Between 2020 and early 2022, ecommerce underwent a revolution that saw a surge in the number of consumers choosing to make purchases online. As a result, having the right capabilities and flexibility is essential to beating out competitors. However, some B2C and B2B businesses are still transforming, looking to provide an online ecommerce offering to meet the changing needs of their customers and to adapt to the “new normal”.

With how fast ecommerce is changing, making the wrong choices when implementing a new platform or building the right composable ecommerce experience stack can set a business back years. So, what are the things that business leaders need to consider when choosing an ecommerce platform to implement?

In this article, we’ll outline 8 major ecommerce implementation considerations that businesses need to take into account before selecting their next platform and explain why an API-first technology architecture should be at the top of the list.

8 Ecommerce Implementation Considerations

1. Research and Planning

The most critical consideration before implementing a new ecommerce platform might seem elementary, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t also underestimated by business leaders today.

Mapping Choices to Goals and Vision

Many enterprises often feel that they need to change their ecommerce platform, undergo a complete digital transformation, or select a particular software solution. Some of the primary reasons include:

• Their current platform isn’t fit for purpose.
• Current legacy technology has reached its end of life.
• They want to break into new markets or offer a new service but lack an ecommerce offering.
• The platform is unable to scale.
• The user experience design is compromised, making the current platform inflexible and unable to display new ways of multi-channel and dynamic content to users.
• The platform has fallen out of compliance with IT security standards.
• The incumbent platform has become too expensive to maintain.
• There has been a change in technical direction from monolithic to API first.

While these are valid reasons to implement a new ecommerce platform, the decision to implement a new system should align with the organization’s goals, business objectives, customers’ needs and future digital road map.

Product and Audience Research

Part of the research and planning process should involve product and audience research. Business leaders should be clear about which channels their customers can be found on and how they should present their products to potential customers.

In some cases, that might mean a mobile app for customer self-service and aftercare to go along with the main ecommerce website, and in others, it could require businesses to explore other channels like an in-store kiosk or collection terminal to enable a frictionless ecommerce experience.

2. Customer Expectations

Before implementing an ecommerce platform, companies need to ensure that it can cater to their needs and, more importantly, the expectations of their customers. Today, online shopping experiences can be personalized to the customers’ unique preferences by leveraging key interactional and transactional data points and behaviors that a mature technology ecosystem can provide if implemented correctly.

Customers also expect flexibility with multiple integrated payment options other than the traditional credit cards, from PayPal to Apple Pay, and Point of Sale finance options such as Klarna. However, they also don’t expect brands to do all the heavy lifting themselves, as 75% of consumers believe having a self-service option is important.

Brands need ecommerce platforms that support these payment options out of the box or integrate with additional tools for checkout and payment processing easily.

3. Cybersecurity

Compliance Considerations

Keeping customer data secure is a number one priority for any ecommerce website. Not only is it necessary to make customers feel safe when conducting digital transactions, but it is also a huge part of meeting security compliance and data processing standards for GDPR or CCPA regulations. Companies should assess whether the ecommerce platform in question carries PCI compliance and whether the delivered solution is fully penetration tested and meets all relevant IT policy and security standards to ensure the security of credit card details and customer profile data.

Infrastructure Considerations

Having the right infrastructure is a crucial factor in keeping data secure. Legacy and monolithic ecommerce platforms are more susceptible to cyber-attacks. For example, according to The Global Ecommerce Security Report 2021, Magento suffered 38 security vulnerabilities in 2020.

On the other hand, a platform that supports headless commerce, such as Shopify or BigCommerce, both of which suffered zero vulnerabilities per the report, is less susceptible to distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks because it gives threats a smaller surface area to target. The right infrastructure is key to ensuring the scalability of the platform to meet high traffic volumes during times of peak demand.

4. Multichannel Requirements

The modern consumer isn’t limited to just browsing an ecommerce website from their desktop. In fact, mobile and in-store commerce are two of the fastest-growing and most popular options for conducting ecommerce transactions. According to eMarketer, four out of five retail mobile app features consumers value most are the ones that connect the physical and digital shopping experience, shining a light on the need for a connected customer journey.

Customers are also purchasing products directly from social media apps, via in-store digital kiosks, and a number of other channels. Even if they aren’t completing the final purchase on these channels, today’s customer journey spans multiple touchpoints and can impact the final sales. As a result, brands need to provide a seamless and consistent multichannel experience serving the right content to customers on any device, wherever they interact with them.

Learn more about how we created a modern commerce experience that fuses digital and in-store.

5. Customer Experience

For any ecommerce store, the online customer experience begins from the time they visit the website, whether that means the main page after finding the brand from an affiliate link, watching a video or browsing a product page after clicking on a social media advert.

Product Categorization

Brands must ensure that product categories are organized to help customers find exactly what they’re looking for as quickly and smoothly as possible. A product search feature can support a user journey through finding the right product and an engaging navigation can remove the friction that can impact the browsing experience and lead to customers bouncing from the page. Well-thought-out categories can positively impact conversions and sales as they reduce the time potential buyers need to spend wading through unrelated products.

Supportive Imagery, Descriptions, Tagging and Meta-data

Engaging product imagery and detailed descriptions are also necessary for the best customer experience. On the one hand, they provide adequate details to help customers better understand the features of the product. On the other hand, clear and structured descriptions can be helpful for customers to find products easily through organic search rankings. An ecommerce platform with built-in SEO features can make this process more straightforward for marketing and ecommerce performance teams enabling quicker time to conversions and revenue.

6. System Integration

Before implementing a new ecommerce platform, business leaders need to assess the existing technology stack and current software tooling. Any new ecommerce platform needs to be able to integrate and work together with the existing tools set. An ecommerce platform that offers an ecosystem or a range of enterprise integration partners can make connecting with other tools and sharing data throughout the ecommerce stack more streamlined. Building an API-first architecture is much easier reducing the dependency on vendor lock-in and inflexibility.

7. Scalability

Any ecommerce platform selected must be able to support the scalability requirements of a modern ecommerce store. That means being able to handle large amounts of traffic volumes and scaling up or down to manage traffic spikes during peak periods such as BFCM and following heavy promotions where a large number of visitors might be expected. This means setting up and configuring the hosting environment correctly, ensuring it’s tested and optimized for scaling.

8. User Interface

To provide consumers with the high-quality experience they desire, an ecommerce platform should also provide the best user experience for internal users /employees. This includes user-friendly tools for accomplishing editing, publishing content tasks, and launching campaigns with limited or no reliance on technical teams and IT.

In order to implement concepts like headless commerce successfully, these 8 considerations are vital to creating a trul engaging multichannel experience for your customers and organization.

How an API-First Ecommerce Technology Stack Can Help

Enterprises that want to get ahead when building their ecommerce experiences will often have two options at their disposal. Building or buying.

Buying an entire ecommerce technology stack often means going for a monolithic or suite option. On the other hand, going headless and incorporating MACH or composable commerce components to build an ecommerce tech ecosystem means selecting different best-of-breed tools and working with multiple vendors.

The benefits of opting for this approach include the freedom to choose the best-of-need platforms for each area or function — this means no vendor lock-in and greater flexibility in replacing technology when it no longer aligns with the previous strategy without affecting other tools, whether it’s the ecommerce platform, CRM, or CMS.

Learn more about dotCMS and Contentful‘s API-first approach.

Building a Better Ecommerce Technology Architecture with Content Bloom

Knowing what ecommerce implementation factors impact your business the most or which mistakes to avoid is a difficult task. With so many things to consider, business leaders might be overwhelmed with questions and uncertainties. That’s why it pays to have an experienced partner assisting you.

As an enterprise digital consultancy, Content Bloom has helped several leading brands with their ecommerce assessment and implementations.

When multinational computer networking company NETGEAR wanted to upgrade their CMS, they turned to Content Bloom for help. An assessment of their roadmap found that a website redesign would also be beneficial. It would unify content across channels and increase ecommerce conversions by optimizing the buyer’s journey. After the upgrade was complete, NETGEAR realized 2x the number of conversions and ecommerce transactions compared to three months prior.

Learn more about NETGEAR’s digital transformation by reading the case study: Digital Strategy for More Meaningful CX.

FAQ

What is an ecommerce implementation?

An ecommerce implementation is a process of designing, building, and deploying an ecommerce platform or performing another task that involves upgrading the ecommerce technology stack to support a company’s online sales. Implementation can include setting up technical infrastructure, integrating with other systems, and optimizing the platform to meet the demands of an ecommerce store.

How much does ecommerce implementation cost?

The cost of an ecommerce implementation project will vary depending on a number of factors, including the licensing costs of the software being used, the number of integrations that need to be made with the pre-existing tech stack, and the length of the project. It can range from several thousand to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

How long does ecommerce implementation take?

Ecommerce implementation can take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks, months, or even longer. It ultimately depends on the size and scope of the project, and the experience of the team doing the implementation.