Running an eCommerce platform is like buying a sports car and going racing

I spent this past weekend at Road America watching highly competitive GT La Mans and Prototype class race cars wind through one of America’s storied road tracks. Watching all the various aspects of the preparation and race got me thinking how similar the entire business is to that of eCommerce engines. I believe that is why I enjoy both as competitive sports. Yes, I consider eCommerce to be competitive and also a sport. Read on to understand what I mean.

For years I have used the analogy of race car and eCommerce platforms. If you haven’t thought of things this way, then it may be why you don’t have the edge over your competitors or the fact that you are not winning the race. I said race and yes that refers to eCommerce being a competitive sport. You have competitors looking to beat you and put you out of business every day. I just attended the IMSA International Challenge at Road America. The field of competitors was 35 drivers in various Daytona Prototype, GT Daytona and GT Le Mans cars. Keep in mind that all these cars, teams and drivers are professionals at the highest level. Yet they can finish 4 miles or 2 minutes apart.

The difference between the winner and loser was an average lap speed of 124mph vs 110 mph or fastest lap time of 2.10 minutes vs 2.08. Look at the videos below to understand the gap between cars and decide which position you see your business in. The platform of cars and engines in the GT series was Audi R8, Ferrari 488 GT3, Lamborghini Huracán GT3, Corvette C7R, Porsche 911 GT3 R, BWM M6 GT3, Acura NSX, Lexus RC. Many cars to choose from, but what makes one team win with more success than the other? The Ford GT team won back to back titles and finished in the top 3 the last three races. It’s very similar to the eCommerce team and engine within your online business. Are you set up to win the checkered flag or compete consistently? If not, then learn why.

Ownership Team

It all starts with the ownership team. Do you have the right leadership team and financial support to win? Meaning are you set up for success? There is a reason that teams like Team Penske, Andretti, and Gannasi Racing dominate the leader board at every event. They have well-known brands with huge capital investments. At the top they have a very smart group of individuals who know how to win. This means the ability to invest very well and hire the best team managers in the industry. This includes the best drivers, Pit Crew Chief, engineers, mechanics, fastest pit crews, and marketing staff. Is you eCommerce team set up in this format. If not, its something to start thinking about as your competitors are seeking strategic partnerships or raising IPO's to get this kind of capital and leadership.

People

The best teams have the best people. It’s that simple. This means the smartest team managers, tech staff, developers, Crew Chief, CTO, CMO, drivers and everyone else on the team. I can’t emphasis it enough. You get what you pay for and you are only as weak as your weakest link. If you want to hire low or pay low, you will finish low in the rankings. If you want to win or be the best, then you need to hire the best and not settle for less. It may be time for your business to have a people revolution to increase productivity output and gain horsepower.

Lap Time vs Time to Load

Racing is a performance business and so is eCommerce. If you haven't caught on so far, its time to do so.  In racing, they measure fastest lap times and average lap speed. In eCommerce we measure Page or Site Speed and Conversion (CVR). Every second of speed equals money. According to KissMetrics and Akamai, your site abandonment increases 5% for every second your pages take to load. That means if your pages take 5 seconds to load, you will lose 25% of your visitors because they refuse to wait.

If you don’t know how fast your eCommerce engine is then you need to visit the Google Page Speed website and test your site for free against your competitors. If you are not above 90 in page speed, then you are losing a lot of customers. This is all part of customer experience and you need to make sure your customers aren’t waiting in line for your pages to load. Just like in racing, spectators don’t show up to follow or transact with the slow 35th car in last place. They follow the fastest challengers battling for top positions.

Racing Car Platform vs eCommerce Platform

There are many options to choose from in terms of race car platforms or eCommerce engines. If performance determines winners and losers, then you should focus on performance. Don't show up to the event in a Ford Festiva or a 121hp Toyota Prius. Racing teams are picking top car platforms and engines from the likes of Lamborghini, Audi, Chevy, McLaren, Ford, Ferrari, Acura, and BMW. If that’s not enough they are tuning these engines to squeeze out 1,000 + hp. You don't have to buy the super car, but show up in something competitive.

Are you running on at least the likes of WooCommerce, Magento, Shopify, Salesforce Demandware, NopCommerce, or BigCommerce? If you are an enterprise size business are you running on Hybris, Oracle, or IBM? If you are driving around in some custom-built software that your local programmer built you then you will have speed and scalability issues down the road.  You will be at the mercy of how fast the developer can keep you current while your competition is scaling with software that is always cutting edge with updated. 

Next focal point is hosting which equals bandwidth, speed and content delivery. If you are not hosting in the cloud with Amazon AWS, Google Cloud or Microsoft Azure then you won’t be able to keep up long term. This is where the fast cars and your competition reside. Especially if you are on some local shared physical server box that 25 other companies also share. When you need bandwidth and speed, you have nothing dedicated and no way to scale. This is your racetrack and straight away. Can you floor it all out or do you have restrictor plates on? The cloud allows you to scale and boost instantaneously upon demand. When the unexpected spike occurs, after your 15 minutes of fame on a viral social media event, your site will simply run out of memory or crash. Great event for your customers who will never return or buy your offering.

Sponsors

Racing has customers and sponsorship brands. Without brands like WeatherTech, Marlboro, Target, Home Depot, and Lowes paying big bucks to slap their decals onto cars, racing teams would struggle to pay the daily bills without winning a race. eCommerce has retail brands and customers aligned with those brands and demographics. It’s also a struggle to cover eCommerce Customer Acquisition Costs without brands providing sponsorship coop to help fund branding and marketing activities online. eCommerce engines need to allow brands to slap decals on their eCommerce platforms and think of eCommerce engines as race cars. 

Pit Crew Chief vs the eCommerce CTO

I believe that eCommerce actually has 2 pit crew chiefs that work together. At least in the environment I have grown up in. This would be the (CTO) Chief Technical Officer as the main Crew Chief and (CMO) Chief Marketing Officer as the secondary. In eCommerce, the CMO now spends more financially on technology than the CTO. I also view the CMO to also be the driver of the eCommerce engine. We will get to that below.

Your CTO better be smart and strategic. Just like the Pit Crew Chief, this individual needs to determine strategy and make very important decisions. They need to over see day to day, current platform today and the road map for the future.

Racing Car Driver vs CMO

In racing you have the driver. The individual who takes the car on the track, tests it out under heavy load and traffic and reports back to the team if they have a winning car. In eCommerce, you have the CMO who takes the eCommerce engine for a ride on the web with consumers. The CMO drives the car fast around the web and pushes a lot of heavy traffic as a stress test. The CMO then measures click thru rates, speed, customer experience and ultimately conversion. If not meeting customer expectations, then the CMO is going to get with the CTO to let them know what needs improvement. 

In racing, brands like to sponsor wining drivers that also have marketability themselves as a brand. In commerce, brands like to Coop and sponsor advertising campaigns with CMO’s who can show them a well working website and results on their investments. 

Web Programmers vs Racing Mechanics

In racing you have mechanics and in eCommerce you have programmers or developers. Who do you want working on your Ferrari? The expert Ferrari engineer and mechanic or the local ASE mechanic that works on general cars. I want the Ferrari mechanic. The same goes for your eCommerce platform. Programmers are valued by testing them on multiple aspects of the development cycle. While many programmers can develop applications, the biggest factor I look at is how much time is focused on debugging their code errors. A good programmer is the smart one that gets it right the first time with little reiterations. In a race there is no room for error and not much time to recover. If the car doesn’t run right then you are out of the race and have to wait until next weekend's event. All the while, dropping in the standings and revenue. Same goes for eCommerce. Hire the best programmers or contract with the best eCommerce platforms that will handle it for you. 

Customers and Spectators

Everyone comes to the races and everyone goes online to shop for products. Are spectators coming to cheer and follow your team? Spectators like to follow the winning race teams, but they also relate to the sponsorship, the likability of the driver and the products being pushed. Do consumers like your brand, your team, your driver, your sponsor and their customer experience? If you are failing to compete in these categories, then they will slowly migrate to your competition. They like your industry just like they enjoy the industry of motor sports. They will simply move on to a competitor that is higher in the rankings then you are. So pay attention to your followers or customers. 

Conclusion

It’s not enough to simply be in the race or just have an online presence because you were told you have to be online. You have to decide if you want to compete or not. If you chose to want to win, then you need to start comparing your business and team to that of a racing team and its cars. Determine your competition and where they are on the track. Where do you want to be in comparison?

You now have some framework to assess your business and decide what you desire to improve upon in order to move up in the standings against your competition.  Keep in mind that there is plenty of room to compete in say the top 5 or top 10, you just don’t want to be in the bottom 2/3 of a field of 35.