Enhance the online shopping experience with the best E-commerce platform for your online business
The “right” E-commerce platform is actually quite deceptive considering that what may be right for your online business is not a template right for all online businesses. So, while there is a list of five E-commerce platforms that we will review via this article, the more important deliberation is to be able to identify and then execute on the platform that may be best for your E-commerce store and website. The parameters to select or even review, as we will be doing below, E-commerce platforms depend largely on a few factors. It is an interesting read to go through these guidelines since shifting from a storefront to an online platform can be a little daunting otherwise.
The thing that most entrepreneurs and small business owners will first look at of course is the pricing and the payment plans of the various different platforms which can be used in the industry. Integration obstacles or should we say the lack of them is another exciting parameter that will drive you specifically towards one program while distancing you from the other alternatives.
SEO is a huge medium to promote an E-commerce business which means that your platform of choice needs to be SEO friendly and inviting so that marketing the business becomes easy and consistent. With over half the population of Americans making E-commerce the future thanks to cellphones and handheld devices, it is imperative that your E-commerce platform is also mobile-friendly in its integration.
Another key consideration is to be able to have the platform backed up with the right kind and amount of customer service. E-commerce and its many veracities maybe a little more than what you can handle so having an expert on call to deal with customer queries and complaints is always an important and necessary feature to be equipped with. Security of course is another huge concern because no one likes to enter their credit and bank card details on a website that may be easily hackable or accessible to the dark web. And finally, there is the small matter of scalability that is also very crucial if you and your online business are in the game over a long-term period. A platform that will easily and seamlessly help you scale will automatically become a platform of choice.
Shopify on their website states that selling online with your own E-commerce website has never been easier, faster, or more scalable allowing you to impress your customers with a beautiful store. This may sound like a tall claim, but it seems also to be a legitimate claim at the same time. Through its many template options, Shopify allows you to set up your E-commerce store in a matter of minutes. There are three major factors that make Shopify a favorite for E-commerce business owners and users not just in the USA but across the globe.
It has a drag-and-drop store builder that allows you to choose the look of your E-commerce store from over 70 professional and free store themes. Once you have chosen the theme and the template, it further allows you to customize colors, imagery, and fonts with complete freedom and ease. What this essentially means is that even if your design skills are poor, you do not need to outsource the designing part to a professional which helps you save on a considerable cost.
Shopify supports over 100 plus external payment gateways and claims that sellers get paid quickly and securely once a purchase has taken place on their E-commerce platform. Judging by the number of reviews and testimonials that the website seems to have stacked up, there seems to be much truth to this claim-making this a happy choice for E-commerce small businesses who are just taking the plunge towards the online spectrum. Shopify Payments also allows credit cards instantly and without third-party accounts.
Considering how much of a part the cell phone and other handheld devices play in generating business for E-commerce stores, Shopify has made their themes and templates fully responsive towards mobile shopping. Consistency while shopping online is a huge attraction to customers and this gives them that much needed and wanted consistency no matter how and from where they are browsing on your online store.
Apart from these three major features Shopify also has other interesting tricks up its sleeve to help with the overall E-commerce process. It gives you a holistic and comprehensive dashboard that allows you to innovate and make constant tweaks to the backend to suit your sales. It also has built-in SEO features that help your online business rank higher on search engine pages boosting your chances of a sale. From drop shipping to social media marketing, the Shopify App Store also has over 4,100 apps to help you start, manage, and grow your business.
WooCommerce is a customizable, open-source E-commerce platform built on WordPress. This allows you to build exactly the kind of website that you are looking for as a nascent but eager online entrepreneur. WooCommerce’s intelligent integration with WordPress also means that you can have an online store set up in literally minutes just by adding its plugin to any site that has been developed using WordPress. This plugin embedded on any WordPress site allows you a range of starting features such as secure payments, configurable shipping options, customizable templates, and other such goodies for free.
WooCommerce like many other good and reliable online platforms allows itself to be completely customizable to suit the look, feel, tonality, and design language of your store, exactly how you want it to be. It also makes it an easy and seamless process to add more features to your store by adding and updating official extensions from the WooCommerce Marketplace. These extensions help extend the functionality of your E-commerce store as well.
WooCommerce is also considered to be a developer-friendly platform, too. Thanks to it being built with a REST API, WooCommerce online marketplaces are scalable and have the ability to integrate with virtually any possible E-commerce related service. This high level of customization means that you can design even the most complex of E-commerce online stores from scratch. In addition, you can make extensions and scalable options as and when you require making them seamlessly, or simply add products and services to your WordPress website whenever you need to and in whatever quantity you need to.
Being on the WooCommerce platform also helps you learn considerably from what a global audience is doing. They boast of 80 plus virtual meetups worldwide bringing this wealth of knowledge and a treasure trove of online resources available at your disposal to use and adapt to optimize your E-commerce store experience. Their customer support extends to over 58 countries and their team of engineers and experts are available across multiple time zones as well to be able to help you with any query or complaint that you may have.
PrestaShop is considered to be the software that adapts to all E-commerce projects across the spectrum. It is an open-source E-commerce solution used worldwide and it has been developed in collaboration with a community of more than one million users and contributors from across the globe. PrestaShop is based on the Symfony framework and includes more than 600 features, and 5,000 pus modules and themes making it an ideal E-commerce platform for online businesses that need a powerful tool that is also highly customizable to fit their brand language and other specifications.
By virtue of it being an open-sourced platform Open Source both users and developers are guaranteed a secure, scalable, flexible, and sustainable solution for all their E-commerce projects. A favorite of over 300,000 E-commerce entrepreneurs and online business owners, PrestaShop has a customizable range of over a few thousand ready-made themes and platforms from around the world at your disposal to create the online store of your choosing and specification.
The PrestaShop backend and customer service are incredibly sound and consistent and it is also available in 75 languages. This means that PrestaShop will help your E-commerce business start, sustain, and succeed irrespective of your customers’ country or currency. This adds an enormous advantage to your business because it not only opens up windows of additional opportunity, it also facilitates an easy and seamless transactional experience for your end-users and customers.
PrestaShop Add-ons is the official PrestaShop marketplace with easy and upfront access to modules, themes, and services that allow you to customize and roll out your PrestaShop E-commerce site according to your needs. The products on PrestaShop Add-ons are developed by PrestaShop and its developer community with over 5,000 plus modules, graphic themes, and services that are 100% secure towards your purchases and personal data and appear directly only to your back-office dashboard so as to ensure complete control and additional security.
Magento comes to you from the house of Adobe, the makers of globally acknowledged and loved software like PDF, Photoshop, Illustrator, In-Design, and more. This incredible brand legacy makes Magento a player to be reckoned with in the E-commerce platform spectrum and one which is equipped and designed to make an immediate, positive, and customizable impact on how your E-commerce store eventually looks and operates.
Magento allows you as the E-commerce business owner to create engaging, easily, and happily shoppable experiences with Magento Commerce. This touted next-generation technology, coupled with a global partner ecosystem, and a fully equipped and extendable extensions marketplace is a potent combination which according to the brand is assured to breathe life into your online business.
Magento brings with it the years of expertise of other Adobe software to help you create the content of your choice with an easy-to-use interface. This not only allows for an easy updating of pages; it also significantly quickens the process. It also allows for instant and radical personalization to suit your many different specific customer segments should you have them for your E-commerce marketplace. This helps deliver a best-in-class shopping experience without the need for developer support.
The user experience that Magento Commerce offers is also incredibly seamless. One can automatically display products by price, color, release date, and more or then take manual control for special items. Due to the high level of customization possible, Magento Commerce also gives your customers several buying and fulfillment anywhere including the PC, POS device, cell phone, or tablet. A unique feature of Magento is that it enables you to serve B2C and B2B customers on just one platform. You can manage quotes with the same ease as orders and use the same branding across all your sites without the hassle of multiple instances.
BigCommerce as the name suggests is an online E-commerce platform that helps you with everything you need to start, run, and grow your online business. It is trusted by over 60,000 online businesses across the globe and has a multitude of responsive and customizable themes that drive sales across different and vivid E-commerce stores and online marketplaces.
BigCommerce can simplify E-commerce management by eradicating finally the guesswork out of managing your new or growing online business. It helps you improve your planning of back end strategy thanks to the many inventory management tools that it comes equipped with. It also helps you craft personalized shopping experiences with different customer groups and profiles and also allows you to choose from leading shipping and payment providers to find your best-fit solutions, without the worry of delays and penalties.
BigCommerce also allows you to drive more online traffic towards your E-commerce marketplace. You can now generate a buzz, find your target customers, and drive more site traffic by boosting SEO strategies with customizable URLs and robot.txt access, or by using Plug-in POS integrations to leading providers like Square and Clover and by selling more with channel integrations like Amazon, eBay, and Facebook.
In conclusion, we understand that starting a new business is challenging, and moving away from the traditional storefront to an online version can be even more daunting considering the world of options ready and waiting at your disposal even before you make your first sale. This is why choosing an E-commerce platform is so difficult for many business owners and yet such an important and necessary step. Measured and well thought of decision in this regard could have you on your way to astounding online business success with the right tools accompanying you in that journey towards the top.
AmareSol Global is a digital business consultancy creating innovative change through a team of talented designers, developers, and strategists creating digital experiences for brands and companies around the world. We are continuously fueling growth across constantly changing and advancing digital landscapes, by seeking and formulating newer and better ways to service clientele on a global scale across industries. Look up more about us at www.amaresolglobal.com.