EP082 From Quick Fix to Long-Term Success - Rethinking Your E-Commerce Platform
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[00:00:06] DARIN NEWBOLD: Welcome, welcome to Commerce Today. This is Darin Newbold, and we're excited as always with Josh here to give you another episode of Commerce Today. And today, today, we're going to talk about from a quick fix to long term success, rethinking your e commerce platform. Well, Josh, that was a big, long title, but Spell it out for us maybe a little more clearly.

[00:00:28] JOSHUA WARREN: Yeah. So going to talk about your e commerce platform and really for the, the people that have studied psychology or you know, the way we think and make decisions, really the sunk cost fallacy. The idea of, well, if I spend a bunch of money on it, then I should keep spending money on it, versus knowing when it is time to move on.

[00:00:48] DARIN NEWBOLD: e commerce. I gotcha. Yeah, it's that proverbial rebuild that, uh, basically it's like having a boat.

[00:00:55] Keep pouring money into it. There 

[00:00:56] JOSHUA WARREN: Hopefully not. 

[00:00:57] Hopefully not. All right.

[00:00:59] DARIN NEWBOLD: All 

[00:00:59] JOSHUA WARREN: going to help people avoid that, hopefully.

[00:01:02] DARIN NEWBOLD: very, very good. Well, I know there's some, uh, some key statistics around this that I know you wanted to share. So what does that look like as far as replatforming and the stats on

[00:01:13] JOSHUA WARREN: Yeah. So there's been a lot of debate on LinkedIn about everyone's replatforming, no one's replatforming. And I finally found a statistic and we'll link to the source in the show notes that it makes more sense now. 27 percent of retailers say they're going to replatform this year.

[00:01:27] So not a lot, but not a few

[00:01:30] DARIN NEWBOLD: About a third.

[00:01:31] JOSHUA WARREN: 76 percent of B2B brands say they're going to replatform. So if you're an agency or platform working with B2B brands, then you're like, wow, everyone's replatforming. But if you're an agency, that's only working with retailers and you might be like, Oh, no one's replatforming. Um, and the interesting thing in looking at that B2B number, that surprised me until I thought of something.

[00:01:50] And I know that we love to blame all of our problems on this, but I think it goes back to COVID.

[00:01:56] DARIN NEWBOLD: Really? Really? So what was it about COVID that drove us to

[00:02:00] JOSHUA WARREN: So I think there was so many e commerce or so many, um, B2B businesses, especially, and some B2C that in 2020, spring of 2020 said, Oh my goodness, no one wants an in person, especially B2B.

[00:02:14] They said no one wants an in person salesperson visit. They want to be able to self serve and place their own orders. I don't have an e commerce platform. I need one. And so there were a lot of people that very quickly stood up a B2B e commerce platform in March, 2020. Now, four years later, business has changed.

[00:02:33] Platform has changed, or you're just having a lot of problems with that platform. And, uh, a lot of the issues we're seeing is people are on platforms that for whatever reason, um, and there's many reasons they're hard to update, or it was built in a rush and there's a lot of technical debt. or there's just a lot of bad performance because, you know, in March, 2020, you were probably just happy to get your B2B e commerce site up and running.

[00:02:56] Everyone was a little bit more patient with each other. And now we're back to the usual, you know, it's gotta be fast. I want it and I want it now.

[00:03:03] DARIN NEWBOLD: have it now. Exactly. Well, you started, you shared a couple of the common issues there, but let's go through kind of the, the signs. I mean, what are the, the signposts up ahead are saying, Hey, it is time to replatform.

[00:03:18] What does that look like?

[00:03:20] JOSHUA WARREN: Yeah. And I want to, I want to call out, we kind of jumped right in and I say replatform. And I talk about these people that have been on a platform for four years. There are people that we talk to sometimes who, and we're going to talk about a real world example in a little bit where You might only have been on this platform for a year, and it may not even be the platform's problem.

[00:03:37] It might be your implementation, and it might be a bad implementation. So, um, don't think if you're like, Oh, we just implemented a new platform six months ago. I'm going to tune out, skip to the next episode. Um, this still, if these signs sound familiar, then you may need to take a solid look at the implementation of your platform.

[00:03:55] But to the signs, um. You may be at the point where you need to consider either a rebuild of your current platform or replatforming if your maintenance costs are high, and especially if they're increasing, if you're having site performance issues, especially site performance issues that aren't easily resolved, um, most modern platforms should be doing relatively well on Core Web Vitals.

[00:04:19] You know, it is hard to get those all green scores, but if you're like way down on the bottom of some of the performance metrics and you're struggling to get that fixed, might be a sign. Um, also if it's really hard to make updates, um, content updates, especially, but even as you're working to add new features of the platform, um, I've seen a lot of sites that were implemented kind of during the pandemic where shortcuts were taken.

[00:04:44] And now all of a sudden, you know, you're.

[00:04:49] your,

[00:04:49] Shopify your Magento plugins, whatever platform you're using, you can't just install a plugin and it works. You always have to kind of tweak it a little bit. And that's a sign that, okay, there's probably some technical debt here. Um, there's probably some, some underlying issues.

[00:05:05] or, you know, sometimes it's just the platform was a great fit for how you were doing business in 2020, but now your business has changed. It's shifted. And Now, or, you know, sometimes, especially I've seen this with the SAS platforms, sometimes the platforms vision has changed and they no longer really serving customers like your business.

[00:05:25] So could even be, that could be another sign that it's time to reevaluate your platform. And, and a lot of these, um, may sound familiar to some of our listeners, um, because I know some of our listeners are the awesome folks that I've done. Some of my free e commerce problem solving sessions with

[00:05:41] DARIN NEWBOLD: Well, yeah, tell me about that.

[00:05:42] JOSHUA WARREN: yeah, so I've heard so many stories. There are so many of y'all that are in pain with your current platform, and I am doing all I can to help. Um, and it, it really, it's those signs that I just shared. Um, a lot of conversations around performance, especially as Google, uh, is. kind of raising the bar on performance and what they expect out of a site's performance for SEO rankings.

[00:06:05] And then as consumers are raising their expectations and just as your competitors are getting their sites to run faster and faster, suddenly performance matters a lot more. And again, like I mentioned earlier, some, some platforms and a well built implementation of a well built platform.

[00:06:23] Improving the performance isn't that challenging, but poor platform or poor implementation, and you might be stuck.

[00:06:30] Um, there are folks, there are a number of folks I've talked to recently where their lighthouse scores on that scale of 1 to 100 we were talking about a couple episodes ago. They're scoring ones, twos, fives. It's rough.

[00:06:44] DARIN NEWBOLD: That's hardcore. That, uh, and that, that affects the ability to sell that performance. I mean, we all know we're in a rush and when a, when a website is going slow, we immediately start looking for something else. And, and you know that's happening. Well, you mentioned a real world example and you started talking about some of the, the problem solving sessions you've had, but let's, Maybe dig in a little deeper on that real world example of

[00:07:09] kind of the case study of where switching platforms or switching the, the baseline was really the right way to do it.

[00:07:15] And, and the effects of that 

[00:07:17] JOSHUA WARREN: so over the years in my work at Creatuity, we have seen this so many times where people will bring a site to us that someone else implemented and they'll even admit to us, we don't know what we should do.

[00:07:27] We don't know if we should keep it or if we should start over, scrap it or rebuild. And that is a hard conversation to have. And especially not being the one that built the site and having to kind of do some research, almost like digital archaeology to figure out, you know, what is the right thing to do here.

[00:07:45] And there's a situation and you know, so often I will default to let's try to save it. Let's try to fix it because it's so painful to tell someone that sunk cost fallacy of saying, hey, You spent 10, 000, 100, 000, 500, 000 getting to where you are, but it's not a good idea to continue to invest money in that platform.

[00:08:05] Um, so we had a client, um, or have a client that came to us actually a couple of years ago. And in 2023, we kind of sat down and had the talk and said, okay. We're noticing ourselves that it just takes a long time to update your site. It's updates aren't applying correctly. Extensions aren't working correctly.

[00:08:23] Um, there's just a lot of issues here. We think it's time to really evaluate the way this, the, the original agency built this site. We don't think you want to continue investing in it. We think it's best for you to basically rip and replace. And that is what we did. Um, and they went live, um, just a couple months ago now, and their conversion rate is up.

[00:08:44] Their performance is up incredibly. Um, they are seeing higher traffic because of that, but I think the, the best thing is it's their busy season and we're not hearing from them. And a year ago, we heard from them a lot because orders were getting stuck. Things weren't working right. There was lots of fixes we were having to apply.

[00:09:03] So while it was kind of a hard pill to swallow of, okay, wait, I just spent all this money to build this platform. And now you're telling me spend that money again. Um, they are seeing a great ROI already on making that change. I mean, the time to updates that were taking us, you know, a hundred hours to implement are now happening in one or two hours.

[00:09:22] Like, it's just incredible how much maintenance costs that's saving them.

[00:09:26] DARIN NEWBOLD: That's amazing how much, how much can really make a difference. And it's kind of that, uh, that story even about, you know, you have an, an old car and while you like the car and you put in some money and you put in some money, there's a point where. Getting a new car, it's time to do it. And it sounds like the, these types of sites in this type of situation where you're constantly dealing with situation where you bolted on different things all the time, it just becomes cumbersome.

[00:09:52] And you really have to do a replatform of some variety. Right. So, all right, we've talked about an example. We've talked where, hey, it's a good thing, but we also know it's a hard decision. And you mentioned that we had to have a conversation with, with that client in particular. So kind of walk me through the psychology, the financials of having that and working through that for yourself.

[00:10:18] JOSHUA WARREN: Yeah. And sometimes this is yourself as the decision maker. Sometimes this is even a corporate culture of like, Hey, we never admit we made a mistake.

[00:10:27] Um, I've definitely seen some companies where that's the case where it's almost dangerous to go to your boss and say, Hey, We want to rethink this decision. but yeah, it really comes down to, and it's funny, your car example, I'm thinking of, I'm struggling right now with a dishwasher issue. And it's a dishwasher that honestly, it's old enough that I should just replace it, but it costs a lot of money.

[00:10:47] And I'm like, I should be able to fix this thing. And so I bought a part and I replaced that part. And then it kind of started working again, but then it's still not working quite right. Then it stopped working again. So I do some more research and find, okay, second part I need to replace. So replace the second part.

[00:11:01] Again, it's still, it's, it's, but, so finally ordered the third part, waiting for it to arrive. And already my wife had a conversation with me about how, okay, this is the last part.

[00:11:11] We 

[00:11:12] DARIN NEWBOLD: the last

[00:11:12] JOSHUA WARREN: at this point, we have spent probably 40 percent of the cost of a new dishwasher on parts. And so, but it's tough, it's tough to basically take something.

[00:11:22] And in this case, I mean, A thousand dollar dishwasher. It's not a 10, 50, hundred thousand dollar e commerce platform. But even with that, I'm like, I spent a lot of money on this. I don't want to just throw it away and buy a new one. And the same time, um, we've been having to wash dishes by hand for weeks now.

[00:11:38] Um, the kitchen's a bit of a mess because the dishwasher keeps getting disassembled. Um, and it's just not really a good way to live. And I would say the same thing for your e commerce platform. Like, it's not a good way to run your business if you're constantly having to basically do these remedial things instead of implementing new features and kind of moving forward in the way you want to.

[00:11:58] But again, it's hard. And I feel like sometimes in my work, especially in these e commerce problem solving sessions I'm doing, I'm almost like a counselor. I'm there just to, to hear the frustration and say, yeah, it sucks. Like you're in a situation that I wish you weren't in, you wish you weren't in, but it's where you are.

[00:12:15] And now let's, you know, kind of put the past aside and say, okay, what's the best way to move forward? And that's where you get to the point. I'm saying, okay, you know, what is your current pain? How bad is it? Because if you can live with it another year or two, get another year or two out of that car, that dishwasher.

[00:12:31] Sure. Maybe it's worth doing that. Um, but if the pain is so bad where you're like, this is holding us back, we're not able to add new products. We're not hitting our revenue numbers, our conversion rates, not where we want it to be. That's a really good sign that if you step back and look, the cost of replacing the platform could be very quickly offset by either maintenance savings or by increasing your revenue pretty quickly.

[00:12:54] DARIN NEWBOLD: Well, and that's, that's one of the things to really think about is that, uh, getting past what you said is the pain and, and looking at that and looking at the cost and focusing on that and being able to then really put into numbers and the realization of what is that ROI and what is that difference?

[00:13:13] And, and yes, it can be hard. It's like nobody has a perfect replatform, you're going to suddenly sell 20, 50 percent more, but there are a lot of good information that's going to say, Their success there virtually every time. And it does make an impact. And like you said, even just looking at maintenance cost that alone. Go ahead.

[00:13:36] JOSHUA WARREN: I was going to say the fun thing is, and one thing I would recommend, you know, looking at the pain, looking at the ROI, um, but also get a second opinion.

[00:13:45] I found myself recently in a situation where I'm giving a third opinion because the first and second opinion did not agree. And that's something I'm more than happy to do. Like I said, I, I hate it when merchants find themselves in situations like this. So that's why I do those. Free e commerce problem solving sessions.

[00:14:01] Um, so definitely whether it's me or someone else, find an independent expert to come in and just look at the situation because your existing agency is obviously going to have some thoughts and motivations and then you yourself, just because this is the site that you're working with every day. You may be a little too close to the situation.

[00:14:22] It can help to have a third party come in. but then also, um, when I come in and I look at these things, it's not always, oh, you need to replace the whole thing. Like that's the case of this client that we were talking about earlier, but there's been some people I've talked to recently where it's okay, you need to replace your front end.

[00:14:39] And if you're on a platform that makes composable commerce or headless simple, um, Then that's actually a pretty doable thing. or it could be, okay, you're running on a platform that has some really good extensions for performance that you just haven't installed yet. So sometimes it's not rip and replace the whole thing.

[00:14:57] Sometimes it's focus on just the front end or just the back end or just an integration. Um, and that's again where. Getting that second opinion can really help because I think there's, there's a lot of agencies out there that if they can come in and tell you, yeah, you should spend a quarter of a million dollars with us to rebuild this whole thing.

[00:15:14] They're going to say that, whether it's the best way to a positive ROI or not.

[00:15:19] DARIN NEWBOLD: Well, and one of the things that I know we've found in, in approaching clients now is instead of coming in with that, Hey, it's going to be 250, 000, we got to rip and replace, really evaluating and coming in with, with three solid options that can build upon each other so that You know, you kind of have that small, medium and large, if you will, options to, to go forward with.

[00:15:42] So you're not having to maybe bite off on an entire replatform. You can kind of phase your way into it.

[00:15:49] JOSHUA WARREN: Definitely. And that's something even where, um, I think the word replatform has become almost a bad word in our industry and no one wants to use it. And, and, I could see even the whole concept of replatform. And as more people move towards composable commerce, I think replatforming may pretty much go away and it might be more just updating your tech stack and saying, okay, this piece isn't serving us as well as it used to, we're going to remove it and replace it with something else and not this wholesale,

[00:16:19] let's move everything and change everything kind of all at once. 

[00:16:23] DARIN NEWBOLD: and where you can and the way things are becoming composable, basically being able to say, well, guys, let's create this phased approach of, hey, this portion of the tech stack, you know, here in the, in the spring is going to be changed.

[00:16:35] And then in the winter, we'll change tech stack part two. And through this, over a course of a year, we've suddenly. Now have a somewhat of a new platform and we're really hitting all the numbers we 

[00:16:46] JOSHUA WARREN: And that actually reminds me of an example. Um, I recently was talking to the new GM of Butter CMS and they are a headless CMS and they're exploring some different things around e commerce and have a number of e commerce clients. But it got me to realize that they're positioning themselves and creating this world where you could change out.

[00:17:08] from Shopify to WooCommerce to Magento or any combination of that without having to redo all your content. Because if you're using Butter CMS or another headless CMS, all your content is over there. It doesn't really matter as much what the e commerce platform piece is because yeah. Yeah. So it's, it's a brave new world that's coming in the next couple of years for sure.

[00:17:31] DARIN NEWBOLD: sure. This is way, way, way cool. All right. Well, Hey, as we put a wrapper on this, uh, awesome episode about, uh, looking at the long term success and rethinking, rethinking of your e commerce platform, we definitely talked about some challenges with quick fixes, watching out for those, recognizing the signs of when it's time, those high maintenance costs.

[00:17:51] And performance, performance, performance is huge. We shared a real world example that we, uh, we even worked with and we understand and we, we want to recognize, Hey, this is a hard decision. It's not something that you just go into quickly, but we recognize that a lot of times it needs to be done and we're happy to help.

[00:18:08] And Josh, why don't you share kind of where best people can get ahold of you so that. They can get your help.

[00:18:14] JOSHUA WARREN: Yeah.

[00:18:14] So if you go to LinkedIn search for Joshua Warren, you will find a ton of Joshua Warren's. I have, I think the world's most common name, but find the one that mentions e commerce and adoption in their, um, byline or with the creativity gold background behind me. And right there on my profile, I have a link that says book an appointment and you can click through to that to book a free 30 minute e commerce problem solving session.

[00:18:37] DARIN NEWBOLD: Outstanding. Well, definitely look up Josh Warren, Joshua Warren on LinkedIn.

[00:18:43] And, uh, as always, we appreciate it. We want to hear from you, hear about your challenges. Hey, tell us some crazy, awesome story about your replatforming experience, and we'd love to share it here on Commerce Today. With that, as always, we appreciate your time. Look forward to seeing you next time, and until then, take care. 

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