Using Third Party e-Commerce Services – A Cautionary Tale

For those of you using or considering an on demand e-commerce service, here is a true story of what happened to one of my technology product-based clients just this past week during the busy holiday shopping season.

During a routine quality assurance check by my very conscientious team, it was discovered that all of the links from my client’s website pointing to the third party e-commerce service, which he selected prior to coming to work with us, were dead.

Due to an apparent mis-communication the service had been terminated. My client was travelling and didn’t know what had happened. My able staff immediately initiated a stop-gap measure that pointed all the dead links to his contact page with custom “Calls to Action”, which provided clear direction and contact points for orders and customer service, thereby thwarting a near catastrophe during the height of a holiday season.

Herein lays the cautionary tale. On demand ecommerce services are great to get you up and running quickly at a reasonable cost. But you will invest a lot of time and money putting information into a system that

a) isn’t yours and

b) over which you have no true control.

If the system falters, or you decide to discontinue it, you will lose all of your live product pages. Immediately upon termination of the service your product web pages will no longer be available to make sales or acquire leads. Often, you will be provided with a rather large file of product data that offers you no immediate sales potential.

On demand services have their value, it’s true. However, when you look down your sales path, as you achieve success nothing can take the place of your own custom ecommerce, or even comprehensive business management solution that offers you

1. full ownership
2. complete control
3. branding and user interface customization
4. flexibility
5. greater functionality
6. expandability as your business needs grow.

This is an especially critical consideration if you market a large number of products or are continuously expanding your product lines.

Ultimately you have to do what makes sense for you. Consider the short term but plan for the long term. If you sell a lot of products, consider the overall costs of investing in a service over which you have no control. Decide at what point the one-size-fits-all no longer fits you.