Good bones

Katie Evans | Feb 1, 2018

In February 2017, Unbeatable Sale switched its e-commerce platform to SaaS platform WebJaguar Commerce. It took about two months for the retailer to change platforms for its main URL, UnbeatableSale.com, and all 27 sites maintained by the retailer migrated to the new platform within six months. Unbeatable Sale completed the full migration in mid-2017 Fisher says.

Many merchants are opting for commercial e-commerce platforms that are hosted externally

If you are planning to move to a new e-commerce platform, what type of technology are you most likely to choose?

Now the retailer’s in-house staff can easily change an image or a banner “in seconds or minutes” and the platform includes responsive design.

The platform also includes a built-in feature that allows the merchant to manage multiple storefronts, which is essential for Unbeatable Sale’s business model, Fisher says.

The platform also includes a number of other useful features. For instance, there’s a tool that lets shoppers put similar products side by side and compare features. Another feature shows a shopper items she recently viewed at the bottom of the page so when she browses the site she can easily navigate back to something she considered earlier. The search functionality is also more robust than the retailer’s earlier platform. For example, it offers a more faceted search, allowing a shopper to select electronics at the top navigation bar, then further filter to audio, video cameras or televisions, then even further navigate down to television cables or wall mounts.

Since switching e-commerce platforms, sales have increased 10% and average order value has increased as much as 15%, Fisher says. What’s more, WebJaguar made replatforming fairly easy, Fisher says. Unbeatable Sale provided WebJaguar with a data feed of all its products and how they should be laid out, and WebJaguar returned several mock ups of the home page, category pages, search results pages and product pages. Unbeatable Sale employees gave WebJaguar designers feedback on the mock ups and the designers took the suggestions and came back with what Unbeatable Sale was looking for quickly, Fisher says.

Unbeatable Sale evaluated numerous e-commerce platform solutions over two years before selecting WebJaguar and was quoted everywhere from $130,000 upfront and $10,000 per month to fees “in the millions” for some of the higher-end platforms, Fisher says. For WebJaguar, it pays a hosting fee as well as a monthly fee in the low thousands. That price includes support and management. WebJaguar was one of the few vendors that could handle Unbeatable Sales’ massive SKU count without “breaking the bank,” he says.

As e-commerce grows and continues to significantly outpace total retail sales growth, e-commerce platform vendors are capitalizing on the healthy market by creating new technologies and features to sell. While the options can be dizzying for merchants, a broader selection means there’s a better chance of a retailer finding a solid foundation on which to build its online storefront—and with good bones support future growth.