As a Digital Marketer, you’re probably familiar with the basics of your company’s eCommerce platform, but maybe you aren’t well-acquainted with all the nitty-gritty details. And when the day comes where you realize it’s time to re-platform, it’s easy to feel lost about where to begin.
In partnership with MoreVisibility, ten24 Digital Solutions, developed a guide to help Digital Marketers gain insight into the technical side of building an eCommerce platform.
Who Wants to Re-Platform Their Website?
Nobody. The answer is nobody. Re-platforming a website is one of those “put-it-off-till-we-can’t-live-without-it” tasks.
But platforms grow old. Our customers’ needs change. New vendors offer better services at lower costs. To put it simply, your platform has a problem that’s limiting your ability to provide first-class service to your customers.
You know the problem is there, but when it comes to actually engineering new platform features to address these issues, things get a bit more complicated. What can marketers do to plan out a re-platforming project? And how can they guarantee that their technical teams will include the must-have features needed to create a great customer experience?
The Three Pillars of Project Planning for Marketers
Everything that marketers need to do to ensure a smooth re-platforming experience can be broken down into three “pillars”.
- History of what’s been done
- Primary challenges to address
- Wish list for an ideal customer experience
History of What’s Been Done
Technical teams need to know what’s already been done before they can decide how to move forward. To begin, marketing stakeholders need to get together and plan out the specifics of the project. What have we done already? Which strategies have worked, and which haven’t?
Key Points to Consider:
- Review the decision-making process that led to the current platform.
- How has the business changed since the platform was implemented?
- Have you conducted interviews with any stakeholders involved in previous projects?
Primary Challenges to Address
Pain point discussions are where a marketer’s perspective can pay off.
Outline the specific problems you are having and work with engineers to see what solutions are feasible.
Key Points to Consider:
- Make a list of pain points and prioritize it.
- Are those pain points going to be solved with a new platform?
- Are there aspects of the current setup that work well?
- What other options may be available?
Wish List for an Ideal Customer Experience
Finally, marketers should describe what their ideal customer experience would look like in terms of their platform.
For example, if you’re talking to an architect about building a house, you’d probably describe the features and benefits you want in your new home: a large kitchen, a sunken fireplace, and so on. You’d describe the ideal outcome—but you wouldn’t suggest placement of the support beams.
The same applies to re-platforming. If you make a small-selection, marketers should trust that their engineering teams will know how to build any value-adding integrations. The marketer’s job is to relay this information to help engineers design the outcome, build requirements and review options; from there, the technical teams should handle the building.
Key Points to Consider:
- Be upfront about timelines, pertinent deadlines, and how these issues may affect priorities.
- Is your team sufficient, or do you need additional resources?
- Have you met with all stakeholders from related departments? Who will be the project owner?
- Are there additional requirements that might delay the project? Content, product, photography, or others?
A Collaborative Approach to eCommerce Engineering
Communication between marketing and engineering is the glue that holds everything together.
We like to look at it this way – the technical team decides how much time and resource investment is required for a given feature and which of the desired features are actually feasible. Meanwhile, the marketers decide how to fit these integrations into the overall workflow and manage the prioritization and decision-making.
These aren’t the types of decisions that technical teams can, or should, make. Technical teams implement, but marketers guide the strategy, and no project can succeed without the input of both.
Need help navigating a website re-platform? Contact us for assistance.
