Does your brick and mortar store offer online customized products- like printed mugs, wall clocks or t-shirts? Are you looking to leverage the internet to acquire more customers for your store?

You are reading the right blog that will guide you at setting up an online product customizer shop.

Perks of having an online presence to your physical store

A recent report by DigitalCommerce360 confirms that the contribution of e-commerce in total retail sales has significantly increased in the past few years. We have seen more than 6% rise between 2014 and 2019 alone.

And it’s just not because an online purchase delivers the product right at your doorstep, but also because the end-users have an infinite number of product options to select from. An online store breaks the long known roadblocks for most physical stores- unavailability of product and the variant. 

Business owners can now offer rarest of the products and often products that don’t exist physically. The lack of any physical storage to the stock levels enable them to accumulate and sell products  that can’t be done on their local outlets.

Moreover, let us assume your city’s total population is 100,000. Well, that is the limit to the number of buyers to your services. Now, compare this with a store that is visible to 4.66 Billion users globally. That is what the internet does to your business.

More ideas for selling products on an online store: Videos to Help Sell Products on your Ecommerce Store.

Why is online product customization a problem?

Product customization as a business, allows the end-users to have products that are tailored for them, with respect to design, color or a mere name-printing. Conventionally, the business owners provide a few samples that are closest to the customer’s desired needs. As a result, the probable buyer has the option to almost verify tailored designs prior to order confirmation.

However, things aren’t the same when your store is dealing with a customer online. There can be millions of combinations between your products, the variants and the extended customizations. For example, Mission Bicycle offers personalized bicycles to the buyers. The end- users can literally have any color for the cycle seat, the grips, rims, frames, etc. and a preview of their final design, as shown below:

Going by the traditional ways of product showcasing, the store owner would have to create thousands of cycle designs, plus added effort while adding a new color variant for the product. Only an online product customization store with the right functions can deliver the desired scalability and user experience.

More on personalized e-commerce experience

With the right technologies by your side, offering product customization features on our store is highly attainable.

How to build a visual product configurator on my online store?

Technically, we have several platforms that make it easier to own an online store. We call them “e-commerce development platforms” and the best examples are Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce and Magento that account for nearly 6 million online stores across the globe.

The product customization business owners can find several pre-designed extensions/plugins of their interest. The extensions will readily install a visual product configurator on your e-store, allowing your buyers to verify the custom designs online, as if they were previewed in the real world.

The first question that your brain might ask is: Is there a limitation to the product types which are customizable? The answer is NO. We have a few stores developed using the same product customization extension.

It is worth noticing that even though each product is so different from the rest, the application is capable of treating every product the way they should.

We have chosen some similar handy options for your stores that will help configure a visual product customizer, that too, with zero technical knowledge:

Custom Product Builder (Magento 2.2 and above)

Having a store on Magento assures a rock solid backend to your e-commerce store. If e-commerce store development can be compared to metals, Magento is probably the Titanium. The store extensions are equally promising.

Custom Product Builder lets your potential buyers customize products on your e-store. The store owners can add any number of customization types the product can offer. Everything is managed very smoothly. All they have to mind is their products and the kind of customizations their users expect.

There aren’t many product customizers in the Magento extension store. However, this one is worth a trial.

Product Personalizer (Shopify)

Product Personalizer is highly popular among Shopify store owners.  The app can readily fit into any Shopify e-store and offer the desired visual customization features.

Having a store on Shopify is itself a treat to the eyes. The UI is light-weighted, fast and extremely responsive to the in-store functions. The backend panel is equally user friendly for the business owners. They can manage everything with utter smoothness. 

Product Designer (WooCommerce)

WooCommerce Product Designer is way ahead of its times. From offering a visual product customizer to creating beautiful text designs, the plugin creates innumerable possibilities for the store owner.

Now, if you are looking to create a store on WooCommerce, you already know a plugin you are going to need to avail visual customization options.

But what if the extensions aren’t up to the mark?

Custom designed solutions

We now know a few tools you might require in your future e-commerce store that provides product customization. So far, we have learnt that they are fulfilling in every aspect. The applications are designed with a rather general approach, such that a store owner regardless of which industry he comes from, can establish a fully functional online store.

On the other side of the coin, the 360 degree approach by these extensions are often loaded with heavy JS files that can ruin your store performance. They come with features that are redundant to your store and you really don’t have options to remove them.

At this, you can go for third party e-commerce development agencies like The Brihaspati Infotech who are capable of designing similar solutions for your store. Something they can offer more to your store, is understand your exact needs and the technological stack best suited for the existing infrastructure.

Their expertise brings in the best balance between minimalism and scalable features injection. And, does that compromise with the quality of the solution? Definitely a NO to that question.

Here is a 3-D visual product customizer. The customers can design their product, preview them, and rotate them in a 3-D platform before finally placing the order.

With that, you literally have 

Summing it up

E-Commerce has transformed the ways businesses were managed. Customers are expecting more than a mere online store. They crave for a more intuitive experience, a thinner boundary between online and offline purchase.

With an online store for product customization you can now offer everything you had always wished for, an excellent user interface, easier means to find more customers and a global platform to showcase your services. 

The community of online developers is ready to help you build an online store from scratch. All you need to do is take the initiative at the earliest.

Author Bio:

Kunal Khullar is a Co-Founder at The Brihaspati Infotech, a leading IT consulting & service provider. He holds 10+ years of experience with providing software services, development and team management with diverse offshore software consulting firms all across the globe.

He is passionate about technology and believes in serving today’s diversified business world with his knowledge and expertise.