With all that’s going on in the world, having your business set up to sell online has never been more important. The good news is that selling online doesn’t have to be hard. With the right eCommerce platform, you’ll be able to quickly list your products, take payments, and handle shipping—all without leaving your office.
In this article, I illustrate a big picture of the global eCommerce market as well as give out some potential e-Commerce platforms for online businessmen in 2021.
What is an e-Commerce platform?
An e-Commerce platform is a software application enabling store owners to do all tasks when operating an online store on their own. More specifically, it helps customers to control their websites, marketing, sales, and operations.
Generally, an e-Commerce platform is a combination of almost needed commerce and business functionalities. These are accounting, order management, inventory management, and customer service. To put it simply, with the support of a functional e-Commerce platform, you can easily fulfill customers’ orders regardless of any sales channel, including brick-and-mortar stores. Or you can based on customers’ history order to publish relevant or personalized deals for loyal customers.
All in all, the appearance of e-Commerce platforms helps you not only in operating your online business efficiently but also in strengthening customer relationships. Moreover, the more satisfied customers can gain, the more profit you can earn.
As a result, in this article, I will focus on introducing you to WooCommerce, Squarespace, Shopify, Magento, and Wix. Overall, these platforms are the top five priority e-Commerce platforms for online businessmen.
1. Shopify
Shopify is the “biggie” of eCommerce platforms. It is the most popular in the English-speaking world. It caters to businesses of all sizes. More than 1 million merchants use Spotify’s platform, across nearly 1.5 million websites. Shopify has a market share of 31% in the United States for websites using eCommerce. One of the most crucial reasons for Shopify’s success is its flexibility. There are more than 2,400 apps in the Shopify App Store.
As well as standard Shopify, Shopify Lite is for those with an existing website that merely needs a way to take payments. Shopify Plus is for companies so large they can easily spend $2,000 a month on their eCommerce platform
Pros:
- More than 70 payment gateways.
- More than 2000 integrated apps.
- Build up customer profiles to identify the most potential ones.
Cons:
- Weak SEO/content marketing tools.
- Highly-priced application.
- Not customizing checkouts.
2. WooCommerce
WooCommerce is an open-source, customizable eCommerce platform for entrepreneurs. It is built on WordPress, and you run it behind your existing WordPress site. It also means that you can benefit from WordPress’s SEO capabilities. However, being on WordPress means that you have to separately buy hosting, a domain name, and an SSL certificate, all of which are catered for by many of the stand-alone eCommerce platforms.
You will need many extensions if you are to create a usable WooCommerce site. This includes payment gateways, like Stripe, PayPal, Square, Amazon Pay, and Authorize.Net, as well as plug-ins for your shipping and email tracking.
Pros:
- Mobile-friendly templates.
- Abundant sources of extensions.
- The best self-hosted platform.
- Powerful tools for optimizing SEO.
Cons:
- Require lots of extensions.
- Expensive hosting services.
- Difficulties in troubleshooting.
3. Magento
Another highly popular eCommerce solution is Magento. Being open-source, it targets people with professional web development experience, so not as suitable for do-it-yourself website developers as some of the other platforms. It’s generally used on medium to large eCommerce sites that can afford a web person or department.
Magento has an expansive back-end interface and an in-depth feature list. You can expand and customize however you desire. Your developer should be able to adapt Magento to meet virtually any eCommerce need.
A beginner will probably find Magento daunting, but experienced users should learn to use the most relevant features easily enough.
Pros:
- Open-sources thus fully customizable interface.
- Being comfortable to choose to host services on your own.
- Compatible with the mobile interface.
- A variety of tools for optimizing SEO.
Cons:
- Require coding knowledge.
- Expensive themes.
4. BigCommerce
BigCommerce is one of the better-known eCommerce platforms. It has two offerings: BigCommerce Essentials (a DIY SaaS platform) and BigCommerce Enterprise (a customized experience for larger customers).
BigCommerce walks you through the steps needed to set up your eCommerce store. You begin by adding your products and only build your website further through the setting-up process. BigCommerce really keeps you organized. There are clear instructions about what information is needed and links to help files related to what you’re filling out. If there’s a third-party app that can help you more than what BigCommerce provides, you’ll have the opportunity to install that app right from the admin console.
5. Wix:
If you are not interested in coding knowledge, Wix is for you. When you design your online store on Wix, everything you need is just a “Drag and drop movement”. Therefore, the uniqueness of your website only depends on your creativity. In fact, Wix offers you a wide range of magical tools to customize your e-Commerce platform as well as operating your online store.
Pros:
- Excellent App Market.
- Fully customizable.
- Not requesting coding knowledge.
- Feature-rich platform.
Cons:
- Weak upselling tools.
- Difficulties in integrating with Amazon.
- Poor SEO tools.
To conclude:
Finally, here is my advice for the top five of the most potential e-Commerce platforms for you to start an online business in 2021. Hence, I hope you will choose your suitable platform to make a well-off business.
Want to build a new eCommerce store for your business? or need to upgrade the existing one? Contact us today for your custom requirement or development solutions.
Qodeyard is a collective of digital enthusiasts who’re focused on innovating consumer experience through thoughtful design. We focus on advancing solutions for e-Commerce development such as WooCommerce development, Shopify development, Magento development services.
