SPIN APE: What buying a guitar can teach you about choosing an eCommerce platform

I’ve got 96 B2B eCommerce platforms on my list. By the time you read this, there will probably be 100+.

Add in the composable services, AI-powered search tools, personalisation engines, and configure-price-quote systems, and the choice becomes overwhelming. Mid-market manufacturers and distributors face a market where limitless options create paralysis rather than opportunity.

The common response is to chase features. In my experience, this approach fails more often than it succeeds.

I saw this constantly when I owned a chain of music shops. Customers would come in asking for spruce tops, humbucking pickups, and 300-watt amps. All features and specs.

They’d come back and buy a “better” guitar each time. Better wood. Better grain. More resonant tone wood. All features are sold to them by instrument manufacturers.

It didn’t make them play any better. The best musicians would walk in, pick up a £125 guitar, and sound better than 90% of the players with a £2,000 Fender US Strat.

I understand the appeal. I own a Martin D35 and a US Fender Strat. I appreciate the craftsmanship and I’ve paid for features I don’t fully use. But I can grow into them. There was still a ceiling when I made those decisions: how much I expected to grow, how much I wanted to spend.

As my brother would say, there’s the question of what car you want to be seen driving or what suit you want to be seen wearing. Sometimes the platform says more about our ambition than our current state. We need something that makes us want to work a bit harder.

Technology is a tool, and code is a language

If you want to tell a good joke, it’ll be funny in any language. The language doesn’t matter. The story does.

The same principle applies to platform selection. Your vision and strategy should determine what tech you use. The platform follows the plan, not the other way around.

When companies let a flashy platform or an overeager IT team dictate direction, they end up feeling like technology is a constant drain. Expensive. Never finished. A source of frustration rather than growth.

This differs from my guitar analogy in one respect: people love their instruments. I don’t think people love their B2B eCommerce platforms, unless they’re developers. And that’s where the developer-led, feature-led decision-making problem originates. They’re not thinking about it functionally.

Feature-first selection creates expensive problems

A piece of technology has features to solve your problems. If you haven’t defined the problem, every feature looks like a shiny, nice-to-have.

This leads to “feature bloat.” Businesses invest in all-in-one solutions and use a fraction of their capabilities. They pay for complexity they don’t need while missing functionality that would actually move the needle.

The pattern repeats across the industry. Teams get caught in “shiny object” syndrome, chasing buzzwords like headless, composable, and AI-driven without a clear plan for how these capabilities serve their specific operation.

SPIN: Define your needs before looking at solutions

SPIN provides the first half of the framework. It forces you to articulate what you actually need before engaging with vendors.

Situation: Analyse your current state. Where is the business today? What’s working? What’s creating friction?

Problem: Pinpoint the core challenge you need to solve. Not symptoms, but root causes that prevent progress.

Impact: Make the consequences clear. What breaks if nothing changes? What opportunities get missed? What’s the business cost of inaction?

Need: Define the required capabilities in terms of outcomes. What does “good” look like when the problem is solved?

This stage keeps the focus on outcomes rather than a wish-list of features. When you’ve defined the need clearly, vendor conversations become productive rather than confusing.

APE: Engage vendors with structure

APE provides the second half. Armed with a clear definition of needs, you can engage solution providers in a structured way.

Align: Match your needs with potential platforms. Does this option solve more of your prioritised problems than that one? Create a direct comparison against your documented requirements.

Propose: Have vendors demonstrate how their product meets your specific needs. This becomes your RFP process, focused on your problems rather than their standard pitch.

Evaluate: Score responses against your original criteria. The question stays focused on which platform makes my business better, not which has the longest feature checklist.

The framework prevents common traps

SPIN APE keeps teams anchored to business problems throughout the selection process.

When vendors present impressive demonstrations, you have documented criteria to measure against. When stakeholders disagree on priorities, you have a shared framework for resolution. When budgets get challenged, you can articulate the business impact of each capability.

The needs-first approach prevents the common trap of buying a platform because of features that never get used. By zeroing in on capabilities that solve your specific pain points, you save cost and avoid unnecessary complexity.

What “good” looks like changes at every stage

SPIN APE works because it forces you to define “good” before evaluating options.

“Good” doesn’t mean perfect. Your first milestone might be getting an initial online ordering system live for a subset of products or customers. Success for that phase might mean 100% of existing customers can log in, see their contract pricing, and place orders successfully. The UX might be basic. That’s acceptable for phase one.

Phase two’s definition of good expands to include advanced search and recommendations. Phase three might add self-service returns or real-time inventory visibility.

By iterating this way, you deliver value sooner and learn along the way. Each phase has clearly defined business outcomes, making it harder for the project to be hijacked by technical enthusiasts pushing architecture that doesn’t serve immediate needs.

The framework shifts power back to the buyer

Without structure, platform selection becomes a vendor-led process. You’re reacting to sales pitches rather than driving the conversation.

SPIN APE reverses this dynamic. You define the problems. You set the criteria. Vendors respond to your requirements rather than presenting their standard demo.

This matters because vendors are incentivised to sell their platform regardless of fit. When you lead with documented needs and clear evaluation criteria, you filter out mismatched options early. The vendors who remain can demonstrate genuine alignment with your operation.

Starting the process

Begin with your internal team before engaging any vendors.

Run workshops to document the current situation. Identify the problems creating friction. Quantify the impact of those problems on revenue, efficiency, and customer experience. Define what success looks like in specific, measurable terms.

This preparation takes time. It feels slower than jumping straight to demos and RFPs. The investment pays back throughout the process. Better preparation means sharper vendor conversations, faster evaluation, and higher confidence in the final decision.

The platform you choose will shape your operation for years. That decision deserves a structured approach.