Sellerdeck Migration
This article is a synopsis for a Blog article entitled "migrating your Sellerdeck store."
Introduction
Sellerdeck, formerly known as Actinic, is a PC-based ecommerce system that was first released in 1997.
At a time when internet connections were very slow and securing online transactions was very challenging, it was a perfect solutions for small businesses seeking to sell online. From around 2002 to 2007 it was the leading ecommerce system in the UK.selling up to 50,000 licenses.
Over time, the introduction of fasted internet connections and more sophisticated online user interfaces led Sellerdeck's market share to decline rapidly. However, it is still used on hundreds of online stores, including some very large and successful ones.
There are a number of reasons that Sellerdeck is still used. The product:
- Has most of the features you need to run a successful online business.
- Is flexible enough to support all kinds of professional designs.
- Can handle very large order volumes.
- Is search-engine-friendly - Sellerdeck sites tend to rank well.
On the downside:
- The desktop software model makes it expensive to use and maintain.
- It is buggy and unreliable.
- There are few people who have the technical skills and experience needed to deploy and use it.
For many uses, the downsides of sticking with Sellerdeck have never trumped the product's benefits, especially when the risks and costs of migration are considered.
The business case
Throughout the lifetime of an online store it is essential to update the site in response to changing customer demands, business demands and competitive pressures. The resulting modifications can be:
- Minor - such as the tweaks to the design.
- Major - such as the introduction of new functionality.
- Fundamental - such as migration to a different ecommerce platform.
Whatever the scale of the change you need to make, it is important to clearly define the business problem before considering the possible technical solutions - all web development projects are complicated and carry risk. The more work that is involved, the more they cost and the harder they are to complete successfully.
Defining the business problem and calculating the likely financial benefits of making the changes will enable you to identify the scale of the project you need. Even so, when you start talking to suppliers you will find it tempting to increase the scope of the project. The danger is that if you lose sight of the ultimate goal - to generate a return on investment - you are creating a platform for disaster.
Defining "the product"
Once you have agreed and set out you business objectives, it is essential to describe in detail the work that needs to be done, the product.
At this point it is important not to make any assumptions about how the changes are going to be made. This can be hard, the whole project might be inspired on the idea that the website should be rebuilt in another platform. Dropping this assumption for the time being will reduce your chances of overlooking something important. As well as defining
The changes will fall into the following categories:
Ecommerce platform
- Website design
- Content
- Business information
- Product information
- Product configuration
- Blog
- Images
- Shipping options
- Payment options
- Order processing
Analytics
- Google Analytics
- Google Search Console
- Google Ads
- Email marketing
- Social media (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest etc.)
In each category you need to define:
- What is changing
- The impact of the change with respect to:
- Bounce rates
- Conversion rates
- Search engine rankings
In each category you should then assign one of the following levels of risk to the change:
- Low Risk - Unlikely to have any material impact on traffic and sales
- Medium Risk - Likely to have some material impact on traffic and sales
- High Risk - Likely to have a significant material impact on traffic and sales
Although this is partly subjective it will substantially reduce the chance of making serious mistakes.
Any request for tender document should document and quantify the aspects of your business you want to improve and what aspects you want to preserve and protect. Without this it is difficult to determine the scope of the project, what resources you need and how much to invest.
Measuring performance
Monitoring the performance of a project is essential.
What tends to go wrong is that we don't do it enough. Projects tend to get a lot of management attention at the beginning and the end, but really they need constant scrutiny. The following variables need to be reviewed at every project meeting.
| Variable | Description |
|---|---|
| Benefits | This is the overall purpose of the project and its ability to deliver a return on investment (ROI). The people leading the project must thoroughly understand this purpose and regularly re-evaluate its potential ROI. |
| Timescale | Although ideally, every project should be finished before a given deadline. What that deadline is, will have an impact on the cost and quality of the updated website. It is also essential to assess the impact of project overruns. |
| Scope | Everyone involved in the project should know what is expected to be delivered in the project, as well as what is not included. It is essential to control, if not avoid, "scope creep," which is the extension of the project's boundaries beyond its defined scope. |
| Quality | The product's suitability for the purpose it serves. Signs of a potential shortfall in quality should be addressed as soon as possible. |
| Risk | Uncertainty always produces some level of risk, and uncertainty is a characteristic of all projects. The question is to determine what level of risk is acceptable to the project's stakeholders, and then build in strategies for reducing that risk. |
| Costs | Every project has a budget, but that budget can vary, either up or down. You will need to detect cost overruns as early as possible. |
Mathis, Bryan. Prince2 for Beginners : Prince2 Study Guide for certification & project management (p. 19). Amazon.com. Kindle Edition.
Where migrations go wrong
Website redevelopment projects typically run into difficulties when you don't do the following things well.
Time and cost estimates
Even the most conservatively estimated projects overrun. Humans tend to be optimistic and price pressure often leads vendors to under-quote clients. The end result is that most projects are under-funded which results in them being insufficiently planned and resourced.
Content migration
One project I was part of had a single featured a single bullet point in the plan - redevelop the website content. This one line item took the retailer 9 months to complete, more time than the rest of the project together. When you sell more than 50 products, migrating website content is a significant data processing task which, if done without care, can destroy your search engine rankings and reduce conversion rates.
Website design
For better, but all-too-often for worse, the design of a website tends to dominate the migration projects. You need to maintain perspective. Yes, design is important, but the success of the project depends on a number of different factors.
I've seen people spend days discussing the position and colour of a button and a few minutes agreeing some vague plan to retain the search engine rankings the whole business depends on. Don't make that mistake!
Invalid assumptions
The devil really is in the detail. Ecommerce systems have many hundreds of features and to save time it is tempting to assume that they all work on the same way.
Often, the reason for this is that at too much attention is given to making the site look great and fixing technical pain points at the expense of the more "mundane" things.
It is vital to review the following areas very carefully:
Third party systems
Integrations with third party systems are a feature of many online stores. Systems such as Loqate (address capture), Feefo, Trust Pilot, PayPal and other payment processors are commonly used, but not always easy to integrate. This needs to be checked at the beginning of the project, epecially if you are migrating platform.
Product configuration and pricing
Ecommerce systems do not use the same approach to creating products with different configuration, bundling and pricing options. For example, Sellerdeck makes it relatively easy to use quantity-break pricing, Shopify does not feature this at all.
Order processing
Sellerdeck has relatively sophisticated order processing features, some are very basic. I have seen a lot of projects where the overall benefits of the redevelopment have been undermined by order processing limitations. Also, where you export orders into third party systems, you will need to check that these integrations are supported.
Checkout
Not all systems allow you to customise the check-out screens and integrate important third party services, such as postcode lookup.
Plugins
Website developers love plugins because they provide a cost-effective way of adding new functionality to their clients' sites.
The problem is that plugins are more likely to be used to plug the embarrassing gaps in ecommerce platform functionality that often emerge during the closing stages of the project (due to insufficient planning).
The best way to view any plugin is as technical debt. Alien third party code that is used plug a product limitation that will become increasingly expensive to manage with time. The more plugins you use, the harder and more expensive it will become to maintain your ecommerce platform as time marches on.
Only use plugins when they enable or facilitate USP for your web site and before any development work starts.
Performance monitoring
If you have a busy online store, it could take some time before you know for sure that you redevelopment has been a success. When I worked at one platform vendor, one client contacted us to ask if we help them could work out why their new website was selling as much. Sales had fallen by several thousand pounds week and they didn't know why.
It is important to prepare for the worst. The means making sure that you continue to monitor the performance of your website using Google Analytics, Google Search Console and, ideally, a third party ranking tracker like Moz. That way, when you do hit problems, you can quickly identify exactly where they are.
The client in question thought that they had a great deal when they redeveloped their website for cost of around £15k. The eventual cost was £15k plus £10k per week for the months it took to recover the situation..
Conclusion
Every project carries with it risk, but with good planning you can mitigate this risk substantially, simply by evaluating all of the challenges you will need to overcome.
The good news is that all you have to do to keep ahead of your competitors is spend more time at the beginning of the project evaluating the total impact of the project on the business.
That way you increase the likelihood of achieving you goals and reduce the risk of failure.