Blog

[vc_row height=”medium” color_scheme=”” us_bg_color=”” us_text_color=”” us_bg_image=”” us_bg_video=”0″][vc_column][vc_column_text]With the rapid development of manufacturing and web development technologies more and more e-commerce stores start offering product customization and personalization.

Developing a product configurator is a challenging development task and requires budget and time. As a reward, the store owners can benefit from a 30% higher price for customizable products, lower than 5% product return rate and 70%+ re-purchase rate.

If you have been looking for a product configurator tool, you might have noticed that there are mainly 2 types of tools: ‘product configurators’ and ‘product personalization tools’. 

Product configurators allow changing the details of the products, like ‘build your own Nike shoes’ for example or ‘build your own pizza’…

Product personalization tools are more about printable areas of pre-selected products. Uploading and positioning logos, texts, artwork and photos to t-shirts, mugs and other promotional products.

Below are some of the competitive tools that we have found in the market that deliver different customization and personalization experiences.

This list is in not final and might be not 100% up to date, since every company is working on enhancing their app!

Please let us know what tools have you tried and what was your experience so that we expand our comparison table with your help!As you can see The Custom Product Builder By Buildateam has both the features for product configuration and product personalization, while other apps provide either one or another.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

[vc_row height=”medium” color_scheme=”” us_bg_color=”” us_text_color=”” us_bg_image=”” us_bg_video=”0″][vc_column][vc_column_text]We are excited to announce that we have released Version 2.0.0 of the Custom Product Builder!

Release Notes:

• Mobile Optimization
• Optimized user experience for mobile devices. Fixed bug that images didn’t show up on mobile devices.
• The application uses Polaris that is the default UI Component’s library.
• Improved components and layout in general.
• Included a Welcome popup to help the users configure the products for the first time.
• Improvements in user experience and layout.
• Custom Layers new type: Upload Images, Artwork, Logos and Text. Now you will be able to render a text inside the image dynamically.
• Improved the algorithm that saves the product’s variants. (No more ‘We couldn’t save options’ error)
• Fixed bugs related to images inside the canvas, category modals, and options in general.

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[vc_row height=”medium” color_scheme=”” us_bg_color=”” us_text_color=”” us_bg_image=”” us_bg_video=”0″][vc_column][vc_column_text css_animation=””]We added two types of image layers: Image and Text

As shown below, now you can type a text to appear inside the canvas.

First, create a new layer

After that, select the layer and fill in the information required

After typing the text, it will appear inside the image

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• We added two types of image layers: Image and Text

First, create a new layer

After that, select the layer and fill in the information required

After typing the text, it will appear inside the image

• We also added a button for making easier the creation of the products. We added a clone button as in many cases products are similar.

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Set Default Options

Customize CSS

If you know CSS, you can customize the themes by following this link. You can override theme classes and ids with custom CSS there.

Custom JS

If you know JS, you can add custom JS that would load within the tool. You can manipulate DOM elements in a similar way that ‘Optimizely’ does it.

What’s next?

If you haven’t realized we are quite excited about the custom product builder and how it can revolutionize the shopping experience. Currently, we have 44 active users and we are very proud of it! Thank you very much for being a part of the community!

We are working on an ability to change layer colors on the fly without the necessity to upload images of all colors! It means you will have to upload 10 times fewer images and can create unlimited color options using just a color picker!

We are also adding all type of new input fields: date and time pickers, multiple select, text labels and text areas that will be rendered on the product image preview, image upload for logos and photos.

Interactive product preview with clickable areas soon will get a lot easier too! Just upload a layer into the custom options panel and we will automatically calculate the border of the image for the clickable area.

On the roadmap, we also have inventory tracking, analytics, and more interactive design tools for the image preview section.

And the last but not the least – we are actively working on releasing Magento 2 version of the builder which will also introduce an ‘Import and Export Custom Product’ feature as well! 

Outsource Desing and Development with Us

And just as a side note, in case you were interested a little bit about the team. We are a bootstrapped startup and the development of this plugin was sponsored by custom design and development work that we do for E-commerce stores using our network of Senior remote experts. Here is the list of all services that we offer: https://www.buildateam.io/outsource/  Our clients include national retailers, luxury marketing boutiques, and VC-backed startups.

If you or someone you know are looking for a reliable partner for outsourcing design and development work, please let us know! We have excellent experts for most any type of projects including mobile app development and e-commerce development.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]