Solutions
Multi-sites and Multi-stores
Maintaining multiple websites at scale poses significant challenges for businesses, often leading to sprawling complexities and inefficiencies.
Adopting a piece-by-piece approach can drive up development, hosting, and support costs, resulting in complex and inconsistent technical infrastructures that lead to significant inefficiencies and critical compromises. This scenario of mixed technologies commonly arises from aggressive growth strategies, mergers, and acquisitions, or the absence of a cohesive digital strategy.
Organisations frequently find themselves bolting on or acquiring new digital applications, leaving behind redundant legacy systems and accumulating technical debt. This scenario is prevalent across various sectors, including mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, hospitality, and global organisations. However, managing multiple single-instance applications comes with its set of challenges:
Duplicated support, hosting, and maintenance costs
Inconsistent management processes
Lack of consolidated data points and intelligence
Security vulnerabilities due to inconsistent protocols
Conflicting tech stacks and technical debt
Inconsistent customer experiences
In response to these challenges, a multi-site infrastructure emerges as a natural solution. It empowers organisations to establish sustainable, standardised, and scalable technical architectures while granting individual business units the autonomy to tailor experiences to their specific needs.
Below are some benefits:
Financial
Centralised purchasing and licensing agreements.
Reduced overheads, resource utilisation, and training.
Consolidated development and support functions.
Single hosting instance and maintenance framework.
Reduced duplicated spending across business units.
Security
Centralised framework for core updates and patches.
On-time and streamlined updates through network-wide activation.
Automated backups of multi-site networks from a single repository.
Third-party integration management through a single installation.
Isolated hosting instance and environment management.
Single installation for PEN and Stress testing.
Regulated access through centralised user management.
Compliance
Accessibility compliance due to shared frameworks and practices.
Data compliance due to shared processing protocol.
Standardised validation, sanitisation, and escaping of data.
Security compliance due to shared measures and policies.
Enforced best practices network-wide.
Maintenance
A single installation of the core components network-wide.
Single point for development, updates, and deployments.
Shared Plugins, Extensions, and Themes across the network.
Manage multiple applications from a single dashboard.
Centralised UAT and release management procedure.
Consolidated Staging and Production environments and protocol.
Merged Domain and SSL management.
Performance
Brand continuity due to standardised design systems and frameworks.
Shared and controlled digital assets and resources.
Standardised workflows and best practices across distributed teams.
Framework for rapid development and deployment.
Implementation of Structured Content Models.
Optimised for content authoring and delivery.
Single CDN and caching across multi-site networks.
Network distributed design systems.
Shared UX and CRO practices across networks.
Marketing automation and sales enablement at the network level.
While multi-site and multi-store infrastructures offer substantial commercial benefits, they also introduce a single point of failure. Thus, meticulous strategy planning, due diligence, and robust management are imperative.
Time upfront is time well spent. Taking stock and understanding your current digital landscape is critical in building a considered roadmap and multi-site/store strategy.
Audit of existing Technologies
Audit of existing Security Protocols
Audit of existing Data Compliance
Audit of existing Marketing Practices
Audit of existing CRM Infrastructures
Audit of existing CRM Supply Chain
Audit of existing Commercial Arrangements
Audit of existing Costs
Stakeholder Identification
Goal Analysis and Strategic Objectives
KPI and Performance Metrics
Project Feasibility and Roadblock Assessment
System Requirements Specifications (SRS) and Costs
A multi-site/store strategy is often an ongoing concern, so laying the foundations and validating the strategy is critically important and will pay dividends in the long run.
Licensing, Financial Budgeting and Forecasting
Roadmap Planning
Framework Agreements and SoW’s
Multi-site Structure and Information Architecture
Structured Content Strategy and Editorial Processes
User Access, Verification, Permissions, and Management
Data Architecture
CRM Strategy
Implementation Plan and Prioritisation
Development Roadmap and Management
Digital Assets and Shared Resources Planning
Multilingual Strategy
Third-party Integration Strategy
Stakeholder and Expectation Management
Launch Plan and Management
Ensuring the essence of multi-site/store is maintained, and that design assets, language, and best practices are factored in at the network level, developing and implementing solid design systems.
Design Systems and Implementation
UX Practices and Protocol
CRO Practices and Protocol
Low-Fidelity Wireframes and Prototypes
High-Fidelity Visuals and UI Components
User Testing and Validation
Digital Asset Management
Ensuring the right technologies, platforms, and development standards are integral for effective and streamlined management. Planning the degree of separation, component-based development, and management protocol.
Systems and Platforms Strategy
Technical and Breakout Specifications
Agile and Scrum Management
DevOps, Standards, and Practices
Versioning and Source Control Processes
UAT and Release Management
Staging and Deployment Protocols
Page Building and Data Importing
Consolidating the security practices and protocol at the network level, ensuring all websites and applications meet the required standards and constantly remain compliant and secure.
Security Measures and Coding Practices
Third-party integration Validation
Application Security Strategy
PEN Testing
User Access, Types, and Permissions
2-Factor Authentication
Cookie Usage Policies
Single Sign on
GDPR Compliance
Data Mapping, Transfer and Disclosure
Password and Encryption Policy
Containment, Eradication and Recovery Strategy
Content Security Policy (CSP)
User Accessibility and Compliance
Ensuring migration of legacy applications is well considered and scheduled, and that any optimisation practices such as SEO, personalised content, and tracking tags are provisioned for.
SEO Migration Strategy
Internal/External Linking Strategy
PPC Migration Strategy
Email Migration Strategy
CRM Migration Strategy
Conversion and Tracking Migration Strategy
Domain and SSL Migration Strategy
Migration Schedule and Management
Planning adequate hosting environments depending on the severity, ensuring auto-scaling instances, performance, stability, recovery, and security are constantly maintained.
Optimised multi-site Hosting
Page Caching and Content Delivery Network (CDN)
Staging and Production Architectures
Server and Environment Management
Performance and Cost Optimisation
Back-ups and Disaster Recovery
Service Level Agreements and Bug Management
Codebase Patching and Updates
Performance tracking and management, ensuring tracking, tags, and goals are mapped and consolidated into a single platform, building on the basis and essence of multi-site/store configurations.
Conversion and Goal Setting
Conversion Tracking and Optimisation
Google Analytics and Cross-domain Tracking
AB/Multivariate Testing and Optimisation
Ready to streamline your digital presence and enhance efficiency across multiple sites and stores? Contact us now to build robust multi-site and multi-store strategies, from centralised management to optimised performance and enhanced security. Don’t let complexity hold you back – take the first step towards a cohesive, scalable digital ecosystem!