How to choose best e-commerce platform for an online store

Prologue

The emerge of the web has become a wide range of businesses to reach a wider market. Not only that, it has made huge new online businesses, but also fueled the increasing rise of mobile connections.

The web provides an enormous opportunity for businesses, but it’s important for companies to grab those opportunities. Your website must be appropriately equipped if you are planning to sell your products or services via online.

Creating an online store from scratch is a huge task. But now, there are large varieties of e-commerce platform packages are available to opt.

Most of the e-commerce platforms offer businesses with standard functionalities like the ability to showcase products in an online catalog, online payments and also managing customers.

As there are various reasons to use e-commerce platforms but need to know some important things.

Easy (For Beginners to start) – In the past, where you have to build the functionality if you need an online store. But now plugins are available where with this eCommerce platforms, you can find everything in one hand and able to get started right away.

Affordable cost – E-commerce platforms are at an affordable cost for running an online shop, which is completely less than building your own solution from scratch.

Adopting for one solution –Basically, when you go for a hosted solution, you no need to worry about taking care of things like web hosting, security, updates, etc. Instead, you will be able to be completely focused on growing your business.

Customer support available – Open-source platforms such as Word Press are mostly community-driven and so, therefore, you dependent on that community to provide support.

Opting e-commerce software for your business is based on your specific requirements. In this article, let’s see the highlights of some of the best e-commerce platforms are currently available.

What you get from this article?

  • 1. What are  the best E-commerce Platform available?
  • 2. Pros and Cons of E-commerce Platform for an Online Store.

Wix Stores

It is basically a website builder which helps you to build websites through drag and drop option, including some features that allow you to create an online store.

Benefits of Choosing Wix Stores Services

This e-commerce platform is easy to use and fast to set up. No coding is needed, using the user-friendly editor you can pull the content anywhere on the site. The most interesting thing is that there are 500 specifically made templates, stock images where you can use it right away for online stores. Wix offers a fully-featured shopping cart, applications with all the functionality required for the site. Plus the service is also fully hosted.

Drawbacks of Wix Stores

The big drawback is that as it is the first website builder besides having only basic things, so it is not possible to change the site template once it is published.

Site Builder

It is one the best website builder and it’s similar to Wix, so to start with an online shop you just need to get the highest plan.

Benefits of choosing Site Builder Services

The drag-and-drop interface is simple and comprehensive to use. It has sufficient eCommerce tools such as the domain, hosting, analytics tools, SEO, where you just need to be started along with unlimited bandwidth and storage space. Moreover, their support agents are friendly and helpful to solve any questions related to eCommerce tools.

Drawbacks of Site Builder

Though Site Builder comes with many templates, only a few are suitable which means their ecommerce options can be limited for advanced users.

Shopify

Shopify is one of the most popular and best brands in the eCommerce platform for Boutique shops. Plus it is a fully-featured hosted solution for thousands of users.

Benefits of Choosing Shopify Services

It is pretty easy and quick to set up by just signing up with an email. Then it is possible to create your shop for selling right away. Its intuitive interface makes simple to build products, including SEO features like title tags and Meta descriptions. It also offers free classy mobile-optimized themes. There is no coding needed for customization, you can just drag your mouse to make any changes. Plus Shopify offers top-grade assistance through email, phone, live chat, and social media are available for 24/7. They also support third-party payment gateways holding a huge app marketplace over a thousand offers to add functionality to your site with a few clicks.

Drawbacks of Shopify

One of the biggest drawbacks of Shopify is pricing plan may vary depends upon the features you purchase. Another drawback is that Shopify uses its mark-up language called liquid, which is based on Ruby on Rails where if you are planning to customize something it is hard to make changes using code by yourself.

Magento

Magento a Word Press open-source eCommerce platform for downloading or installing using your own servers. Also meanwhile, offering a hosted cloud version like WordPress.org.

Benefits of choosing Magento services

Magento a self-hosted solution giving you lots of access. Where with the technical knowledge you can do any changes in terms of functionality and design. Plus even you can opt for your own server environment. Membership, subscriptions, payments, discounts, the ability to modify content per user is comparatively a bit simple. The platform is robust in terms of multilingual websites and also has plugins and themes for all sorts of purposes. Additionally possible to build separate sites from different languages. It gains a strong community because of constantly improving the platform by developing new themes and plugins.

 Drawbacks of Magento

Though Magento offers lots of features, while it will tend you to invest some time and money into optimization. Since the platform is written in PHP, if you need to make some useful changes where you have to opt for someone for development.

Open Cart

Open Cart is currently available for downloading and installing using its own server. The service offering a cloud version solution.

Benefits of Choosing Open Cart services

The open cart has everything you require to build and manage your shop, where is possible for you to place unlimited products and product categories for both digital and physical goods. The dashboard provides an overview of important data such as product reviews and ratings, etc. While you can create and control several stores from one interface. It also supports multiple currencies. Besides all, the platform is extremely customizable with thousands of themes, a plugin to integrate with hundreds of payment gateways. Being a self-hosted solution it benefits of administrating your site on your own server. Plus if you planning for cloud version, you will get access for the separate theme, plugins while you can take care of hosting, security and backup.

Drawbacks of Open Cart

Drawback is that hosting your site by yourself is not always simple to customize new modules which can be quite expensive. Moreover, the platform is not always known as the fastest solution and also the native marketing features are limited.

Prestashop

It is been introduced in 2007 and has gained a well-known name along with fully-fledged Ecommerce development solutions over the past years. Moreover, Prestashop has managed to provide an e-commerce platform for over 1.25 lakh stores globally while making trustable online shopping solutions and wonderful user experience.

Benefits of Choosing Prestashop Services

In Prestashop it is a quite simple process to install software and also for setting up a full function online store is a few and simple steps away. There will not be a problem for users having a slow internet connection as it is light which is less than 6MB in size, so users can get benefits of quick search options. Plus it is an open-source platform that is owned free of cost. No much technical skill is required while it is easy to handle and maintain the website. The comfort of managing the store with a user-friendly interface and the availability of 25000+ plugins plays the key benefits of Prestashop shopping solution and fully functional store with ease.

Drawbacks of Prestashop

Some drawbacks of Prestashop are lacking of multi-store feature when setting up a complex project. When you need to build some additional modules you have to spend some money on such a case. And also sometimes designs lack a professional touch and look poor. Plus there is a limited official resource to help you out with any mishaps.

VirtueMart

VirtueMart an open-source and self-hosted eCommerce solution for free download and use. It is a cloud-based shopping cart like Big Cartel and Shopify.

Benefits of Choosing VirtueMart Services

VirtueMart is a plugin for CMS Joomla which is an essential download for a version of Joomla bundled with VirtueMart, which means it is not required to install both pieces of software to use the cart. VirtueMart offers several third-party extensions like allowing you to share your products on social media sites and also allowing to modify currency settings based on customers’ global locations. Has it integrates 8,000 Joomla extensions, there is no trouble finding an add-on that does what you required.

Drawbacks of VirtueMart

Some of its drawbacks are like good technical knowledge is required for development or any issues. There are limited features, plus Add-ons are often necessary. Moreover, comparatively fewer customers support.

Woo Commerce

Woo Commerce, the e-commerce plugin of top-notch Word Press CMS. While it boosts the User Experience (UX) in a significant manner, which navigates between screens, finding products and making payments. It is easy to use, quick check out and simple to be worked upon.

Benefits of Choosing Woo Commerce services

Woo Commerce can be customizable and has professional appealing theme designs, including the integration of functionalities like shipping methods, one-click checkout, payment gateways and many more. It offers comprehensive analytic tools, while it is Scalable, flexible and also client-specific web development. Plus it is easy to manage both front-end and back-end of an eCommerce platform.

Drawbacks of Woo Commerce

The disadvantage that goes unnoticed by fewer experienced users because of the installation of too many plugins and extensions tends to slow downloading speed and overall performance while utilizing more memory space.

Final Thoughts

I hope this article finds you well about the knowledge of the best ecommerce platform that will help you to opt for your business.

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