Why Ecommerce Replatform Is Important For The Modern Day Ecommerce Business

E-commerce Migration and Replatforming: The Ultimate Guide

If you are looking forward to scale-up your online retail store and want to see remarkable growth in your site traffic and increase in product sales, you will require a backend platform for your e-commerce store so that your business can achieve the desired outcomes. In this blog article, we will be discussing e-commerce migration and how e-commerce re-platforming works. To make it easier, eCommerce migrate examples will be given from the resources of e-commerce global. Going from one backend to another the method of re-platforming is not at all straightforward for always. It has lots of downsides if some mistake happens.

There are also numerous different other options available to choose from today so overhauling tasks of your e-commerce platform for gaining more control becomes difficult. Replatforming somehow can very be necessary for reaching the potential of your organizational growth as per your targets. This is why it is important to do the process very attentively, step by step, and choose the right migration partners and platforms. By keeping all the things right, you will be able to make the whole process quite smooth and skip the headaches.  

What Is E-Commerce Migration And Replatforming  

Online retailers usually migrate from one e-commerce platform to another platform for having improved functionalities within their business. It not only improves the functionalities, but also the customer experiences, performance,e and engagement in their eCommerce site. Replatforming means moving into a third-party platform or maybe building an in-house solution for the eCommerce site. At its basic level, data migration is done from one online store to another. The eCommerce platform migration is also known as ecommerce replatforming.

In simpler words, when you take your business through the procedure of migrating from one eCommerce platform to another eCommerce platform which includes the transferring of your website data, content management systems, and integration with another service provider which is third-party. For e-commerce migration, you need to determine the best platforms for your business, issue RFP to those platforms, forecasting revenue, and total ownership costs, investigate functionalities, determine integration redirects and initiation, meet with all the potential stakeholders, and put the platforms to test.

When you re-platform an e-commerce website, you will move your current content management system to a new content management system. It is not very necessary that you have to re-design, rather it is more about positioning your eCommerce website, and software application, and improving the entire digital presence for succeeding in the next internet generation which is web3.

Ecommerce Migration Examples

Tectran: Switching to BigCommerce, from Tectran resulted in an almost 98% increase in orders with the help of extraordinary B2B features.

The Upside: Switching from Magento to BigCommerce increases the conversion rate of The Upside by almost 103% and revenue by 161%.

Kintec: Switching from Magento to BigCommerce resulted in Kintec’s increased average order value by almost 8%, raised orders by 111%, and decreased cost per click by 111%.

The modern-day eCommerce platforms are integrating IT, business development, and marketing all in one.

Whenever you launch your first brand, the eCommerce platforms seem to be cumbersome, highly expensive and need many hours of extra tasks that you end up taking with internal resources or through outsourced resources. There are e-commerce platforms that take all the technical tasks off your hands that give your team the extra time and financial advantages for capitalizing on the market with strategic and very engaging campaigns.

Why E-commerce Migration And Replatforming Is Required

Of course, your first e-commerce website provides every basic feature necessary for the needed performance, but as the e-commerce business expands with time, the platform lacks to keep up pace with fulfilling the needs of a larger customer base. It tends to seem poorly designed, incapable of achieving growth, and slow and bugs and issues start occurring. Also, you will witness a hike in your costs and you start to pay for those features which are worthless. This increased expenditure in fact will create bigger problems very soon, as it will be difficult to upkeep the maintenance and team management.

It is quite a big task whenever it comes to re-platforming as it demands time, and effort and involves risks too. Alongside this, it affects your entire e-commerce business, which includes admin navigation, functionalities, design, performance, etc. This is the main reason why the migration and the re-platforming process requires to be accomplished at the right time and for the right kind of reasons.

Security Issues In the Current Platform

Many online sellers have decided to re-platform due to security breaches, vulnerabilities, and malicious attacks of some form. This decision has often led them to move to a hosted platform like SaaS to a very high extent. The reason behind this choice is that it decreases the risks of security issues with self-the hosted or legacy systems which need a lot of support. Otherwise, things go sideways and result in leaking the confidential details of the eCommerce platform which is very dangerous regarding the amount of access the hackers may have. That is why you must give importance to cyber security as there is an uncountable number of security threats that we have to be aware of. That is why if you want to shift your platform, it should be your first and foremost priority and also make your team understand its necessity.

Performance And Customer Experience

In today’s world, customers, who do online shopping, obviously expect a well-connected, effortless, and very sophisticated online shopping experience. In the same way, online businesses are anticipated to offer their potential customers creative and innovative experiences, with out-of-the-box box and unique features supported by the most advanced technologies, and very smooth multichannel integrations. This is where the need for re-platforming comes into play, where it ensures assistance to provide an improved experience to your customers and enhances the calibre for becoming more attractive from the other players in the market.

Scalability And Stability

The main reason why online retailers decide to re-platform is that they need increased profits, sustainability, and stability. This is one of the most common reasons why there is a high need for platforming at some times. It can solve many other issues like problems in customization, releases, technical things, integrations, maintainability, stability, etc., and affects major deployments positively by solving all such issues. The platform is like a temple for e-commerce retailers and it is the thing that makes business for them. With issues in it, their whole business management is shaken in a very bad way. This is why you also must look for continuous improvement, no matter what it takes to bring sustainability to your business.

Admin Functioning

A poor admin plan leads to improper navigation which decreases the performance of team management and business conducting. It results in increased disputes and less productivity. But if you switch to an effective admin panel, it ensures that your team coordination and management are done properly that ultimately results in enhanced performance in productivity.

Maintenance Costs

Due to increased maintenance costs, you are in big trouble. If you want your website to be pocket-friendly and effective but your current platform needs regular time-consuming and costly maintenance, then it is high time that you change to another platform that enhances the performance and chooses the best third-party solution which is better capable of the whole burden of the maintenance of your online store.

Analytics

You cannot get meaningful insights for conducting crucial improvements if your analytics are improper. That is why you must be sure about the fact that you are accumulating, measuring, and exhibiting the necessary data which is very crucial for taking the best decision by you and your teams who work based on such data.

Repetitive Works

After re-platforming with the very effective and advanced interface and increased number of functionalities, you don’t have the headache of repetitive tasks, or duplicate tasks, which happens by mistake while performing those tasks manually daily.

Responsiveness

From various reports, almost 40% of online shoppers leave visiting your website if it takes more than 3 seconds to load. Therefore, the website should be very light and simple so that it is fast, responsive, and quick to load. The website hosting service must be of very high quality for that matter. To ensure your website runs flawlessly and efficiently, you must consider restricting your plugins by removing all the unnecessary ones and only keeping the necessary ones.

When E-commerce Migration And Replatforming Is Required

By now you must have understood the importance of eCommerce migration and re-platforming. However, if your ongoing e-commerce platform has no problem or it’s keeping up with the current pace in the market, and costs are effective too, then it's not necessary to shift from one platform to another platform. But here are the signs given below, observing that you need to shift your platform as soon as you can.

Increased Expenses

Whenever it comes to maintaining a website, numerous field factors lead to increments in costs. For instance, maintenance costs go a very long way, renewal fees of licensing, the cost of digital marketing, and the list go on. When these things start to appear in your eCommerce platform, it is crucial that you migrate and re-platform your eCommerce store as soon as possible.

Outdated Technology

Technology is one of the most important factors when you are doing your business digitally. The ongoing technology will get outdated after some time and will face difficulty in keeping an edge with the requirements of the market, that is why you need to update your technologies from time to time and if your technology resources do not support that change you need to change your technological resources. The case is similar when it comes to eCommerce migration and re-platforming. One of the most technical issues to resolve is the loading time of the website for which people leave without visiting the website. The lack of decoupled CMS or headless CMS results in zero presence on the touchpoints. The old systems are easier for hackers to cyber-attacks. These technological issues increase the need for data migration to some other new store. The issues faced by online sellers in their old platforms are:

• Log-in performance under peak traffic.

• The database cannot handle huge amounts of product SKUs

• Ecommerce is only capable of holding just a limited number of attributes.

• High level of difficulty in adding custom features for restrictive features and increased costs.  

Marketing Issues

The marketing activities also need improvement from time to time and it is better if the marketing tools are integrated within the platform. But when the performance starts to fade away, it is high time to update the technology. Therefore, the need for migration and platforming is also important for the sake of marketing activities. When the marketing team fails to perform any sort of task that is important for the performance of website traffic and generation of sales, or some other tasks like updating website content, integration of social media tools, and many more, this arouses the requirement for migration and re-platforming. After migrating to a better eCommerce platform, the benefits are:

• Execution of GTM

• Improved site search

• Customization of content after understanding customer choices and preferences.

• Mobile Commerce Optimization for better funnelling and mobile-first web design.

• Improved shareability and social media integration.

• Better tag management.

Final Verdict

So, by now you must have understood the significance of e-commerce migration and re-platforming. Ecommerce replatforming is a good choice if you choose the right kind of service provider and that too must have to be better than your current one. You need to look at whether the new platform supports all the criteria that you need for improving the performance of your retail store in the current situation. You need to look towards other eCommerce migrate examples and trends in eCommerce global to understand your needs properly.