Mary Yasensky Delivery Manager

• Business
• Digitalization

August 22, 2024 10 min read

Golang Ecommerce Website Development: Benefits You Get Choosing Go

According to Statista, global retail ecommerce sales accounted for approximately $4.9 trillion in 2021, with projections to reach nearly $7.4 trillion by 2025. In today’s competitive landscape, retailers need robust, performant ecommerce apps and platforms to attract and retain users. This is where companies should consider a tech stack. Golang ecommerce development, in fact, has great prospects and advantages.

If you are reading the article, you’ve probably decided on a custom ecommerce product over an out-of-the-box solution. Go is among the best programming languages that is likely to suit your ecommerce project needs. Numerous well-known businesses used Golang in their projects, including Uber, Alibaba, BBC, Intel, Netflix, and Twitter. They leverage Golang opportunities for different use cases across various industries.

We’ve been creating custom ecommerce solutions for mature startups and global enterprises, from online shops to enterprise resource planning systems, since 2011. In this article, we are glad to share our vision of the cost estimation approach.

Pros and cons of a custom ecommerce solution

Making a custom ecommerce website has advantages and drawbacks you should be aware of prior to project start. You need to realize that it takes time, resources, and cooperation with IT experts who will help you outline a product roadmap and choose the right technology stack.

We primarily like Go since Golang ecommerce software development helps optimize performance and scalability while enhancing the user experience. But to help you make a more balanced decision, let’s take a look at pros and cons of Go.

1. Longer time to market (TTM) but faster upgrades

As a custom ecommerce solution requires a lot of tailoring to the needs of a particular company, its delivery takes more time compared with implementing turnkey software as is — typically at least 7 months.

Apart from the development itself, the team analyzes project requirements, builds a customer journey map (CJM), creates a UI/UX design, and makes other necessary preparations.

Despite longer TTM, you win faster implementation of custom features in the future, which is almost impossible with out-of-the-box solutions. The average feature release time is 1–3 weeks, while small urgent changes like introducing seasonal holiday design can take just a few days.

Shopify, for example, is known for its frequent updates and feature delivery. They often roll out new functionality every few weeks. For instance, they might announce a new feature and begin shipping it out gradually over 2–3 days to all users.

2. More time and resources but minimized risks

The development of a custom ecommerce solution is impossible without the involvement of the client’s team. After all, no one knows your customers’ needs and problems or the goods you plan to sell better than you.

Based on our experience, the more actively the client takes part in the process, the higher is the chance to meet and even exceed initial expectations. So, prepare to invest your time and resources in custom ecommerce website development.

At the same time, you minimize the risks of dependence on third-party experts. A custom solution belongs to you completely and is under your management, while the out-of-the-box solution is something you only rent.

If you choose to outsource an ecommerce project, make sure to request the transparent transfer of code and documents, and your in-house staff will get appropriate training for the solution’s further support and maintenance. The entire knowledge base should remain inside your company.

3. A more expensive but unique solution

A custom ecommerce platform with Golang or another language costs more than for an out-of-the-box product. Therefore, before you invest in ecommerce website development, be sure to analyze whether you really need it and whether such a sales channel will be efficient in your case.

The unique features and design mean not only more pages and different colors of buttons and banners, but rather a well-thought-out UX. Nothing should distract the user from the purchase, and the process needs to be easy to understand. If you find the right balance between meeting the expectations of your target audience and the wow effect, a custom online retail solution can become the digital face of your brand as compared to typical ready-made software.

As a result, custom ecommerce products tend to bring high conversion rates. You get rid of extra barriers, build the optimal order flow, and go on with increasing loyalty and repeat purchases.

When you need a custom ecommerce solution

Based on the pros and cons of Golang ecommerce development from scratch, here are some cases when it makes sense to start building your own custom platform:

• You have a unicorn online retail business that has faced a scaling challenge.
• You’ve already tried an out-of-the-box solution, and it doesn’t match your organization’s structure or the requirements of your back office.
• You need unlimited possibilities for integration with both in-house and external systems, specific marketing solutions, and BI systems.
• You aim to offer your customers a unique UI/UX or functionality set.
• You strive to receive a future-proof, innovative ecommerce product, for instance, to attract investors and raise funds.

Now, let’s have a look at the main factors affecting the cost of Golang ecommerce website development.

Cost-affecting factors in custom Golang ecommerce development

The decision to build a custom ecommerce website shall be well-weighed and informed. It is crucial to estimate ecommerce product delivery costs. To help you with it, we’ve estimated an average project with what it comprises and what factors can have an impact upon it. Before we begin, a little disclaimer:

1. We consider only design and development, not taking into account any legal expenses, content creation, marketing, and promotion.
2. Without a preliminary study and analysis of your ecommerce project needs and requirements, hardly anyone will tell you how much it exactly costs to make an ecommerce website. But there are certain aspects that will surely influence the final price, and this is what we are going to speak about.

Ecommerce website features

Success chances for your ecommerce website increase if it offers everything users need for easy and convenient online shopping. In addition, many businesses strive to implement various innovations to keep buyers engaged and outrun competitors.

However, the cost directly depends on the project complexity, so delivering all the things users potentially want may be too expensive. On top of that, consumers may not need some of the functionality you are going to add.

To identify priorities before building an ecommerce product with Golang, we recommend that you conduct audience research. Then, you should determine the feature scope for the first version. This will help you improve TTM, learn from user feedback, and avoid extra work for implementing unnecessary functions.

To avoid unnecessary expenses, we offer our clients to start with preproject research also known as Sprint Zero. It covers preproject activities aimed at estimating the scope of work, terms, and budget for a specific online retail project.

In 1–3 weeks we prepare a feature set, design concept, backlog, and an ecommerce solution roadmap with solid proof for each suggestion. The cost of preproject research is about 5% of the overall project budget.

UI/UX design

The UI/UX design does not only make your ecommerce product attractive. Unique design implies adding value and solving problems. A professional design of a website will help you stand out among competitors and offer the best possible user experience. The cost of this stage of building an ecommerce website depends on the level of complexity.

We always strive to understand and meet users’ needs. To create the design that impacts business results, we offer to start with building a customer journey map — if we do preproject research, we start on the CJM at that point. This helps identify the specific needs of different audiences and detect what to pay attention to while creating a user-friendly and engaging product.

Working on a Customer Journey Map for a fashion brand, we found a segment of the target audience we’ve never thought was big: women buying men’s clothes for their husbands or sons. As a result, we implemented an option that allows saving size measurements for different people and to filter the catalog accordingly.

Ecommerce development with Go

Development activities account for a larger proportion of project hours, which makes them also a significant cost-affecting factor. To estimate their cost, you shall take into account whether you are going to build an in-house team, hire freelancers, or outsource the development to a team with relevant experience and expertise.

Other important points are developers’ location, qualification, and technology stack. Golang belongs to the 10 top-paying technologies, according to Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2021.

For its price, Golang offers significant benefits that make it a good match to build an ecommerce website:

• Teams often choose Go for being simple and capable of saving development resources, making maintainability of code less expensive and the development process faster.
• When compared to Java, Python, Rust, and Node.js, Go surpasses them when you need to develop high-load or distributed systems.
• Easy code writing, high level of security, high execution speed, and a low entry barrier make Golang unrivaled for microservice architecture that is the best foundation for fast response to customers’ needs and market trends.
• Golang provides for high page load speed, reducing customer churn and feedback complaints regarding slow page load time.
• Golang assures concurrency and scalability, while scaling is a vital factor for further development of the ecommerce site.

Therefore, be careful in evaluating the right tech stack for your future product, taking into account all the benefits Go offers for web development, APIs, charts, real-time communications, server apps, cloud-based services, cloud computing, etc., and checking other alternatives for mobile apps, graphics, and frontend development.

Quality assurance

Ecommerce services form a domain where security and performance are the highest priority, as the users today expect services to be available 24/7 with no downtime and entrust a lot of sensitive information to their favorite platforms.

QA processes are an integral part of development both in terms of product quality and security. Implementing good QA may result in significant savings. But be sure to check what you are paying for.
For example, we practice early review of requirements and design that allows us to detect eventual bugs at the early stag. As a result, it costs less to fix them.

Another example is test automation: as the project grows in functionality, manual tests require more effort, and with time the QA team activities will become insufficient. We save our clients up to 80% of the time on testing by using automated tests. With automated tests, we make new releases twice as often as they did before.

Third-party integrations

An ecommerce business is not just a basic online store. It needs integrations with different software like CRM, payment systems, business intelligence tools, accounting software, reporting suites, and many more. Such integrations allow minimizing human involvement and saving businesses time and resources.

Coming back to the case study of the fashion brand above, we provided the fashion shop customers with the possibility to save their clothes size in the app so that in-app search filters their results according to the specific parameters.

Simultaneously, the CRM system integrated with the app automatically uploads this information to a shop assistant’s phone whenever users visit an offline store. Such a multichannel customer-centered service is a good booster for customer loyalty.

The number of integrations, their complexity, and specific features are the factors that have an impact upon the cost of creating an ecommerce website.

Our pricing approach: time & material

When setting up a cooperation with an IT company to build an ecommerce website, you should pay attention to what price and payment terms opportunities this or that type of agreement offers.

We know how difficult it is to estimate at the start how long it will take to build a new unique project with complex system changes and a long development process and how much it will cost. So, in our workflow, we apply a flexible product-based approach to pricing.

1. We provide a preliminary estimation of working hours by stages or features, and the client confirms the work they need.
2. Our team performs the work agreed upon and demonstrates the results and progress once a week or more often at the design stage.
3. If required, we make adjustments and clarify the scope of work during the works until the product is ready.
4. Meanwhile, once a month we report on the progress and real costs. The client checks and pays.

As a result, the client does not have to overpay for the works that have been done faster or turned out to be unnecessary. We do not have to worry about the extra activities or works that have not been included in the initial estimated costs.

When you don’t need a custom project

Starting your new ecommerce project, make sure to check all cost-affecting points to avoid extra and unnecessary expenses.

Thus, you should not spend money on a custom solution if you:

• Only want to try up your model.
• Need a fast-built POC or MVP to show the investors and stakeholders to get funding.
• Need to solve standard business tasks.
• Do not need custom design.

Make your choice

The above cost elements shall be taken into account if you are aimed at long-term growth, fast scaling, unique UI/UX, numerous integrations — thinking of making your solution stand out. In such a case, you should consider Go and look for a team with relevant experience.