Many companies today now offer their goods and services online. Online sales are a key revenue stream for countless brands. You may be ready to launch your own online storefront. Before doing so, you need an e-commerce platform. You will find there are thousands to choose from.
Choosing the right platform can be challenging. Care must be taken as you move through this process. The choice is a strategic long-term decision, one that will impact your business for years to come. The following tips will help you choose the right pob platform for your business needs.
Know Your Needs
Choosing the right e-commerce platform is crucial for any business looking to sell products online, and knowing your specific needs should drive this important decision. Selecting a platform that aligns well with your current and future business requirements, capabilities, and resources ensures you find an optimal match that enables your online sales goals.
Prioritize Your Must-Have Features
You must prioritize which features you need in an e-commerce platform. When deciding what to develop first, evaluate your business goals, user needs, and development costs. Revenue generation should be a top priority. Focus first on features that help convert site visitors into customers and grow the average order value. For example, make sure the shopping cart and checkout process is seamless.
High-impact customer service tools like self-service account management should take precedence over things like customizable themes or user ratings and reviews. Ease of implementation must also be considered. Simple features that can be launched quickly offer faster returns on time and cost investments.
From a user perspective, page speed, site reliability, and responsive design for mobile are essential early features to ensure a smooth customer experience. Ultimately, rank potential features by their ability to move key metrics the business depends on like conversion rate, customer retention, cost reductions, customer lifetime value, and more.
Compare Overall Usability
In addition to technical capabilities, the day-to-day usability of the admin interface and content management system is crucial for your team to work efficiently. When comparing platforms, create free trial accounts and have your key users test admin workflows for core tasks like managing products, orders, customers, and content. Also, examine the flexibility of user permissions and the intuitive nature of the dashboard. Considering the back-end usability will ensure your staff can access necessary tools quickly.
The usability of this e-commerce platform from the customer’s perspective is also a key priority. It directly impacts customer satisfaction and sales conversions. For example, look for a platform that uses icons and visual cues rather than dense text to communicate key actions and messages. It should also optimize search and filters to help customers efficiently find products.
Evaluate the Potential for Customization
You need a customizable e-commerce platform for your online business to stand out. This platform will help provide the best experience for your customers. What should it include?
The ideal e-commerce platform allows you to select themes that align visually with your brand image. It also offers plugins and integrations suited to your specific needs, whether that’s complex product configurations, subscriptions, drop shipping, or some other special requirement. As your business evolves, a truly adaptable platform makes it easy to scale up features without needing to migrate to new technology.
Perhaps most importantly, a customizable storefront enables better customer engagement by showcasing your products attractively, simplifying navigation, providing robust search, and personalizing recommendations. Meeting users’ expectations across devices has become essential. An agile, configurable e-commerce platform gives you the tools you require to put the customer experience first while differentiating yourself in a crowded market.
Compare Available Support Resources
You need strong support resources when running an e-commerce business. Robust help documentation, FAQs, forums, chat options, and ticketed support can be critical for resolving issues promptly. Without easily accessible assistance, minor problems can quickly escalate into costly headaches and lost revenue.
Additionally, support coverage should match your business needs. If you sell globally or operate 24/7, make sure assistance is offered around the clock in multiple languages. Scaling your operations also may require features and integrations that benefit from expert implementation advice. Vetting the knowledgebase content, community engagement, and responsiveness of customer service when evaluating platforms is essential. The right support ecosystem gives you the confidence to focus on store strategy rather than troubleshooting crises. With the complexities of e-commerce, having a safety net through stellar support resources separates the best platforms from the rest.
Consider Long-Term Scalability
E-commerce platforms need to be highly scalable to support growth in traffic, customers, product catalogs, and transactions over time. A platform that cannot efficiently scale with demand will suffer from slow page loads, downtime, lost sales, and poor customer experiences. Key elements for scalability include having a flexible infrastructure hosted in the cloud and employing autoscaling capabilities.
As an e-commerce business grows, the platform should allow easy expansion of server capacity, storage, and computing power. Database and search architecture should also scale out horizontally across servers as needed. Ongoing performance monitoring, load testing at higher traffic levels, and planning for peak demand times are crucial. Choosing established e-commerce platforms with a proven ability to support some of the highest-traffic sites demonstrates long-term viability.
Compare Costs and Contract Options
Pricing can vary widely depending on the type of eCommerce platform, range of capabilities, and business size. Make sure to accurately compare TCO (total cost of ownership) across any fees for licenses, add-ons, transactions, storage, bandwidth, and more. Also, examine the available contract lengths and terms in case your needs change. Upfront costs are usually lower for annual contracts, but month-to-month or pay-as-you-go options offer more flexibility. If launching a new business, starting with a lower-priced platform to test the market may be the best approach before scaling up.
By carefully evaluating your needs, must-haves, growth potential, cost, and more across several leading eCommerce platforms, you can confidently choose the right solution tailored for your online business today and in the future. Keeping these tips in mind during your selection process will ensure you pick the best platform partner for long-term success selling online.