You know you need help with your ecommerce implementation, but where to start? There are so many companies out there that figuring out who is the best partner for you can be quite the challenge. You know better than to pick based solely on pricing, so what else should you consider?
1) Who are you?
Now that I’ve got that song stuck in your head, for real, what kind of merchant are you? What differentiates you from your competitors? “Who you are” is where you need to start in figuring out what type of partner is going to be the right fit.
Are you a fashion retailer that sells directly to your customers? You are going to want to look at agencies that specialize in bespoke visual design and can be a powerhouse for creating dynamic ad copy and imagery. You are going to want to ask for a portfolio to see the types of things they have done before.
Are you a manufacturer that is looking to start driving B2B sales online? You are going to want to look at companies that have specific experience in B2B ecommerce solutions – instead of asking for a portfolio, ask for a reference to another merchant that the agency has helped guide on this path.
2) Do you have an in-house development team?
This is a big one – I think that organizations often underestimate what it takes to maintain their site. Merchants almost never want to just do an initial setup and then leave it running for years – in order to keep up with their competition they need to continuously evolve their online presence. This evolution typically does not look like a single “big project” every year, but more of a continual thread of work that needs to be done with intermittent “bigger” items.
If you have an in-house development team with platform development experience, you might be able to handle this on your own. If not, you may want to look for an implementation partner that can help you with this ongoing work. As you are talking to potential partners, ask them how they handle this sort of arrangement (if they do – not everyone does!) or if they have a minimum engagement requirement.
3) How complex is your commerce infrastructure?
Is your ecommerce platform an “all in one” for you, or do you have a separate system for things like:
- ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning)
- PIM (Product Information Management)
- CRM (Customer Relationship Management)
- MA (Marketing Automation)
The more systems you add to your ecosystem, the more complex the integration requirements. You want to make sure you have a partner that has extensive experience solving complex problems. In my opinion, it is less important that they have deep expertise in the specific products with which you are integrating, but rather that they have approached these sorts of data and process flow challenges in the past and know how to architect integrations in a way that will be easy to maintain and resilient to things like upgrades of any individual component.
4) Do you trust them?
While the prior factors have all really been about you, this one is really about them. And there isn’t a specific question to ask to vet this one, but it is really rather a “gut feeling” that you get from all of your interactions. Look for things like:
- Are they responsive when you reach out to them?
- Do you enjoy chatting with them?
- When following up on items, do they do what they say they are going to do?
- Are they willing to say “no” or “I don’t know”?
Honestly, this may be the biggest and most important factor of all. In this rapid-paced world, you need to know you can rely on your team to have your back. You aren’t buying a widget, you are embarking on what is hopefully a long-term relationship. And just like in the dating world, if you don’t like them when they are on their best behavior, you probably won’t like them when they are living the day-to-day grind with you.
Are you looking to embark on a new implementation? Or pondering a breakup with your existing implementation partner? We’d love to chat and see if we might be the right fit. And if we don’t think we are, we promise to tell you and will do our best to steer you in the right direction.
