E-commerce has changed the way retail businesses operate providing them with beneficial advantages in comparison with trivial forms of store marketing. The value e-commerce brings to companies has an extremely significant effect on sales, revenues, and customer outreach. Nowadays companies tend to shift their paradigms toward online stores that impact the efficiency of their businesses.
According to 99Firms’ Ecommerce Statistics for 2020, the eCommerce market is anticipated to increase to 95 percent by 2040. Fantastic! But building a successful eCommerce website is not so easy as it may seem at first glance: not only the development process is important, but the after-launch maintenance process as well, including updates, fixing bugs, enhancement of UX, etc. With this purpose in mind, expert eCommerce marketplace developers come in.
Actually, our article is devoted to the topic of how to select the right eCommerce development team. We’re sharing tips and tricks on how to hire the best eCommerce marketplace developers and to keep from getting burnt. So let’s go!
What Do You Need to Know Before Hiring Ecommerce Marketplace Developers?
Below there are several factors to consider before starting your eCommerce website and hiring eCommerce developers.
Define your business goal and requirements
Before hiring eCommerce marketplace developers for your website you need to identify the requirements of this website. What is this eCommerce platform going to fulfill? What is your target audience? What features does your eCommerce project have to cover? Compile the list of your brainstorming ideas and narrow down it afterward by removing unnecessary items.
Furthermore, one of the most essential things is planning your budget. That’s why be simple in your selection and accurate in determining your business goal.
Learn more about developers’ experience and expertise
If you think that developing a simple website is similar to building an eCommerce marketplace platform you are mistaken. Therefore, it is so important to browse through the company’s (the one you’re going to hire) portfolio in order to get insight into the company’s previous case studies. Moreover, you have to prepare questions to learn more about eCommerce developer responsibilities relating to the specifics of digital marketplace development. For instance, such a feature as integration with payment service needs appropriate eCommerce developer skills for implementation. So be ready to ask in-depth questions in terms of developers’ previous experience. It is also useful to get to know if there were any pitfalls and how developers managed to cope with them.
If you want your expectations to match your developers’ design patterns, review the portfolio paying attention to UI/UX since it really matters to your customers' satisfaction and retention on the platform. Check out feedback from previous companies they collaborate with to be assured of their solid approaches toward eCommerce project development.
We outline the following common features and skills each eCommerce developer should possess:
- Scaling experience. To work in an eCommerce startup developers need to be aware of the product growth and acquire abilities to automate processes, use big amounts of data, be flexible, and adaptable.
- Business awareness. By saying this, we mean the commercial understanding of the product, how their (developers’) work has an impact on the commercial side of the project. Having that in mind will contribute to the overall company performance.
- Abilities to analyze data. Backed up by data, an eCommerce agile environment is supposed to scale fastly; therefore, developers need to process data and use it for performance improvement and analyze it to drive better decisions and prioritize their workflows.
- Soft and hard skills. It is not a newness that possessing these skills are a priori the foremost ones. Let’s talk more in detail about them in the next paragraphs.
What Are Technical Skills Marketplace Developers Should Have?
Irrespective of the job a programmer does, he has to have a good command of programming languages, computer science concepts, tools and cloud platforms, and much more. Let’s take a look at the most crucial hard skills every developer should have.
- Programming languages and frameworks. According to the statistics on the popularity of programming languages, Javascript, Python, Ruby on Rails, and C/C++ are the top ones. It does not mean a good developer has to know all the languages, even the best ones. It depends on the peculiarity of the project and his spheres of interest. Nevertheless, a developer needs to learn at least one programming language in-depth.
- Dedicated eCommerce platforms. Marketplace developers have to be aware of the most popular eCommerce platforms such as WooCommerce, Magento, or Shopify that can be great alternatives to traditional programming.
- API development and integration implementation. This is one of the most crucial requirements when hiring an eCommerce developer. It is obligatory to develop a connection of SaaS apps (payment systems, shipping and inventory management, CRM, ERP systems, etc.) with marketplaces to ensure an all-in-one well-performing system in order to get access to the data connected with products, customers, orders and much more.
- Database. There are a lot of databases available, for example, Oracle or MySQL. If you want to hire an eCommerce developer he has to be familiar with essential database concepts and at least basic SQL queries. Knowledge on how to create, delete, update, store records, etc. is an indispensable part of development processes.
- Source control. How a developer manages and controls his code is also one of the must-have hard skills. If a developer is comfortable with version control systems, he will be able to collaborate with other teams. What do control systems mean? They can maintain different versions of the project and allow merge them into one working project so that a developer can rollback to any version he wants without a need to create a lot of other projects.
- Data structures and algorithms. It is of high importance for every developer to be able to organize data with the proper data structure and algorithm to solve issues fastly and in less space.
- Cross-platform software. A developed eCommerce product needs to be accepted by the maximum number of systems considering the fact that users are likely to switch to their smartphones. Taking this into consideration, a developer has to adapt an online product to the various devices paying attention to UX.
- Basics of testing. A not less important skill to master. To identify bugs and fix them before a product will go on a big scale is a must-do to ensure great UX for the customers. There are three core testing methods available:
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- Unit testing (every independent module are tested)
- Integration testing (interaction between different blocks and modules are tested)
- System testing (testing on complete and integrated software).
What Soft Skill Should Ecommerce Developers Have?
To make your venture a driving success it is of high importance to hire a developer who has certain qualities that no one accent on; however, they are as important as technical acumen. These are soft skills - let’s take an overview of which ones are imperative when looking for an eCommerce developer. He will be a good match for your project if he/she is a (an):
- Problem-solver. Developers’ work depends on the accuracy and in-depth knowledge of frameworks and languages, but sometimes there are inevitable hidden technical bugs that need to be elaborated upon thoroughly. So the ability of a developer to look for eCommerce development solutions to fix mistakes is an immense advantage for him to be well-estimated by the hiring company. Those who strive to solve problems and are ready to dive deep into hard work on a certain small problem are bound to succeed.
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Innovator. Sometimes traditional decisions can bring no such results as innovative ones. Developers have to always learn new technologies and methodologies to take out new ideas and not to be afraid of trying them out.
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Flexible person. It can be challenging enough for developers who are not flexible and haven’t worked before in iterative environments. As we mentioned above, developers have to survive the pressure that comes with a scaling environment. Their ability to rapidly shift and adapt to changes is must-have quality. Check out if your development team has had previous experience.
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Good communicator. Developers need to clearly explain technical concepts to non-technical employees and external customers.
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Attentive to detail. Understanding the intentions of the clients, developers collect all necessary data to write appropriate codes.
Do Not Forget About Culture Fit
Fitting into the company culture is just as essential as having a solid technical background. No matter how tech-savvy a candidate for eCommerce website development is if his intentions do not match with your company culture. Taking into account that the Agile environment incorporates a high level of eCommerce developer’s independence, responsibility, and trust, the great candidate is one who has perfect personal values aligned with the company’s ones and an appropriate working ethic.
Therefore, the ideal scenario of hiring the person is the balance between his technical talents and his striving to contribute to the company values.
Onboarding Process
Without a well-thought onboarding process business expectations can be failed. Therefore, it is essential for a developer to dive deep into business requirements and goals, to have a clear understanding of the product, as well as to be on the same wavelength with a client’s vision.
Once a developer/development team is hired, cooperation has to be discussed beforehand, including:
- Overall setting up processes
- Progress reports (how and when devs should inform of their accomplished tasks)
- Communication channels (how developers need to communicate with a client and other team members)
- Usage of tools for task management (ClickUp, Asana, JIRA, etc).
Looking for eCommerce marketplace developers?
There are plenty of eCommerce experts in our talent network, experienced in various technologies and industries. Let us help you select the best development teams tailored to your business needs and requirements. Moreover, now you can evaluate the expertise of the candidates and hire the best talents by yourself. Let's hop on the call to discuss your eCommerce project in detail.
Alongside the development processes, it is also important to consider marketing efforts. We have also materials that can definitely interest you on how to drive more sales on the marketplace with AI. Check it out!
