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Looking for eCommerce Platform Migration?: Consider these Digital Marketing Factors before you Select a New Platform

17 Mar 2022

Mike Patel

Looking for eCommerce Platform Migration?: Consider these Digital Marketing Factors before you Select a New Platform

eCommerce and Digital Marketing go hand-in-hand to make a business successful. If you use digital marketing perfectly, your eCommerce can create a big revenue as it helps attract customers and brand value.

Likewise, it’s equally important that your eCommerce platform supports all digital marketing endeavors like social sharing, embed reviews from all channels and more.

Customers are no longer dependent on content and word-of-mouth when it comes to buying products and services. They have learned to read reviews on all the platforms where there is a product listing. A recent analysis has shown that 50% of people are more interested in a brand after seeing an ad on Instagram.

It’s significant to remain visible to your customer or potential customers on all digital channels as customers get distracted easily and you need to grab their attention. That’s where digital marketing comes into play. Digital marketing helps eCommerce businesses succeed at such challenges.

If you are planning to migrate your eCommerce platform, here are the digital marketing factors you should consider

1) Maintain your SEO

Search engine optimization, or SEO, is a blessing in disguise. It’s the practice of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search engine results.

When a prospective customer uses a search engine to look for information about a product or service, you want to have a higher ranking in search results. This helps increase your opportunities of converting them into customers.

SEO considerations include

Domain name
Meta description
Image alt tags
Navigation links
Page titles
Headings
IP addresses and more.

When thinking about the right commerce platform for your business, attracting potential leads to your website, using digital marketing, is one thing. The other factor is how is this commerce platform going to let you do that.

Here are some SEO features to look for:

2) Ability to customize tags

When looking for the right platform, do you have the ability to edit title tags, meta descriptions, URLs and header tags? You may need to make certain edits on your product page, home page, collection pages and other customizable pages.

Title tags and meta descriptions play an important role in strategically adding in your business’ targeted keywords and they function as your call to action (CTA). This entices the searchers to check your listing above competing listings.

A well-optimized URL structure and simple 301 redirects

URL is one of the most important components of any page for SEO purposes. It tells the search engine what the page is about and it’s the path through which the search engine finds that page.

An SEO-friendly ecommerce platform is one that gives you the ability to easily edit URL strings and rearrange their structure. What is an added advantage is if the platform offers the option of 301 redirecting (from old to the new URL).

Mobile customization

It’s not just desktop users you have to think about. It’s important to also consider customers who are accessing your website through a mobile device. A good commerce platform should give you the option of optimizing your website for a mobile device.

Whether that’s through an app that creates a mobile store or by using a responsive design, where a website changes its size and shape depending on the display of the screen.

Powerful internal site features

Most ecommerce platforms offer website visitors the option to conduct an internal search. This means that users can search for items/categories they may not have run into while browning the online store.

Internal search results pages are powerful tools. You can leverage your SEO strategy because they contain information based on what your user searches.

Good customer service and technical support

It’s crucial to maintain a relationship with the support team at the platform of your choosing. This ensures that your online store complies with these SEO features. Each ecommerce platform has their own uniqueness and even professionals may require the assistance of the technical team.

The assistance helps your platform to make customizations or to properly set up the online store. The last thing you want for your online store is to not appear on the results page once it’s up and running.

3) Is There an Opportunity For Growth?

It’s important to think about whether the platform can grow with you. How much traffic do you expect on your site? If you’re just starting out, you might not need a host with high-traffic capabilities. However, if you’re focused on growth, your ecommerce business should grow rapidly.

Will your platform be able to handle the traffic demands now and in the future?

What would happen to your platform if you ran a promotion that goes viral? Your choice of platform infrastructure needs to have the flexibility to handle the traffic surges without crashing your site.

4) Does the Platform Allow You to Grow When Unfortunate Events Arise?

2020 was one of the biggest turning points for businesses. You know why. COVID. One of the biggest changes is that there were new types of customers who were using e-commerce capabilities and buying new products that they’ve never purchased online before.

The new way of purchasing changed the experience and expectations of those customers. If you were a business that sold certain items that one demographic doesn’t buy, the experience on your platform needs to change because your platform had a certain design that was for a different set of customers.

If the technology and business align, look for a platform that allows you to grow and change those experiences when unfortunate experiences happen. We’re not talking about just COVID, there’s other unfortunate events within the market and business. These unforeseen events create demand changes for customers and their expectations.

Pick a platform with a roadmap that aligns with your business, technology and is constantly creating new features, workflows and enhancements. This allows you to extend that platform to meet and surpass the ever-changing customer expectations. You need to keep up with the changing customer expectations otherwise your competitors will take up on the opportunity and take your customers from you.

5) Will the Platform Help Meet Your KPI Goals?

You also want to start looking at your key performance indicators (KPI). The best way to describe KPI is school grades. If you get an A+, that’s a key performance indicator of how well you knew the information.

However, getting a D means you didn’t know the information that well. Within ecommerce, there’s a lot of key performance indicators that you can leverage to determine success.

Will the platform you choose meet or exceed certain KPIs from day one?

What other KPIs do you need to build if you upgrade the platform?

You have to remember that a website exists for different reasons. Generally speaking, a website attracts, engages and converts customers.

If you’re making a platform change you will see some short-term loss in organic search traffic. What you can do is prepare for it and keep that in mind. What you could do until your ecommerce platform goes back to where you were, invest a little more money into paid media. This can keep your customer acquisition rates at the level you want them to be.

6) Cost of Implementation

Knowing the cost of hosting an ecommerce store helps you anticipate your spending and estimate your ROI. Some ecommerce platforms offer plans that include a number of features:

Web design
Security
Functionality
Maintenance
Periodically hosting

Running an ecommerce site requires maintenance, security and other feature upgrades. If you didn’t do proper research before the site launch, you’re looking at a costly transaction.

What is the platform cost, implementation fees and the licensing? Look at other areas that could negatively affect you by not taking into account the right steps.

This aligns with return on investment and how the platform can drive more revenue. How can you create a better customer experience?

How can you set the foundation for the future of your business, the success for you, your employees and for the customers who are shopping on your platform?

Make sure you fully understand the total cost of what you’re looking to achieve.

Wrapping up

Running a business itself is difficult, especially when you want to run an online store.

You want to make sure that the platform you choose meets with your businesses’ expectations, there is room for growth, there are ways to measure the KPIs and that it can adjust abrupt change.

There are many different platforms like Magento, Shopify, BigCommerce that can provide you with certain benefits that you’re looking for.

ioVista – a Digital Commerce Agency powering B2B and B2C brands since 2004 is a Magento solutions partner, BigCommerce and Shopify partner. For more than 17 years, we’ve been developing eCommerce websites on all the top platforms– Magento, Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Yahoo Stores, and WordPress.

Connect with an eCommerce specialist at ioVista to learn how we can help create an exceptional shopping experience that drives sales and delivers real business results.

Mike Patel

Mike Patel is a digital marketing enthusiast, innovator and President of a leading Digital and E-commerce Development Agency in Dallas, Texas. Mike holds a BS, Computer Science degree from Wayne State University and is a key player in the E-commerce development and digital marketing industry since 2004. The scope of technology in his extensive experience of more than 15 years ranges from Magento, Shopify, BigCommerce SEO (Search Engine Optimization), PPC (Pay Per Click) management, E-commerce SEO, Google Shopping Ads and more.