Ecommerce

Custom Online Store Development

Custom Online Store Development from Tepia, a US led software company that designs and builds for teams across the US.

The essentials at a glance

Tepia designs and builds ecommerce end to end, with a US based project manager on every engagement and thirteen years of delivery behind it.

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Proven process

Every Tepia build runs through six phases, Discovery, Design, Development and Testing, Training, Launch and Support, with a milestone at each stage.

Read: Shopify vs a Custom Online Store: How to Decide
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Thirteen years

Tepia has spent thirteen years building software for healthcare, field service, home improvement, retail, logistics and IoT teams across the US.

Read: Systems Integration Services
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Typical timeline

Custom online stores typically take 4 to 9 months from discovery to launch, with a US based project manager, design lead and engineering lead on the engagement.

Read: Custom Ecommerce App Development
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Compliance

Stores are scoped for PCI DSS with tokenized payments through Stripe or Square, meet WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility, and handle CCPA and GDPR data from day one.

Read: Build Custom Software or Buy Off the Shelf?

The numbers matter.

Industry figures Tepia plans around when scoping ecommerce work.

80%

B2B sales gone digital

Gartner projects that 80% of B2B sales interactions between suppliers and buyers will happen in digital channels.

70%

Carts abandoned

Baymard Institute puts the average online cart abandonment rate near 70%, most of it caused by checkout friction.

60%

Mobile share of ecommerce

Statista reports that mobile devices now account for roughly 60% of ecommerce sales worldwide, and the share keeps rising.

When Shopify templates stop fitting, and what Tepia does about it

Shopify is the right answer for most online stores, and Tepia says so plainly. A custom online store is justified when the way you sell is different from the way a template assumes you sell.

Many of these are not replacements for Shopify at all; they are a custom front end or a custom layer on top of it.

The decision framework with fee math is on the Shopify vs custom online store page.

Three architectures Tepia chooses between

Tepia has built all three patterns and picks by trigger, not by preference.

Tepia’s rule: keep checkout on the platform as long as possible, because checkout is where fraud, taxes, payment methods and compliance live and the platforms handle them well. Move it only when your payment terms (net 30, purchase orders, partial shipments) make platform checkout impossible.

Configurators, subscriptions and other custom flows

Tepia’s RELI Solutions work, a home improvement app for window and door replacement, is an example of a configured product sold through an app.

Subscriptions with real rules. Subscription apps handle a fixed box every month.

Checkout steps no plugin provides. Age or license verification, delivery slot selection, installation scheduling, financing application, or regulatory disclosures that must be acknowledged before purchase. Tepia builds these as steps in a custom checkout or as a pre checkout flow that hands off to platform checkout.

Every custom store Tepia builds meets WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility, scopes PCI DSS down to tokenized payments through Stripe or Square so you never store card data, and handles customer data under CCPA and GDPR rules, which matters for California and international customers.

How Tepia approaches custom online store development

Tepia’s six phase process applies to every store build, with discovery deciding the architecture before any design work.

  1. Deliverables: Investigation Summary, Interview Summary and User Stories, plus an architecture recommendation from the three patterns above.

The process is documented at tepia.co/process, and finished products are at our work.

Frequently asked questions

When should we move from Shopify to a custom online store?
Even then, Tepia often keeps Shopify checkout and builds a custom storefront or layer over it.

What Our Customers Say.

A paragraph or two with information on your product/service or describes a problem your product/service is designed to solve.

Jascotina

CEO

“They customized the website’s backend to my business' specific needs and I am absolutely thrilled with the result.”

Water Saver Solutions

Senior Project Manager

"Tepia Co was always willing to go the extra mile for us."

Onward Engineering

VP & Operations Manager

"There are no hidden things, there are no surprises. We know what's going on."

Sell the way your business actually sells