Both B2B and B2C companies shifted gears to cater to COVID-19. Many were forced to find new ways to reach and serve their customers. This meant being flexible and rethinking on how to use technology to help the business deliver.
Entering 2021 many leaders find themselves starting a journey of crafting a new eCommerce solution based on how inflexible their current solution proved to be. Most aren’t starting online operations from scratch, but want to improve upon existing fundamentals to help overcome constraints felt in the past year.
While tempting to dive into platforms head first (sales pitch, demo, repeat) we want to advise leaders to pause. To ensure you have a flexible, scalable solution capable of adapting to your business growth and allowing you to get the most out of your investment there are steps you should take. We are mapping out how to get the most out of your eCommerce platform development through vision, architecture, and what to look for in an eCommerce platform.
Choosing the Right eCommerce Platform
It is about defining both a technical and customer-centric vision for your company. Then working out how to strike a fine balance between realizing the strategic vision and leveraging prebuilt features from services and technologies to support the vision.
STEP 1- The Vision
Getting the most out of your eCommerce platform development starts with the vision. This will allow you to define how you want the technology to support and drive your business. With the help of a trusted, knowledgeable eCommerce agency you can leverage their expertise to understand the full solution required to meet your business objectives with each feature and function designed with a purpose.
Are you stepping into online operations for the first time? Most companies' responses will be no. You likely want to change something fundamental about the existing solution in order to overcome constraints.
Customizing the platform and technology is generally a bigger investment than the platform and technologies.
Why?
The vision wasn’t put in place before they reviewed technology.
The right eCommerce technology will be one to support and scale your vision. This is why you start here to get the most out of your investment. Done right, it will ensure you get a flexible solution capable of adapting to business growth, the emergence of new technologies, and shifting consumer trends. The more that can be achieved through business and operational change to get the most out of the solution, the greater the return on the investment, resulting in a likely overall reduction in TCO.
Ultimately, the transformation should be defined by the business with the technology supporting it- not the other way around.
Start a conversation to help define your business vision.
STEP 2- Designing the Architecture
Making huge technology changes isn't something to be doing on the regular. If you are making a major change to your eCommerce solution it’s likely because the current one is not supporting the evolution of your business.
When considering your approach to eCommerce platform development look to the future. The best approach is to ensure the platform can provide the flexibility to adapt as your business needs change. This flexibility allows the business to respond rapidly to the customer, business, and market trends as well as innovate and test out new ideas.
How is this done?
- Focus on connecting all parties that will have a stake in the project before starting on step two. The vision has already been crafted by these key stakeholders.
- With a vision, business and IT teams work together to choose an implementation partner. Focus on questions based on their capabilities and experience, not a list of requirements that your business wants for the site.
- The implementation partner can then use their experience, not a list of features, to create the architecture to support your vision. Knowing this vision can (and should) evolve in the future.
- The end result is a platform created for customizing the needs of future requirements.
With a clear definition of architecture for your eCommerce, you will help establish a foundation that allows for continuous innovation while minimizing business disruption. This will help protect your eCommerce platform investment for years to come.
Read how we partnered with Jessup Manufacturing to create their digital business platform.
STEP 3- Choosing the Platform
You’re finally here. Ready to dive into the comparison and pitches of various eCommerce technologies. Don’t get overly excited by specific features, but remember to choose a platform and services that allow you the tools to build out your vision.
The most important factors to consider when deciding on your eCommerce technology investments include:
- Vision alignment: Does the product or service offer the flexibility needed to connect with your vision? By compromising your vision you could potentially be adding a lot more to your investment once you bring the technology onboard in order to get what you need out of it.
- Pricing structure: Your business case won’t work if the pricing structure doesn’t make sense for it. For example, if you have low margins but high volume online a revenue-based model may not be the right choice.
- Performance and scalability: Make sure the platform can scale with your business and respond to atypical volume with no notice. Cloud-based eCommerce solutions provide a lot of flexibility when the architecture is properly designed.
- Clear roadmap: Choosing a vendor with a clear roadmap supporting your vision can help maximize your investment and support continuous innovation efforts.
Speaking of investment, by taking time to evaluate hidden costs of implementation and ongoing TCO from the platform, you will gain a more realistic idea of how much value the platform will add to the business.
Let's discuss your eCommerce
Echidna is a global eCommerce agency. Our capabilities include strategy, creative, marketing, systems integration, eCommerce platform development, and managed services. We commit to our customers to understand their business in order to design modern commerce engines that will power their next phase of growth and innovation. Working with B2B and B2C merchants, our goal is to deliver top-notch quality on a predictable schedule and at an affordable rate that our clients recognize the real value in.
