There are many different factors to consider that vary from customer to customer. They are also not constants but can be changed. Some of the things that need to be considered are:
- Functionality – It is particularly important to think about what special functions your business requires that may not be included as standard with all platforms. How much can be customized, is it enough for your e-commerce?
- Scalability – Always plan for the e-commerce investment to be able to grow, it becomes costly to quickly outgrow an e-commerce solution. It is important to be able to handle both a larger amount of orders and increased traffic.
- Integrations – It is important to choose an e-commerce platform that offers the integrations you need and may need. Thinking Composable commerce is increasingly popular to use exactly the components needed to create the optimal solution where it is easy to replace individual building blocks. It can be about business systems, WMS (Warehouse Management System), OMS (Order Management System), CRM, PIM, payment gateway (PSP), search and personalization.
- Business model – Does the platform have good support for your particular business model that you have now or that may be relevant in the near future? Examples of such could be circular trade, where support for second hand and vintage may be relevant as recommerce becomes increasingly popular among consumers who want to buy used.
- Internationalization – Do you already sell to multiple markets, languages and currencies or have plans to do so? Then the platform's support for internationalization is important to compare.
- Operation – More and more operations are done in the cloud and on-prem is becoming increasingly rare. Choose a platform that supports your strategy around cloud/on prem.
- Cost – Since all platforms do not offer the same standard functionality or pricing based on sales or volume, it is important to make a comparison in cost for different scenarios. Different add-ons also differ as well as maintenance costs. There is also a difference between open source and various SaaS platforms.
- Version updates – One thing to compare is whether the platform updates according to the Evergreen concept or whether major updates to new versions must be made. Evergreen refers to managing to release new versions where functions and adjustments are made without creating breaking changes. However, you may still need to build your solution on top of the platform in order to take advantage of certain new functions.
- Demo – To get a feel for what it's like to work in the platform, it's good to get a feeling of it in a demo version where you can try it out.
The e-commerce platforms we currently work with are Litium, Norce, Omnium, nopCommerce, Bizzkit and Optimizely. But we have always worked platform-independently and constantly evaluate new interesting options. You will receive a proposal from us to decide on, but the choice is always yours.
Price from SEK 49,000.
We also have experience in helping in projects as expert consultants in solution architecture or interim e-commerce manager so that you can get the help you need to move forward with your investment.