How Do You Select the Best Commerce Platform?
The best way to select a commerce platform is by identifying your business goals and evaluating each vendor’s offering to see how they match up. At the bare minimum, your vendor should have a clean user interface, be positioned to scale with your business, have a modern frontend, play nice with third party solutions, and have straightforward pricing.
Since a commerce platform is a long-term investment, failure to choose the best provider could set you back hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost sales and technical debt. With that in mind, let’s explore the features your next commerce platform should have in more detail.
Core Commerce Platform Features
Great user interface
A commerce platform should be easy for teammates with varying levels of technical abilities to use. Uploading products, updating customer profiles, and tweaking prices should be easy. To support non-technical teammates, it helps if your preferred commerce platform has a headless CMS. This will make it easy for marketers to add/change content and for developers to manage design.
According to e-commerce expert Neil Trickett: “We are way past the time when it was ok for internal users to have a laggy, painful UX. It has to be lightning fast, super functional, and frankly enjoyable to interact with.”
Scalability
Your business is growing. Therefore, you need a commerce platform that will grow with you. When starting, you only need limited resources, but once your business starts to scale, you need a platform that can support your growing traffic and provide functionalities at scale. Look for a platform with fast and trusted APIs that will help you customize and automate your store based on your needs.
Modern frontend
A modern frontend means headless commerce. It means faster implementation and better customizations for the shopping experience. The frontend moves quickly, and you need a platform that can keep up. A modern frontend means great design, and it will give you an edge over your competitors.
Integrations and add-ons
A good commerce solution provides many integration options. Integrations and add-ons will help you connect your platform with other software apps and third party solutions. With the availability of integrations, you can build a commerce platform that’s truly yours. For instance, with Fabric, you can use pre-integrated, best of the breed partners or bring your own custom application.
Pricing
Different commerce vendors price their services differently. Common commerce pricing models include flat rates, monthly subscriptions, a charge per transaction, and extra costs for app subscriptions. Pricing should be straightforward and justifiable for your business needs. Look for a well- priced platform that fits your budget, but don’t sacrifice what you need for cheaper rates.
Tech advocate and writer @ fabric.
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