Is it better to use Custom Software or Commercial Solutions?

Why would you reinvent the wheel?

The greatest story behind page buzz is our software because our clients are the biggest part of that and the reason it is so great.

We see a lot of webmasters / programmers /web developers that tell customers the can build them a shopping cart. The problem is, they could never do in a short time what any company has done over 10 years developing the same product.

We have learned by trial and error, we have added what people needed and created streamline system that does no require our support staff to walk every customer through the process of doing every task.

The fact that we have a very small support staff is not a flaw or an indication of our customer base, it is by design and in part because the software is so easy to use.

One thing we learn very early is that we could only handle so many support calls a day, so when a tool was not easy to use and had many people a day calling for help, we changed it.

This hit and miss process over 10 years has allowed us to create software that needs no support, website building tools so easy to use that people don't need to call us for help.

If you tried to do that in a couple of weeks it would be impossible.

The reason our cart is so good is that we have so many people using it.

When one customer calls us and say, hey, my customer can't checkout. We investigate and maybe it is a bug in a new browser or operating system, we try to create a work around so users with that browser will not have a problem.

But can an independent webmaster spend 20 hours fixing simple common problems like that? If they do, what are they going to charge their customer for it?

There is a distinct advantage to using commercial system like the pageBuzz shopping cart over less developed system or something an inexperienced webmaster hacked together is a few days.

You get the benefit of years of development and you get it for a fraction of the price of having one built from scratch.

Now companies like Walmart can certainly afford to have an IT team build a cart from the ground up, and over a few years they get it working smoothly and make updates when necessary.

For them, this business model is critical so they can make changes regularly and update the way their cart works.

Bit for the average business without an IT team of programmers it makes sense to use a cart that is managed by a team of IT people.

Now, that does not mean you can have changes made or have custom features built just for you whenever you need it, because that is unlikely in any commercial release. But it does insure you have current working and easy to use tools.

For example, when a webmaster build a cart and spend 2 weeks to integrate real time shipping via your fedex account, maybe you paid $2000 for that work. Then 2 years later, fedex makes changes to their gateway and you have to have the webmaster start all over again.

This is very common, as a matter of fact is expected when any system interfaces with another.

Building applications that use google APIs or access data from outside sources is just asking for trouble. Because those companies are not going to sit on their applications, they continue to develop then, make them better and add features.

But that means you need to keep up with them, when they make changes in how it works, you have to make changes in your website. Since your webmaster built it 2 years ago and has since moved, who do you go to for help?

This can leave merchants without working websites and with big expenses.

They though they were saving money by using an open source solution that was free, but in fact, it is always more expensive that using commercially developed solutions like pageBuzz.

If you look at websites today the are much different than they were 5 or 10 years ago, things change, software changes and operating systems change.

If you plan on having a business online for more than a few years you want software that can be updated easily and at little or no cost. Paying a team of IT professionals is out of the question, but buying commercial carts or sofware are the best way to go because they are updated at the vendors expense and not yours.

Of course not every person can slip into a standard size shoe, but most can and having standard system like shoes, pants and other clothing make it cheaper and easy to update a wardrobe.

Having a commercial solution is cheaper and faster than building custom applications.

Of course, each software vendor has a custom application unique to them. But we all try to make the features broad enough to fit the majority of companies. That way there is a big enough market to support the development costs.

That can be a problem for people that need unique features or tools that are not used by other companies.

We get this all the time at pageBuzz.com. Potential customers call and ask if the cart can do this or that and I have to tell them that they might be the only company that would need that and it is not likely going to be the feature of any cart. They are facing dealing with a development team and building a custom application or modifying an existing application to work.

Having a unique business is great because you often have few competitors, but when it comes to using standard tools you are left out and you have no choice but to develop software from the ground up. Hopefully your business model accounts for that and you have some flexibility in your budget to cover it.

For the rest of the businesses, if you can find a commercial cart that fits your needs it is really a better option than trying to reinvent the wheel.

When the wheel was invented it was not fast, made of rubber or even reliable. But after Centurys of use and development we have fast cars that run smoothly and reliably. Who would have know what was possible 200 years ago when wheels were wooden spokes with steel rims riding over rough rock and terrain?

Nothing is every perfect the first time it is made and no webmaster, programmer or developer can think of everything that you might need in the future or how the Internet will change.

Even the wheel took thousands of years to get to what we have today and that is very simple compared to complex software. So when you make your choice, consider what you need out of your cart today and the years to follow. Consider costs and performance as well as ease of use.

There is no right or wrong answer, but don't look for a yes or no choice, choosing the right application requires more consideration than just flipping a coin or finding the cheapest host on google.