In case you’re planning to build direct sales from your site, there are a number of options available out there. Starting an online store is considered as one of the best options for launching a startup. However, no matter how easy it may sound, choosing the right e-commerce platform is very difficult. The introduction of more and more e-commerce platforms is further making it difficult to choose the right one.
The increasing competition among e-commerce stores and the advancement in the technology has raised people’s expectations. Offering some level of customization, easy setup, and standard features are not enough. Online stores need mobile friendliness, phenomenal user experience, social media integration, SEO, customer support, and modules for content marketing as fundamental requirements.
So which is the best platform to suit your requirements? We’ve shortlisted top e-commerce platforms based on their strengths and weakness. This will help you in deciding the best platform to fulfill your requirements. Read on.
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Magento
It was spun out by one of the global e-commerce dominant, eBay. It’s now an independent firm which continues to run as a top enterprise level player. When we’re talking about e-commerce, Magento has stood the test of time. Primarily, it’s a perfect fit for large-scale online retailers and creating high-end e-commerce websites. The platform is fully scalable and customizable and offers an extreme level of security. Moreover, it offers features which other platforms lack, such as multi- currency support, multi-language, and multiple storefronts.
Retailers prefer Magento app because of its scores pretty well in significant parameters like mobile friendliness, SEO, user-friendly admin area, and intuitive navigation. The pricing is also quite impressive. Magento offers community plan for free. However, the enterprise plan is based on client’s business and aligns itself to as per the business’s growth trajectory. Internal or external staffing charges are also required to manage this platform.
The enterprise plan arrives with enhanced security, functionality, and performance. Apart from this, it offers features like customer support software, customer segmentation for targeted offering, and return and cancellation management. But, building a website using this platform or going for Magento app for your site requires a higher level programming skills. It becomes quite difficult to find developers who can take over this difficult task and produce great results in return. Also, Magento based stores do not offer a variety of free themes.
At the end, if you’re planning to have a serious e-commerce platform that is enterprise graded, Magento is the best option for you. This is because it’s a front runner. However, if you’re not for investing in a large scale e-commerce store, going for Magento might overkill your requirements.
BigCommerce
It resembles Shopify to an extent, except it has a number of built-in features. BigCommerce, for starters, offers you a fully functional website, you can add as many items as you want, unlimited storage, and bandwidth. Also, it offers essential features like review & ratings, basic marketing tools, and gift cards. Basic marketing tools are also created on BigCommerce software.
The platform is easy to setup and it primarily aims at individuals with lack of web designing skills. In case, you’re into CSS and HTML, you can easily tweak stuff around in order to offer a unique feel and look to your store. The page loading speed and security of BigCommerce are pretty much neck-to- neck with top e-commerce platforms. This means that the security and loading speed is quite high and extremely reliable.
Customer support offered by BigCommerce is another great feature. It provides extensive guides, video guides, comprehensive setup wizard, and auto responder emails functionality right in place. You can easily set up and run your business without worrying about getting stuck up in between. This is because after having so much of information, the chances of getting caught up in some issue are pretty thin.
The price is a bit higher as compared to others. But, you cannot ignore the fact that it offers way more features compared to its competitors. Outdated themes used to be a downside of BigCommerce, but now the issue has been solved. BigCommerce is your ideal match if you’re ready to invest a little more money in return for more customization and extra features.
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WooCommerce
It’s a free WordPress plugin. You can expect to get all the benefits that you usually get if you have used WordPress as your platform for creating websites. You do not have to pay for installing WooCommerce. However, you have to pay a certain amount if you’re planning to go for WooCommerce’s complete integration as a functional shopping cart.
It is completely customizable and offers a secure payment gateway and great shopping cart experience. Here you can get several options for themes to choose from. WooCommerce also allows you a design an entirely new, customized theme. To use this option of customization, you need to have some knowledge regarding WordPress platform along with having technical skills on how to create a custom WordPress template.
The platform offers extremely instinctive admin panel, which any layman can manage and understand. There is no limit to product categories in WooCommerce. Apart from this, it also includes a WordPress blog as a feature and thousands of extensions and plugins. In case you have a website having WordPress as a platform, you’re good to go with WooCommerce.
As a bottom line, if you own a WordPress website, but you’re not planning to start a huge online outlet, then you should consider WooCommerce as an ideal choice.
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Conclusion
By now, you should be quite clear that there exists no such thing as “one-size- fits-for- all”. Each platform is built to entertain specific goals and requirements. This suggests that no single platform is the best to suit every kind of business requirements. Do your homework and write down pros and cons. You need to choose the right platform which best serves you need.
