9 Ways to Choose the Right Online Business Platform
This episode piggybacks off our last but breaks from our new norm of live interviews just for this week. Once you’ve got your business idea dialed in, looking for a platform is the next big step. We’ll talk through the key things to look for when choosing an online platform and will also provide a worksheet to help you work through the considerations for your specific business. This is a quick but important video.
Finding the right platform to support your online business is a make or break decision and it needs to happen really early in your planning. So you have little to go on to make this ginormous call. It can be the difference between growing a successful business and barely holding on.
I worked with a service organization a while back that was paying a lot of money every month for a membership platform. The information available to clients was so outdated and confusing that the front desk staff was on the phone constantly answering questions because no one knew how to make updates or set things up properly. They were paying a lot for the membership site, and were also paying desk staff to provide the same information instead of allowing them to truly host clients arriving for their service. And that’s not a situation you want to find yourself in down the road.
The first thing to consider when choosing an online platform is:
What’s your online sales model?
Direct to consumer
Wholesale
Drop Ship
Subscription
These don’t have to be mutually exclusive, but will help you narrow your search. If you’re offering subscriptions for example, the payment collection and content release can be a little tricky. Some platforms offer the option but treat it like a premium offering so they charge a lot more while others focus on this type of product so they’re able to offer it at a more competitive price.
What kind of product are you selling?
Physical
Services
Digital
There are platforms for each of these options but not all of the platforms offer options to sell each product type. And some sell certain types better than others.
Are you currently using a payment processor and do you want/need to keep them?
Some of the platforms work with specific processors or charge a premium to use a specific one. But the common small business processors integrate really nicely with most platforms.
Do you currently have a website?
Many website hosts offer ecommerce or membership add-ons now. Its still important to assess all the other factors but its worth looking into so you can potentially house everything in one place.
How much do you plan to sell?
You’ll need to have a rough idea of how much you’re going to sell and how many products you’ll be selling at any given time. Your transactions fees will be impacted by this information and many of the platforms charge by # of product or volume that you’re moving. So, when you start to compare overall costs, these can play a significant role in filtering through your options.
Where do you plan to sell?
If you only want to sell on facebook, your options are going to be very different than if you want to sell on your site, on amazon and other marketplaces.
Developer or DIY?
Having a developer would be awesome but depending on your business, could be way too costly. There are some really robust platforms but you need some pretty hefty coding skills to use them effectively. If you’re going the DIY route, you’re still going to have a lot of really great options but its important to make that distinction for yourself.
Do you currently have or will you need a POS system?
If you see yourself doing in person sales at some point, you may want to look for a platform that does both online and offline sales. Or if you already have a brick and mortar store with a POS system, some POS systems offer an online version. Possibly saving yourself some serious time on setup and maintenance.
What’s the customer experience like?
Once you’ve made it through most of these, you should have a short list of options. The last thing I would suggest doing is to put yourself in your customer’s shoes and visualize their experience with your remaining platforms. How does each feel, are there areas you see them getting caught. Are there areas where you’ll struggle to get them the information they need to make a sale or communicate with them? You can do this visually or many of these platforms offer a free trial so you could take the actual platform for a spin.
Really what you’re doing is using your business model to help guide you to the right platform. Factor in your product, volume, your customer experience and what your current resources are and you’ll find yourself with a great platform that you can grow with. If you have big growth plans, know that you may have to settle on a platform that works for you now and down the road switch over to something else that can better accommodate where you’re headed.
You can download your own worksheet that covers all that we talked about today at:
Please remember I believe in you and your business.
