Ecommerce platform selection and integration: a guide
The content for this briefing has been reproduced from Econsultancy’s Ecommerce Best Practice Guide.
The briefing will cover:
- Platform definitions
- Platform selection
- Platform integration
- Product information management (PIM) systems
- Digital asset management (DAM) systems
Introduction
The starting point for understanding best practice in platforms is understanding the wider ecosystem in which the ecommerce platform operates. Mapping business processes, technical requirements, market opportunity and operational realities to create an end-to-end ecommerce capability helps the marketer develop an understanding of the flows of data, content and payments.
Most standard ecommerce business processes are supported by the following:
- The core ecommerce platform
- Back office/ERP and accounting systems
- Delivery partners
- Product information management (PIM) systems for stock management
- Digital asset management (DAM) systems for content
- Payment options including credit/debit card acceptance and fraud mechanisms
- An understanding of how to manage an ecommerce projects at inception and as part of business-as-usual
- Partners to build platforms and integrate process flows.
Figure 1 illustrates the process flows that map to each part of the ecosystem.
Figure 1: The ecommerce ecosystem
Source: Colin Lewis
Each of these can be seen as a component part, with its own individual best practice.
Platform definitions
There is often confusion with naming conventions and labels in ecommerce, and none more so than with the technology behind ecommerce platforms. Even the word ‘platform’ can have different meanings, just like the term ‘CMS’ can have different meanings.
Over the last few years, best practice has come to the fore and has created more clarity in terms of technology choice.
What is an ecommerce platform?
- A technology application that allows brands to sell products, manage stock, catalogue products, customer orders and process payments direct from a website. Often called a ‘shopping cart’, ecommerce platforms must display multiple products, enable product search, product descriptions, images, video and reviews. Examples include Magento and Shopify.
What is a content management system (CMS)?
- A CMS is used to create and manage the digital content on a website. It uses HTML, CSS, JavaScript and images to create and manage the resources, content types and data that make up modern websites. Examples include WordPress and Drupal.
To add to the confusion, ecommerce platforms have plugins that may also function as CMSs, and some CMSs offer deliver plugins that do the work of ecommerce. An example of the latter is WooCommerce.
However, a simple distinction will be made for clarity: when referring to a CMS, this report is referring to CMS platforms that offer content, blogging and marketing capabilities without the need to code.
Think in terms of a frontend (CMS) and a backend (ecommerce platform) although, as noted, the lines are a lot more blurred than that simplistic analogy suggests.
Many companies are using in-house systems that have been created over the years. However, building an ecommerce platform is not for the faint-hearted. An in-house platform could in theory offer better customisation geared specifically to business needs, as well as having a readily accessible team to maintain and upgrade an ecommerce platform.
To build an ecommerce platform in-house from scratch requires considerable technical resource and expertise, as well as lots of planning, research and analysis.
Platform selection
A small set of platform vendors dominate the ecommerce platform market, and they are further divided into hosted and non-hosted platforms. The best practice for ecommerce platform selection is to consider existing platforms on the market – hosted and non-hosted – despite the fact that these systems can force organisations to follow particular standardised workflows or frameworks.
Most major .com websites use platforms on the market as the core building blocks of their ecommerce strategy.
Choosing between the features and functions of an ecommerce platform is challenging. Ecommerce consulting group Wunderman Thompson Commerce makes the case that features and functions are not always the best ways to make the choice, and recommends that businesses instead consider the following seven items:
1. Ease of integration with other technology systems, for instance, back office systems.
2. Performance that aligns with expected size and scale of the business – a high performance platform is not for every business, simply because volumes will be small.
3. Scalability – how simple is it to scale up to respond to need?
4. Flexibility in terms of building adding new services. For instance, if you wanted to add a chatbot in the future, could it be integrated?
5. Cost and payment structure – what are the fees structures, and can a high upfront fee be avoided?
6. Strategy alignment – does the platform provide the capability to grow with the business?
7. The real cost of the ecommerce project, taking into account the fact that the cost of the platform and its implementation is just one aspect. Software infrastructure costs, monthly fees, fixes and new features as well as personnel (day-to-day management, customer service, IT costs, analytics) can actually represent the majority of the cost when a project is fully costed.
There is plenty to consider when it comes to identifying the right ecommerce platform. The first criteria is ‘hosted’ vs. ‘self-hosted’.
Hosted services are software applications or IT functions that organisations access from external providers over the internet, as opposed to on-site or self-hosting, where the organisation itself manages all the software and its associated infrastructure, security and updates. Cloud-based services also fall within the hosted services category.
Cloud-based ecommerce platforms ecommerce platforms offer convenience; self-hosted applications offer control and capability.
Cloud-based or self-hosted?
Hosted or cloud-based ecommerce platforms have developed extensively in the last few years, with a huge spike in adoption, and not just among smaller ecommerce brands. Cloud platforms like Shopify, Salesforce Commerce Cloud (formerly called Demandware) and BigCommerce are growing their market share (and their share price) rapidly.
Cloud-based ecommerce platforms provide a package including all the functionality required for ecommerce to allow customers to access the software and for the organisations to store their ecommerce data. Cloud-based ecommerce platforms remove the requirement for on-site hosting expertise, and the platforms guarantee uptime above 99%.
Cloud services are far easier to manage than self-hosted services, allowing the business to focus more on the nuts and bolts of ecommerce, such as product selection or marketing.
However, customisation to a particular industry or product is more of a challenge on cloud-based ecommerce platforms. However, cloud-based ecommerce platform such as Shopify have app stores which have hundreds of applications that can help resolve the customisation issue.
Cloud-based ecommerce platforms: Shopify and BigCommerce
The two biggest cloud-based ecommerce platforms are Shopify and BigCommerce. They offer a lot of similar functionalities, such as low cost of ownership, low transaction fees and a standard payments system. Hosted platforms provide the more standard features and functionality.
Shopify and BigCommerce are now starting to offer more enterprise functionality, offering capabilities that suit much larger businesses. Salesforce is now aggressively entering this market through its acquisition of Demandware.
Self-hosted: Magento
The largest self-hosted platform is Magento. IBM WebSphere and SAP Commerce Cloud (formerly SAP Hybris) are competitors to Magento. Choosing these self-hosted ecommerce platforms gives maximum customisation and functionality as well as a degree of control that cloud-based ecommerce platforms simply cannot match.
The common thread with each of these systems is that they are enterprise: implementation requires highly trained people with previous experience to achieve success. They are mostly suitable for medium-sized and large companies, as a lot of resources can be needed to manage a project, and a lot of effort to is required for planning and design.
Compared with cloud-based ecommerce platforms, all self-hosted solutions have more features, more customisations and more functionality, as the software can be customised and extended for particular business requirements.
Ecommerce platform selection best practice
Why might businesses choose a cloud-based ecommerce platform like Shopify or BigCommerce over a self-hosted platform like Magento? There are multiple factors to be taken into account when considering hosted vs. non-hosted choices. The reasons favouring hosted platforms, which are considered in an Econsultancy blog post, are given in Table 1.
Table 1: Why would you choose hosted ecommerce over Magento?
Headless commerce
What does ‘headless commerce’ mean? Most available ecommerce platforms have a standard or ‘template’ based interface that the user sees, called the ‘frontend’. This predefined frontend is only designed to display the content and functionality provided by the ecommerce backend. In other words, an ecommerce backend ‘delivers’ functionality to the frontend, which is what the user sees.
Headless commerce is the decoupling of the frontend interface from the backend ecommerce platform that manages all the ecommerce functionality. Ecommerce platform vendors are separating the core ecommerce functionality from the user interface to enable ecommerce capability to be delivered across new channels and environments.
Why is ‘headless commerce’ getting traction?
- The role of content is more and more important as ecommerce brands wish to personalise the customer experience. ‘Headless commerce’ enables the brand to deliver all the functionality required as well as a customised design, content and capability for that brand.
- Users now want to find and buy products on an increasing number of devices such as wearables, Alexa skills or progressive web apps – not just direct ecommerce channels such as .com. Standard or ‘template’ based user interfaces do not work in that context such as Alexa, so ‘headless commerce’ capability enable ecommerce brands to appear in new channels.
- Enterprise customers, who have significant effort invested into an existing frontend content management system (CMS) are reluctant to migrate to a new ecommerce platform as this requires a huge effort to recreate their content, and the loss of Google ranking for search terms.
There are good reasons to believe that the popularity of headless commerce capability will increase:
- An existing frontend CMS can add backend ecommerce functionality with minimum effort, and new frontend designs and user experience can be created from scratch, unconstrained by the ‘standard’ frontend features provided by an ecommerce platform.
- Customisations can be made to the frontend without disrupting the ecommerce business functions.
- Customers with existing website content can add ecommerce functionality from proven ecommerce platforms with minimum risk and effort.
Ecommerce platform integration
Running an ecommerce site has a direct effect on offline business processes that can be difficult to predict and hard to control. In a business which has existing retail outlets or other forms of distribution, ordering, inventory, shipping and invoicing business processes are usually connected.
However, an ecommerce site is a separate channel that needs to be kept in synchronisation with current systems.
Running an ecommerce platform without integration into other business processes means duplication of effort; rekeying the orders, customers, stock adjustments in the current back office system for every single order. Frequent manual synchronisation always results in data entry errors and customer confusion.
Every aspect of stock level, order requirements, logistics, delivery and customer service must be thought through, otherwise the ecommerce initiative will fail.
Connecting the back office: finance and delivery systems are important
Ecommerce integration connects the ecommerce site with enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems to manage accounting, inventory, logistics and delivery. Thinking through the integration of the ecommerce site between front and back office is important because it can:
- Synchronise ordering, confirmation, fulfilment, stock availability and invoicing.
- Reduce duplication of effort and manual rekeying.
- Set the ecommerce site up to scale with growth in mind.
- Improve the chances of customer’s buying due to live shipping costs being displayed.
- Enable live shipping and tracking management to improve the customer proposition.
- Enable the ecommerce site owner to have their finger on the pulse on key success metrics including margin, profits, sales report by date, SKUs (stock keeping units), time period, inventory, tracking and delivery reports – not just top line reporting such as revenues, basket size or conversions.
Best practice: cloud-based ecommerce platforms
With cloud-based ecommerce platforms, integration options are to either use an available platform app to integrate with the back-office system or use the platform APIs, if a suitable app does not exist. Shopify and BigCommerce app marketplaces offer connectivity to popular back office systems.
For start-ups and small companies, it is possible to have an integrated ecommerce and back-office system, because the likes of Shopify and BigCommerce provide a basic set of back office and accounting features suitable for smaller merchants.
If this is insufficient, or for larger ecommerce stores, the aforementioned platforms integrate with popular accounting packages, as well as delivery and shipping companies (e.g. couriers).
If there is no application in the Shopify or BigCommerce platform to connect with the ecommerce store’s back office system, then their platform APIs will be required to transmit data between the ecommerce platform and the back-office system. Using these APIs means delivering a ‘connector’ between the ecommerce platform and the back-office system.
This will require a software development project. The connector sends the required data flows between the ecommerce platform and the back-office system. BigCommerce and Shopify have technical partners who can build these connectors.
Best practice: self-hosted platforms
For larger companies who use a back office system or ERP system as the business complexity and/or volumes justifies it, the only workable solution is ecommerce integration with existing back office systems. Non-hosted platforms such as Magento have several pre-built integrations to SAP, Microsoft Dynamics and NetSuite.
They also have the flexibility to extend and integrate with back office systems as the retailer has control over the ecommerce platform installation. Partners who have integration experience with ERP systems are a considerable advantage as there is always experience, code and documentation that can be reused.
Best practice: integration with delivery partners: FedEx, UPS, DHL
Delivery integration connects the ecommerce platform directly with fulfilment of that order – seamlessly. Customer expectations around delivery are increasing because:
- Customers expect multiple delivery options including a free shipping option.
- Free returns are an important consideration when purchasing online.
- Delivery options are continuously improving, with Amazon recently offering Prime customers in the US 1-day shipping (as opposed to the previously offered 2-day shipping). In many major cities, Amazon now offers deliveries within a few hours. (For more information about Amazon’s approach to delivery, read Econsultancy’s Amazon: Lessons and Success Stories report).
Delivery integration with carriers allow businesses to provide the shipping options that customers now expect. It also means that the customer is kept updated on delivery progress, without the need for continuous updates in multiple systems.
All of the process flows that affect fulfilling the customer order are integrated, including ordering a delivery, requesting a carrier to pick up goods, the transportation of goods to the customer by the carrier, the tracking of a delivery and the communication of progress.
Shopify and BigCommerce provide real-time UPS, FedEx and DHL quotes on the shopping basket page and at checkout. The site owner has the option to show standard rates or their negotiated rates.
Users are shown relevant services and shipping zones based on their order. In addition to shipping rates, ecommerce basket and checkout pages will also need to create shipping and return labels, VAT and other documentation.
If this is the case, applications such as ShipPro, ShipTheory and Shippo can be automatically integrated with cloud-based ecommerce platforms directly from their app marketplaces to automatically deliver labels, VAT cost and documentation.
Best practice: delivery integration
Partner delivery integration involves connecting to a partner to offer real-time customer delivery options, at checkout time. This means integrating with carriers such as UPS, FedEx and DHL. This integration can be ‘tight’ or ‘loose’ or provided by a partner.
Tight delivery integration is connecting directly to a single carrier for efficiency. Loose delivery integration refers to connecting with several carriers to offer delivery options to the customer.
Product information management (PIM) systems
A PIM system, or product information management tool, is a central repository for product details for an ecommerce store. Having product details in one place ensures that consistent product information, a ‘single source of truth’ is available to customers, ecommerce teams and suppliers.
Not all ecommerce platforms will require dedicated PIM (sometimes called an MDM – Master Data Management) functionality.
The main benefit of having a PIM system is that it provides a centralised, single view of all product details. This makes it easier to ensure the consistency and accuracy of product information across all retail channels, especially for larger inventories. The smaller the catalogue, the less important it is to have a dedicated system.
If detailed control over the internal and customer-facing view of product data is required, ecommerce sites will need a PIM system. PIM systems hold information such as:
- Product names and descriptions
- Meta text for the product page, as well as possible SEO-friendly URLs
- Product defining attributes, used for product comparison
- Images of different sizes including metadata, videos and other product merchandising content taxonomy details that help display products into the right categories to site users
- Product-specific information required, for example: food ingredients, safety instructions, related items such as replacement parts or consumables.
Customers expect to view products in many formats, such as in online stores, on the brand’s website and email content, in marketplaces and in ads that appear in their social feeds.
Each one of these systems has separate requirements to accept product data, and different techniques for optimising the display of that product data. Using a PIM system eliminates the need to manually create and synchronise products across all these channels and formats.
If a new product or channel only requires certain information, then it can query the PIM system and receive only the information it needs in return. Likewise, third parties that are updating technical information can be given restricted access to PIM systems without being granted access to any other aspect of the ecommerce platform.
PIM functionality exists natively in the ecommerce platforms such as BigCommerce, Shopify and Magento, and in specialist solutions including Akeneo and Linnworks.
The benefits of a PIM can be grouped into those relating to internal business and those affecting customer experience.
Ecommerce business benefits of PIM
- Offers a single source of truth
- Guarantees consistent product information across channels (without a PIM this is difficult, time-consuming and requires headcount to manage)
- Enables consistent, precise product creation, management, enrichment and governance
- Adds the productivity benefits of maintenance in one system and simplicity of updates
- Integration capabilities are built in, reducing manual rekeying and synchronisation
- Reduces time to market and enables content delivery to other channels easily.
Customer benefits
- Customers can quickly find the products they need with consistent, complete product data
- Customers can view consistent product data across channels, and be confident that the product they are choosing is the same across all channels.
When to use a PIM product
In many cases the PIM features provided by the ecommerce platforms will suffice for the needs of the business. A specialised PIM product is required when one or more of the following applies:
- Sharing product changes and stock levels across multiple channels manually requires ongoing effort
- Products listed on marketplaces require accurate stock levels to avoid overstock or understocking product, as Amazon and eBay penalise and even suspend sellers that disappoint customers
- Different channels expect separate data enrichment
- Product validation and versioning functionality is required – a PIM has complex business rules and workflows
- Languages or product-specific/country-specific requirements are required
- Returns rates become a cost factor because of incorrect or incomplete product information.
Digital asset management (DAM) systems
A digital asset management (DAM) system is the source of truth for ecommerce digital assets. This platform component is responsible for the uploading, tagging or categorising, storage and retrieval of digital assets like images, documents and videos.
Digital assets support the development, release, sales and support of physical products or services. Product images, instruction manuals and ‘how-to’ videos are good examples of digital assets that need to be managed.
Basic content management systems (CMSs), ecommerce systems, PIM systems, standalone vendor systems and third-party online DAM platforms all provide DAM functionality. The complexity of an ecommerce site’s digital asset management requirements should determine which solution is chosen to provide DAM features.
A DAM should be considered if:
- There are frequently changing assets in various languages, sometimes in multiple countries or used by geographically dispersed teams.
- The ecommerce site has digital assets that follow a process of creation, management, distribution and protection.
- Distribution through marketplaces requires different image requirements which will increase requirements exponentially.
- Digital assets such as a product image are associated with more than one product, and there are regular bulk image updates.
More sophisticated ecommerce websites often use third-party DAM systems that may be accessed by multiple retailers. Nielsen Brandbank, for example, hosts assets for a large number of FMCG manufacturers across the UK and US.
Brandbank also supplies the majority of UK retailers with the assets they need to merchandise these products digitally, even including photography and product data.
The content for this briefing has been reproduced from Econsultancy’s Ecommerce Best Practice Guide.
The post Ecommerce platform selection and integration: a guide appeared first on Econsultancy.
Source: Customer Experience