What should you consider when choosing an e-commerce platform?

Choosing an e-commerce platform for your business is far from straightforward. Technology is moving fast, and the jungle of systems, features and vendors can feel overwhelming. On top of that, the SaaS world is flooded with buzzwords and overly complex solutions to what are often simple problems. With this article, we hope to help you think more clearly about what to prioritise when you’re investing in a new e-commerce platform.

1. Let your strategy guide your choice of e-commerce platform

Your first step should be to start from your own reality when choosing an e-commerce platform. Base your decision on the strategies and tactics you need to turn shoppers into satisfied, returning customers. That’s what will move your business forward and create growth. 

Technology should never be an end in itself when you build your tech stack. It should make your day-to-day work easier and help you reach your customers.

2. Choose an e-commerce platform that can scale

As sales increase and your e-commerce business grows, you need to be able to scale your e-commerce operation efficiently. So make sure the platform you invest in actually supports that. Scaling can mean handling higher order volumes, heavier traffic on your site, expanding into new markets, or selling through more channels such as marketplaces.

When you’re preparing to choose a new e-commerce platform, our advice is:

• Make sure other retailers have actually grown on the platforms you’re evaluating. 
• Don’t be afraid to ask how they grew and how the vendor supported that journey. 
• Make sure there are no hidden costs behind implementing your new e-commerce platform. In many cases these are perfectly reasonable investments, but if you’re considering a platform change, it’s important to factor them in from the start. That means fewer unpleasant surprises later on.

3. The art of choosing the right tools and components

The challenges in your e-commerce business will shape the strategies you need to take on the market. Whether this is your first e-commerce platform procurement or it’s time to migrate to a new platform, your starting point should always be your own needs and conditions.

Choosing the right setup isn’t easy. It takes time, and it should. A platform change is often a major investment, with plenty of factors to weigh up along the way.

4. How much flexibility do you need when choosing a new e-commerce platform?

In recent years, composable commerce has become a widely used term when retailers procure systems for their e-commerce setup. Composable follows on from terms like headless and MACH (Microservices, API first, Cloud native, Headless). What these concepts have in common is a strong focus on integrations between multiple systems, each with a limited set of functions.

You pick the tools you need and then integrate them to create a complete setup. In practice, that often means choosing an e-commerce platform with PIM and OMS, then selecting partners for marketing automation, payment solutions, CMS, ERP and more.

The biggest advantage of an approach like composable commerce is that replacing one part of the platform usually doesn’t require a major investment. As a retailer, you’re less dependent on a single partner, whether that’s on the system side or the agency side. That can create a real sense of freedom and flexibility.

Most platforms today are built to move data through APIs. Almost every option on the market can integrate with third-party systems. The difference is that a composable commerce platform has made integration its “speciality”. 

As a retailer, you also get more implementation partners to choose from, which can feel reassuring in itself. If one partner doesn’t work out, you can simply switch to another. That is, as long as too many heavily customised solutions haven’t been built into, for example, the CMS. 

New partners can struggle to manage the previous partner’s code, which can lead to problems during version upgrades. That’s nothing unusual in CMS platforms such as WordPress, and it often results in a new partner recommending that large parts of your site need to be rebuilt.

5. Broader functionality means easier maintenance and better performance

The alternative is to choose a more comprehensive solution with a broader set of features built into the e-commerce platform itself. That means everything is brought together in one place. Processes covering everything from product data to orders and returns management sit within the same tool. 

That’s often an attractive option, but just like composable solutions, it comes with its own challenges. In most cases, integrating third-party systems with platforms that are still rather lazily labelled monoliths is no problem at all. They have APIs that make integrations possible, but building the connection probably won’t be as quick.

Why isn’t it as quick to build integrations for more comprehensive platforms?

One reason is that more comprehensive platforms take greater responsibility for making sure systems work properly together. Put simply, they have no one else to blame when a version stops working, which means they place slightly different demands on how an integration is built and how it should function. 

It’s important that integrations are built the right way, so the third-party tool’s functionality doesn’t clash with what’s already there. In other words, developers need to think it through properly. But once everything is in place, you as a user can feel confident that it all works. And above all, you know exactly who to call if something does break.

Choose a platform that gives you the right conditions to succeed

E-commerce is a low-margin industry. A lot of moving parts need to work together, and competition is intense. That’s why your processes need to work as well as possible and, ideally, be automated as far as they can be. 

Viskan E-commerce Platform is built to help you work efficiently as an e-commerce business. Partly from a process perspective, but above all from a financial one. You should be able to take control of your processes while also being able to add value easily through open APIs, using strong partners and their functionality.

Interested in taking the next step in your e-commerce journey? We have experience we’re happy to share. Get in touch.