Are you unhappy with your current e-commerce platform and thinking about moving to another platform? If so, there are a few things to take into consideration before you decide to plunge in and make the move.

Design Considerations

Today’s e-commerce platforms are built on templates and depending on the platform changing those templates to fit your current site’s design may be difficult and you may need to make design changes to the site to fit the new template on the platform you are moving to. A move to a new platform can also give you the impetus and opportunity to update the current design of your site, so this could be a good thing.

Product and Category Migration

This is probably the biggest challenges you will face if you decide to migrate your site from one platform to another, particularly if you have thousands of products, complex product options, and a complex category and subcategory system for your products on your current platform. If a product migration doesn’t go smoothly it can be an absolute nightmare and take many, many hours to fix it and get it correct. Imagine thousands of items and hundreds of categories that don’t match up with your current store, and then imagine going through every one of them to figure out what issues need to be fixed.

Customizations

If the platform you are on now allows for you to add custom variables, has a flexible database that lets you add custom attributes to your products, and lets you write code to take advantage of those variables and database attributes, you need to be aware that the platform you move to may not allow you to customize your site in this way. The advantage of the new platforms is they are easier to operate and run, allowing more non-tech savvy people to open online businesses. To achieve this simplicity they lock down the database and prevent you from writing code and logic to customize your site, basically, what you get is what you get with these platforms. This is a big consideration if you currently take advantage of the customization that your current platform allows. If you want to keep those customizations make sure the new platform supports what you need.

Customer Reviews

Many of today’s e-commerce platforms have built in review systems. If you are using a third party review system on your current site, it may be difficult to migrate those reviews over to the new platform. In many cases the third party review systems have more features than the simple ones the platforms have implemented. If you want to keep your third party reviews there will most likely be extra costs associated to have those moved to the new platform.

URLS

The likelihood that the URL structure on the platform you are migrating to having the exact same structure of your current site is extremely low. Most likely during migration your product and category pages will have different URLs than what they currently are. This means you will need to 301 redirect the old URLs to the new pages; otherwise you will lose any SEO link juice that those old pages had.

DNS

The final step to a platform migration is to update your DNS so the new site can go live. DNS stands for Domain Name System. This system is used to point to the server that your website lives on. If you change platform, you are changing servers. So you will need to point your domain name to the new server. For the most part this is a pretty simple step, and the platform you are migrating to will have instructions on how to point your domain name to their servers, but if you aren’t familiar with changing your DNS settings it can seem a bit daunting. There are a few things to be aware of though. The main thing is you need to aware of with this is whether you will be changing your mail server or keeping it where it is. A wrong setting can prevent your web site from working or prevent you from receiving or sending your email.

With careful planning and expert advice, migrating to a new e-commerce platform does not have to be difficult, and a professional design and marketing firm can help ease the transition and assist you in avoiding any pitfalls that come along.

Trust is one of the most important factors in whether a customer decides to purchase from your online store. Visitors to your store need to feel safe when making purchases on your site. Successful store owners establish trust with great customer service, but sometimes that’s just not enough. A proven way to boost credibility for your business is the use of common trust indicators.

Millions of digital transactions are made every day, requiring sensitive data to passed over the internet. A trustmark from a third-party verification company proves to visitors that your website is trustworthy. Showcasing your earned trustmark logos is a great way to ensure that your store is safe to do business with. Good trustmarks are easily recognizable, and are issued from companies that the public is familiar with, such as PayPal, Norton, McAfee, or TRUSTe.

Trustmarks can also showcase how reliable a store’s customer service is. Companies like the BBB and Trustpilot issue trustmarks based on customer reviews.

Online stores secure the financial data they pass to their servers by using SSL, a security protocol that encrypts any data passed between a customer and the store. Displaying your verified SSL trustmark in addition to serving pages securely is a good way to ensure the security of customer transactions.

It is important to make available a clear and concise return policy for items purchased from your store. Address potential customer concerns up front and you’ll avoid customer service issues post-sale.

The idea that someone is available to chat with should you have any questions is comforting to most shoppers. It’s convenient to not have to pick up a phone to contact support. Installing a live chat service is simple and unobtrusive, and there are many chat platforms to choose from that will integrate easily with any online store.

Last but certainly not least, nothing establishes trust in an e-commerce website like professional design. Successful companies depend on well thought-out, amazing-looking web design. Their graphics are sharp and planned-out well in advance of any promotions, and they’re consistent across platforms (desktop, mobile, social, email, and so on).

Potential customers approach online shopping just as they would walking into a brick and mortar shop; If they have any reservations about your store, they won’t bother browsing, much less give you their credit card information. Establishing trust right away is key to getting the sale.