Scalability is one of the major factors to consider when selecting an ecommerce platform. Nevertheless, scalability is often misinterpreted. A platform might accommodate more visitors, which does not mean that it is scalable. With an increasing amount of work, all aspects of a company, from the product catalog to sales, marketing activities, and analysis become more and more complicated.
It is essential for a scalable ecommerce platform to ensure proper management of this complexity without changing the entire technology stack each time a new growth stage is reached.
For a start-up, the website functionality might suffice. However, as the brand starts growing, the platform must become a solid base for bigger catalog, more sales, more customers, marketing activities, etc. The point is not just how much more traffic can the platform manage. The point is how easy it is possible to develop further the whole ecommerce business.
Website performance is certainly one aspect of scalability, but ecommerce success has much more components. Think about what happens when the company grows from 50 products to 500. Think about the transition from a handful of orders a day to hundreds. The marketing campaign frequency will grow, inventory control will become more difficult, customer requirements will be higher, and you’ll have to enter new markets.
A scalable system has to address all of these aspects and not only handle the technical issue of website traffic.
As an ecommerce company grows, product management may become harder. This is because more products normally translate into more categories, collections, variants, images, descriptions, price details, and SKUs.
A scalable ecommerce platform must make it easier to manage such data as the number of products in the catalog increases. For instance, while a fashion firm may start with a few collections, it will later need to handle hundreds of products that come in different sizes and colors. Without a proper structure for the catalog, managing such products becomes cumbersome.
Scalability thus involves being able to manage more product information without having to put in more effort.
Product categorization is going to be quite complex, even though you have fewer products compared to what other companies might have.There are different ways in which each product can vary. Each variant may have its own SKU, prices, stock management, etc.
The right platform should give you a means through which you can organize product variants. It’s especially relevant for businesses within fashion, footwear, accessories, electronics, furniture and other kinds of product lines where variants of the product are common. The goal here isn’t just about allowing product variants. The goal is to help you manage these variants.
Increased products and increased orders result in increased complexity in inventory management. Inaccurate inventory information can cause businesses to oversell products, disappoint customers, or even have extra fulfillment tasks to do.
An ecommerce platform that can scale should have a system in place to effectively handle inventory management together with product and order management. The importance of inventory visibility increases as the business grows as the team should know what is available, what has been ordered, and what products require action.
Scaling should accommodate this increased complexity without increasing complexity in manual processes.
In a case of business receiving ten orders per day, it is possible to handle most of the processes on their own hands, manually. However, in a situation where orders are received in much larger volumes, the process starts becoming more difficult.
Order management should definitely be seen as an important aspect for ecommerce scalability. The company needs visibility in all orders that have been sent, order status, customer details, order items, and associated processes for order fulfillment.
An increase in size and complexity does not automatically mean a difficult shopping experience. In the case where there is an increased number of products for sale, customers will still want to be able to locate them, get proper information about them, use the categories, and make purchases easily.
An ideal ecommerce platform should enable you to continue having a great customer experience despite the increased complexity of the system. Some of these aspects include having a responsive storefront, easy navigation, good product presentation, and a simplified purchase process.
Ecommerce growth will make companies have to move beyond desktop considerations. As their catalog and customer base increases, the mobile shopping experience must continue to be stable and user-friendly.
Responsive design is just the first step. Companies should consistently review their mobile navigation, product pages, variant selection, shopping cart, and checkout process.A scalable ecommerce platform will provide companies with the means to ensure consistency in their shopping experience.
An increasing ecommerce business normally requires more than merely listing products. Marketing efforts can scale from SEO, email marketing, promotions, advertising, content, customer retention, and other marketing channels.
Where the ecommerce platform runs independently of these marketing efforts, businesses can find themselves running separate systems. Integration would allow businesses to integrate their storefront, product listings, promotions, marketing efforts, and performance metrics.
This is not meant to have all the marketing efforts run on one system. This is meant to ensure that the ecommerce business and its growth efforts are able to work together efficiently.
Growth brings about data.The problem lies in how to convert that data into information that can be used for decision-making. In a scalable ecommerce platform, it is necessary to have analytics that will assist businesses to get insights into their sales, products, customers, and many other aspects of their businesses.
As the business scales, the need for analytics will grow since gut feeling will not be enough. Some of the questions that the platform needs to help answer include:
Scalability involves increasing visibility for the business.
AI can help simplify operations through automation. For instance, with the help of AI-powered solutions, cataloging, product content, and even some ecommerce processes can be handled. It is especially useful in case an enterprise deals with a large volume of products.
Yet, it is important to keep in mind that AI can only make operations more efficient but cannot replace the strategy. A scalable platform should automate processes only if they simplify operations.
Not all companies grow in the same way.While one company can increase its range of products, another can move into new markets. While a direct-to-consumer company can concentrate on customer acquisition and retention, a retailer can concentrate on inventory and order management.
A scalable ecommerce platform, therefore, needs to offer sufficient flexibility to allow for these various growth scenarios. This would include flexible storefronts, flexible product categorization, marketing tools, analytics, and more.
One of the most practical approaches to scalability is viewing beyond the website itself. There are many interconnected layers in a growing ecommerce business:
Storefront → Products → Inventory → Orders → Payments → Marketing → Analytics → Customer Experience
When these layers are disconnected, growth may result in increased administration. A platform solution could enable the business to handle these aspects in a more integrated environment.
This doesn’t imply that all businesses require all the features available. This implies that the technology should offer a solid foundation for the relevant aspects of the business.
Before deciding on the e-commerce platform to use, think about what the future of your business might be like. Think about:
Think about products, varieties, categories, collections, and SKU.
Think about the order workflows and the visibility of operations.
Think about the convenience of navigation, product search, mobile purchase process, and checkout.
Consider tools other than the storefront that help attract and analyze customers.
Think about automation, workflow supported by AI.
Think about the platform’s evolution along with your requirements.
Those questions give more practical insight into scalability than the question of what traffic a platform can support.
Idiocom is marketed as an ecommerce growth platform that aims to go beyond simply creating a storefront. This ecosystem consists of store creation, product & catalog management, inventory, orders management, payments, marketing, analytics, and catalog powered by AI.
The concept of such an ecosystem can enable businesses to integrate all these areas of operations for ecommerce instead of treating their website as something standalone. The platform allows for store creation with no code, responsive stores, theming, variants for products, and catalog management.
Simply put, the idea behind it is quite simple. Businesses should have ecommerce technology that will support the future of their operations, not only current operations.
The true scalability of an ecommerce platform involves more than just handling more visitors. It involves making sure that businesses are able to do more, whether in terms of number of products or product variants, inventory, orders, customers, marketing efforts, and data management while retaining simplicity for their visitors.
Having the best base starts by growing with the business and not being yet another layer of complexity. When looking into ecommerce platforms, take a look at the future. Think about what catalog you want to create, who you want to target, the volume involved, and the necessary growth initiatives.
Scalability means allowing space for growth without having to change your whole ecommerce infrastructure.
What is scalability for an ecommerce platform?
Scalability of an ecommerce platform is its capability to handle an increasing number of products, customers, orders, inventory complexity, marketing activities and other needs without making the business unnecessarily complicated.
Is ability to cope with a large amount of website traffic enough to provide scalability?
No. Traffic scalability is only one aspect of scalability. Other factors include product management, inventory, orders, customer experience, analytics, marketing and many others.
Why is catalog management important for scalability?
Catalog management is very important for scalability since with increasing the number of products and product variants management of product data becomes increasingly difficult.
How can AI help with ecommerce scalability?
AI can help ecommerce businesses reduce routine tasks, for example, cataloging and creation of product content. The benefit of AI depends on the business need.
Does a small business have to worry about scalability?
Yes, especially when the business plans to grow. Selection of appropriate technologies can save from costly changes in the future.
