Any time a technical solution is developed, there is a risk of creating technical debt—especially if you are in a rush to go to market. Even sectors that don’t solely focus on building technical products, such as ecommerce, can be greatly impacted. If you are an online retailer with a custom-built storefront, your business is probably feeling the impact of technical debt.
Technical debt is incurred when technical teams make suboptimal choices during development, such as using quick fixes, neglecting code quality, or skipping testing. Many times, these choices are not made intentionally—they are often a symptom of external business pressures like tight deadlines, limited resources, or insufficient planning.
In ecommerce, time to market is everything. The sooner a new product, storefront, checkout experience, or other important capability is launched, the more revenue can be generated. This puts a lot of pressure on technical teams to move fast, even if they are working on complex custom ecommerce solutions.
But when technical teams must deliver under tight deadlines, they don’t get the luxury of choosing the most optimal solution, especially if it adds time or extra cost. But each suboptimal choice creates more technical debt. As technical debt grows, it can show up as slow load times, frequent crashes, security vulnerabilities, and longer development cycles. Choices that once saved time in the short run create complexity that slows everything down in the long run.
In this article, we’ll look at the root causes and overall impact of technical debt in ecommerce platforms. Then we’ll walk through strategies for managing and ultimately reducing technical debt to drive better operational efficiency and overall revenue.
Causes of technical debt in ecommerce
Both custom-built and legacy ecommerce platforms are notorious for accumulating technical debt. A decade ago, building your own ecommerce platform was the only path to delivering a unique brand experience or meeting other very specific technical requirements. Developers of these platforms had full choice in how they built, what coding languages and frameworks they used, how the platform was hosted, and much more.
However, the ecommerce landscape is always evolving, and platforms need to adapt and add new functionality to meet ever-increasing buyer expectations. The challenge is that every new addition to the platform is likely to incur technical debt unless it is extremely carefully managed.
Over time, it’s not hard for custom ecommerce platforms to grow into technological behemoths, with layers of code and customizations that must be updated, integrated, documented, and managed. As complexity increases, so does the likelihood your technical team will be “putting out fires” instead of working strategically. If they are already responsible for maintenance and other ad hoc requests, they will continually be forced to use the fastest ways to get new features and capabilities out the door.
If you’re curious if technical debt is impacting your business, here are some of the warning signs to look out for:
- Suboptimal code choices that now require refactoring or workarounds
- A gap in developer knowledge coupled with poor documentation, especially if technical teams have had personnel changes in the past few years
- Simultaneous development on multiple parts of the tech stack with little time spent on alignment and management
- Outsourced software developers without proper technical leadership and guidance
- Poor technical project management with numerous last-minute changes requested every time something is upgraded or added
- Growing demands on your engineering team to handle too much: platform maintenance, updates, security, new feature development, alongside numerous other requests from across your organization
A custom-built ecommerce platform requires significant, intentional management of technical resources and development processes to avoid technical debt. If maintenance and development of your platform is not managed carefully, the impacts can be significant—ultimately leading to lost revenue and customers.
The impact of technical debt in ecommerce
A 2022 study by McKinsey uncovered the impact of technical debt. They found that 30% of CIOs believed that more than 20% of their budget for new products was diverted to resolving issues caused by technical debt. In a competitive space like ecommerce, being forced to reallocate funds this way can be devastating to growth and profitability.
Crafting company MakerFlo is a great example of how a custom-built website can quickly incur technical debt and impact bottom lines. They started their business with a custom website, but started to run into limitations the minute they tried to grow. As they scaled and innovated, everything they wanted to do required more time and cost from developers. The technical debt they incurred early on started to have a major impact, all the way up to business decisions and bottom lines.
“We had to think about the logistics of how everything would work, how the entire back end would talk to each other—if we implemented this custom code, how it would work with this, this, and that, and how everything would talk. Even to add the simplest thing, the developer would say, ‘It's going to take me 6 months and it's going to cost us $60,000 to get it done.’”
Eventually, MakerFlo addressed their technical debt head-on with a full migration to Shopify, where they rebuilt their entire online presence. And building the new website didn’t take as long as expected—it was created and launched in just a few days. Today, their technical debt is low, they have saved hundreds of thousands of dollars on developer costs, and they can implement new features in under 10 days. Even better, they experienced a 2,400% revenue increase in the year following their migration.
MakerFlo is just one example of how costly technical debt can get. If technical debt starts to manifest as slow load times, bugs, or other issues that impact customer experience, you could lose customers permanently. In a worst-case scenario, development shortcuts or taking too long to apply security patches and fixes could leave your ecommerce tech stack vulnerable to a data breach.
How to manage technical debt in your ecommerce tech stack
If you’re not ready to make a major change to your ecommerce platform yet, there are ways to manage your technical debt. A 2023 survey of CIOs found that technical debt consumes 31% of IT budgets and requires 21% of IT resources to manage, so it’s worth the effort to make any improvements you can.
Successfully managing even some of your technical debt can boost your bottom line. According to Gartner, IT leaders who successfully manage technical debt can achieve at least 50% faster service delivery times to their business.
One way to manage technical debt is to repay it. As with financial debt, you don’t have to repay technical debt all at once. You can identify the critical areas such as security vulnerabilities or performance bottlenecks and address them quickly. Another way to repay technical debt is to improve development processes with better testing and documentation.
To proactively manage technical debt, adopt best practices such as regular code reviews, enforcing code standards, and leveraging continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipelines. Have your team look for tools to automate routine tasks and testing to reduce the accumulation of new technical debt.
Investing in your technical teams is another way to minimize technical debt. Take steps to foster a culture of technical excellence within your business. Encourage your engineers and developers to prioritize quality and maintainability. Make sure they are given the time and resources to do so by avoiding overly aggressive timelines. The technical landscape changes at a breakneck pace, and developers can’t keep current without dedicated time for professional development.
There might be more specific ways to manage technical debt depending on your underlying ecommerce architecture. Any ecommerce process, function, or feature that causes numerous headaches for the teams working on them is a likely source of technical debt.
Strategies for reducing technical debt in ecommerce platforms
There are many ways to tackle technical debt in a custom-built ecommerce solution. Some of these strategies are similar to ones we mentioned earlier, but with more resources directed at them to reduce the overall amount of debt. Here are some key ways to significantly lower your technical debt:
Improve the quality of your code wherever you can
Implementing coding best practices is a crucial step in both managing and reducing technical debt. Dedicate team time to refactoring the most critical parts of your codebase to significantly improve readability, maintainability, and performance. Establish and enforce guidelines for the proper documentation of code, architecture, and deployment procedures. Encourage developers to write clear and concise comments within the code itself.
To prevent the accumulation of technical debt, invest in robust testing strategies, including unit, integration, and end-to-end tests. Implement CI/CD pipelines to automate testing and catch issues early. Research and implement automated testing tools to further reduce and eliminate debt.
Repay technical debt
Repaying technical debt in an ecommerce platform will significantly improve agility and performance, ultimately resulting in a better experience for your buyers. That’s why it is critical to prioritize technical debt on product roadmaps and pay it down in a timely manner.
To do this, IT teams will need dedicated time and resources to address technical debt. For a custom ecommerce platform, this could mean upgrading to a newer version of a framework, optimizing database queries, or implementing a robust caching system.
Projects should never be considered complete until technical debt is mitigated. Don’t rush technical teams with unrealistic deadlines—giving them the time to choose the right approach to avoid technical debt will lead to better outcomes in the long run.
Measure and monitor technical debt
Not all issues that lead to technical debt are immediately apparent. That’s why it is important to track and measure technical debt to gain visibility into potential issues. This can include creating and tracking metrics like code complexity, test coverage, and the number of critical bugs. By regularly reviewing metrics, teams can identify areas where technical debt is accumulating and remediate quickly.
However, you don’t need to track every aspect of technical debt—IT teams should focus on tracking the debt that is fixable. This targeted approach allows teams to prioritize efforts and allocate resources effectively. For example, with a custom ecommerce platform, you might prioritize addressing performance issues that have a significant impact on customer experience and revenue.
To get insights into the overall health of your codebase, IT teams can use code metrics like code coverage, cyclomatic complexity, and SQALE-Rating. These metrics can identify issues including poorly written code, excessive complexity, or lack of testing. By tracking these metrics over time, teams can assess the impact of their efforts and use the data to make better long-term decisions.
Implement and adhere to best practices
A final way to reduce technical debt over the long run is to implement and follow best practices to improve overall code quality. You should establish clear coding standards by defining consistent guidelines for formatting, naming conventions, and modularization. This ensures all of your developers can write clean, maintainable code from the outset.
Improving development project management and code monitoring is another key way to reduce technical debt. Using project management tools like Jira or Trello can help track progress, identify potential bottlenecks, and allocate resources more efficiently.
Even a shift in work culture on your development teams can reduce technical debt. Foster a culture of collective code ownership by encouraging developers to take responsibility for the entire codebase, rather than just their individual contributions. Conducting regular code reviews, incorporating pair programming, and hosting knowledge-sharing sessions are a few ways to cultivate this culture.
Tackle technical debt with a move to Shopify
With any custom-built ecommerce solution, some level of technical debt is inevitable. To keep it from impacting your bottom line, it’s crucial to take steps to manage it effectively. By implementing best practices such as regular code reviews, code refactoring, and automated testing, you can reduce the impact of technical debt on your bottom line.
With Shopify, you can make an even more strategic move to eliminate technical debt permanently. By building with Shopify, you get to leave the complex infrastructure management, security updates, continual performance optimization, and platform maintenance to our in-house teams. When your teams don’t have to do the basic maintenance to “keep the lights on,” they are free to focus on what truly matters: innovative features, exceptional customer experiences, and strategic growth.
Managing coding teams to keep a platform running won’t drive your bottom line, especially in ecommerce. Even if you have a bold, unique brand vision, you can still innovate while eliminating the technical debt that can impede revenue. Buyer expectations are growing and evolving every day, and a partnership with Shopify will let you invest your time and resources in delivering customer experiences that drive new business and long-term loyalty.
Technical debt FAQ
What is meant by technical debt?
Technical debt is the result of technical teams taking shortcuts or making compromises in the development and creation of technical solutions, including ecommerce platforms and storefronts. Technical debt is incurred when a quick, but suboptimal decision is made to save time or resources in the short run. In the long run, these decisions can lead to increased maintenance costs, security vulnerabilities, slower development times, performance issues, and even system failures. It is referred to as debt because the longer it is not addressed, the greater the cost to remediate and “pay it down.”
How do you reduce technical debt in Scrum?
To reduce technical debt in Scrum when developing ecommerce platforms and solutions, prioritize code quality and maintainability. Dedicate specific sprint capacity for refactoring existing code, focusing on areas that will have the most significant impact on future development. Ensure developers write clean and well-tested code for new features, conduct regular code reviews, and balance debt-reducing activities—like improving website performance and enhancing security measures—with the ongoing work of delivering new products and features.
How to pay down technical debt?
To pay down technical debt in a custom ecommerce solution, focus on improving code quality and maintainability. Allocate time for developers to refactor legacy and poorly written code and implement best practices for clean, well-tested code in future projects. Foster a culture of codebase ownership, conduct regular code reviews, and consider migrating to a modern platform like Shopify. Shopify offers a robust, scalable, and secure platform with dedicated teams for updates and maintenance, allowing your technical teams to focus on high-value tasks for your business.
How can technical debt be reduced?
To reduce technical debt in custom ecommerce solutions, focus on modernization and strategic refactoring. Provide IT teams with the time and resources to improve high-impact areas of the codebase, including performance, security, and future development. Avoid overly rushed deadlines and allocate time for refactoring, writing clean code, and conducting code reviews. Consider permanently reducing technical debt by migrating to a modern, scalable platform like Shopify, which eliminates the need for extensive in-house development and maintenance for core ecommerce functions.
