Businesses have turned digital for the betterment. Today, it is just a click away from connecting to a business established a thousand miles apart. People prefer doing online shopping as one of the most convenient ways to purchase the commodities they need in their comfort. However, the growing demand for online shopping has placed competition at a rapid-fire stage. Every business is marching the pace to stay connected to its customer base with improved services.
This has summoned improved eCommerce functionalities to reach out to the larger crowd. It is no more a secret that including multiple tactics within the eCommerce platform attracts potential customers leading to growth and development. But at the same time, businesses need to pay extra attention while selecting the right eCommerce platform with an efficient eCommerce development company for their business.
This blog post will draw your attention to the right eCommerce platform selection, so just scroll further.
Why Should You be Worried About the Right eCommerce Platform?
There is no dearth of eCommerce platforms in the market, helping businesses grow in the right direction by managing their operations, processes, websites, sales, marketing, etc. In this race, you cannot turn a blind face by picking a random platform for your business since a platform that suits another business might not fit on your table. Henceforth, it is highly recommended to select a platform that offers advanced tools and software and enables the integration of various processes and features to automate the operations.
Different Types of eCommerce Platforms
Open-source eCommerce platforms- This type consists of a cloud or on-premise hosting environment, wherein manual intervention is required. With this platform, users can modify the different aspects of the codes, and it is the best fit for companies having robust IT infrastructure to control the eCommerce environment. Such a platform would let the user organization incorporate manual patches and receive a release of the update from the eCommerce platform provider. Although, integrating this very platform requires more technical expertise and is expensive to be managed.
SaaS eCommerce platform is more of a tailor-made option for organizations, eliminating the complexity of running a business. In this platform, user organizations only need to rent out the available platform fitting their business needs. Compared to others, this platform is cheaper and easier to incorporate.
It enables the organization to manage different tasks like product updates, PCI compliance, hosting, security, and other software-related tasks.
Read More: The 8 Biggest Trends That Will Transform eCommerce Industry
Headless Commerce Platform
This platform allows organizations to use a cloud environment for hosting and utilizes different applications such as design experience platform (DXP) like Adobe experience manager, Content management system (CMS) like Drupal or WordPress, etc. It also gives the option of a plugin for the decoupled eCommerce shopping cart solution. One of the most significant advantages that come along with this platform is that it supports go-to-market features and reduces the total cost of ownership. It becomes easy to implement APIs, decoupled technologies, plugins, etc., along with some of the decoupled solutions that work in coordination, such as CMS slowing building pages and blogging, ERP allowing data collection, and Email Service Provider, POS for covering the payment processor, and many more.
It is very obvious to get puzzled by the available options, and you might end up thinking about which one is the right fit for your business.
Fret not; CMARIX- Magento Development Company is here to help you; just keep scrolling further to understand the steps required to select the right platform for your eCommerce stores.
What Should all be Considered Before Selecting the Right eCommerce Platform?
Cost of Ownership
This is one of the most important parts to be considered while selecting the eCommerce platform. You should know what all types of fees and processing costs it involves. Apart from the budget constraints, you must check the hosting cost, contract duration, maintenance charges, and other hidden costs.
Plugins
Although there is not just one but multiple plugins that exist to transform the platform into a high-performing portal, below are some of the plugins that must be considered while selecting the eCommerce platform.
Payment and Shipping
This feature needs to be as accurate and straightforward as possible, so customers can track their order and get any required shipping and payment details.
Third-Party Tools
The eCommerce platforms must have the option to integrate with the different tools like marketing automation tools, ERPs, CRMs, etc. This would help evaluate the performance and integrate the required functionalities in the platform on the go.
Themes and User Experience
People come on eCommerce platforms to access the convenience and comfort of shopping. This means every bit of their time on this platform must ooze out ease. There must be a careful consideration of themes as some are free while others are chargeable. You need to cross-verify which features come along with the selected theme and what are the options for customization that can meet your customers’ requirements.
Round the Clock Support
It is eventually a task for the eCommerce platforms to check on their customers’ queries, concerns, and/or any help. Assisting customers with human support and automated bots is the best combination. This will help staff to stay productive with other tasks on their hands. Meanwhile, the bots can handle the queries and concerns powered by AI to give a human-like experience.
Consider Speed and Scalability.
An eCommerce platform needs to be super fast, so customers don’t have to wait for the features to upload. And his speed consistency should be there throughout the business growth, also, during the peak traffic time, the platform must be able to handle the customers without hindering their customer experience.
ecurity Should not be Compromised.
The online vulnerability platforms possess due to the growing risk of cyber-crimes is a reality and a concern to deal with. It is highly significant for eCommerce platforms to consider security options to monitor fraud protection and DDoS attacks to evade such privacy issues.
Supports Multiple Payment Gateways
An eCommerce platform’s major focus should be on building stronger and longer customer relationships. And giving them the convenience of payment is one of the major goals to be achieved. Customers don’t need to be hassled by rigid payment methods, but there need to be multiple ways to make the payment. This enables customers to move ahead with the safest yet most convenient methods to make a purchase.
A Quick Guide of Best eCommerce Platforms
BigCommerce
Pros | Cons |
Excels in multi-channel selling | Speed is inconsistent |
Strong SEO | High volume stores are expensive |
Flexible and scalable | Entry plan doesn’t support cart abandonment |
Incredible theme designs | Selling/ upselling is not strong |
Magento
Pros | Cons |
Supports 1-click selling with multiple features | Requires larger space and memory |
Scalable and highly customizable | Themes are expensive |
SEO friendly and Certified Magento developers | Requires development skills |
Flexible to host various software | Virtual support is missing |
WooCommerce
Pros | Cons |
SEO friendly | Incorporating hosting is costly |
Plenty of integrations | Troubleshooting is not easy |
Highly customizable | Virtual support is missing |
1-click selling feature makes it user friendly | Simple command requires extension |
Shopify
Pros | Cons |
Fast loading time | Not SEO friendly |
Easy to set up | Checkout process cannot be customized |
Community driven | Adding up applications adds up cost |
1-click selling feature makes it user friendly | Requires developer for incorporating advanced features |
What is the Final Verdict?
Honestly speaking, every platform has its own set of pros and cons, and it majorly depends on your business requirements to analyze which one works best for you. You need to study your users, competitors carefully, and market trends, then check out which platform available in the market is best suiting it. The marketing campaigns are driven by the user requirement and not by your business needs; hence studying your customers is the key to selecting the right eCommerce platform.
Conclusion
The market is flooded with various eCommerce solutions giving choices to customers. In such a tumultuous situation, building an online shopping platform based on customers’ requirements is highly advisable.
If you are confused and find no way to pick the best suitable tool for your eCommerce platform, get in touch with the IO team.
We are here to help you boost Your eCommerce Sales in 2022 with the best possible solutions fitting your business needs.
Call us today to receive a no-obligation quote for your project requirement.