Substantial growth in your business is exciting, but scaling that growth usually means you have to make some difficult decisions. One of these choices is whether to build up your current eCommerce website or upgrade to one that grows more effectively alongside you.

Magento Open Source (formerly Community Edition) is often a starting point for smaller businesses on the Magento platform, and success with the product could mean you’re ready for a move to Magento Commerce (formerly Enterprise Edition).

While we recommend you consult a Magento Partner before making your final decision, here are our 6 signs that your business can benefit from upgrading to the enterprise product:

1. VISITORS ARE STRESSING YOUR CURRENT WEBSITE

When you gain popularity, it’s normal for the increasing number of simultaneous visitors to push the limits of your website. However, it’s important to remember that a poor experience—whether it is slow performance, broken pages, or a crash caused by too much traffic—can damage your reputation in the eyes of potential customers. Because of this, you need to be sure to increase your bandwidth or upgrade your website before the visitor count becomes too high for your systems to handle properly.

Magento Commerce’s enhanced caching and databasing capabilities can help your business operate more efficiently in serving your increasing number of customers. It also gives you exclusive options, such as cloud hosting, to deliver extra muscle during high-traffic times.

2. CONVERSION RATES HAVE PLATEAUED

A telling way to measure the success and effectiveness of your website is the conversion rate. A high rate is a strong sign that you’re marketing to the proper audience, have the right products, and are selling at a reasonable price. However, if you’re operating on Magento Open Source, your store still isn’t using Magento’s best conversion-driving features, which are available to Magento Commerce customers.

Magento Commerce delivers improved performance for you to retain more visitors once they reach your site. It also offers you more opportunities to entice customer purchases and increase the order value of your transactions. Some of the enhanced features include:

• Ability to create segmented marketing messages and storefronts
• Gift wrapping options
• Built-in gift card functionality
• Tailored cross-sells and up-sells
• Access to 100+ promotion types

3. You’re Ready To Serve New Markets

Reaching a point of growth at which you can introduce new products or start selling to new customers in new markets is a milestone for any business. However, it is important that your eCommerce foundation is built to support these initiatives and help get them off the ground.

Whether your expansion is from B2B to B2C, introducing a new vertical, or jumping into a new geographic area, Magento Commerce has the capabilities to serve as the backbone for your next move. Multi-site capabilities allow you to build different webpages and stores for different subsets of customers, so you can showcase and sell the appropriate products to the right visitors as soon as you launch your new offering.

4. ON-PAGE CONTENT ISN’T DRIVING SALES

It makes sense for a growing Magento merchant to upgrade to Magento Commerce, but in other cases, Magento Commerce features can catalyze growth for those that are struggling. Some of the features that can help businesses better connect with and sell to customers are those related to website content and presentation.

With Magento Commerce’s modular content, preview, staging, and scheduling tools, you can update your layouts and designs without the help of a developer. Further, Magento Commerce’s automated segmentation functionality helps you identify which customers are looking for which items and from where they’re looking. You can use this information to build pages tailored to these segments, using different imagery, content, and strategies to most effectively sell your products.

5. Fulfillment is Becoming a Challenge

An increase in customers and orders can lead to a number of fulfillment challenges, and you need to be prepared to conquer them all. It is important to forecast customer demand and the load placed on your store before your fulfillment chain is pushed beyond its limit in the live eCommerce environment.

While many fulfillment challenges reside outside of Magento (such as warehousing, carriers, and staffing), you need to prepare your systems to handle the increased capacity and push orders to internal and external fulfillment modules. A few features from Magento Commerce that can help you accommodate the increased demand for more orders, customers, and products include:

• Improved database support – Create a faster, more productive environment, both on the front and back ends with Magento’s multiple databases.
• Streamlined admin experience – Manage orders, customers, and workflows more effectively from the upgraded Magento admin interface.
• Customer-initiated returns – Make returns easier. By allowing customers to initiate their own returns, you free up administrative time and reduce costs.
• Broadened Magento Marketplace – Access Marketplace extensions that are only available to merchants operating on Magento Commerce.

6. KPIs are dropping

One frustrating situation you can encounter is when all internal factors remain constant, but your business goes from successful to struggling in a relatively short period of time. In a rapidly changing eCommerce environment, if your business isn’t implementing new technologies, you could be surpassed as customers migrate toward competitors that offer lower prices, faster shipping, better customer service, and personalized user experiences.

While we generally recommend a new site be built every two to three years to stay relevant with the latest consumer demands, you should constantly tweak your website and processes as the market changes. Aside from new features and improved customer experiences, Magento Commerce can help your website draw and retain more customers with personalized offers, faster load times, and improved security.