If you’ve ever embarked on developing an e-commerce store, you know that the journey from idea to a functional online shop can be full of challenges. The traditional approach often involves months of planning, development, and testing—yet the final result doesn’t always meet customer expectations. Fortunately, there’s a more effective way to bring an e-shop to market quickly and flexibly: the combination of an agile approach and the concept of a Minimum Viable Product (MVP).
Scrum and the agile approach aren’t just about faster development. They also bring better control over priorities and allow the customer to actively shape the final product. In the first part, we explored these advantages. Now, we’ll focus on how to build an effective Minimum Viable Product (MVP) for your e-commerce store—and how the agile approach helps you respond quickly to changing market demands and customer needs.
The agile approach—specifically the Scrum methodology—introduces an iterative process to e-commerce development. This enables teams to deliver functional parts of the product regularly. In other words, instead of waiting a year for the final result, you can launch a basic version of your e-shop in just a few weeks—while continuously improving it based on real user feedback.
Sounds like a win? It is.
According to the Standish Group CHAOS Report 2020, a staggering 66% of technology projects end in partial or complete failure. So why waste time and money building features customers might not even want?
This is exactly where the concept of the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) comes in—a simplified version of a product that delivers real value to the customer and allows you to test what truly works.
What is an MVP, and why does it matter?
In the context of e-commerce, an MVP means a fully functional online store that includes only the most essential features—just enough to enable real transactions and gather behavioral data from users. Most importantly, it doesn’t pretend to be perfect. You launch, collect insights, and improve.
Benefits of MVP:
- Faster time-to-market: A basic version of your store can be ready to go live within just a few weeks.
- Real user data: Actual customer behavior tells you more than a hundred internal meetings ever could.
- Flexibility: You direct further development where it matters most—no guessing games, just facts.
What Might an E-Commerce MVP Look Like?
When designing an MVP, the focus is on the essentials—the features that allow customers to visit, browse, and make a purchase:
- Homepage: Clear presentation of your brand, current promotions, and featured products. First impressions matter.
- Product Listing Page (PLP): Organized categories, basic filtering, and easy navigation.
- Product Detail Page (PDP): Photos, description, and pricing—everything a customer needs to make a decision.
- Cart and Checkout: A smooth, intuitive purchasing process without unnecessary friction.
- Payment: Integration with a payment gateway—such as credit card or cash on delivery.
- Shipping: Connection to one delivery provider to start fulfilling orders.
- Analytics: Basic visitor tracking (e.g., via Google Analytics) to understand user behavior.
This foundation allows you to launch your e-commerce store, start selling, test the market, and—most importantly—gather real data that will guide the next stages of development.
Data = a true picture of what’s happening on your site
In agile development, data is one of the key decision-making tools. It helps us:
- understand what users are doing and where they drop off,
- run A/B tests to compare different versions of features or elements,
- prioritize future development based on what delivers the biggest impact.
From experience, we know that many product decisions are based on gut feelings, assumptions, or limited feedback. But data helps us challenge—and often disprove—those assumptions.
It’s often the analytics that uncover user behavior we never would have expected.
How does the use of the SCRUM methodology and the agile approach influence MVP development?
When designing an e-commerce store, we often imagine everything at once – from a beautifully designed user account to advanced filters or multiple delivery options. The agile approach teaches us to break this package into smaller parts and select what brings the greatest value right from the start.
1. Core structure:
- Homepage – brand presentation and highlighting key products
- PLP (Product Listing Page) – product list with sorting and filtering options
- PDP (Product Detail Page) – photos, videos, description, 3D models, documents
- My Account – contact information, order history, wishlist
2. Cart and Checkout
3. Integrations:
- Shipping providers – Provider 1, Provider 2, pickup boxes
- Payments – Card payment, Google Pay, Apple Pay, PayPal
- Marketing and analytics – Google Analytics, Meta Pixel, mailing tools
Phase 1: Minimum Viable Product (MVP)
From the full package, we select only what’s needed for a quick launch and the first sales:
- Homepage
- PLP (basic filtering and sorting)
- PDP (photos, description, price)
- Cart and checkout
- Card payment integration
- Integration with one shipping provider
- Basic analytics (e.g., Google Analytics)
- Goal: Launch as soon as possible, get the first orders, and start tracking user behavior.
Phase 2: Extensions Based on Data and Feedback
Based on real usage and collected data, we gradually add more functionality:
- Advanced PLP – more complex filters, labels, sorting
- PDP – videos, 3D models, product comparison
- My Account – wishlist, order overview
- Additional shipping providers and pickup boxes
- More payment options – Google/Apple Pay, PayPal
- Marketing tools – newsletter, discount codes, retargeting
- Advanced analytics and A/B testing
- Goal: Improve what has the greatest impact on customer experience and business results.
Collaboration as the Foundation of a Successful E-Commerce Project
Scrum isn’t just about processes and tools—its true strength lies in collaboration. Without regular communication and mutual understanding between the client and the development team, there’s a high risk that the end result won’t meet expectations. That’s why our goal is to “connect the dots” together—to create a product that makes sense and delivers real value.
Most common obstacles during development:
- misunderstanding the principles of Scrum (focusing on form instead of collaboration),
- resistance to change and rigid expectations,
- weak or unclear communication between parties,
- undefined roles and responsibilities,
- frequent changes without a clear strategy.
These challenges can be overcome—especially through an agile mindset. What matters most is setting the right mindset: openness to change, a willingness to continuously improve, transparent communication, and a focus on the real needs of users.
Conclusion: Agility Is Not the Goal — It’s a Tool
Scrum and agility are not magic solutions to every problem. But they are a proven foundation for development that is flexible, collaborative, and value-driven. They help you make better decisions, respond faster, and take part in the creation process in a way that gives you real influence over the outcome.
If you’re looking for a partner who will treat you as part of the team—not just a client, and you want to build an e-commerce store that grows with your business, then Cassovia Code is ready to be the right choice.
Curious what the MVP of your e-shop could look like?
Schedule a free consultation and let’s figure it out together!
