Ready to start selling your products online? First, you need a robust eCommerce platform that allows you to design, create, and maintain your online store. It’ll help you manage your site, products, operations, and other things related to online sales.
Building an eCommerce website is not that difficult, BUT…the challenging part is choosing the right eCommerce platform. At present, the market is flooded with numerous eCommerce platforms providing solutions for all types and budgets.
Whether you are looking to switch providers or designing a new eCommerce website from scratch, these FOUR eCommerce platforms will point you in the right direction.
1. Shopify
With 14.36% of market share and 17,815 currently active websites, Shopify is the leading eCommerce platform in Australia for creating eCommerce websites for small-to-medium size businesses.
It is one of the best web applications to create a quick online store with many available templates. You can easily customize these templates to design your website’s look and fit the required online retailer needs.
Everything you need for designing your website is already integrated into the Shopify platform?storefront design, performance analytics, content marketing, etc. Once you have the basics set up, it’s a simple process to change the store’s code itself or upgrade it with third-party extensions.
As far as payments are concerned, Shopify supports a wide range of credit cards, so there will be no unwanted payment conflict issues in your store. Also, with 256-bit SSL encryption for security and level 1 PCI compliance, your data is safe with Shopify.
You can easily manage, track, and modify your store anywhere regardless of desktop or mobile access with a fully responsive Shopify platform. You have a wide choice between 73 mobile-optimized themes (64 paid and nine free), starting from $140.
Added Advantages of Shopify
? 24/7 live chat, email, and customer support
? Drag-and-drop site builder
? Additional shipping discounts
? In-house payment platform
? Lightning-fast load time
? Used by one million+ online stores
? Great themes with multiple designs
2. Magento
Magento is an open-source eCommerce platform initially released in 2009 and then updated in 2015 as Magento 2.0 with an improved code base and more features like usability and stability.
With over 5,000 extensions, Magento is one of the best eCommerce platforms for small-to-medium businesses and enterprise-level online stores that have already established manpower, time, and demand to build their site.
It offers the most robust and powerful eCommerce capabilities for different websites across different industries and businesses that operate as B2B, B2C, or both. It’s used by various global giants?Jack Daniel’s, HP, Canon, and Nike.
At present, it has two versions?Magento commerce and Magento open source.
The essential features of Magento open source include:
? Site search
? Instant purchase
? Customization options
? Mobile-optimized shopping
? Catalog management
? Global selling
? Integrated checkout, payment, and shipping
? Extended functionality via the app marketplace
Magento commerce features:
? Instant purchase
? Content staging & preview
? Page builder
? Customer segmentation & personalization
? Product recommendations
? Instant purchase
? Merchandising
Magento is a fully mobile-optimized and open-source platform with integrated shipping, payment, and checkout modules, but you need to build them along with the store yourself. That means no simply input modules, default dashboards, and fancy drag and drop tools in this platform.
It means while using this platform; you have a lot of freedom to choose rich content and various other features for your products. Also, you can quickly get additional eCommerce extensions through Magento Marketplace.
Added Advantages of Magento
? Sturdy and spacious
? Versatile content management
? Advanced search engine optimization
? Flexible third-party integrations
? Customizable security permissions
? Mobile-friendly configuration
You need to hire a professional agency offering eCommerce web development services to build a dedicated online store on the Magento platform.
3. BigCommerce
BigCommerce is one of the most popular eCommerce platforms globally, known for its highly flexible APIs and low total cost of ownership. It provides you with a wide range of eCommerce tools set with a variety of additional features. It enables your online store to combine your ideas with most of the present solutions in the eCommerce ecosystem.
BigCommerce makes it easier to produce different catalogs or price lists to other customer groups making it an ideal choice for businesses covering both B2B and B2C customers.
This platform’s initial learning curve is higher than other similar platforms due to the complexity of built-in features. However, with its well-oriented and in-depth guiding documents and support team, you can quickly learn about this platform and make quick use of it.
The BigCommerce platform’s pricing is divided into four tiers?Standard, Plus, Pro, and Enterprise. You can choose depending on your needs and budget.
Added Advantages of BigCommerce
? Unlimited bandwidth & file storage
? Unlimited product listing
? Multi-currency sales
? Ratings and reviews
? Integrations with shipping and POS software
? Custom domains
? 12 free and 160+ paid themes
4. Squarespace
Founded in 2003, Squarespace is one of those eCommerce platforms that offer drag-and-drop functionality with sleek pre-built website design and template capabilities to create web pages.
Squarespace ranked second most favorite platform for designing eCommerce websites with a total share of 17.69%. It is most appropriate for small business owners and entrepreneurs with basic eCommerce needs.
This eCommerce platform is very effective, but only as an associate to the primary website builder. Large businesses that handle a large volume of inventory or more advanced online retail requirements would be better off with other more dedicated platforms.
Conclusion
With so many free and paid options to consider, you’ll need to narrow down your choices according to your needs and budget to select the best eCommerce platform for your online store. If you are looking for more information on eCommerce platforms or sound guidance on creating one, the web app development company in Jaipur can help you.
