How To Choose Your Enterprise ecommerce Platform

It’s a challenge to make any business successful. Agree, don’t you?

The challenge grows manifold when you already have a successful wholesale or enterprise business and want to take your success a few notches higher.

Nevertheless, you have to find ways to grow and thrive. And what’s the best course to take to grow really fast?

Well, how about rolling your enterprise ecommerce platform to reach new markets? 

Sounds interesting and lucrative, right! 

After all, the wholesale ecommerce industry is witnessing an unprecedented boom. So why not ride the tide! 

Did you know that the global B2B ecommerce market is valued at $12.2 trillion in 2019? What’s even more interesting is that the GMV for global B2B ecommerce has multiplied almost 3X from 2013 to 2019. 

Source: Statista

Slowly but steadily, wholesale and large-volume businesses are realising the importance and benefits of taking the ecommerce route.

How To Choose the Right Enterprise Ecommerce Solution For Your Business

No wonder, going online is the best thing you can do for your business at such an inflexion point.

However, to ride the wave the wholesale business owners not only need strategic planning but also a robust and best-fit enterprise ecommerce platform that can support the growth of their business. After all, enterprise businesses are not just bigger versions of retail businesses. They are much more complex than that. They have additional steps and complex flows involved at each step of the ordering process. 

To stand out and make a kill in the multi-million wholesale online shopping industry, you need to invest wisely in the technology and IT solution provider. The enterprise ecommerce software should have the capabilities to handle the complexities and nuances of your business and make your processes smarter and efficient.

But when you start looking for a solution to support your business, you realise that choosing the right enterprise ecommerce platforms is a complex process. Here is a list of questions to help you decide the best enterprise software for your business:  

Q 1. Can your wholesale ecommerce software scale along with your business?

Scalability can be a major concern for wholesale businesses that deal with high volume of products, users, orders and customers. Usually, a turnkey enterprise ecommerce platform is designed with the requirements of a large business in consideration. The architecture is designed to be scalable but you really need to consider unprecedented scenarios.

Before buying their claims of scalability, it is wise to check the platform on a number of business scenarios. To ensure you are opting for the right solution, always think in terms of five years from the current date. Validate the platform on the following pointers;

• Does the technology make the enterprise ecommerce platform inherently auto scalable?
• Is it capable of handling high volume traffic during peak hours/season?
• Can it handle all the transactions during such a peak?
• Will it be able to handle lots of searches?
• Can it scale up to any number of users, pages and products?
• Does the enterprise software offer close to 100% server uptime

Once you get a positive answer for all of these queries, you can be assured that this can be a sustainable solution for your business in the long run. 

Built on the most advanced technology stack (MEAN stack), StoreHippo enterprise ecommerce platform offers an inherently scalable solution for high-volume fast growing businesses. It offers peak load tolerance with 99.99% uptime. You can check some of the case studies  powered by StoreHippo which showcase live use-cases of wholesale businesses.

Q 2. Can your enterprise software handle extreme changes in your business?

The dynamics of ecommerce make it mandatory that your business is always ready for change. Such changes are necessary to make your business survive and grow. Hence, the enterprise ecommerce platform that you are considering should be able to offer you the flexibility to adapt to the ever-changing environment.

A premier online store should not be opting for a solution that is designed on the premise of one size fits all. Your chosen platform should be able to handle extreme customization and allow you to tweak not only the backend but also the front end. 

Also, such tweaks should not take a great deal of effort in terms of time or resources. See for yourself if the platform has the following capabilities;

• Does it allow to create custom entities or tweak the existing entities
• Can it handle multiple storefronts for multiple product lines
• Does it allow to onboard a huge number of vendors for selling products/services
• Can your enterprise ecommerce platform accommodate custom flows
• Does it have B2C like ease and features for your B2B business
• Do you have an option to white-label your site and its communication channels

If the platform satisfies all the above criteria, you can be assured that it would cope with the demands of your growing business.

StoreHippo is capable of handling extensive customizations required to suit the unique needs of large businesses. With native multi-vendor marketplace, multi-store, comprehensive B2B and B2C ecommerce features, the StoreHippo enterprise ecommerce platform offers a versatile solution that helps your business experiment with popular business models and customer centric features.

Q 3. Does your enterprise ecommerce solution offer features to gain a competitive edge?

Let’s accept it, the level of competition faced by a premier wholesale online store goes beyond cut-throat. To stay ahead of your competition along with your product and services your website should have top-notch features that make your store unique and extremely user-friendly.

To achieve this your ecommerce software should be well aligned with the roadmap of your business. It should offer a gamut of tools and features that help you get customers from multiple channels. Thoroughly check your enterprise ecommerce platform on the following pointers;

• Does it offer cross-device, fast and engaging experience to your users
• Do you have the option to implement device-specific design themes
• Are the page load and page switch time good enough to engage customers
• Can you get a mobile site that is accessible on the basic smartphones or poor internet connection
• Does your enterprise ecommerce platform has inbuilt and allows integrations with third-party marketing and remarketing features/tools
• Can you rapidly implement new marketing pages or custom forms to get more information from your clients

Using a combination of above features and functionalities you can offer an unparalleled experience to your customers. This would help you keep them happy and loyal to your business.

StoreHippo is built on mobile-first principle which offers you an advantage over your competitors. Online stores powered by StoreHippo enterprise ecommerce solutions are PWA, which means they behave like a native app when opened in any browser.  Use of SPA and global CDN makes our stores super fast. 

With inbuilt design tools and dynamic marketing pages you can update your store theme and create new pages on the fly. StoreHippo also offers a gamut of inbuilt marketing tools and facilitates seamless integration with many other marketing tools.

Q 4. Will your Enterprise Ecommerce platform remain economically viable in the long run?

Although pricing is not the only factor to consider while selecting a pla n, it does remain one of the major concerns when you are choosing your solution provider. In fact, many businesses opt for turnkey enterprise ecommerce solutions just to save money and resources. So the pricing factor should be thoroughly investigated before finalizing your service providers.

A premier online store has to distribute its budget prudently so that it has sufficient reserves to invest in new product lines and new business units. The expansion goals can be taken care of only when the core expenditure remains stable and does not involve upfront or hidden costs. To ensure that you don't need to curtail the budget of other critical resources check the following;

• Does the pricing model has a growth-oriented structure
• Do they charge additionally for servers and security tools
• Can you easily switch between the plans
• Do they offer additional services to grow your business digitally
• Can you avail additional services by paying for them instead of upgrading the whole plan
• Are there any hidden costs that beyond the standard pricing

An enterprise ecommerce platform that offers you an affordable yet reliable and feature-rich solution can do wonders for your growth. Seek detailed and clear answers on all the above pointers to narrow down the best solution for your business.

StoreHippo offers a transparent pricing plan with no hidden charges to build your wholesale ecommerce store. You do not need to pay additionally for server and hosting or software upgrades and maintenance. You can choose the plan that best suits your budget and move up as your business grows. 

StoreHippo enterprise ecommerce solutions give you the flexibility to integrate with your chosen payment gateways or any other service provider without any additional cost. With 300+ inbuilt features and tools you don’t have to app for additional apps or plugins to build a fully-functional wholesale ecommerce store.

Q 5. Does your enterprise ecommerce platform offer shipping solutions?

 A poor supply chain can be the worst nightmare for a wholesale business. Bad logistics can endanger the reputation of the business and can dwindle the customers base rapidly.  A well-aligned and streamlined logistics service forms the backbone of a successful wholesale business.

While rolling out your enterprise online shop you should ensure that your platform offers easy integration with shipping partners. With far and wide reach of its shipping services it should enable you to explore new business territories. To ensure that you are not left to handle the pain of ecommerce logistics check whether your enterprise ecommerce platform empowers your business by offering the following;

• Does it offer integration with multiple domestic and international carries
• Can you avail discounted rate of shipping
• Do you have a simple and automated shipping management process
• Are there any extra costs involved in choosing additional shipping channels/partners
• Does it offer rate-comparisons to optimize your shipping costs
• Do you get automated delivery boy module to manage your own shipping

If these queries get a confirmatory reply from your enterprise ecommerce platform provider you can be assured of a growth-oriented partner for your business.

StoreHippo offers an automated logistics solution for all the stores built on the platform. You can choose the discounted services of our partner shipping providers or can integrate with any of the shipping solutions of your choice.

The automated shipping solution makes shipping faster, easier and less prone to human errors. You can optimize your shipping rates by choosing the best shipping partner for a given destination. What’s even better is that StoreHippo enterprise ecommerce solution offers you an inbuilt delivery boy module to help you manage your own fleet of delivery agents.

Conclusion

To script the success story of your wholesale business you need to ensure that you have asked the right questions before taking the final plunge. StoreHippo enterprise ecommerce platform incorporates all the features and services that are needed for the success of your enterprise business. 

Along with the above features and tools StoreHippo  also offers multilingual, multicurrency and other features that help you take your business to global markets. StoreHippo offers a well rounded, customizable, inherently scalable, fully hosted and managed solution for  wholesale businesses of every size.

Do you have more questions? Why struggle with them alone? Schedule a free-demo with our experts and get answers to all your queries right away!