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In recent years, especially since the pandemic, cloud migration has become the standard. Retail business is not an exception: cloud operations allow online businesses to access tools for automation, optimization, and innovation, as well as reduce costs. Despite some challenges in adopting cloud e-commerce solutions, they offer an array of benefits that businesses cannot miss. In this article, we’ll discuss the components of cloud-based e-commerce, explore its benefits and downsides, and take a look at the trends. Lastly, we’ll offer you an easy-to-use checklist to gauge your own readiness for the cloud.
Cloud-based e-commerce platforms are software that leverages cloud computing and allows retailers to reduce or eliminate their reliance on physical hardware infrastructure. These platforms offer scalability, flexibility, and accessibility that online store owners require to run and grow their businesses. Retailers can utilize cloud environments to set up their shops, host data, execute maintenance and updates, bolster security, and more.
The key features of cloud ecommerce solutions include an entire array of management and administration functions, from website design and product catalog management to secure payment gateways, inventory management, and customer analytics. In addition to the necessary features, cloud platforms enable SEO analysis to help businesses be visible and searchable on sites like Google.
In the past, most online businesses had to establish and run their data locally by investing in physical infrastructure. Instead of delegating the management of cloud solutions to providers like Google Cloud Platform or Amazon Web Services, companies can operate on local servers. While on-premise tools allow for a higher level of control, the funding required to set up the infrastructure is unattainable for smaller organizations. Cloud-based e-commerce democratizes the market, enabling smaller players to build and scale their operations without large upfront investments.
Let’s examine the core components of cloud e-commerce platforms.
The back end is the mind of the platform, storing and running applications, data, and other resources. The back end is in charge of inventory management, cataloging, transaction processing, security features, and more. In a cloud e-commerce platform, the back end can be set up using cloud resources like Amazon S3 for data storage or AWS Lambda for server management. Nowadays, businesses can rely on Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) to access toolkits for dealing with hosting, storage, databases, etc.
Powered by the back end, the front end is what’s seen by the customer. From website design and navigation to various payment and social media integrations, the front end is what drives the customer experience. Organizations can use cloud-based content management systems (CMS) to create, manage, and publish content on their website. They can also opt for custom CMS development to generate a platform that aligns with their goals and needs. Retailers also utilize e-commerce hosting features to safely accept payments and can pair their webpages and apps with social media integrations to boost engagement.
Similarly to on-premise infrastructure, databases in cloud environments help users host their digital assets. However, while traditionally companies were forced to invest money into purchasing expensive hardware and hiring a team to manage the data, cloud computing lowers the barrier of entry. Using cloud solutions, businesses can deal with large volumes of data without upfront costs, while benefiting from data accessibility, process optimization, and data analytics.
In this part, we’ll investigate the business benefits that cloud migration for e-commerce can create for your organization.
Among the key cloud e-commerce benefits is the opportunity to continuously build and roll out new features and updates without disrupting the functionality of the website. With lower latency and advanced disaster recovery plans, cloud e-commerce stores can handle security patches and performance optimization in the background while still running the recent version of the site. Not only does this simplify operations, but it also cuts the unnecessary expenses associated with downtime and legacy systems.
Cloud infrastructure is known for enabling strong computation capabilities, aiding business leaders in unlocking data-driven insights. Using centralized dashboards and analytics tools, users can gather real-time updates, measure KPIs, and generate timely reports. Cloud-based e-commerce platforms provide retailers with a wide range of features for monitoring sales performance, inventory levels, customer data, marketing campaigns, and more. Access to such precise yet vast insights supports companies in growing their businesses, optimizing marketing and sales efforts, and making smarter and more informed decisions.
Businesses virtually never operate in a stable environment, where predictability is easy to calculate. More often than not, organizations have to take into account market fluctuations, economic situations in the country, customer tastes and trends, seasons, and many other aspects. Accommodating these inconsistencies in external circumstances is key to business continuity, customer satisfaction, and increasing sales revenue.
Major cloud providers offer tools to manage the ever-changing conditions, such as load balancers to monitor server health, auto-scaling for optimizing the usage of cloud resources, and automated backups to ensure the integrity of your data.
Features like auto-scaling offer endless opportunities for managing traffic spikes without hindering platform performance. During peak demand periods, organizations can scale up their resources to accommodate the heightened interest, while in the off-season, they can scale down to save on resources. Additionally, a cloud ecommerce platform offers the flexibility of accessing your data from anywhere at any time. This accessibility translates into faster updates, on-the-go product management, and easy remote collaborations.
As already mentioned, cloud e-commerce solutions lower the barrier for smaller organizations by allowing them to opt for a pay-as-you-go model. Instead of investing significant sums of money from day one, businesses can gradually set up the cloud infrastructure, select the needed tools, and scale the resource usage automatically depending on the circumstances. The costs allocated for maintenance of the servers are also eliminated in the cloud, as the provider is the one that manages the infrastructure.
Major cloud providers are equipped with APIs and tools for creating, managing, and growing your online businesses. For example, you can opt for Stripe and PayPal integrations to process payment gateways, rely on Mailchimp for marketing automation, and utilize data analytics tools like Google Analytics to gain insights into your data. Cloud vendors can offer an array of business management systems, like CRM and accounting software, to help you optimize your processes and maximize revenue.
Cloud providers put a large emphasis on cybersecurity, continuously producing new tools and practices to protect their customers’ data. From data encryption and multi-factor authentication to regular updates and compliance with data privacy laws, cloud vendors provide numerous options for bolstering your security. Using machine learning algorithms, cloud security tools can identify fraudulent behavior before the fraud has been committed, saving corporations from financial and reputational losses.
Since cloud migration is a complicated process, some challenges might arise in deployment. Let’s take a closer look at the most common bottlenecks companies run into when moving online stores to the cloud.
Architecture misconfigurations can occur during cloud migration, storage setup, resource selection, and more. While some mistakes can lead to slight delays and issues, others can be catastrophic, resulting in data breaches and snowballing costs. The most egregious misconfigurations are in security measures, posing a serious risk to the entire organization. These can be loose Identity and Access Management (IAM) roles, outdated SSL certificates, or insufficient encryption. To avoid this pitfall, hire cloud architecture experts and cloud consulting support, and perform regular audits to uncover these mistakes before they turn into major problems.
Despite the flexibility and the lack of upfront investments that cloud platforms offer, the pay-as-you-go model requires technical and business expertise to properly utilize. In traditional IT infrastructure, the costs are predictable and transparent, while in the cloud, your monthly bill depends on numerous factors, including traffic, storage space, data transfers, resource usage, etc. Although the cloud does offer significant cost savings, businesses need to be savvy and knowledgeable enough to derive these financial benefits. For example, costs can balloon from forgotten resources running in environments. Without a thought-out cloud cost optimization strategy, your expenses can get out of control.
To this day, many organizations still, at least in part, operate on outdated platforms with monolithic architectures and dependencies on legacy technologies. Migrating these systems to the cloud is extremely challenging, requiring refactoring, re-architecturing, or even rewriting the entire system from scratch. Without addressing technical debt, businesses take their operational inefficiencies to the cloud, making the migration less effective.
Here, we’ll explore a short guide to moving your online shops to the cloud, from establishing business requirements and objectives to post-migration maintenance.
Depending on the reasons for cloud migration, evaluating your business objectives and requirements is essential for meaningful and fruitful transformation. For example, you may want to enhance customer experience, increase sales revenue, or enter a new market. Without concrete and clear goals, it’s impossible to assess the success of your cloud migration strategy. Partnering with an e-commerce development services agency can help define these objectives and improve implementation.
Based on your goals and requirements, select the best cloud e-commerce solution for your business. Pay attention to scalability, customization, and integrations that the system provides, as well as the security standards it upholds. For custom e-commerce development, consider collaborating with an expert agency with the status of a certified AWS, GCP, and/or Azure partner. Your budgetary possibilities also play a role in choosing the best cloud-based e-commerce platform, with different systems providing various pricing models.
Once the optimal cloud services are selected, you can start migrating data to the cloud. How exactly you perform the transition is contingent on your systems, the complexity of your applications, your budget constraints, and other factors. The simplest and cheapest way to move your data to the cloud is rehosting and replatforming, while more complicated projects require refactoring or even rewriting.
After successful data migration, leverage cloud app development expertise to set up integrations that tether your online store to CRM, marketing and sales automation, data analytics tools, and other cloud services. APIs can also help you access additional tools for process automation, shipping and logistics, etc.
Following e-commerce website development tips, take advantage of demos and trial periods to evaluate the platform’s performance and make necessary adjustments. Getting feedback from your user base can also be incredibly crucial for your strategy, allowing you to continuously tailor your online shopping business to accommodate customers. Your security practices should also be regularly assessed to keep up with current hacking methods and bolster your safeguards against them.
The world of e-commerce is constantly evolving to accommodate the changing market and customers and to innovate using the latest technologies. In this part, we’ll try to anticipate how the industry might change in the near future.
Much like in many other industries, AI is expected to have a huge impact on e-commerce. AI in e-commerce can automate cataloging and targeting, provide personalized recommendations based on customer data, and remove bottlenecks in supply chains. AI and machine learning systems can also make the online shopping experience more inclusive by featuring voice search and virtual assistants.
Other cutting-edge technologies like augmented reality and virtual reality (AR/VR) can have the potential to transform the customer experience. Using these systems, customers can virtually try on clothes and makeup or envision their future furnished houses before making the purchasing decision.
Headless commerce works by decoupling the front end and back end, allowing business owners more flexibility in managing their online stores. One of the central trends in cloud-based e-commerce, headless commerce enables retailers to adjust to the ever-changing market a lot faster than previously, and integrate new technologies as quickly as possible. The biggest benefit of this trend is the ability it gives to innovate on the front end without disrupting any operations in the back end.
Amid the looming climate change, more and more companies make a conscious choice for sustainability. Cloud providers, including market leaders like AWS, Azure, and GCP, are already investing in renewable energy and attempting to build carbon-neutral data centers. Optimizing workloads and using serverless architectures is another way to reduce the carbon footprint. As an increasing number of customers begin to consider the company’s sustainability when choosing an e-commerce platform, more organizations invest in carbon-reducing technologies and practices.
Cloud migration is a technically complex and lengthy process that demands careful planning, technological prowess, and industry knowledge. If you’re not sure how ready you are for cloud computing, consider using NIX’s cloud deployment for the e-commerce checklist.
The checklist consists of six phases, from zero to five, each describing essential steps required to take before moving to the next phase. For example, the first phase of the e-commerce cloud deployment checklist is Initiation and Business Goals, featuring questions about primary goals, product development stages, business integrations, and architecture. The next phases entail questions about cloud infrastructure, CI/CD deployment, testing, security, and business readiness.
At the end, you can calculate how prepared your organization is for cloud solutions. Having such a clear and comprehensive overview of what needs to be accomplished is imperative for businesses. Visit NIX’s cloud deployment for e-commerce checklist, leave your contact information, and we’ll get back with personalized tips. Reach out to the NIX team to learn more about our projects and tools, and start your cloud journey together.
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Cloud e-commerce platforms are online tools featuring numerous solutions for retailers. Hosted in the cloud, such solutions can be accessed from anywhere and at any time, offering flexibility. Using cloud-based e-commerce systems, sellers can take advantage of product and inventory management features, secure online transaction processing tools, and customer data to enhance the experience.
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There is no single ideal e-commerce cloud deployment model, as your choice is dependent on the business size, budget, domain, and compliance requirements. Enterprises seeking stringent security and compliance measures will benefit from private cloud, while public cloud is perfect for medium-sized organizations looking to lower costs. Hybrid cloud is the middle ground between the two, combining enhanced privacy with the scalability capabilities of the public cloud. Multi-cloud strategy is more complex and is used by retailers who would like to avoid vendor lock-in.
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Cloud automation tools like auto-scaling are instrumental in managing peak traffic, allowing online stores to handle the spikes without slowing down performance. Additional functions that support e-commerce platforms during unexpected traffic upturn are load balancers that evenly redistribute requests, content delivery networks, and regular health checks.
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