Choosing the Right B2B/B2C eCommerce Platform

Part 2 Finding the Right Platform

Once you have identified your important business goals and know your customers well, both current and future, your website goals will jump out at you. In turn, your website goals will drive your platform choice.

For example, if attracting more customers very important then the platform will need a flexible Content Management System to allow for design and marketing content. 

Likewise if the focus is on providing your existing customers with an powerful online ordering and self-service portal, you will need an eCommerce platform provides the B2B functionality and features out-of-the-box.

If you haven’t already read part 1 ‘Business Goals and Strategy’ Click Here.

Common Mistakes Made When Choosing an eCommerce Website Platform

1. Treating the Website Choice as a Marketing Function only

An integrated eCommerce website impacts many areas of your business. You should consider how your new site can make these areas more efficient while always taking into account your customers’ needs:

• Finance
• Purchasing
• Logistics
• Fulfilment (both products and services)
• Inventory Management
• Customer Service
• Sales
• Marketing

There are many marketing aspects that have to be well served by your new eCommerce platform but all parts of your business should be considered and their requirements gathered and fed into the decision-making process.

Recommendations

We recommend that you canvas a wide range of team members to get their input on your new eCommerce platform. You should aim to avoid a committee decision but at the same time, ensure that the decision maker does take account of all requirements.

As well, you need to ensure that aspects of minor impact do not outweigh aspects that have a greater effect on the success of the project.

To help with this process look for a comprehensive list of platform features which you can use to evaluate against your needs.

Click Here to view the 360 Feature List

2. Beauty Contest Judging

Choosing a website platform is not a beauty contest. It is surprising how many companies and people choose an eCommerce website supplier based on having seen some “beautiful” eCommerce sites.

It is important to remember the more highly designed and pixel perfect the website the more costly it will be and the harder it will be to maintain and automate complex features.

Recommendations

Good design is very important but it is only the tip of the iceberg, especially for B2B websites. B2B website design and User Experience should be more focused around ensuring the customer can access all the information they need as well as ensuring the ordering process and checkout are quick and easy especially with bulk ordering.

Also remember website design has to be right for the user experience and for the brand and the market positioning. This is why different websites have very different designs.

3. Believing the Hype

Over the last 25 years we have seen a myriad of new online technologies pop up and attract a cult following. They promise a nirvana that never eventuates then move on to the next big promise leaving a trail of abandoned websites and their disappointed owners behind them.

Some website companies and developers get very excited about their chosen technologies and are then very evangelical about them.

Because most people do not have the knowledge to make informed decisions about eCommerce platforms, they tend to get confused when confronted with different platforms and then fall prey to the hype by latching on to the developers’ passion for some specific or new technology.

Recommendations

Concentrate on actual platform functionality. It is important that the underlying technology is mainstream but technology alone does not mean that the platform will be right for your website. Ask for demonstrations of your required functionality in action.

4. Buying an eCommerce Website Platform on Price

If you select a platform on price alone, you may feel good on the day you pay for the initial implementation then suffer every month after that through lost sales opportunities, increased back-office costs or high additional custom development costs due to lack of functionality and flexibility.

For example lack of integration features with your Financial ERP system means much more manual staff intervention and therefore time and cost. You will also end-up replacing your website more frequently than you should have to.

Recommendations

• Make the distinction between cost and price such as staff time etc. Cost is much more than what you initially pay out in dollars
• Be realistic about costs and functionality, don’t try to buy Champagne on a beer budget
• Be cautious of snake oil salespeople who talk of an ocean of functionality at low cost but without detail

For example:

Shopify is a supposed lower cost platform. However there are a plethora of hidden costs such as the many plugins it requires and the 2.7 % fee of sales. This can push the monthly fee up to $10,000 plus on sales of 300k per month.

Likewise the larger enterprise platforms such as Big Commerce Enterprise, begin at about $400 USD per month and can range up to $15,000 USD per month with full integration and additional modules.

The above is just for the monthly fees, the actual website build or setup depending on the chosen platform is separate and can vary anywhere from $30,000 to $100,000 plus.

Look out for our upcoming Part 3 Blog ‘Categories of eCommerce Platforms’ which covers the pros and cons of platforms such as SaaS and Custom build.

5. Poor Pre-Purchase Communications

It is very risky to not communicate your detailed requirements which covers the key areas of your business to potential eCommerce platform vendors. 

For example a simple detail often missed is whether the website needs to display prices both GST inclusive and exclusive for B2B and B2C customers groups? This is something many major platforms can’t deliver and can cause major problems.

Recommendations

The Right Team

It is important that you have the right person to lead the project team with the appropriate skillset and knowledge. This must cover a good understanding of all the key areas of the business which the website will touch such as finance, operations, marketing and sales. This will ensure a balanced approach and ability to focus on the important criteria based on the overall business and website goals.

For example if the project is led by marketing then the RFI may be focused on the marketing requirements but be lacking in detail on other key areas.

‘Request for Information’ (RFI)

The RFI should include top-level things such as:

• Who are your customers and what are their needs?
  E.g., “My customers are resellers who want fast order entry for a large number of products with minimum clicks.”

• Do you require both Business to Business (B2B) and Business to Consumer (B2C) functionality?
• How many products and what types of products?
• How many variants can a product have?
• How complex is the product variant structure?
• Is there a requirement to be able to group / bundle products?
• How many categories and subcategories will you have?
• Pricing – simple, multiple price lists, contract pricing, quantity breaks?
• Do you want to hide pricing until a user is logged in?
• Do you want to display stock availability to all customers?
• Do you need an ERP integration?
• Are you selling services associated in conjunction with products?
• Do you want the site to capture sales leads?
• Do you have any complex needs such as?
  - Order-On-behalf
  - Restricting visibility of some products or categories to certain groups
• What content do you need?
  - Editorial – Blog, News, Press
  - Campaign – Projects, Case Studies, Landing pages
  - Brand – About, Philosophy, History
  - Lead generation – calls to action, newsletter sign ups, lead magnets

6. Vendor Evaluation

Recommendations

Be methodical in your evaluations. It is important that you establish a basic vendor evaluation criteria. This should ideally include the following:

• Confirm each key business and website goal the vendor meets such as must have features or functionality, nice to have, could have or future requirements
• Evaluate the level of detail supplied by the Vendor i.e. beware of vendors who talk of an ocean of top-level functionality but provide little detail
• Check out claimed functionality – it is vital that you get proof that the vendors solution will do what is required to satisfy your needs. “Think feature lists rather than wish lists” when evaluating a vendor. Ask for demonstrations of your required functionality in action
• The quality of the vendors response, especially questions demonstrating an understanding of your business processes
• The stability of the Vendor i.e. current clients, business model, staff turnover etc
• Beware of word-of-mouth recommendations as most eCommerce platform users don’t know what good looks like and don’t know what they don’t know

7. Repeating Past Mistakes

Many companies make the same mistakes over and again, seemingly thinking that the next time they choose a new website vendor or platform it will be different. 

We have seen a number of company’s go through this process and change website vendors & platforms 4 times in a 8/10 year period. Ideally the right company and platform should last at least 10/12 years if not longer.

The cost to your company both in staff time, opportunity and actual price every time you do this is huge.

Recommendations

Common mistakes to avoided:

• Not starting with clear realistic business and detailed website needs/goals
• Assuming that you know your customers’ needs without thinking about it or researching their needs
• Treating the website mainly as a marketing function
• Focusing on price as the prime criteria
• Poor pre-purchase communications 
• Not having the right key people with the skillsets, knowledge and time to select and evaluate company’s and platforms 
• Champagne tastes on a beer budget
• Recommendations from colleagues or friends only
• New staff wanting to make a big splash, replacing an existing website before they understand all aspects of the business

Click here to read part 3 "Categories of eCommerce Platform"

Where Does 360 Commerce Fit In?

360 Commerce is a powerful, integrated, scalable B2B/B2C eCommerce platform. It was built specifically for B2B environments and has all the features to meet the complex needs of B2B businesses and customers while also providing a great B2C retail solution on the same platform.

The unique 360 Commerce platform architecture is constructed of configurable components that provide over 200 features, all of which can be configured to your business needs.

Save Time and Reduce Risk - Get A Copy of the 360 Commerce Feature List

To save you time we have created this checklist of existing 360 Commerce website functionality. Having this list in your hands will mean that you won’t forget anything and will also give you the ability to assess different platforms for functionality.

Download Free Feature Checklist Now

 

 

360 Commerce’s Philosophy We believe that you should be able see all the features you are going to get before you sign the contract. We believe that having to replace your website every few years is wasteful. We believe that your site should evolve as technology evolves without incurring surprise costs. We believe that enormous power, flexibility and agility should be yours to control with just a few clicks. We believe that eCommerce is not just about taking orders. We believe that you should have certainty about your ongoing costs.