E-commerce platform selection is an integral part of the services that Accorin provides to its clients. Platform selection is also what merchants think about a lot because they are constantly barraged with marketing messages from the platform companies; this makes sense; they have $millions to spend on marketing and we the SIs don’t. So we’ve decided to launch this very simple platform selector tool which we’ll evolve periodically.
Over time, we’ll add to the input questions and change the algorithm a few times a year accounting for platform changes that we become aware of. Initially we’ll start by recommending one of three platforms, depending upon input to the tool. But, we plan to evolve this tool and share the data so that our audience can evolve and learn with us; continuing to learn in the ever-changing spectrum of reasons why e-commerce merchants look to compare and ultimately choose a platform.
Starting with the Basics
At Accorin, we focus our e-commerce development work on three popular platforms:
- Adobe Commerce (formerly Magento),
- BigCommerce, and
- Shopify.
These three platforms have an association with three very broad organizations of business requirements that we tend to see when we talk with prospects. Although every business is different we typically see levels of complexity that help us to organize requirements into patterns of business use cases, on both the customer and administration sides of e-commerce. So, this tool roughly aligns with the organization or requirements that we typically see. That’s how we’re starting with this tool (Fall of ‘21).
Collecting Anonymous Data from the Tool
There is an option to provide data if a user would like follow up conversations with an Accorine-commerce strategist or solution architect. We suspect many users who interact with the tool will, however, do so anonymously. Whether the answers are anonymous or not we plan to share the input data which we believe will help the e-commerce community understand how the landscape of e-commerce requirements is changing. We will post the data publicly once per quarter and provide some general observational analysis on the trends.
No data about user identity (name, email or company information) will be shared. We hope that this tool can provide e-commerce managers with basic insights into platform selection and we hope that by sharing the input data we can help our entire audience better understand the drivers behind platform selection.
What These Recommendations Mean / What They Don’t Mean
There are many factors that ultimately help us to identify which platform will work best for a merchant and it requires a lot more than answers to a few questions. But the tool can help users think generally and directionally about where their e-commerce technology choice might best be served. We obviously don’t believe that users should use this tool in a vacuum without considering many important factors. Using the tool provides direction. The recommendation provides direction. It is not necessarily an answer. By frequently reviewing and sharing the data provided by users of the tool, we hope to make the tool better over time and evolve the conversation around platform selection so that merchants, the platforms, and other SIs can all work productively to make e-commerce better using a starting point that makes sense.
The Bottom Line
Our E-Commerce Platform Selection Wizard is ready for you to use! If you’re actively trying to decide which platform you might build on or migrate your e-commerce site to, give it a try. If you’re just curious if the platform your website is built on is the best option for you…you can try it too. It’s free, and there are no strings attached as you’ll get your recommendation instantly!
Periodically, we will revise and re-launch it through 2022 and we’ll begin to share the insights and trends we see by the close of Q1 2022.
