Touchpoints and pain points in the customer journey

To understand an eCommerce customer journey, you should know the touchpoints and pain points in the journey.

Broadly, “Touchpoints” could be

• Product – Hardware, Software, Services
• Interactions – Phone calls, Websites, Blogs, Social Media, User Forums, etc.
• Messages/Communication: the brand, collaterals, advertising, packaging, etc.
• Settings (where the product is ‘ seen’ ) – the internet, the television, events, shows, etc.

Once you’ve understood the touch points, ask yourself:

• What action does the customer take at every stage or move onward?
• Is the customer motivated to go to the next stage?
• What are the uncertainties or other issues that the customer faces?
• What barriers or costs obstruct the customer’s moving to the next stage?

You would then understand that the “Pain points” in a customer’s eCommerce journey could be linked to the following spheres:

• Financial – how much money spent
• Productivity – what is the efficiency of the product/service
• Processes – how was the customer guided through the entire path of buying
• Support – are the customers getting enough support during their purchase and usage journey
• Communication – is the communication from various levels of the company, clear or disjointed
• Navigation & Checkout – what is the comfort & convenience of website navigation
• Multiple channels – is the movement from one channel to another smooth
• Tracking and delivery – how effortless was this process

When you can seamlessly coordinate & integrate these touchpoints and reduce pain points, you create a superior eCommerce customer journey experience.

Stages of the eCommerce customer journey

A typical journey for an eCommerce customer goes through these stages-

• Engaging through advertising or any other exposure to the brand
• Buying the product or service
• Using it
• Sharing the experience with others on social media or other platforms
• Completing the journey by replacing it or upgrading or choosing the competition

These stages are categorized into the following subheads. Look at the following table to understand more:

Understanding this entire journey helps a business understand the market, streamline the experience, reduce the customer pain points, set real & achievable goals, and build plans for the future.

How to Map the eCommerce Customer Journey?

Organizations who want to excel in customer management and relationships define their value propositions clearly across the touchpoints, emphasize innovation, and use metrics & mapping systems to ensure consistency of the brand experience. Mapping the eCommerce customer journey helps understand the experiences that customers have across touchpoints and the action or pain points that eventually drive an organizational decision-making process.

These are the steps you can take to map the customer journey:

1. Observe and list the TouchPoints.

Touchpoints are the interaction points between your brand and the customer. This could be before the purchase, during the process, and after the purchase. Identifying these is like taking the first step into your customer journey. If you can empathize with the customer and think of what you would do if you had a problem, how you would try & discover a solution, and how you would make your purchase decision, you will understand the ‘ touchpoints’ too.

2. Explore for data

Research, and collect information on your customers from all the possible touchpoints. This helps you understand your customer’s mindset and journey. Also, research the competition. Your data will come from your website, social media, and online surveys. Tracking your potential customer data helps you analyze the demographics and interests better.

3. Define Personas

For a successful e-commerce customer journey mapping, you need well-defined customer personas. A persona is a semi-imaginative character that you create to symbolize your customer segment. This gets built on the demographic background, personality, supposed lifestyle, and shopping choices, and preferably is based on the actual data collected through analytics or surveys. The traits you list combine to personify ‘ somebody’ (maybe with names too). When you are realistic about creating the personas corresponding to the customer segment, you can work that much better on improving their shopping experiences. Tools help you to create personas (e:g Hubspot).

4. Identify the Pain Points

Data from personas helps identify the pain points and decipher the gaps in the customer experience. What do your customers think at every stage, what questions do they ask regarding the brand, what actions do they take subsequently, their needs and expectations, and how their behaviour is affected by their emotions and goals?

Ask yourself how your brand will fulfil its expectations and what potential opportunities you can create for a better customer relationship. This will help you veer them towards the next step in the journey.

5. Set Goals:

List what you need from this eCommerce customer journey mapping process. Ask yourself the ‘why’ of your efforts. You should know why you are making this map, what the perspective is, and what experiences to consider. Research helps you stay ahead of your customer in assessing goals, pain points, and solutions.

6. Map the Journey

Armed with all the information from the above pointers; you can now visualize and map your eCommerce customer journey. You know the stages of the journey, and you know how to collect & analyze data at various stages.

Analysis helps you figure out the gaps and fill them with appropriate steps. Plus, the dynamics of customer behaviour teach you that the journey map could change with time too. Use Google Analytics, Heatmaps, and Surveys to understand the nuances of customer behaviour. Use effective CRM to understand customer behaviour for complex sales processes.

Making the customer journey more worthwhile,

eCommerce brands learn daily through their observations of customer behaviour and touchpoint analysis the more your observation, the sharper your analysis, and the better your support. eCommerce journey maps help you improve brand interaction, loyalty, and business. Undertaking the mapping is invaluable – and helps you set the path for the present – and future customer journeys.

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The post How to Map Your Ecommerce Customer Journey? appeared first on Tricky Enough.

Product development can be a fragmented process and without a proper framework in place, you can easily anticipate your business to be hanging all over the place. It’s a process that streamlines all the different stages that ensure your product’s success and market positioning with an ability to retain customers. Otherwise, your new ideas can cost to make a hole both in terms of revenue and reputation. Therefore you need a process that ensures your idea’s sustainability in being a product and its economic usefulness. To ensure the same we’re highlighting some prominent benefits of why your idea deserves a New Product Development process to ensure it sails among the big waves-

1. Helps your business save money

A report by Fundera, estimated around 20% of new businesses fail to the ground in the first year itself. The factors influencing these numbers are plenty including poor or improper market research, incompetence, half-knowledge of competition, or economically unviable business models.

The new Product development is designed to be competent in building products that stand prime in the market. It is designed to alleviate your business processes and remove any risk factors that can hamper the product positioning towards the later stages. The NPD process tests the potential success of your product idea and keeps giving you suggestions based on market research and iterative edits on how to build a product that the market favours.

Having this information up your sleeve that informs about your product’s effectiveness gives you a secret weapon against throwing a disastrous business idea, and to uphold your business financially stable for longer.

2. Innovation and idea generation

The new product development process goes through an extensive process of idea gathering, screening, and finally picking an idea that is innovative, has market demand, and aligns with the business vision. Therefore new product development process is a promoter of new product ideas and not just random ideas but ideas that complement the business’s long-term vision. NPD’s framework evaluates the viability of new ideas which are laid out for implementation after looping the suggestions from all teams involved.

Given that ad hoc idea creation methods are more likely to fail, an excellent NPD process ensures the success of each product. This culture of innovation is vital for the commercial growth of the business and its employees.

3. Formalizing and Strengthening concept development processes

When you settle for a new business idea or product idea, only defining your product concept is not enough. The best way to ensure the wholesomeness of your idea is when you take into consideration the consumer’s requirements and how they perceive your product. This product should be represented in meaningful consumer terms. Here are a few ways how you can involve your consumer’s perspective in the process-

• Pitch the product concept first with the internal stakeholders and the senior staff of the business.
• The idea then moves ahead based on its worth and business capability.
• If the idea gets approved, the product is developed into a product concept that is branched out to present in front of multiple demographic groups often branching out to target different demographic groups.

4. Improve your Reputation for Quality

When you follow a development process that is intuitive and iterative for continuous development adding more credibility to the product; You build a product that caters to market requirements at its best. Thus the New Product development ensures that the quality speaks volumes at every step of the process. Quality improvement in your product development framework can help boost your sales.

If you deal with businesses that charge their quality standards as a condition of purchasing, you can guarantee that you are authorised as an approved supplier by making the required advancements.

You can further advance this by presenting materials that are more reliable or by redesigning the product that meet the consumer’s quality requirements and specifications. Meeting quality specifications and ensuring quality improvements will enable you to enter markets that make quality one of the regulatory requirements.

5. A Personalized Marketing strategy with the NPD process.

With the new product development process, you can formulate a marketing strategy that plays on your product’s Unique Selling Point (USP) and create a personalized strategy. Alongside since you’ve conducted demographic market research earlier, you can market your product differently for different audience groups based on their preferences, demographics location, etc. Thus once you’ve designed and tested your product, you have your MVP (Minimum Viable Product) ready you can weave your marketing strategy to find the audience’s reactions.

Since most of the research and information gathering has been done upfront, the process becomes simplified and fast. You can leverage the information into a marketing strategy.

Three critical aspects of your marketing strategy comprise-:

• Identify your target audience and how you can connect with them and personalize your reach.
• Pinpointing the crucial details like the product’s planned price, the ideal distribution channel, and your initial year’s marketing budget.
• Ensuring your short and long-term budgets, sales, and profit margins.

A product development process helps you create an accelerated marketing strategy that already consists of all the information you’d require to personalize your audience’s journey in finding your product and its features.

6. A practical business analysis

This can include cost projections and profit predictions, and how the company’s overall objectives will be met by the release of this new product.

The business attractiveness of a new product can only be developed once its market sustainability and expedience are ensured. It comprises the product’s cost and the profit predictions. Alongside when and how will the company’s widespread objectives be completed by the release of this new product?

This data is further corresponded with the other product’s data in the past either by the company itself or other competitors. All this process gets conceivable and faster with a new Product development strategy in place.

The post Benefits of New Product Development Process for Businesses appeared first on Tricky Enough.

The entire product team should adopt a product mindset over a project mindset. The product is their responsibility throughout its lifetime and goes beyond the initial launch. Businesses that focus on a product mindset are likely to succeed and even increase the product’s lifetime as it continues to add value to customers’ lives.

There are six stages of the product life cycle, and this write-up covers all these stages in detail.

Six Stages of Product Life Cycle

The six stages of the product life cycle include:

1. Development

Once the product development process completes requirements analysis, design, coding, and testing the next step is to strategize its launch. Businesses allocate budgets and spend money on post-launch marketing plans. Because the product is not launched yet, there will be no revenues to add up.

Marketing strategies for the development stage:

• Create a landing page for the product.
• Build a buzz around the product across social media channels.
• Create short videos that focus on “how does your product solve the customer problems.

2. Introduction

The introduction stage is when the product is first launched in the market. The ultimate aim at this stage is to increase initial adoption rates. The introduction starts with creating brand awareness and expanding reach. The team needs to identify the digital channels where the customers would be available and carefully craft a strategy that attracts audience’s attention.

Marketing strategies for the introduction stage:

• Content marketing
• Launch product on “Product Hunt”
• Leverage copywriting
• Influencer marketing

3. Growth

Growth happens when the customers have started adopting the product, and the awareness increases, either through word of mouth or through other marketing strategies. Also, the development team works on adding new features alongside implementing growth activities.

Marketing strategies for the growth stage:

• Creating BOFU (Bottom of the Funnel) content such as testimonials and case studies.
• Email marketing, personal DMs across social media channels, and cold calling.
• Organize podcasts and webinars to educate the audience.
• Create interactive content in the form of social media posts and videos.

4. Maturity

This is the stage where revenue starts doubling up and product adoption rates continue to increase. When the product achieves maturity, the CAC (customer acquisition cost) is finally lower than the CLV (customer lifetime value). In other words, businesses are spending less, whereas revenues continue to grow.

The marketing strategies at the maturity stage shift its focus from awareness to making competitor differentiation.

Marketing strategies for the maturity stage:

• Set pricing packages that are affordable compared to competitors
• Introduce unique features
• Fix bugs and act on customer feedback
• Plan entry into new market segments
• Collaborate with other brands to increase reach

5. Saturation

At the saturation stage, the product reaches a stable position, i.e., the existing customers stick to your product, but no new customers add to your network. The sales data show more or less a constant figure across quarters.

Saturation happens when competing products in the market perform better, use better technologies, innovatively solve the problem, or have winning marketing strategies in place. A product can also transit to the growth stage by implementing the required changes and filling the gaps.

Marketing strategies for the saturation stage:

• Offer exceptional customer service.
• Rely on word-of-mouth marketing.
• Create short videos that focus on competitor differentiation.
• Offer competitive pricing.

6. Decline

This is the most feared stage of the entire product lifecycle. When the product reaches the decline stage, it is time to pull it down from the market as revenues are continuously declining. At this stage, the product growth stagnates, and the churn rate doesn’t seem to slow down.

The only options at this stage are to discontinue the product entirely, sell the company, or iterate through the development and bounce back in 6 months or so.

Marketing strategies for the decline stage:

• Create posts that talk about the product’s success over the years
• Advertise about a 2.0 version of the product (in case you plan to continue)
• Reduce prices and offer the product for free in its last leg

Conclusion

The product life cycle covers the stages from the development of a product to its decline. Every product-based company goes through the above-mentioned stages, i.e., development, introduction, growth, maturity, saturation, and decline. However, there is always a way to avoid decline through accepting change and innovating on the fly.

Whether you are undergoing new product development or improving an existing product, consider product life cycle stages to guide your marketing strategies.

Product development is just the beginning; real business starts after that.

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The post The 6 Stages of Product Life Cycle appeared first on Tricky Enough.

You know that old saying about a plane taking off from California to Hawaii being off course 99% of the time — but constantly correcting? The same is true of successful startups — except they may start out heading toward Alaska.” ~ Evan Williams

It is the same story that repeats every time. Initially, teams come up with ideas to begin a startup. Further, they put time and money into the MVP process and decide which features to include and leave out of the MVP. Ultimately, after the MVP launch, the startup moves with a stable and mature product when everything works as planned.

Then what goes wrong with this fairy-tale success story? In reality, over 90% of them fail.

So what leads startups to fail?

Because they fail to recognize MVP as not only a product to work and finish within 2-3 months and launch; instead, a more precise amount of effort and work goes into the process after the MVP launch as well. After launching the MVP, it doesn’t end there; rather, the list goes on. MVP development is a repetitive process and continues until a robust product has found its best fit market.

Here’s the to-do list to follow:

Collect Feedback

Until the MVP launch, the MVP was built based on essential features for the user’s mind. As soon as the product launches into the market, it’s open for feedback- which is better advice to follow- what the potential customers have to say after using the MVP.

After the MVP launches into the market, collect these actual data and determine whether and why customers are using your product and why not!

Tracking user behaviors is vital for engine growth; businesses can measure and learn from user interactions and decide which features to improve, add, or delete. Use the data to analyze what it is that would make your product more commercial and successful.

Don’t be discouraged by the negative feedback from the customers. Don’t hesitate to go back to square one, if needed, because most startups do it multiple times.

Prepare to Scale

Startups worry more about examining their assumptions, validating the same in the market, and gaining tremendous traction. The Salability factor becomes a later stage concern.

The world of startups believes a vital aspect of technical stability can be avoided. Startups are more burdened about testing their assumptions and validating them in the market to cater to huge tractions. At the same time, Scalability comes to be a later stage concern.

This blind belief has unfortunately led some startups to fail miserably. A home-service startup, ‘TaskBob,’ which had raised around $5.7 million in funding in 2014, had to shut down in 2017 as it could not scale up and generate profits. Thus always be optimistic of standing a chance of the MVP, as there’s always a standing chance of the MVP catching up quickly and sign-ups start rolling in.

Thus hosting your product in a fully scalable platform for plenty of new users is vital. For example, Dropbox chose not to launch an MVP product. Instead, they came up with a simple explainer video about what the product does.

This video generated 5000 to 75000 beta signups overnight. But the question lies in whether they were ready to handle these vast numbers.

The head of server engineering at Dropbox, Rajiv Eranki explained that the Dropbox team used Python for virtually everything in a RAMP Conference presentation. This means that the whole platform “could get to 40 million users writing thousands of lines of C code.” The use of Python allowed the Dropbox team to scale quickly and cater to the needs of potential customers. Thus, Dropbox made a planned move by launching its MVP with complete preparation to digest the success with an ideal dose of Scalability.

Set the right Pricing

Eventually, they analyzed the product demand and found an optimal monetization approach. Deciding the pricing quotient is usually kept at the backset during the MVP development or the launch; the general notion for this is the thought process of whether the product is not ready yet.

The argument provided is- how can you charge for a ‘minimal.’ product?

However, what is vital to understand is whether the product is still in the MVP stage and the top pain points of the customers are already addressed, and the customer development process is done, then you are ready to go ahead on the success journey.

For example- Buffer recognized this winning strategy. Initially, they analyzed the product demand with a basic MVP (a landing page) within the potential consumers. After the landing page started catering to more traffic, they added more pages carrying the pricing plans for their signup process. Eventually, the company analyzed the product demand and also found an optimal monetization approach.

Don’t Shy Away from Marketing

As we read earlier, MVP is an early-stage product development package. Nevertheless, businesses should get ahead with their marketing strategies to let the world know that their product is finally live. It is advised to get started with the product promotion as soon as the MVP launches in the market. However, marketing the MVP and marketing the final product is different.

“Mint,” a personal finance app, is a perfect example of how they utilized an ideal marketing medium right from their MVP launch to future success. The founder of the Mint app, Aaron Patzer, came with an excellent marketing strategy. He came up with “Whatever we can do, basically, for cheap or for free.” Content marketing was the way to achieve this the right path for them. They initiated a personal finance blog to build their audience for Mint.

And as a result, the app hit a milestone of 1,000,000 users in just a couple of years since the launch. By simply putting an email subscription form at the end of each article, led the startup to accrue around 20,000-30,000 emails from potential customers in only nine months while the app was still in the development phase.

A Journey from MVP Development to Product Development — Final Thoughts

While there are enough pitfalls to avoid when building your MVP, even more, will be waiting for you once you launch your MVP in the market.

However, after following all the points mentioned above, you will get to know whether or not your idea has a spark; if it is possible to move forward from MVP development to product development. Remember to be unemotional and pragmatic about the results. If you didn’t get the desired results, don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. You might be just a few tweaks away from success.

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The post 4 Steps to Help You Move from MVP Development to Full-Scale Product appeared first on Tricky Enough.

To make the most of the digital space, and ensure that your brand is always prepared to meet and exceed the needs and desires of its consumers, it’s important to know how an eCommerce migration or re-platforming can help and support your business during times of momentous digital transformation.

Upgrading an eCommerce platform can help business owners expand their marketing strategy and reach, leading to an increase in customers and business. With the right platform, a retailer can be truly global, ensuring that their reach extends almost anywhere there is consistent internet access. eCommerce re-platforming also helps retailers provide a secure and pleasant buying experience to mobile users and enhance customer engagement – becoming a critical part of the eCommerce package.

Understanding the Basics of eCommerce Replatforming

If you’re not familiar with the concept of re-platforming, Ben Staveley of Econsultancy offers a direct and straightforward explanation that easily encompasses the process and end goals of this kind of project. Essentially, re-platforming is all about moving from your current digital business operations from one eCommerce platform to another in the hope of gaining headway in an increasingly disrupted and complex digital marketplace.

…for more complex sites and web applications, managing upgrades and revamps becomes more difficult… That’s where the idea of platforming comes in. This is the process by which an eCommerce site will move from one platform to another. – Ben Staveley, Econsultancy

By reviewing multiple eCommerce platform options – often with the help of a team of web development experts a brand can bolster its digital customer features and functionality, as well as move away from the unnecessarily costly and hard to implement upgrades and renovations that come with staying tethered to dated and inefficient solutions. Generally, this plan to enact a shift toward new mobile and desktop iterations of a chosen platform serves as the first key decision in a greater commitment to a higher quality eCommerce user experience across multiple devices.

Gauging the Benefits of eCommerce Replatforming

As far as the benefits of installing a new eCommerce platform go, apart from enhancing the functionality and performance of your website for your digital consumers; it also makes certain that your brand doesn’t fall behind its industry competition. Replatforming allows you to capitalize on new opportunities to increase revenue and improves business agility. In the age where the experience takes center stage, re-platforming is the key to ensuring that it is a seamless one.

Companies that commit to re-platforming are able to manage the following factors much efficiently within their eCommerce endeavors:

• Competitive threats and expansion by industry opponents.
• Growing demands of the modern consumer.
• Digitally empowered target audiences.
• A business’ growth aspirations.
• The rise of global markets.
• The general stress placed on dated eCommerce systems.

Context Challenges and Risks: The Five Pitfalls to Consider

While the reasons to change eCommerce platforms are varied and often quite vital to the development of a Digital Commerce business, some risks shouldn’t be ignored when considering the possibility of attempting the re-platforming process. Selecting the wrong platform or failing to correctly customize the platform to fit the needs of a specific business can lead to a disaster. It’s important that business owners educate themselves about some of the specific issues they might encounter as they pursue the re-platforming eCommerce process.

While various problems can come up during an eCommerce re-platforming, some tend to be more prominent than others. Five of these are discussed in detail below, with their potential consequences.

1. Lacking Scalability

Almost every business out there wants to increase its reach and generate more leads in order to make more sales. However, a platform that performed perfectly well when the business was only interested in a niche market located in a single country might not be appropriate when the business decides to expand its audience. When the number of individuals purchasing items or services as well as the number of countries in which these customers might be located increases, many platforms quickly prove to be unable to handle the new traffic and demands.
Hence, it’s essential to assess eCommerce platforms for their scalability carefully.

If a business was to grow quickly and significantly, how would the platform in question respond? Would it be able to handle the new demands placed upon it? It’s a good idea to select a platform that will successfully scale up or down to meet the business needs. Even if business owners don’t necessarily anticipate that kind of growth, it’s better to take the issue into consideration now rather than later. Taking the time to re-platform only to discover that the new platform is unable to scale to handle different business needs properly is a common issue that can disrupt sales and turn out to be time-consuming.

2. Inadequate Control and Flexibility

It’s not uncommon for a project to begin with a clearly defined objective based upon a predetermined idea of the scope of the issue and the resource planning needed to address it. It’s even less uncommon for this neat idea of how the project should proceed to go ashtray as unforeseen issues are unearthed during the process. A re-platforming eCommerce project is certainly not an exception to this phenomenon. It should be assumed that there will be various issues that are sure to arise and demand the full attention of everyone on the team.

In order to ensure that a project plan isn’t completely derailed when the all-but-inevitable arises, take time to ensure that plans are created with flexibility. It’s important that the team is to adapts the plan as needed in order to ensure a successful delivery that depends upon the new scope of the project. Plans that are created rigidly and leave no room for change are dangerous because they run the risk of turning a re-platforming project into a derailed mess that didn’t have any room for managing risk.

3. Incompatible SEO for Platform

Businesses today are heavily focused on search engine optimization (SEO) – and understandably so. Correctly utilizing SEO can help expand a brand’s reach through search engine results. Savvy businesses that are researching a new eCommerce platform will carefully consider their SEO needs and have specific considerations when looking at the functionality of the platform in question. It’s essential to understand what specific SEO goals a business has and how they plan to meet them using their eCommerce platform so that the potential eCommerce platform can be vetted to gauge its SEO abilities.

Many eCommerce platforms will advertise themselves as being “SEO efficient” or “SEO friendly.” In reality, this often means that the platform in question can meet the basic SEO needs of a company. They usually don’t consider things like URL structure, Robots.txt files, media alt tags, or user-generated content that are important to keep in mind while developing a comprehensive and successful SEO strategy. This is why business owners must do their research before selecting a platform. Not doing so could land them with a platform that is not capable of handling their SEO needs, and instead requires a lot of additional customization that was not part of the original replatforming plan.

4. Missing Collaboration of Multiple Departments

The eCommerce re-platforming process is an incredibly complex one to begin. Many different factors decide whether or not the process is finished on time and meets all goals set. As with anything in life, communication is key in the business world. This is especially true of interdepartmental communication when major changes like an eCommerce re-platforming are underway. Many business owners are content to simply assign the project to a particular team and let them develop the plan, select the platform, and handle the conversion process. This isn’t the best idea, because it essentially ensures that only one department has an in-depth working knowledge of the new system.

Bringing in multiple departments to the eCommerce restructuring process is a great way to keep the company informed about new features and changes. No one will be completely caught off guard by the changes when using this approach. Fostering a sense of community and collaboration within a company that spans across departments is one of the best ways to ensure that the key stakeholders can bond together and accept change easily — the more people involved in the eCommerce re-platforming process, the better.

5. Inability to Predict Future Requirements

This is a particularly difficult step. It requires a business owner to be knowledgeable about the technology and potential developments and take a careful look at their own business to be able to predict future requirements. Almost everyone wants their company to see steady growth. Unfortunately, not every business will grow – and even those that do, the rate might not be quite what the entrepreneurs are hoping for. That’s not to say that the growth is random, however, because in reality there are different ways to measure and predict future growth. The business owner must take the time to objectively look at the data before committing to an eCommerce re-platforming consultant. This means that they attempt to visualize, based on data, where their business will stand in a given period.

With that said, do not make the mistake of attempting to “future-proof” your eCommerce platform. It’s possible that the technology will look very different in a few years as the needs and demands of the many dictate change, and the platform that seems like an incredible value now might seem less appropriate. Instead, make smart choices based on realistic expectations and the knowledge that eCommerce re-platforming is a fairly common occurrence for many businesses. It’s not entirely necessary to create the perfect choice right this moment, in other words. Smart business owners will make the choice that makes sense now and will continue to make sense over a specific time, after which they will reevaluate their business’ needs and the performance of the platform in question.

How to Know When the Time Is Right to Make an eCommerce Platform Switch?

If you know how to look for the signs and symptoms of a currently inadequate platform, then cutting through the uncertainty and making a smart judgment regarding replatforming becomes a significantly more manageable affair.

It’s a process that can strike fear into the heart of any web developer or eCommerce manager but actually, if approached in the right way, it can be incredibly beneficial. – Ben Staveley, Econsultancy

Some of the most apparent indicators of a platform in need or retooling or replacement include:

• The current platform requires complex and expensive updates to maintain.
• Your company finds itself longing for new or expanded features.
• Your site seems cluttered, hard to navigate, or counterintuitive to inbound consumers.

While these signs are by no means the only way to reach a conclusion on re-platforming, they serve as a powerful foundation for making an appropriate decision. Additionally, reaching out to a team of trusted web and digital product development experts can solidify your brand’s stance on re-platforming and bring to light other symptoms that point to the need for this kind of eCommerce upgrade.

Industry Best Practices to Replatform in an Effective and Efficient Manner

To promote a smooth and successful transition to a new platform, brands should adhere to a strict set of industry best practices and guidelines during the process. Failing to do so can lead to missed launch dates, unfulfilled consumer expectations, and countless other unforeseen issues that can wreak havoc on the overall business. The following list of considerations is essential as you plan the re-platforming of your current eCommerce portal:

• Commit to Research – There are several eCommerce platform options available in the market, and all of them have their own advantages. However, despite the popularity of one platform or the pricing advantage of another, the fundamental aspect to consider should be how well it fits your business needs. This calls for thorough research of the options available to weigh their pros and cons for you before picking the final solution.
• Layout Your Business Goals and Expectations – No two organizations have the same goals during a re-platforming event, so lay out a stated set of expectations before making a change. This way, you can verify that the various steps of this process fall in line with the result you desire from the new platform.
• Understand your Budgetary Limitations – Re-platforming is a scalable and dynamic event, so having a static or inflexible budget can be detrimental to growth. At the same time, it is essential to understand your budgetary limitations and divide them across the initial development, data migration, maintenance, and other such processes for a friction-less re-platforming process.
• Consider In-house and Outsourced Routes – While some companies have the resources to enact a re-platforming strategy in-house, this approach isn’t always feasible or cost-effective for all organizations. In fact, outsourcing and collaborating with a team of trusted eCommerce re-platforming consultants can help mitigate risk and expenses and bring in experience and expertise to improve the overall quality of your final eCommerce product.
• Maximize the Outsourcing Option – If you do go down the outsourcing path, don’t be afraid to ask questions and bring forth any comments or concerns you might have about the project. Replatforming is often an intricate and complex process, so leaning on the expertise of eCommerce re-platforming consultants can go a long way toward minimizing confusion and uncertainty during and after the process.
• Develop a Transitory Plan – Having a transitory plan in place promotes a smooth switch once you’re ready to shut down your old eCommerce platform and launch a new, improved digital product.
• Don’t Rush Into a Launch – Speaking of launch dates, rushing to the finish line with your new eCommerce platform can often end up being a recipe for disaster. Instead, take the time to test and retest this platform for bugs and other technical issues before committing to a launch date.
• Take a Long-term Stance – Re-platforming isn’t a one-time fix, so committing to maintaining and managing your new eCommerce platform is vital. The best businesses on the internet understand this fact and are always looking for new ways to continue innovating and enhancing their digital customer experience.

If you’re able to follow these practices and guidelines, enacting a successful re-platforming strategy can become a far more manageable and practical task.

Replatforming – Foundation of Successful Business Transformation

It’s important to understand that throughout this process, the goal of re-platforming is to transform and improve your business and its standing in the digital marketplace. In many ways, this means that re-platforming serves as the foundation for the digital transformation of your business.

The commerce platform is the foundation of business transformation. A new eCommerce engine enables new agility, capabilities, experiences, integrations, even new products. Be prepared to revamp business processes and take an ongoing, iterative approach to what is, essentially, a business transformation project. – Lily Varon, Forrester Research Blog

Making the switch to a new eCommerce platform isn’t just a static decision; it has lasting ramifications that can alter and augment your approach to doing business in the digital marketplace. Committing to a continuous and iterative approach is the only true way to embrace business transformation and build toward a successful and prosperous future for your brand.

Conclusion: Making the Right Decision for Your Brand’s Digital Future

Replatforming is a complex and vital piece of the puzzle for the online store to succeed. However, with a well-thought-out plan leading the way, this business transformation doesn’t have to come with unnecessary stress and concerns. From garnering a basic understanding of how replatforming works and why this change is often inevitable if your brand plans to up its engaging digital customer experience, to gauging the need for your brand to make a switch on this front, you can lay the foundation of the first steps of this move toward a new eCommerce platform.

Once you’re ready to make a switch, leveraging the knowledge of the industry best practices and standards, and seeking the help of a team of web development experts, you can ensure that you find and implement the right platform for your business needs. Throughout all of this, it’s also important to hold fast to the realization that re-platforming isn’t a one-time event; it’s a continually evolving process that seeks to keep you on the cutting edge of the digital world.

With this perspective on business transformation and proper eCommerce management guiding your business, there’s only one question left to ask: Is your brand ready to embrace the future of digital commerce and start down the path toward a lasting and fruitful replatforming solution?

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