Why we integrate third-party themes into custom e-Commerce websites

We can cut big costs from e-Commerce projects by taking advantage of themes already built.

As a web development firm, we know a good chunk of cost for any custom project is the design and implementation of the user interface. This is public facing, what the visitors see, and determines how the user interacts and engages with the website. A lot of time is spent on a website’s front end.

In a modern web framework, the architecture is typically what is referred to as “full stack”. This means a website runs in two places: in the user’s web browser, and on the web server. The front end is designed to receive input from the user, and to securely and efficiently communicate with the server.

A full stack developer is one who does development on the web server and in the web browser, and makes these two seemingly independent systems work in tandem as one web application. That’s what we do.

One important skill of a programmer that’s honed over years of experience is to know when to reuse existing code, or to strip away the parts you don’t need and re-purpose it for what you do.

This is what we can do with third-party website themes for two main purposes: cost savings and security.

Most website owners simply install their CMS via an installation wizard, buy, install, and configure a theme, and that’s it. They replace the demo content with their own content shoe-horned into regions allowed by the theme, and hopefully continue with their site updates as time passes.

What they don’t know is the theme almost always has third-party components that need to be updated, but are skipped during the CMS’s core updates. This security problem is not solved with DIY web builder services, as they’re some of the worst offenders we’ve seen.

We solve this security problem with theme integration because we maintain the theme code and ensure its third-party libraries are updated.

Designing the look and feel of a website is expensive. There’s labor costs involved with a creative graphic designer, lots of sketching and wire-framing, proofs and meetings, and then there’s work to integrate the creative with the code.