5 things to look for when selecting a digital commerce platform

Is your digital commerce platform future-proof? 

In the 21st Century, brands have focused tremendous energy on providing their customers with the best possible digital customer experiences. However, customer expectations are evolving as quickly as the technology underpinning digital commerce. This pressure has created an experience innovation arms race leaving many organizations to wonder: Is my legacy digital commerce platform ready for today, let alone the future? In many cases, the answer is no. Not at all. If your organization struggles with managing product content, inflexible UX components, inability to personalize, and a lack of data, it’s a strong sign your existing system was not designed to operate in the era of accelerating change. If any of this sounds familiar, here are 5 things to consider while selecting a new digital commerce platform:

1. Flexibility 

The conversation starter should be “Is our platform flexible enough?”, but then again what does flexible look like? With ongoing demand changes, businesses should be able to pivot quickly, and changes need to be reflected instantly across their digital experience platforms. At any point in time, delivering a continuous and unique customer experience is crucial. Having access to various themes, extensions, configurations, integrations, and plug-ins that can be adaptive to multiple formats is critical to a platform’s flexibility.  

Some questions to consider: 

• How fast can I update products? 

• Is it easy to adapt a site-wide promotion? 

• Do users get the same experience if they’re on mobile or any other format?  

• How qualified are our solution partners? 

2. Scalability 

Scalability is all about handling growth, so how seamlessly and efficiently does your digital commerce platform accommodate growth? With increased volume in traffic, transactions, processes, and customer services inquiries, businesses shouldn’t be second-guessing if their commerce platform is going to slow down or crack under pressure.  

A scalable digital platform should effectively handle increased volume in terms of users or load, without interrupting end-users. One key differentiator between fast scalable and non-scalable platforms is the implementation of a cloud-based commerce platform.  

Cloud technology powers some of the greatest innovations today. Headless CMS can enable content delivery across a range of channels and enhance customer experiences. It also drives innovation and adapts to emerging technologies all while enhancing customer interactions.  

Top benefits of cloud-based platforms: 

• Improved business agility 

• Speed of implementation and deployment 

• Lower overall costs 

• Easier information sharing  

• Automated updates  

3. Content deliverability  

As valuable as the first two points are, their value is highly dependable on content. Is your business having a constant race between creating content and delivering it? If that’s a yes, then you should know that it’s not supposed to be a competition, instead, it should be cohesive. When technology doesn’t perform as it should, this gap starts to build up. Your digital commerce platform should support fast content development, and empower marketing and sales team to create, edit, manage, and publish content collaboratively.  

This is where a platform like Sitecore Content Hub can help – it’s a unified platform that helps marketing and sales teams take control of their digital assets and product marketing content. Content Hub can be easily integrated across the organization and with other systems. 

Learn more about how we’ve implemented Content Hub for global product information management. 

4. Multichannel capability 

Multichannel outgrew the basic understanding of having a store and website, it has developed into a full ecosystem that can include retail partners, distributors, web stores, social platforms, and more.  

The important question is “can your digital commerce platform serve new marketplaces, storefronts, brands, channels, or even countries?”. Even then, the question doesn’t stop there, “does the commerce platform leverage a solid order management process?”. Having a smart order management solution delivers automated, fast, and cheap fulfillment possibilities all while keeping inventory up to date.  

5. Business models capacity 

With constant changes and demands, business models are widening their scope from B2C to B2B options or vice versa. Having a commerce platform that supports various multiple business models allows your organization to scale up and be more flexible.  

At XCentium, we provide services and capabilities around best-in-industry technology to suit your business needs and deliver unique experiences. No matter your business model - B2C, B2B, or B2B2C, we make sure our clients don’t miss opportunities or hold back their growth by leveraging agile, scalable, and enterprise-level digital platforms.  

If you have any questions about digital commerce, please don’t hesitate to reach out for a no-cost, no-commitment consultation and a member of our team will contact you shortly.