Buyers nowadays practically don’t need to leave their homes to get the things they need. From groceries to plants and clothes—they’re all just a click away. The ease of access offered by online shopping has changed the direction of consumer behavior; nowadays, buyers expect to be reached by businesses and not vice versa. To keep up with the changing consumer behavior, businesses also shifted to conducting their operations from brick-and-mortar to online stores. All to meet the consumers where they’re most present—on their phones and laptops.
As an outcome, retail e-commerce has grown to become a booming industry. In fact, in 2020, over two billion people bought goods or services online, bringing this market to a value of more than 4.2 trillion US dollars worldwide, with Statista predicting that this figure would grow by 50% over the next four years, reaching about 7.4 trillion US dollars by 2025. Needless to say, the global pandemic only accelerated this trend further.
But, even though it seems that the Internet is the primary source consumers and businesses turn to for every question, there is also a lot of noise that needs to be filtered to find the right answer. Not to mention the fact that starting a new online store is never easy. There are a lot of aspects to consider, especially if what you are starting with is just an idea. What would I sell? Whom would I sell to? How to reach my potential buyers? And, maybe most importantly, where do I start? While we cannot help you solve all the mysteries, we can definitely help with the latter – learn where to start.
So, you might wonder, who are Lemon.dev and why you should trust us?
Founded in late 2021, Lemon.dev is an Estonia-based company that takes away the hassle of designing and developing an online fashion store. And all of that in a matter of a couple of days. Seems a bit unrealistic; I’ll give you that. So, before getting into further details, let’s see how Lemon.dev compares to other traditional solutions and why we’d provide you with the right solution for your needs.
Hiring an in-house or a freelance developer.
Sure, the first option that comes to mind would be to hire a developer. A freelancer or a full-time team member depends largely on your unique needs, but for the sake of it, we’ll see what that means in case you go with either. Let’s say you’d go with a freelancer. To find one, you’d need to spend at least a couple of hours on research, first on the developers’ platforms/communities like Upwork or Fever, followed by contacting the top choice, discussing the project’s details, etc. And then comes the cost. Did you know that an hourly rate for a developer on Upwork ranges between $15 and $30?
You would probably wind up leaving the technical part to the selected candidate so that you’d focus on the business side of things. Only, setting up the website would probably be the easiest part; the main job comes afterward, and you’ll probably find yourself adding more and more hours on the payroll, and thus, more and more dollars on your initial costs. There is a similar situation with hiring an actual team member, only now, you’ll need to pay social and health insurance, in addition to the costs prior to hiring the developer like the interview process. To paint a picture, let’s refer to the employer review website Glassdoor, which estimated the average cost for hiring a developer in the US at $110,967 per year. True, this might be an adequate solution if you really need full-time support, so we’ll give you that.
Building the store yourself.
This would be a viable option if you have some technical background or used to code for fun. But, let’s be real, most business owners probably haven’t. So, the first steps would probably be to find the right hosting solution and platform and read all “programming for dummies” books you can find. A lot of unnecessary man-hours and money are spent on this, instead of what actually matters – your business plan and reaching your customers. Now, there isn’t really a statistic that would show exactly how much is spent on the failed website, so, we’ll let you do the math yourself.
Using website builders.
Similar to above. If you don’t build your website from scratch, you’d probably turn to drag-and-drop website builders. Potential options include WordPress, Wix, Squarespace, Weebly, GoDaddy, and so on. Loads of options are available, and we’ve listed only but a few. Now, you’d need to examine all the options and plans carefully to be able to choose the right solution for your needs. We won’t go into too many details at this point, but let’s see what you need to consider as the primary factors. Of course, it would need support for online payments and maybe a decent storage space, right? So, you’d need to get yourself a premium plan. For example, Wix charges $17 per month for the most basic business plan. Pretty decent option, true, but all of the heavy load is again upon your back; from creative decisions to tech support.
Choosing Lemon.dev
Now that we’ve had a look at three potential options let’s see how Lemon.dev compares to them. Our theme Liv is a Shopify-based solution that caters primarily to fashion stores but can also be tailored to any product that can be sold online. Let’s go step-by-step. Shopify is an e-commerce store that offers a library of templates to build your own store. I guess you can call it a website builder as well. Only now, instead of doing the hard work yourself, you get access to a dedicated team that does the job for you.
Our theme Liv is the product of a collaboration with BrandsGateway, a dropshipping solution that provides businesses with thousands of products from the world’s most popular brands like Gucci, Dolce & Gabbana, Jimmy Choo, and other luxury brands. Based on decades of dropshipping experience, BrandsGateway found that its customers’ main pain point was not the lack of website solutions, but the ease of building one. To address this, they partnered with Lemon.dev and formed the brainchild – Liv Theme. Liv has already been used to build nearly 30 online stores, offering a full website solution with the added benefit of integrating all the products offered by BrandsGateway. Of course, besides integrating with BrandsGateway, we also offer the theme for other dropshipping websites like BrandsDistribution and Griffati. And there’s always the option for entirely different categories of products.
Our pricing is not based on hours spent or subscription fees, but on a package deal. What this means is you pay only once to get access to all our available features. You can choose between the two most popular plans or contact us to tailor a solution just for you. Besides getting access to the developers’ team, we also offer, I dare say, outstanding support to our customers; and they seem to agree, at least according to the reviews we got on Trustpilot.
You can think of Lemon.dev as a partner in building your store rather than a mere service provider. Our process starts with an initial call where you define your expectations, we discuss your options and help you choose the right plan, and decide what the deliverables are. We’ve prepared a survey where you can let us know more about your idea, sticking to the bare essentials without taking too much of your time. This will give us the direction you’d like us to move toward. You can be as specific as possible here, or, if you’re not so sure, let us mix you up a signature cocktail. Then, in a matter of a few days, you’ll get your new on-brand and functional online store. All that’s left for you now is to build your marketing strategy and ramp up those sales.
Did we manage to get your attention? Book a call with us to talk more specifics.
