Platform Migration

This article is a synopsis for a Blog article entitled "redeveloping and migrating your online store."

Introduction

I have worked on numerous ecommerce website developments and the thing that has made the biggest impression is how often they run into difficulties. Usually because of a lack of planning.

Throughout the lifetime of an online store it is essential to update the site in response to changing customer demands and competitive pressures. Some modifications can be minor - such as the tweaks to the design, some major - such as the introduction of new functionality and some fundamental - such as migration to a totally different ecommerce platform.

One of the most important things to remember when you redevelop your online store is to consider every change very carefully, as an accident waiting to happen.

This article explains how to increased your chances of success and minimise the risk of damaging your business.

Planning your project

In any ecommerce project, inadequate planning is the same as planning to fail.

Before you ask for any kind of quotation, you need to be very clear about what you are trying to achieve in terms of:

• Generating website traffic
• Conversion rate
• Sales

Any request for tender document should document and quantify what you are trying to improve and what you want to leave as they are. Without this it is difficult to determine what a sensible budget.

Most request-for-tender documents fulfil the first requirement in spades - after all, it is the exciting bit of the project. Where they tend to fall short is in documentation the things that need to be left as they are.

Key problem areas

Website redevelopment projects typically run into difficulties in the following areas.

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, as much time as the rest of the project. 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.

Incorrect assumptions about functionality

When it comes to ecommerce projects, 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.

The reason for this is that at the beginning of the process too much attention is given to making the site look great and some technical pain points at the expense of the more mundane aspects of running the online store.

This is often not the case in the following areas:

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.

Over-reliance on 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 a code smell. Alien third party code that will become increasingly expensive to manage with time. The more plugins you use, the harder it will become to apply updates to your ecommerce platform.

Only use plugins when they enable or facilitate USP for your web site and before any development work starts.

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.