Are you looking to switch or upgrade to a new ecommerce platform?
Changes and improvements in technology have exposed new options to businesses. The ecommerce platform, on which your site has been built on a few years ago, may seem obsolete now. Or it may be that your business has outgrown the existing platform and requires more sophisticated features.
However, migration to another ecommerce platform is a critical process. Frankly speaking, merchants are likely to make mistakes. After all, the process is quite stressful when it comes to planning and managing ecommerce replatforming initiatives.
Here’s a recommended checklist to keep in mind for a successful ecommerce replatforming project.
Consider Scalability:
Will a new platform support your business growth?
A platform that is limited to a single country may not be appropriate for targeting the international market. When the number of customers ordering items as well as the number of nations in which these customers might be located swells up, many platforms are not that efficient to support the new traffic and requirements.
That’s why you should carefully review your new ecommerce platform for its scalability. If your business is to expand on a broader level, for example, will the platform in question respond? Will it be able to support the new requirements?
Opt for an ecommerce platform that can be scaled up or down to meet your business needs.
Assess Control and Flexibility:
Issues are inevitable and they may even discard the project-in-making.
An ecommerce replatforming project is not immune to this phenomenon. There will be various glitches and halts that will haunt everyone on the team. While opting for a new ecommerce platform and generating a timeline for its execution and delivery, it’s important to ponder over the potential issues.
To make sure that a project plan isn’t totally shelved in case of any potential issues, make sure to give a room to flexibility.
For example, if there is a need to change the timeline, the team should be able to imply the plan B as required for a successful delivery.
Understand the Role of SEO:
SEO should not be the last thing to worry about.
Companies can survive or collapse by their organic search traffic and a big drop in this can be very costly, especially if the gap is covered with a paid search engine.
While SEO is vital for getting exposure, it is often one of the most undervalued things during a re-platform. Most businesses are likely to focus on their UX, data and integrations and functional requirements. SEO is often considered towards the end of the project. But this can be an expensive mistake that can eclipse both timeline and success of your project.
A migration will come with a wholesale change to product data, content, UX and URL structure. These elements have a huge impact on SEO. While a website is likely to see a dip of up to 20% in its inbound organic traffic after a re-platform, executing a sound SEO strategy at the very beginning of the process can minimize this impact and restore any lost SEO equity as quickly as possible.
Promote Collaboration:
Let’s admit it – ecommerce process is overwhelming and stressful. There are many things that determine the efficiency and delivery of the process. And communication among all the assignees is one of them.
Keeping your all departments on the same page is downright essential. It will keep everyone informed in the loop. Everyone will be aware of when the changes or modifications are made. Adopting a sense of community and collaboration across a company is one of the effective ways to promote a culture of coordination.
Document the Entire Process:
What are your objectives, goals, priorities? How are they leveraged by each stakeholder? The point is here to capture all these insights in a formal audit or assessment document. Given the challenges of the ecosystem, you’ve just come across, having this information in the first place will efficiently streamline the process with potential platform vendors and system integrators, letting them to quickly and accurately quote your venture and team up with you during the requirements, elaboration phases and analysis.
Embrace the New Reality of Ecommerce:
Ecommerce platforms have gone beyond stand-alone applications to agile, easily integrated channels that deliver great shopping services to various merchants. The level of effort, departmental cooperation, and risk analysis are required for this approach. Needless to say, it requires a dedicated and highly skilled team with the ultimate focus on the project.
It is important to assess the requirements; consider scalability; promote collaboration and capture insights for a successful migration. Have we missed anything? Drop your valuable feedback and opinions to the comment box below.