Microsoft Certified Partner Chimes In ECommerce Platform Evaluation Criteria Enterprise eCommerce platforms are a key component for driving process automation and increasing market share. Organizations from family businesses to mid-large organizations can rapidly grow market share with Clarity's eCommerce tools. Through Clarity's deep analysis of the market's different available solutions, Clarity has culled the list of enterprise eCommerce solutions down to a select list of vendors. In this article, we'll highlight the top Dynamics ERP and CRM-friendly eCommerce evaluation criteria. Find a Vendor That Does Both Top 5 Criteria for eCommerce Platform Evaluation Integration Middleware Platform Enterprise eCommerce hinges on secure and seamless integration with internal data sources. Two-way, SSL, and authentication-secured data exchange between the external web and mobile presence to the internal presence is critical. Certified experience with Microsoft Dynamics integrations and eCommerce is a must. Business efficiency and process automation experience is what you're trying to achieve so ask them to "show" you how and what they've done for their other customers. Features & Completeness Although many platforms boast the feature set needed for an "off-the-shelf" or "turn-key" solution it's prudent to ensure the features work as expected with as little customization as possible. That opens you up to quite a few solutions, however, you're not done there. Now that you've got a list of features you need today, think about all of the changes (i.e. growth, attrition, acquisition, mergers, etc.) that your company may go through over the next 1, 2, and 5 years. Does the chosen "product" allow for, and is designed for full customization? Is it extensible? Does it have a well-documented API included in your license? Inbound Marketing, SEO considerations, Reporting, and Analytics/Business Intelligence Although each of these could have its own full segments of evaluation, we're effectively looking at the level of completeness of the solution by itself without supplemental / 3rd party marketing and reporting resources. Does the solution automatically create your product sitemap XML file? What about category landing pages and category sitemap XML file creation? Is the solution built with SEO and designed to help drive traffic and conversions? This will be more important for those D2C, B2C, and some B2B sites. Responsive & Mobile Friendly A forward-looking enterprise eCommerce platform will keep up with the ongoing rise of mobile eCommerce (mobile online purchases surpassed desktop shopping back in 2015). As more and more potential clients access your platform with portable devices, it is essential that the platform and website are responsive to mobile devices. Make sure that your developer and platform understand and provide mobile responsive templates out of the box. Check their technology stack and see how outdated it is. Are they using Bootstrap 4, Angular, HTML5, CSS3? Or are they still on older tech stacks? Security, Compliance, Performance & Validation A mature platform is typically well-vetted for security, performance, and common validation of data input-output. We confirm the level of fullness for each of these items. Does the vendor have experience with or provide penetration testing, performance and load-balance testing, HIPAA compliance, PCI DSS compliance, WordPress ADA compliance, WCAG, and more? With the ever-increasing accessibility regulations, you better consider all these now, before you're forced to and have to play catch up to your competitors. Get a leg up, get ahead of them with a developer, like Clarity, that deals with these types of regulations on a daily basis and can provide you with both consulting, as well as training and doing the work, to get you ahead of the competition.