Companies don’t love to migrate their ecommerce website and, when faced with the need, most of them understandably try to wait until it’s absolutely necessary before absorbing what is sometimes seen as an unnecessary expense.
As we’ve talked about before, fighting against resistance to change might be the most feared part about pushing for a replatforming process. However, decision makers are also weary of determining exactly when it’s advisable to support this push. Some of this weariness might come from lack of information or lack of clarity about what exists in the market beyond their current provider.
In this piece we’ll explore some of the most evident reasons to pull the trigger on a migration, from the practical, to the technical, to the economical.
You have outgrown your website
Ecommerce operations are always set up with the intention of having important growth in the next few years, but not all providers are ready to back up that growth. If a product line is rapidly growing its categories or its number of SKUs and the ecommerce platform is not ready to adapt in a way that drives sales up even more, it might be time to look elsewhere.
“People tend to hold onto stuff that they already have, but when they look at what other retailers are getting from their platform and the real costs of migrating without many customizations, their position tends to change.”
Michael von Bodungen, Chief Customer Officer at VTEX
With more experience in the online retail industry, a website might find that its needs adapt with time. A better promotion engine or a more robust catalog module are both examples of features and functionalities that should be considered when grading your current website, since they have such an impact on the consumers’ journey.
Cross-border capabilities should also be considered if the online store’s growth plan includes different territories. All these elements are areas that might not have impacted the online business just yet, but that could easily hinder the expansion plans in the short and long term.
“You have to have the business savvy to present the next big thing. For instance, letting clients know that they can integrate their blog and that everybody loves content-to-commerce. Another big element is payments: you used to be fine with just credit cards, and now you need PayPal and Apple Pay, as well.”
Gwen Bennett, US Customer Success Leader at VTEX
Technical challenges
One of the most inescapable reasons to migrate an ecommerce website is security concerns. Not having security robust enough to protect customers’ data can translate into unnecessary maintenance costs for the IT team, and an eventual leak could be a huge blow to the buyer’s trust in a website.
Challenges in the admin panel could spell the same troubles: if the team can’t easily locate order numbers, payments and shipping details, it will surely impact the customers’ buying journey inside said ecommerce store.
“Customizing the website less has the added value of keeping the cost of ownership down by allowing you to access more features down the road. For example, in VTEX, if you want to add a new payment method, it’s not a developer process, it’s a configuration process that can be turned on very quickly, without a project that requires developers or testing.”
Michael von Bodungen, Chief Customer Officer at VTEX
Technical challenges can also include issues like a platform making it too hard to implement third-party apps, or to implement new features and updates in general, as well as lack of mobile-ready interfaces.
Total Cost of Ownership is increasing
Ultimately, all the problems we’ve enlisted so far can be solved by technical teams, both inside the ecommerce website and inside the platform provider. The issue is that the cost related to these improvements can be very high, which makes the prospect of a site migration process more attractive.
Migrating to an all-in-one solution can make this transition even more attractive by reducing maintenance costs and also driving down the cost of adding new elements to improve the user experience.
It’s time to replatform
The needs of every website are different, but the more a client understands their specific pain points and the more information they have about the market, the easier it will be for them to make the right choice when it comes to an ecommerce provider, whether it be their current one or something better still unknown.
If you’re still curious about the topic, read what leaders told VTEX about the need to migrate ecommerce websites.
