Should My Small Business With Three Employees Use an eCommerce Platform?

To answer the question posed in the title, it helps to put some thoughts down about which activities are currently being done to support commerce actions. Here are some examples of transactions you might find are taking place during a normal business week:

• Keeping a record of products sold, transaction value and how may orders are placed by each customer
• Editing orders by increasing, decreasing, or spitting orders
• Keeping track of customers’ shipping accounts, line of credit and receivables
• Updating financial transactions for your own business needs
• Keeping track of personnel changes; buyers, sales, etc. when customers have personnel changes

The amount of commerce activity and timing is driven in large part by your product and your go-to-market strategy.  Is your product a digital product, or hardware? Are you a B2B or B2C business, or is your offer sold as a SaaS. Given the complexity of products, businesses and variations of business needs there is no magic formula that determines exactly when you “suddenly” need an eCommerce platform, however, below is an outline of various needs taking into account transaction volume, complexity and growth intent. It can give you a sense of the progression of capabilities as you consider where you stand on the business ladder.

Garage Shop (1–5 employees)

Description

• Early-stage, side venture, or pilot
• Low transaction volume (dozens per month)
• Simple product catalog (1–10 SKUs)

Tools

• Manual invoicing
• Payment links (Stripe, PayPal)
• Marketplaces (Etsy, Amazon)

Assessment

• A full eCommerce setup is optional
• Overhead (setup, maintenance, compliance) may outweigh benefits
• Suitable if online sales are exploratory. Digital products or subscriptions benefit immediately due to automation

Small Businesses (5–10 employees)

Description

• Online sales are a core revenue channel
• Growing transaction volume (hundreds per month)
• Need for inventory tracking, tax handling, and order management

Platforms start to make sense

• Cost of manual order handling exceeds platform cost
• Errors in fulfillment or billing begin to scale
• Needed for:
• Automated checkout
• Inventory synchronization
• Basic analytics

Platforms

• Shopify
• WooCommerce
• Squarespace Commerce

Assessment

• This is the most common employee range where adopting an eCommerce platform clearly pays for itself, making it the most common adoption point

Growing Business (11–25 employees)

Description

• Multiple products, channels, or geographies
• Customer support and fulfillment often handled by separate roles
• Marketing and promotions are structured

Platform value

• Integration with:
• Accounting (QuickBooks, NetSuite)
• CRM systems
• Shipping carriers
• Role-based access controls
• Discounting, promotions, subscriptions

Assessment

• An eCommerce platform is no longer optional since integrations become more valuable than raw cost

Mid-Size and Up (26 –100+ employees)

Description

• High order volume
• Complex pricing, B2B and B2C mix
• Compliance, security and uptime are business-critical

Platform characteristics

• Enterprise-grade eCommerce (Shopify Plus, Magento/Adobe Commerce)
• API-first architecture
• Dedicated Development/Operations or IT support

Assessment

• Platform choice is a strategic infrastructure decision. Scaling is vital

Making Your Decision

Odds are pretty good that if you’ve been in business for a few years and have positive cash flow, the thought of looking into eCommerce has crossed your mind. Remember that the implementation of an ecommerce platform takes a while. Waiting too long to commit can have you behind the curve. You’ll be trying to learn the platform while still servicing your current (possibly growing) level of business.  On the other hand if you take on more of an ecommerce implementation than you need too soon, you’ll be paying for a resource that you are not ready to use, yet. Fortunately, most eCommerce platforms understand this conflict and are structured accordingly. Constructed with a tiered implementation, they allow you to add on functionality as more functions are needed and your customer base grows. It’s worthwhile, even at the early stages, to at least educate yourself on a few platforms, so you’ll have a better idea of what an eCommerce package can do for you, so you can move toward an implementation more quickly if called for.

Photo credit: https://unsplash.com/photos/a-shopping-cart-with-shopping-bags-in-it-next-to-a-mobile-phone-cC7eabUFP8Y