All You Need to Know about the Leading eCommerce Platforms

What is an eCommerce Platform?

An eCommerce platform is a software application that lets online companies work on their website, marketing, sales, and operations.

Platforms like BigCommerce offer powerful eCommerce features, while also combining with common business tools — allowing businesses to centralize their processes and operate their business their way.

How to Choose an E-Commerce Platform

With so many e-commerce platform choices, it’s essential to pay attention to which features matter most to your business. After all, what performs for one seller may not work for all vendors? For instance, you may only sell seven different things, which signifies you don’t require software that keeps an extensive inventory.

Or, maybe you have a brick-and-mortar shop but like to branch online—you require a platform with POS stuff, so stock automatically syncs no matter where the investment is made. Aside from essential features, you should also assess your budget, how easy it is to use, whether you require multichannel selling and if the platform contains an SSL certificate. This certificate is essential and lets consumers know it’s secure to input credit card details when placing an order.

8 Key elements of an eCommerce platform

Though different platforms offer different characteristics. So many platforms out there with countless elements and parts available can get you overwhelming.

Among the sheer number of options, always recognize that an average eCommerce platform supplies you with the unification of core business operations to gain complete visibility across your business and eventually satisfy the most discerning consumers.

It’s sometimes difficult to say that which eCommerce platforms will deliver the process you like, or it will always be cost-effective as your account is scalable.

To select a winning eCommerce platform, you can depend on the following elements:

• Run-on a single, unified platform: an eCommerce platform should deliver natively unified eCommerce, accounting, inventory, POS, and order management, marketing, financial, customer service, merchandising on a cloud-based platform.
• Offer a complete consumer view: a right eCommerce platform should have consistent experiences, targeted marketing, and outstanding customer service. All client relations and trades should be in a single view across all the touchpoints and media.
• Intelligent order management: make the most suitable way for consumers to buy, complete, and return the products. Centralize the order management to maximize profitability. It’s optimal to have a single view of the inventory across all mediums and units in the supply chain of your firm.
• Provide excellent consumer experiences: select a platform that makes responsive, friendly, personalized, and rewarding mobile, web, and in-store experiences for consumers if you like to construct your store stand out and live up to consumers’ expectations.
• Support bottomless development: entirely support numerous business models, channels, brands, locations, currencies, and languages all on the same platforms.
• Site security: if you’re a fresh store owner, phrases like “eCommerce SSL certificates” or “PCI compliance” might give you a head-spinning. But you will be aware of them soon. Select a platform that delivers an SSL certificate and PCI compliance to ensure the security of your account and the consumer information it contains.

Many platforms offer additional security packages. You can consider these packs relying on your demands, your store’s future requirements, and your budget.

• Easy to make content: you should look for platforms that allow you to efficiently design content on new or existing pages, also new pages, and contact records. It should be a snap to make and publish content on your account. If your store doesn’t have strong supporting content, it will suffer extensively in Google searches.

You can assume about a medium with a reputation for having a reliable content management system (CMS).

• Highly reliable support and document: your platform provider should deliver help whenever you require it. Businesses often offer support through many channels such as email, ticket support, live chat, or direct phone calls. Decide which one is the best for you, then you can reach out to your platform provider if you have any issues related to the platform.

Also, take a look at their available document, tutorial, such as FAQs, how-to blog posts, user guides, and knowledge base posts. You might find answers before contacting the providers.

Why are eCommerce platforms necessary to brands?

Imagine a house without a concrete foundation; it’s terrible like an online store without a good platform. An eCommerce platform doesn’t just help, but it promotes the growth of an online store.

Put simply, eCommerce platforms are essential to the company success of any online retail business.

Back in the 20th century, people mainly came to brick-and-mortar places to promote sales. Now, after many years, thanks to related technology and the Internet revolution, platforms are designed to facilitate the exchanges of value from decentralized networks of people.

Accordingly, the platform has risen exponentially, and the power to help value exchanges has achieved an exceptional level. Regardless of being hosted on-premise or in the cloud, eCommerce platforms ensure the scalability and security protection of your information, present a broad range of working advantages and company tools, including:

• Pricing. Running your e-commerce store shouldn’t cost you more than what you create, so we excluded platforms with excessive fees or prohibitive monthly pricing. Similarly, we completed sure to pick platforms with excellent value.
• Components and functionality. Standard features help vendors get their stores up and running fast, while some platforms deliver additional opportunities like POS and advanced reporting.
• Ease of use. It shouldn’t bring a creator to create little modifications to how your site looks and operates. Each of our choices has drag-and-drop functionality, so you don’t require to learn any coding to update your site.
• Inventory management. When a consumer places an order, your inventory should drop proportionately without you needing to adjust anything manually. And, when you add inventory, you should be able to do it all from one screen.
• Multichannel selling. You don’t necessarily require a medium that allows you to trade on Amazon and eBay simultaneously. The power to market through social media, all without having to update inventory manually, is a large advantage worth noting.

Using eCommerce platforms, you can personalize your product details to fit your online business requirement best. It’s useful for both store owners and buyers.

Here is what to Evaluate When Picking an Ecommerce Platform

There are numerous things to consider before you select a platform and always remember that migrating a site might be an awful experience for you and your buyer. Therefore, consider the following factors before you pick an eCommerce product service from a provider.

The type of business: Multiple businesses begin little and if you wish to expand, ensure to select a solution that enables development and scalability.

Target Audience: For a site owner who targets various users, a solution must authorize integrations to meet user requirements and find them anywhere.

Cost: There are lots of things you will have to settle for when pursuing a development service and after. These contain web design, maintenance, security, hosting, etc. Assess your budget and needs to confirm that an answer is within your means.

The Different eCommerce Platforms

There are several kinds of eCommerce platforms, each with its benefits and drawbacks and they have;

Magento

Magento is a famous option when it comes to eCommerce and delivers solutions for all measures of companies. It is exclusively an eCommerce solution and lets users handle numerous stores through a single administrative panel. It is commonly preferred for its scalability, SEO features, however, expensive. Contact PerfectionGeeks Technologies, an eCommerce development company if you wish to understand more about this eCommerce platform before investing in it.

BigCommerce

As a cloud eCommerce platform, BigCommerce happens to be a perfect choice for small companies and start-ups. It comes with built-in elements and SEO control abilities. It integrates enterprise functionality, an app ecosystem, and open architecture.

WooCommerce

This open-source eCommerce platform delivers a cart solution. It is chosen by those expanding into eCommerce since it’s positively scalable and enables a fast setup. Users can take benefit of either the free or paid themes. It is essential to seek a proficient eCommerce development service since WooCommerce needs a lot of resources.

Shopify/ Shopify Plus

Those who like to begin selling online instantly can benefit from Shopify. It comes with in-built payment services such as PayPal, Amazon, among others. It is also easy to operate and with it, you can have a fully refined website. Shopify plus (Cloud-based) is a business solution for those who run high-volume online stores.

Squarespace (SaaS)

This website builder has risen in popularity over the last few years, thanks to its marketing efforts. It reaches with an easy-to-use backend structure and shows many templates for use. Beyond all, it presents a lightweight cart to sell products.

Conclusion

We have now come to the end of our blog and if you wish to start an online store, we hope that the above insights teach you. If you need to know more about any website builder or need website development services, feel free to get in touch with PerfectionGeeks Technologies, an eCommerce website development company.