A decade or two back, people would have laughed if someone would have mentioned shopping from home.
Online buyers have been on a steady rise as e-commerce emerges as a powerhouse option for shopping. We used to go places in search of products. Now, the products come to you place in search of you. This is the change. And this is the revolution. It’s estimated that there will be 2.14 billion global digital buyers this year alone.
The best part about e-commerce is the convenience and power it gives to customers to shop whatever they want, from wherever they want, at any given time. Online sales revenue is at an all-time high and more buyers are preferring digital buying. Even print on demand e-commerce stats shows this growing tendency in the eCommerce market. These times have made customers do so. With a few clicks on the screen, potential customers can see all the details they want before making a buying decision.
But the biggest question for e-commerce store owners. It’s great that your e-commerce store has been seeing great sales over the years. It is great that your e-commerce store has great reviews. And it is great that you have repeat customers, which is a rarity for most shops.
Is the platform your e-commerce store is hosted on keeping pace with the current dynamics? Is your store in line with the latest e-commerce trends and security compliances? Can you provide best-in-class customer experience capabilities for a seamless shopping experience?
Cars released 10 years back seem indifferent compared to the inquisitive cars that are coming into the market now. The reason is that upgraded features include better performance, more driving options, safe, fuel-efficient, powerful engines, and more.
Similarly, all the software and technology that we have been using. Are you still sticking to the self-hosted or the basic platform using which you have built your e-commerce platform?
If so, you need an upgrade to e-commerce replatforming. E-commerce replatforming is the process of shifting your store to a new platform and architecture to increase customer experience, scalability, stability, and security to stay ahead of the industry standards.
Would you leave out a chance when you can sell more and earn more by taking a decision that would benefit your company’s prospective growth and potential? Read further to understand why e-commerce Replatforming might be your brand’s key to unlock more revenue.
No brand would like to be stuck in the same position for a longer period of time. Everyone wants growth. But the bigger question is: is your current e-commerce platform fully equipped to embrace the growth?
Many e-commerce stores hosted on nominal platforms do not have the luxury and customization features to do what they want in order to reach a more diverse audience. In situations like these, business owners do whatever they can with the available resources to propel their growth.
No, that’s not the way to do it. Every business is started with a dream, a purpose, and a vision. Every time there is a barrier preventing growth. Do not settle for less. Instead, take steps to remove that barrier.
E-commerce replatforming to a top platform gives you umpteen options and resources that you can play around with in taking your brand to the next level: high customer experience, fast website, top-notch security coverage, rich UI, and more.
Seventy-four percent of businesses report concerns that their current platforms will not allow them to scale properly, and 78% say their existing solutions cannot support the agility of cross-channel order management. Considering such statistics, we find some of the greatest challenges for online storefronts.
The aim of every business is to keep growing and for that to happen, brands have to be technically prepared to welcome the influx of sales. e-commerce Replatforming gives you better options for the way your store functions.
What guarantees success? Definitely, it is not the products alone. No matter how world-class your products are. Brands can’t rely on product quality alone to attract, engage, and retain their e-commerce customers.
E-commerce replatforming gives you modern features that possess the key to connect with your customers and build trust amongst your target audience, which is necessary to keep them engaged as time goes on.
Initiate personalized marketing and start delivering tailored content to customers, throughout the customer journey, based on their individual actions and circumstances. Make no compromises on customer experience. Make customers feel great and valued.
Thanks to technology, the marketplace now is filled with lots of fulfilling integrations that can do the job for you in a faster time. Does your current e-commerce platform allow you to integrate its main architecture with a myriad of migrations options to fuel your growth? When you choose supporting technologies, they help to sell more, faster, and smarter. Thereby, increasing sales and even making customers happy.
Being an e-commerce store owner, if your answer is no to the above questions, then the answer should stay the same for your customers as well. E-commerce replatforming ensures your site is with a top speed: rich UI, responsive, and faster loading pages. And also in lieu of the latest security standards to protect your site and customer data.
How well structured is your current e-commerce platform? Is there a single source of truth in all your landing pages across the whole website? Are all your pages and links fully responsive? User consistency ensures that your website looks unified and helps customers in searching for the products they want faster.
Enabling this ensures potential buyers a better experience, improves the usability of the website, aids users to navigate through various pages seamlessly, and eliminates navigation complications. And importantly - quick and efficient shopping experience.
Marketing matters the most. The way you sell your products is as important as the products themselves. Make sure you have the right e-commerce platform to support your marketing efforts. Ensure the website is fast (because, duh, no one likes to shop on slow websites). And do your homework about the target audience and replatform the e-commerce store in the most appealing way possible. Low effort experience is the secret.
Crack the code and create more customers. Explore various options to take your brand to the masses. Seek their attention with unmissable visual content. And build your brand.
Let's discuss seven core considerations your team should make before taking the plunge to switching over platforms.
Since the site entirely is going to be re-platformed and repositioned into a new system. We don’t want to sugarcoat and say instant success beckons; yes, there will be a few initial hiccups. But they won’t last for long.
And also, they will be worth the wait. Because e-commerce Replatforming, once done, takes your brand to a greater height with a lot more ulterior features to help the way you sell, and help the way people shop.
Talking about the long-term business impacts, you are now in a more comfortable position to adapt to market conditions and make strategic decisions as the platform gives varied options that suit your product lineage.
Looking at the big picture, you can then reinvest these additional profits, allowing your brand to ramp up its efforts across the board. And you’ll be able to make much greater strides toward your organization’s overall vision.
It’s common to feel lurid about replatforming. Because e-commerce Replatforming is not a simple task either. It involves top-level decision-making and meticulous planning to ensure all the data is safely driven and migrated to the new platform.
Peeking into the brighter side of things, your team will now have more features from your new platform using which you can formulate new strategies to tap the key audience and drive more visitors to your website.
Also, it gives you diverse customization options so you can do business the way you want without any hindrances or compromises. With all the customer information added to your team's knowledge, there's huge room for improvisation and enhancing the customer experience.
Make sure to keep your team aware and prepared on why you are taking the decision of e-commerce replatforming and ask them to be ready to embrace the change and new pathway to success.
As the same old saying goes, one size does not fit all. There is no set or predefined scale that can estimate the cost of replatforming. The first decision you have to take is to analyze and finalize to what modern e-commerce platform your company is going to be shifted.
Next, do deep research and find out all the data (Re: each and every data that needs to be moved from here to there). There’s going to be a lot. Ascertain all the data that needs to be migrated and filter out the unwanted.
By data, we mean customer information, pictures, product details, SEO materials, and a lot more that constitute and complete your current e-commerce platform. After finalizing the scale of your e-commerce replatforming, the cost can be determined. It is directly related to the quantity of data and other technical aspects.
Every decision that we take every day being a business owner should advance our team’s growth and place our business on a higher pedestal. So does e-commerce replatforming.
Businesses can do more in lesser time by utilizing features with modern capabilities, customizing the e-commerce store in line with your business, fast shopping, better and safer security compliances, increased customer experience, intuitive layouts, real-time data to make strategic decisions, advanced marketing features, and a lot more.
There’s no “one way” to go about making improvements to your e-commerce store. Still, there are a number of things businesses in any industry can consider doing to make it happen after they choose e-commerce replatforming.
For this far, we have spoken about how e-commerce replatforming can do wonders to your online store if the decision is taken at the right time. But as business owners, when should you take that decision?
If your e-commerce store is not in line with industry standards; if your e-commerce store is not offering a rich customer experience; if your e-commerce store is not supporting other integrations; if your e-commerce store is custom-built or an outdated platform; if you are already on a SaaS platform and are looking out for new features. And above all, if you want to upgrade the way you do business by selling more, go for it!
E-commerce replatforming is not an easy decision to make. Analyze your store, seek customer feedback, talk to your team, and then arrive at a final conclusion.
The best thing about technology? It’s always on a changing spree. What was spoken about a few months back might not even be a discussion-thing now. But some tech initiatives have managed to withstand time and still give optimal results.
Say, you see one of those solutions and want to combine it to your existing platform to serve customers better. Or you have multiple third-party integration apps in mind, but the current architecture does not support all that.
Your e-commerce platform should let you work the way you want. Because it’s your brand and you know it better than anyone. Make sure the current e-commerce platform you are going to choose allows you to integrate with a legacy as well as future systems. Integrate, innovate, and inspire the customers.
In simpler words, all the critical data is needed to keep the business up and running. Primarily, customer data, order details, and product information. Apart from the mentioned, product visualization in e-commerce like images, videos, and all that support a customer in arriving at a buying decision. Ensure all the data is backed up properly and no data loss occurs during the e-commerce replatforming.
Gain full control over your e-commerce store. There are no shortcuts - even if customers are not slightly pleased with the store’s performances, the chances are bleak of seeing them once again. It is the brand’s responsibility to delight customers at every touchpoint. You can’t take chances.
Apart from upping the custom experience, e-commerce replatforming helps to free up your team so they can focus more on revenue-building and revenue-bringing tasks rather than spending time on data updating or fixing technical glitches.
Before the last, let’s keep up with the latest buyer and retail needs. It is not correct to design a store we want and expect customers to adapt themselves. It is actually the opposite of that. Replatform and redesign a seamless customer experience so the buyers keep coming back.
E-commerce replatforming is a hard decision to make. But it will be worth every time and dime spent on it if you take the call after a detailed and thorough analysis of the need. The future is here and it is changing faster. As brands, you ought to adapt, to grow. Replatform and scale faster on autopilot mode.
Akash Madhi is a Content Writer at Cloras. He has been weaving words to educate and engage readers, especially about ERP, B2B, and the need for e-commerce. In his free time, he can often be found on the corner of a coffee shop with a book in his hand.
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