Insights / Checklist / Omnichannel platform architecture
ChecklistChoosing an ecommerce platform: a checklist
The right ecommerce platform depends on your products, volumes, markets and team. List the must-haves, check every integration and estimate the full cost before you shortlist.
Ecommerce platform selection often starts with a demonstration. A vendor shows a beautiful storefront, a fast checkout and a dashboard full of charts, and the decision feels obvious. The trouble surfaces months later, when the platform cannot handle your trade pricing, does not talk to your ERP or costs twice what was budgeted to run.
The right platform depends on your products, volumes, markets and team. There is no universal winner among Shopify, Adobe Commerce, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, Salesforce Commerce Cloud or ERP-native options such as Odoo. There is only the best fit for your requirements. This checklist helps you define those requirements before any demonstration.
Start with your must-haves
Write down the capabilities without which the platform simply will not work for you. Keep this list short and specific. “Good search” is not a requirement. “Customers can filter 8,000 products by size, colour, material and price” is.
Pay particular attention to pricing and tax. Businesses that sell to both consumers and trade customers, operate in several countries or run complex promotions often find that pricing rules are where platforms differ most. Check how each platform handles your real scenarios, not generic ones.
Separate must-haves from nice-to-haves explicitly. A long list of equally weighted requirements makes every platform look similar, because each will tick most boxes. A short list of genuine must-haves, perhaps ten to fifteen, quickly rules out the platforms that cannot serve you and lets you focus attention on the ones that can.
Check every integration
A storefront is only the visible part of ecommerce. Behind it, orders must reach your warehouse, stock levels must come back, invoices must post to finance and shipping labels must be produced. Each of those depends on an integration.
For each connection, ask whether a maintained connector exists, who supports it and how it handles failures. A connector maintained by a small third party may be fine, but you need to know what happens if it stops being updated. Ask for references from businesses using the same combination of systems as you.
Decide early which system owns each piece of data. Product descriptions might live in the ecommerce platform or a product information system; prices and stock usually belong in the ERP. Clear ownership prevents the same information being edited in two places and drifting apart.
Estimate the total cost
Set-up cost is the figure most often compared and the least useful on its own. Over three to five years, licences, transaction fees, apps and extensions, hosting, development and support usually far exceed the initial build. A platform with a low entry price may charge a percentage of revenue that becomes expensive as you grow. An open-source platform with no licence fee may need significant development and hosting effort.
Build a simple five-year model for each shortlisted platform at your expected volumes, and test it at double those volumes. The comparison is often decisive.
The selection checklist
- We know our catalogue size today and in three years, including variants.
- We have documented our pricing rules: customer-specific prices, tiers, promotions and bundles.
- We have listed the payment methods our customers expect in each market.
- We know the languages, currencies and tax regimes we must support.
- We have confirmed how the platform connects to our ERP or stock system, and who maintains that connector.
- We have confirmed integrations for finance, shipping carriers, marketing email and analytics.
- We have built a five-year cost model covering licences, fees, apps, hosting, development and support.
- We have tested the cost model at double our expected volume.
- We know who will run the platform day to day and what skills they need.
- We have spoken to at least two reference customers with a similar size and system landscape.
- We understand how we would export our data if we ever moved platform.
Match the platform to your team
A powerful, highly customisable platform is only an advantage if you have the people to configure and maintain it. Hosted platforms with app marketplaces suit teams that want to focus on trading rather than technology. Highly configurable platforms suit businesses with complex requirements and access to development skills, in house or through a partner. Be honest about which describes you today, not which you aspire to.
From checklist to decision
Use the completed checklist to shortlist two or three platforms. Then ask each vendor or partner to demonstrate your scenarios using your data: your most complex price list, your awkward product variants, your real integration with stock. Score each against your must-haves and your cost model, and make the decision on that evidence rather than on the most impressive demonstration.
Source: Intelliversal analysis.
