E-commerce Development: Magento, WooCommerce & Shopify

Development Services is the subject of this article, from the constraint that hurts to the handover.

Where Development Services fits

CodeWiz documents how development services is deployed, monitored, and handed over.

E-commerce development is the work of turning a store platform into a business system: a catalogue that matches how you actually sell, a checkout that works for your customers and payment methods, and integrations that keep stock, orders and invoices in sync without anyone copying data between screens. Installing Magento, WooCommerce, PrestaShop or Shopify takes an afternoon. Making it run your business reliably is the part that needs engineering.

For development services, open-source tools are the default when they fit the job.

At CodeWiz we build and extend online stores on all four major platforms. We write custom modules, plugins and apps, build themes, connect stores to ERP, accounting, courier and marketplace systems, migrate stores between platforms and keep them fast and secure under real traffic. We work with the platform’s architecture, not against it, so your store stays upgradeable.

A development services engagement starts from the system you already run.

This service is for retailers moving from a template store to something that fits their processes, B2B companies that need price lists, quotes and customer-specific catalogues, brands selling across several countries and currencies, and teams stuck on an outdated or overgrown store that has become slow and fragile.

The development services work stays in your repository and on your infrastructure.

Development Services: Laptop on a glass desk displaying the homepage of a modern online store

Magento Development for Large Catalogues and Complex Stores

Magento (Magento Open Source, and Adobe Commerce as its commercial edition) is built for complexity: tens of thousands of SKUs, configurable and bundled products, multiple websites and store views from one installation, customer groups with their own prices, and B2B features such as company accounts and quotes in Adobe Commerce. That power comes with a steep learning curve and a demanding stack.

CodeWiz reviews development services in production, not only in a demo.

How we develop on Magento

Custom modules that use plugins (interceptors), observers and service contracts instead of core rewrites, so upgrades to new 2.4.x releases stay manageable.
Declarative schema (db_schema.xml) and data patches for database changes, versioned in Git together with the code.
Frontends on Hyvä for much lighter pages than the classic Luma stack, or headless storefronts over GraphQL when the project calls for it.
Indexers set to “Update by Schedule”, message queue consumers for heavy jobs, and cron monitored like any other production service.

The stack Magento needs

Magento is not a shared-hosting application. A healthy setup runs PHP-FPM with OPcache, MySQL or MariaDB, OpenSearch for catalogue search, Redis for cache and sessions, Varnish as the full-page cache and, for larger stores, RabbitMQ for asynchronous operations. Deployments are scripted so the store never sits half-updated:

Decisions about development services follow the business constraint that actually hurts.

bin/magento maintenance:enable
composer install --no-dev --optimize-autoloader
bin/magento setup:upgrade --keep-generated
bin/magento setup:di:compile
bin/magento setup:static-content:deploy -f en_US de_DE
bin/magento indexer:reindex
bin/magento cache:flush
bin/magento maintenance:disable

In practice we build artefacts in CI and switch releases with a symlink, which brings maintenance mode down to seconds. The Adobe Commerce developer documentation is the reference for module architecture.

Handover for development services includes the runbook your team will use.

WooCommerce Customization Without Plugin Overload

WooCommerce turns WordPress into a store, which makes it a natural choice when content, SEO and selling belong together. Its weakness is the habit of solving every requirement with another plugin until the store has sixty of them, a slow admin and checkout conflicts nobody can trace. We customize WooCommerce with small, focused code instead.

CodeWiz scopes development services around the operational goal, not a fixed package.

What we build

Custom product types, pricing rules, B2B price lists, minimum order quantities and role-based catalogues.
Checkout changes built for the block-based Cart and Checkout (the default for new stores), using the additional checkout fields API and Store API extensions rather than template overrides.
Integrations through the WooCommerce REST API and webhooks, with background work handed to Action Scheduler so customers never wait for an ERP call.
Replacement of heavy multipurpose plugins with lean custom code where it improves speed and stability.

Modern WooCommerce foundations

High-Performance Order Storage (HPOS) moves orders out of the generic WordPress posts tables into dedicated tables, which makes order queries and admin screens far faster on busy stores. It is the default for new installations, and every custom plugin we write declares compatibility with it:

Development Services is tailored to the job, then measured after it is live.

add_action( 'before_woocommerce_init', function () {
    if ( class_exists( \Automattic\WooCommerce\Utilities\FeaturesUtil::class ) ) {
        \Automattic\WooCommerce\Utilities\FeaturesUtil::declare_compatibility(
            'custom_order_tables', __FILE__, true
        );
    }
} );

For existing stores we audit plugins for HPOS and block checkout compatibility, migrate orders with sync enabled first, and only then switch over. WooCommerce’s HPOS documentation explains the migration path in detail.

Development Services is the subject of this article, from the constraint that hurts to the handover.

PrestaShop Solutions for European Retail

PrestaShop is popular across Europe for good reasons: it is open source, multilingual and multi-currency out of the box, has a built-in multistore mode and is lighter to host than Magento. It suits small and mid-sized retailers who want full control of their code without the operational weight of a large platform.

CodeWiz documents how development services is deployed, monitored, and handed over.

Custom modules hooked into display and action hooks such as displayProductAdditionalInfo or actionValidateOrder, instead of class overrides that break on upgrades.
Theme development on the classic theme or a child theme, with Smarty templates kept clean and assets bundled and minified.
Upgrades from 1.7 to 8 and 9, which mostly means auditing and replacing modules that are no longer maintained and moving overrides into proper modules.
Integrations through the PrestaShop Webservice API or custom endpoints for stock, prices, orders and shipping labels.
Performance work on the usual suspects: too many modules on every page, unindexed custom tables, and the product listing and faceted search queries.

Shopify Development: Themes, Apps and Functions

Shopify removes hosting and platform maintenance completely, which is why many brands choose it. The trade-off is that you customize within Shopify’s rules – and knowing those rules well is what separates a smooth Shopify build from a pile of monthly app subscriptions.

For development services, open-source tools are the default when they fit the job.

What we do on Shopify

Online Store 2.0 themes: custom sections and blocks in Liquid with JSON templates, so your team can rearrange pages in the theme editor without a developer.
Shopify Functions: custom discount logic, delivery and payment customizations that run inside Shopify’s infrastructure. Functions replaced the older Shopify Scripts, so stores that relied on Scripts need their logic rebuilt.
Checkout extensibility: checkout UI extensions and branding instead of the retired checkout.liquid customizations.
Custom apps: private apps on the Admin GraphQL API for ERP sync, bulk operations and webhooks, often replacing several paid apps with one tailored integration.
Headless: Hydrogen or a custom frontend on the Storefront API when the design or content model goes beyond what themes can do.

One practical note for stores in our region: Shopify Payments is not available in every country, and when you use a third-party payment provider instead, Shopify adds its own transaction fee on top. We factor this into the platform recommendation from the start. The Shopify Functions documentation lists what can currently be customized.

Long row of nested shopping carts with red handles in close-up

Magento vs WooCommerce vs PrestaShop vs Shopify

There is no best platform, only the right one for your catalogue, team and budget. This is the comparison we walk clients through before any code is written:

Platform	Hosting and maintenance	Customization depth	Running costs	Best fit
Magento / Adobe Commerce	Self-hosted (or Adobe cloud); demanding stack	Very high	Higher hosting and development; Adobe Commerce licence	Large catalogues, multi-store, complex B2B
WooCommerce	Self-hosted on WordPress	High	Low base cost; paid extensions add up	Content-driven stores, small to mid-sized catalogues
PrestaShop	Self-hosted; lighter than Magento	High	Low base cost; paid modules	European SMB retail, multilingual stores
Shopify	Fully hosted SaaS	Medium (within platform rules)	Monthly plan, app subscriptions, transaction fees	Brands that want zero server maintenance and fast launch

If you are already on a platform, switching is rarely the first answer. Most stores gain more from fixing what they have, which is the focus of our e-commerce optimization blueprint.

Integrating Your Store with ERP, Couriers and Marketplaces

A store that is not connected to the rest of the business creates manual work: retyping orders into accounting software, updating stock from spreadsheets, copying tracking numbers into emails. Integrations are often where e-commerce development pays for itself fastest.

ERP and accounting: two-way sync of products, prices, stock levels and orders with your ERP or accounting system, through its API, database views or file exchange when nothing better exists.
Couriers: automatic shipment creation, label printing and tracking updates through courier APIs, with shipping rates calculated at checkout.
Product feeds: clean feeds for Google Merchant Center, Meta catalogues and price comparison sites, generated from the catalogue rather than maintained by hand.
Marketplaces and PIM: one source of truth for product data when you also sell on marketplaces or manage content in a PIM.

Every integration we build is idempotent, retries on failure and logs what it did, because an order that silently fails to reach the warehouse is worse than no integration at all. We have written about this mindset in detail in zero data loss e-commerce.

E-commerce Migrations and Replatforming

Moving from one platform to another – say, from an old PrestaShop or Magento 1 to WooCommerce, Magento 2 or Shopify – is a data and SEO project as much as a development one.

Products, variants, images, customers (with password handling planned for the target platform), order history, reviews and coupons are mapped field by field and migrated with scripts, not by hand.
Every old URL gets a 301 redirect to its new equivalent, so search rankings and backlinks carry over.
We run test migrations on staging, compare counts and totals, and do the final delta migration during a short, planned cutover.
Analytics, product feeds and payment and shipping methods are verified before the DNS switch, not after.

Store Performance, Search and Security

Speed and trust are revenue features in e-commerce. On self-hosted platforms we tune PHP, the database and object caching, put Varnish or a page cache in front of catalogue pages, and configure Cloudflare for static assets and protection against bots and card-testing attacks. On every platform we optimize images, fonts and third-party scripts so product and category pages pass Core Web Vitals.

Search deserves special attention, because visitors who search tend to be the ones ready to buy. When the built-in search is not good enough, we connect a dedicated engine – see how a Typesense-powered store search changes the experience. On the security side, we keep platforms and extensions patched, enforce two-factor authentication for admins, restrict admin access and keep card data away from your servers entirely by using hosted payment fields.

Common E-commerce Development Mistakes We Fix

Editing core files or parent themes directly, which makes every update a risky manual merge.
Dozens of overlapping plugins or apps, each loading its own scripts on every page.
Synchronous ERP or courier calls during checkout, so a slow external API means a lost order.
No staging environment, with changes tested on the live store during business hours.
Product data maintained in three places with no single source of truth.
Platform migrations without redirects, wiping out years of organic traffic overnight.

What Drives the Cost of an E-commerce Project

We estimate after understanding your catalogue and processes, but the cost drivers are consistent across projects:

The platform and whether you need a custom theme or a refined existing one.
Catalogue complexity: product types, variants, B2B pricing, multiple languages and currencies.
The number and quality of integrations, especially ERP systems without a modern API.
Data migration volume and how clean the source data is.
Ongoing needs: platform and extension updates, hosting, monitoring and new features.

Design and checkout decisions also affect revenue more than most technical choices – our guide to conversion optimization on WooCommerce, Shopify, PrestaShop and Magento covers that side.

Bins full of parcels and packages waiting for sorting in a mail facility

How We Work

Discovery: we map your catalogue, order flow, payment and shipping methods, existing systems and the problems you want solved.
Plan: we recommend a platform (or confirm your current one), define integrations and data flows, and agree on scope and milestones.
Build: we develop the theme, custom modules or apps and integrations on a staging store, with code in Git and automated deployments.
Test: we test real order scenarios end to end – payments, taxes, discounts, shipping, refunds and ERP sync – on desktop and mobile.
Launch: we migrate data, set up redirects, verify analytics and feeds, and monitor orders closely after go-live.
Support: we keep the platform and extensions updated and continue improving the store as your business grows.

Why CodeWiz

All major platforms: Magento, WooCommerce, PrestaShop and Shopify, so our recommendation is driven by your needs, not by the one platform we know.
Full-stack depth: stores, APIs, databases, servers, payments and search are all in-house skills, so integrations and performance problems do not get passed between vendors.
Open-source first: we prefer upgrade-safe custom code and open-source tools over stacks of paid plugins and app subscriptions.
Fair pricing: premium development without premium prices, from Banja Luka, working remotely with clients locally and internationally.
Business first: technology should serve your sales goals, not complicate them – read more about CodeWiz.

Frequently Asked Questions

Which e-commerce platform should I choose?

It depends on catalogue size, budget, in-house skills and how much you want to customize. WooCommerce suits content-driven stores, PrestaShop suits European SMB retail, Shopify suits brands that want no server maintenance, and Magento suits large or complex catalogues. We recommend after a short discovery, not by default.

How much does e-commerce development cost?

Costs depend on the platform, design, catalogue complexity, integrations and data migration. A refined theme with a few custom features is a modest project; a multi-store B2B build with ERP integration is a much larger one. You get a clear estimate after discovery, before work starts.

How long does it take to build an online store?

A store on a refined existing theme with standard payments and shipping can launch within a few weeks. Custom designs, complex integrations and migrations from another platform typically take a few months, mostly because of data work and testing.

Can you take over and fix an existing store?

Yes. We start with an audit of code, extensions, performance and security, fix the critical issues first and then improve the store step by step, without a risky rebuild unless it is genuinely the better option.

Will I lose SEO rankings if I migrate platforms?

Not if the migration is done properly. With complete 301 redirects, preserved content and metadata, and checks in Search Console after launch, rankings typically carry over. Most ranking losses after migrations come from missing redirects.

Ready to Build or Improve Your Online Store?

Tell us what you sell, where your store is today and what is holding it back, and we will propose the right platform and plan. Contact us to discuss your project, or explore our e-commerce development services.

E-commerce Development: Magento, WooCommerce & Shopify

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