Creating E-Commerce Excellence: The Key Ingredients Behind a Successful E-Shop

In my previous post, I shared about the training and mentorship I pursued once I realized that becoming a leader was something I still needed to work towards. While I focused on my development, the forming PrestaRock team continued working in the area where I was strongest—creating online stores. So, how did we fare working with clients?

After more than five years of professional experience with IT projects, I learned what worked and what didn’t. We developed proven solutions and refined, even if not entirely formalized, processes for building unique and tailored online stores.

By then, we were well-known among various business consultants involved in business development. Our first major clients and expertise in the tire industry came through recommendations. I was almost like an in-house expert when we started collaborating with some clients. I wasn’t just developing and programming online stores but also guiding them on how to properly build and manage e-commerce without making costly mistakes.

Success in creating and developing projects mainly came from referrals. Over time, this approach led us to some of our most significant achievements. One of them was introducing a new brand for a major corporation in Lithuania and developing a unique store from scratch to launch LIVE in just three months.

Working with probably the most professional team I have seen to this day, we helped clients launch an entirely new brand in Lithuania within an impressively short timeframe. Typically, creating a unique (non-template, non-modified) online store with our team of 4-5 people would take around six months. But this time, we managed to cut the development time in half!

Another milestone was building one of Lithuania’s first—and perhaps the largest—pharmacy network online stores. I can’t recall whether the client came to us through a direct inquiry because they chose PrestaShop as one of the best systems available at the time or if they already knew about the quality of our work.

A large, demanding client with one of the highest visitor counts at the time brought us new challenges: optimizing speed in ways we had never considered before. Handling multiple orders per second simultaneously felt like something extraordinary!

The key to this growth was the set of personal values I infused into the business: quality, results, going the extra mile, and transparency. This foundation was unfamiliar to other providers who focused on quickly “finishing” projects just to get paid. Since I personally coordinated projects with clients and double-checked everything before handing them over—having bitter experiences with mistakes—I became meticulous and demanding to ensure that the final result met the client’s true needs.

Another significant advantage was that as I grew as a specialist from the age of sixteen, I also touched upon the business side of things. We were not just programmers executing tasks as instructed. We were a genuine team, combining business analytics knowledge, experience, and skills to help clients save money and avoid unnecessary expenses.

Additionally, our approach saved not only money but also human resources. With our consultations and ready-made solutions, we avoided experimenting with clients or “learning at their expense.” We had pre-prepared and tested solutions that worked and followed the right path. We already knew what worked and didn’t—what to avoid and what to do to get things right the first time.

A fourth key to success was choosing the right subcontractors for design slicing and server administration. Even today, I can confidently say that we have the best server administrators in Lithuania. At that time, they generally did not work for Lithuanian clients but made an exception for us.

The fifth factor behind our success was likely our pricing. We were affordable. Our initial estimates were based not on the speed of a junior or mid-level specialist but on my own pace, having worked with PrestaShop for nearly more than half a decade. As a result, if we didn’t complete something or fit within the estimate, it was our problem. This approach provided clients with significant value because they didn’t overpay. Unlike our competitors, we offer much business value at a reasonable price, making us one of the top choices for e-commerce projects with PrestaShop.

In conclusion, despite our successes and solid projects, there were also some failures. We sometimes significantly exceeded budgets, or the client was so demanding that we got caught up in unnecessary disputes. However, even today, I can confidently say that we have completed all projects, never abandoning or dropping any of them. Even if it meant launching a project later than planned, using more of the client’s budget, or significantly misjudging the estimates.

This tendency is gradually disappearing with today’s Gen-Z generation becoming company leaders. It is becoming normal to disappear midway, not finish a project, or refuse a client if they are demanding and your competencies do not meet the requirements, which is sad. It seems like we are going back nearly a decade when the advantage was that you worked with dedication. Still, today, the advantage is having the courage to take responsibility and complete the project.