Fuel your ecommerce growth a development retainer
In today’s fast-changing digital landscape, ecommerce businesses must navigate multiple challenges to drive growth, stay agile, and invest proactively to remain competitive. With evolving consumer expectations, emerging technologies, and ever-shifting search algorithms, success depends on continuous improvement rather than one-off website builds.
Having a development retainer with a trusted ecommerce agency is one of the most effective ways to ensure sustained growth and stay at the forefront of ecommerce innovation. In this guide, we will explore how a development retainer can drive ecommerce success, the key benefits it offers, and how to make the most of your investment.
What is a Development Retainer?
A development retainer is an ongoing agreement between an ecommerce business and a development agency to provide continuous support and optimisation. The agreement will lay out details like the set number of hours or resources per month to support, maintain, and enhance an online store. Unlike one-off projects, which focus on immediate needs, a retainer ensures ongoing collaboration and improvements that align with your long-term goals.
- Feature Development – Implementing new functionalities to enhance user experience and boost conversion rates. This includes adding advanced filtering and search capabilities, personalised product recommendations, or streamlined checkout processes to reduce cart abandonment.
- User Experience (UX) and Design Enhancements – Continuously refining the website’s layout, navigation, and overall usability based on real user behaviour and feedback to improve engagement and conversions. This includes conducting heatmap analysis and session recordings to identify friction points, optimising websites for better accessibility, or implementing micro-interactions to create a more intuitive shopping experience.
- SEO and performance optimisation – Enhancing website speed, mobile responsiveness, and search engine best practice to drive organic traffic and improve user experience. This includes technical SEO improvements such as structured data implementation, core web vitals, and resolving crawl errors to ensure better visibility on search engines. Performance enhancements focus on reducing load times by leveraging image compression, lazy loading, caching strategies, and content delivery networks (CDNs).
- Integration with Third-Party Tools and Platforms – Connecting your ecommerce store with powerful third-party solutions to improve automation, customer engagement, social proof, and data-driven decision-making. This includes integrating CRM systems (such as Salesforce or HubSpot) to streamline customer interactions, email marketing platforms (like Klaviyo or dotdigital) for personalised campaigns, search and merchanding (like Klevu), reviews (like Trustpilot or Reviews.io), or AI-driven chatbots to enhance customer support. Ecommerce businesses can also benefit from integrating additional payment options (such as ApplePay, Klarna, or PayPal) to offer flexible payments and reduce checkout friction.
Your business will be assigned an experienced delivery manager who will act as your primary point of contact, overseeing the effective management of your development retainer hours. They will help you assess priorities, evaluate the impact of proposed enhancements, and provide clear timelines for development and go-live deployments each month. Their role ensures a structured, transparent, and efficient approach to implementing improvements that align with your business goals.
Our dedicated Web Support team manages essential reactive tasks such as website maintenance, regular updates, security patches, performance improvements, bug fixes, and troubleshooting. These services operate under a separate service level agreement, ensuring swift issue resolution. This allows our proactive development retainers to concentrate on strategic enhancements instead.
Why a Development Retainer is Essential for Ecommerce Growth
Since 2009, we have been a strategic long-term partner for our clients helping them develop their online stores and drive online revenue growth. Some of our clients have dedicated ecommerce teams who are able to provide a prescriptive development roadmap for our development team to implement and this scenario works very well.
However, many businesses lack large in-house teams of ecommerce specialists and rely on our consultancy and digital marketing experts to analyse ecommerce data, uncover trends and pinpoint where the new growth opportunities lay for their ecommerce store now and in the future.
Tanya Peasgood, Head of Consultancy at Williams Commerce says, “Our in-house consultancy team helps our clients leverage data-driven insights to identify the most cost-effective and high-impact areas for website improvements, ensuring that development efforts are prioritised strategically to deliver maximum value and measurable results.”
Below we outline five key areas where an ecommerce development retainer can fuel business growth.
1. Continuous Improvement and Innovation
The ecommerce landscape is highly competitive, and stagnation can be detrimental. A development retainer allows for continuous improvement, ensuring that your website evolves alongside changing consumer behaviours and technological advancements.
Regular updates, feature additions, and performance tweaks help maintain a seamless user experience, which is crucial for increasing conversions and customer satisfaction.
2. Faster Implementation of Growth-Driving Enhancements
A major advantage of a development retainer is having a dedicated team continuously improving your website. Rather than waiting for a drop in sales, or competitors taking market share, a proactive approach ensures ongoing optimisation—whether it’s enhancing site performance, improving user experience, or implementing the latest ecommerce innovations.
3. Cost-Effectiveness and Budget Control
While a development retainer requires a monthly investment, it is often more cost-effective than hiring in-house developers. With a predictable budget, businesses can allocate resources efficiently without having to worry about unforeseen development expenses.
4. Enhanced User Experience (UX) and Conversion Rate Optimisation
Customer experience is a critical factor in ecommerce success. A slow, clunky, or outdated website can deter potential buyers and lead to higher basket abandonment rates. Our dedicated UX team working alongside our ecommerce development experts help our clients stay up to date with the latest best-practice when it comes to accessibility, digital sustainability and website performance which in turns leads to better conversion rates.
5. Scalability and Futureproofing
As an ecommerce business grows, its website must scale accordingly. A development retainer enables businesses to plan for expansion by ensuring their platform can handle increased traffic, new product lines, and additional features without compromising performance.
By working closely with a development team, businesses can futureproof their ecommerce store, making it easier to adapt to new market trends, integrate with emerging technologies, and offer seamless omnichannel experiences.
How to Make the Most of Your Development Retainer
To fully capitalise on the benefits of a development retainer, Tanya Peasgood says ecommerce businesses should follow a strategic approach:
1. Define Clear Goals and Priorities
From the outset make sure your dev team fully understands the business objectives and what key development tasks are seen as the most important. Whether it is improving site speed, enhancing accessibility, or implementing third party tools, having a clear roadmap ensures that resources are allocated efficiently.
2. Foster a Collaborative Workflow
Regular communication between the ecommerce business and the development agency is crucial. Your delivery manager will suggest regular check-ins that work with you, progress reports, whilst agile development methodologies help maintain transparency and alignment with the business’s growth strategies.
3. Leverage Data and Analytics to Make Informed Decisions
Use website analytics, user behaviour tracking, and conversion data to inform development decisions. Insights from tools like GA4, heatmaps, and customer feedback can guide optimisation efforts to maximise results. If you do not have the expertise in-house, your delivery manager can discuss with you options to leverage the experience of our digital marketing team.
4. Think about building in a test and iteration mindset
Whilst it may require additional budget and resources, businesses can achieve greater success when there is the chance to adopt continuous testing and refinement. Regular A/B testing of landing pages, checkout flows and navigation ensures that your ecommerce store is optimised for the best possible user experience. A test and learn mindset leads to sustainable ecommerce growth.
5. Stay Ahead of Industry Trends
Your delivery manager will be a valuable source of ideas, drawing from experience across multiple ecommerce businesses. They can bring ideas and insights around possible new AI features and third-party tools that have succeeded elsewhere and may be an excellent fit for your website.
Conclusion: Why a Development Retainer is Key to Ecommerce Success
A development retainer is more than just a support plan—it is a strategic investment in your ecommerce growth. Rather than treating website development as a one-off project, a retainer ensures ongoing enhancements, seamless user experiences, and the agility to adapt to market changes.
A dedicated Delivery Manager plays a crucial role in this process, helping to prioritise initiatives, align development with business goals, and introduce innovative ideas from across the ecommerce industry. Their expertise ensures your website remains optimised, competitive, and primed for long-term success.
By committing to continuous improvement, businesses can stay ahead of trends, implement data-driven enhancements, and maximise their revenue potential.
If you are looking to accelerate ecommerce growth, a development retainer could be the key to unlocking your website’s full potential.
