What Should You Pay Attention to When Selecting an eCommerce Platform?

The first e-commerce initiatives were launched in the early 1990s. These included the first online bookstore and shortly after that, Amazon launched, which is now a fully-fledged online store.

Since then, both technology and customer expectations have evolved significantly. Digital commerce - for a long time, the most important arena for retail - is now crucial to any business-to-business success. Today, every industry invests in digital commerce. This increase in demand has led to an increase in technological capabilities and providers of digital commerce solutions. And that leads to the challenge of selecting the right solution for your business.

Today, digital commerce is crucial to any business-to-business success. In all sectors, companies are investing in digital commerce to improve customer engagement, self-service capabilities and loyalty. The question now is how to choose the right solution for your business and avoid the five most common pitfalls in this process?

And finally, some loyalty programs in the Netherlands wanted to expand their reach to more partner companies and deliver more products to customers. To do this, they needed a more flexible way to integrate different systems and to be able to add functionality, now and in the future. They needed an e-commerce platform that could handle API integration, multi-store, multi-catalog and complex pricing. The teams selected the new platform because it met those demands and also has a modular architecture that allows future replacementsor addition of any one component (module) without affecting the rest of the system. Additionally, with the new platform, they can go headless, which allows them to decouple the frontend from the backend. This unchained logic allows for more architectural flexibility, so it was easier to design the solution desired. The new site quickly connects with various APIs, allowing customers to see points balances and redeem points faster. The flexibility of the new platform, enabled them to build the site with the strategy in mind to achieve their commerce vision, to develop continuously and expand the platform. Access to new functionalities ensures they can serve customers well now and even better in the future.

These examples show that it is crucial to go through a detailed and robust selection process. This starts with defining a clear go-to-market strategy, which includes a concrete plan for a company's digital commerce. When it comes to selecting the right partner for an e-commerce project, it is important to assess the internal team and determine what capabilities a company already has. It is just as important to select a flexible platform that is able to meet changing customer requirements and business needs. It must support a wide range of business implications.

Selecting the right e-commerce platform can indeed be daunting. Virto Commerce has tried to make it easier by demonstrating those five pitfalls and how to avoid them. To help companies develop an effective selection process, we have described these most common pitfalls and how to avoid them in a white paper. This white paper can be downloaded from the Virto Commerce website.

If you want to hear how other companies have been successful in their efforts to boost their digital strategy, read more in Virto Commerce's customer stories.