to drive visitors to your store.

We are here to help whether you have a new store idea or an existing store you would like to grow.

Sweetness Across Platforms: Shopify and WooCommerce

When you start the journey of building an e-commerce store, picking the correct platform is essential. Changing your platform after your site has been created is a tedious process that can confuse existing customers. We support a variety of e-commerce platforms, but we usually recommend one of the two largest, depending on the needs of the business: Shopify and WooCommerce. Here’s a quick look at the pros and cons of each to help you make the best decision for your online store.

Shopify

If you are looking to start a e-commerce business and have not heard of Shopify we assume you must be at the start of your project. Shopify offers a very easy to use e-commerce shop builder you can use to build a store. So, if you can do this yourself, where does our expertise come in? Just like any other website you need an elegant and unique design for your shop. This is hard to come by just using the premade templates. We offer full customization over the Shopify platform.

We also develop custom Shopify apps that can provide specialized shipping solutions, custom analytic solutions, advanced order fulfilment workflows, custom checkout flows, and much more. If you find you need a feature not already offered on the platform we can create a plugin to add this functionality to your store. Shopify has ultimate say over the code they allow in apps so please request a free consultation to determine if we can build the plugin you are envisioning. If you are deciding whether Shopify is right for your business consider this short list of pros and cons we have compiled just for you.

Shopify Pros

Easy to use: Shopify is known for being easy to use. With just a little time, you can set up a basic e-commerce website for your business.
Hosted Platform: If you are not very technical you may not understand this point, but all websites need to be hosted by a physical computer somewhere in the world. Shopify hosts your website from their own servers so that is one less thing for you to worry about. Keep in mind they do charge for this service, but it is included in all Shopify plans.
Sweet Support & User Base: There are a ton of people already using Shopify to power their e-commerce website. For this reason, you will find a variety of themes prebuilt as well as arguably the largest e-commerce platform support community.

Shopify Cons

Limited Customization: As mentioned in the pros Shopify does have numerous prebuilt plugins and customizations already built for your use. Similar to the iPhone’s ecosystem the Shopify platform can be restrictive at times. You are always at the grace of Shopify to support the features you desire in your store. This is more restrictive than WooCommerce where you have 100% control of the code running your store.
Reoccurring Costs: You didn’t think we would forget to mention the price, did you? Shopify costs are reoccurring and can be changed by Shopify at any given moment. These recurring costs are not present in WooCommerce.

WooCommerce

WooCommerce is a free (open source) e-commerce platform built on top of WordPress. It is a top choice by stores that want ultimate control over their website as well as little to no reoccurring costs. You have complete control over the code and can tailor WooCommerce to any specific needs. Our software wizards can also build WooCommerce plugins for your website. These can be useful if you desire to integrate advanced shipping options, custom product configurations, complex pricing models, and much more. WooCommerce is an open platform, and we can make any idea you have for your store come to life! If you are deciding whether WooCommerce is right for your business consider this short list of pros and cons we have compiled.

WooCommerce Pros

100% Customization Control: With WooCommerce, you have access to read and edit any aspect of your store, including design and functionality.
More Affordable: While you do need to take care of hosting yourself this can possibly be included in your web hosting fees. WooCommerce itself is free and does not carry the monthly costs that Shopify does.
Tons of Plugins: WooCommerce has a ton of plugins you can install to shortcut effort on new features for your store.

WooCommerce Cons

Steep Learning Curve: WooCommerce can quickly get quite technical quickly. Although basic usage of WooCommerce does not require much technical experience, customizing it to your liking may require a decent time investment in building technical skills. If you do not have someone managing this you will spend more time setting this up than with Shopify.
Self-Hosted: This is highly related to the previous con. If you go to the WooCommerce website, you will not find an easy “Get Started” button like on Shopify. You will need to work with a WooCommerce web host to get your website set up, and this is more hands-on than Shopify.

Custom E-commerce Development for Unique Business Needs

Some ideas require custom solutions and we are here to support those! We offer custom custom e-commerce development services for businesses with advanced needs. Candy Creative has in-house software engineering wizards that can help any idea you have come to fruition. We work with modern web development technologies such as Next.js, Express.js, Vue.js, and React.js. These technologies allow us to build highly customized user interfaces and advanced integrations to deliver the sweetest shopping experience possible. Of course, we build more than just your storefront. We can also build custom admin panels that allow you to track store performance and manage the store easily. Custom e-commerce development allows you to have the uttermost control of your business operations.

Does Speed Matter on E-commerce Websites?

Speed as an important metric cannot be emphasized enough when discussing e-commerce development. The page you are reading this on was not designed to sell directly to you and still requires extensive emphasis on page speed. If this article loaded too slowly, you may have hit the back button to Google and read this on one of our competitor's websites. With e-commerce platforms the ante is upped another notch. Speed is everything when attempting to sell products to your users. A study performed by Think with Google found that a one-second delay in page load time can lead to a 7% reduction in conversions. That is why we ensure every e-commerce website we build not only looks great but loads quickly. It won’t matter how sweet your website looks if your visitors are bouncing before ever seeing it. Quick loading is a consumer expectation and empowers a top-tier experience that will keep your customers coming back.

Sweet Integrations and Security

A thriving e-commerce store is much more than just a storefront. Hackers understand you likely have access to your customer's full names, contact information, addresses, and possibly payment information. This treasure trove of data makes e-commerce websites lucrative targets for hackers. Security is a top-tier priority here at Candy Creative, and we take various proactive measures to protect your website, including SSL Certificates, frequent security audits and monitoring, and data backups. If you are already facing a security issue on your website we offer Malware removal services. We will determine how the malware infected your website, remove the malware from your website and create an action plan to prevent your site from becoming reinfected. We also offer comprehensive e-commerce integration services that allow you to streamline every aspect of your business operation including shipping, payment processing, delivery fulfillment and much more.

Driving Sales and Traffic: Where E-commerce and SEO Collide

When building e-commerce websites most agencies focus on the design, products, and aesthetics and ignore the SEO for the pages. Failure to utilize SEO best practices in your product and landing pages can cause your website not to rank on Google. This can provide friction for users attempting to discover your store and result in lower sales. We specialize in optimizing product pages for search engines and setting up email marketing campaigns and social media integrations to help your store thrive in sales.

Ongoing Support and Maintenance

E-commerce websites need frequent updates to mitigate security risks and further optimize user experience. Our e-commerce site maintenance services include updates, plugin customization, performance monitoring, and much more. Your business is always changing so why wouldn’t your website?

Why Choose Candy Creative for Your E-commerce Needs?

Many web agencies will create a website for you but fail to offer the marketing and SEO services needed to drive traffic to your website. As a result, you end up working with two, three, maybe even four agencies and get stuck playing Messenger. We streamline this by offering a sweet variety of services that help your e-commerce website succeed. Our services are also tiered making them affordable for small businesses while scaling along with large businesses! Let’s create something sweet together—get in touch with us today to learn how we can help your e-commerce business thrive online. 🍬Our website technology of choice is WordPress, as it allows us to design websites that look super sweet, while also providing you with the flexibility to change your content as your business changes. A study performed by W3Techs found that WordPress powers over 40% of all websites globally (W3Techs). It is not only used by small businesses either. Many large multi-national businesses use WordPress as it is one of the lowest barriers to entry content management systems and has millions of users already, meaning it is super extensible. WordPress has a large library of themes and plugins that allow you to get your website to function and look exactly how you want, without requiring custom No matter what your brand is looking to accomplish with its online presence, we are the ones for the job! We can help you with anything from establishing a fresh brand, rebuilding your outdated website, or providing reliable maintenance and hosting. Our motto is “Unwrapping Creativity” as we exist to help bring your vision to life, and create a sweet online experience for your business. Contact us today to build something sweet together!