How to Shortlist Ecommerce Platforms.

The events of 2020 have accelerated the need for businesses to have an online shopping channel. Choosing an ecommerce platform is not something that should be rushed.

There are a lot of considerations that need to be thought about because re-platforming is time-consuming and expensive.

The following list comes from my book – Ingredients for Ecommerce Success

B2C Ecommerce Platform Requirement Checklist

Here are some of the things you should consider when choosing an Ecommerce solution.

• How many SKUs or Products will be in your Ecommerce catalogue?
• How many simultaneous transactions do you expect in peak times?
• How complicated are your products? Can they be customised?
• Do you have a standard or novel business model?
• What languages do you want to support?
• How many currencies do you want to support?
• What functionality do you want at launch versus later phases?
• What is your Budget? How much can you spend on the build and running costs?
• Do you have existing systems that you need to integrate with? e.g. CRM, ERP, Loyalty.
• Do you need B2B functionality like account or volume-based pricing?
• Do you have in-house IT resources or support?
• Do you have IT policies that need to be adhered to? e.g. Is an Open Source solution ‘allowed’. Does the system need to sit on a certain codebase or technology stack?
• What does the ecosystem look like? How many partners are there in your part of the world? Does the app marketplace include all the tools you need? e.g. is there a ready-made integration for your required Payment Gateway?
• How much control do you want over the UI / UX including design?
• Do you need to customise the checkout?
• What will you need in 2 years’ time? Are you willing to re-platform? Will your chosen system scale sufficiently?

The answers to the questions above will be different for every business. There is no ‘best’ ecommerce system – only the best ecommerce system for you. For some it will be Shopify, for others it will be BigCommerce or Magento or WooCommerce.