How To Choose The Right E-Commerce Platform For Your Business?

When you start an online business, one of the biggest decisions you can make is while choosing an e-commerce platform for your business to ensure a scalable and long term growth.

You can implicate your business on this steps for better growth of your business:

  • Protect the bottom line in terms for sale growth, in addition with the installation and maintenance.
  • Ensure that your employees get what they want to implement on the campaign strategies.
  • Help customers to get engaged with your brands and reduce friction while they’re getting the product they need. 

Let’s look at what things to consider while choosing an E-Commerce platform.

The online selling method has become the most popular and favoured method for vendors to generate revenues these days.

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The new entrepreneurs with their unique ideas finding new possibilities in this business as well. With a large customer channel, eCommerce selling has become a modern trend for every enterprise.

So, what is eCommerce sell actually?

Well, selling the products online or taking orders and accepting payments online without leaving the store is an eCommerce sale.

To make it happen we need an online store, and this online store called “eCommerce Website“.

Now you need a website developer to set up a unique, simple to manage and good looking website. Aren’t you?

To make your website secure, hassle-free functionalities, you also have to choose the right platform as well.

But what is that platform?

The e-commerce platform is the web-based software in which your business will use to conduct buying or selling activities.

And the developer is the person who will set it up and customize according to your needs.

And there are many platforms that have been here to choose from. Like WordPress, Magento, Shopify, Drupal, etc.

E-commerce Platforms

As an entrepreneur, you may further like to think about choosing the right platform. Because every business owner might not have a good technical background to decide on.

When you get down to the competitive market, you may find a few competing with each other claiming to have nice features to help change or modify your functionality with ease.

In this case, you may develop a desire for a safe platform which gives you the flexibility to change your site features without the help of a dedicated developer.

Let’s see what the present statistics say.

Most Used Platform - Builtwith Statistics

Looks like WooCommerce and Magento, both are leading the race. The above statistic is showing these platforms are far ahead in the competition as the best choice for entrepreneurs. Let’s learn more about these. 

What Is WooCommerce?

Let me clear it first, WooCommerce is not an e-commerce platform itself.

It is a plugin/addon that adds e-commerce functionality to the website. It is widely used in the WordPress platform. And with just a few clicks, it turns the website to a fully-functional e-commerce website.

Whereas, an E-Commerce platform software is defined as the software that allows any online business enterprise or small business to easily manage the websites, sales, marketing and operations. It is a central hub or homebase to your businesses.

It offers many powerful features that help to run a business while also integrating with many common business tools that enables businesses to centralise the operation and run their business in an effective way.

It means you can use this tool if you would build your website on the WordPress platform.

I already have given brief details about WordPress and the features on my previous blog.

This tool is widely popular for its features which are easy and helpful for both developers and entrepreneurs. i.e

  • Easy Installation, Setup, and Integration
  • Data Control
  • Feature-packed Shopping Cart
  • Complete Control of Products
  • Easy Shipping
  • Easier Tax Management
  • A Leader in Marketing and Search Engine Optimization
  • Keeping You Informed
  • Customer Management
  • Easy Mobile E-Commerce
  • Fully Extendable

 Magento, Is It Similar To WooCommerce? 

Absolutely not! Magento is an eCommerce platform built on open source technology that offers a flexible online shopping cart system with full control over the look, content, and functionality of their online store as well.

Magento also offers powerful marketing, search engine optimization, and catalog-management tools.

Here are some other benefits we can get from this platform:

  • Easy to install and add additional layouts and plug-ins
  • Open source technology that offers flexible, scalable eCommerce solutions
  • Effective and cost-sensitive program
  • Allows for various discounts and promotions during check-out
  • Provides more than 50 payment gateways

With this insight section, you would have quick access to all your actionable data exclusively for your store. And can utilize them accordingly.

Magento Platform FeaturesImage Source: Techcresendo.com

Small entrepreneurs always have the benefit of being agile when it comes to taking action.

You can go through my previous blog for “Benefits of Using Magento E-commerce Platform for Your Business“.

I’ve worked with the team at Andolasoft on multiple websites. They are professional, responsive, & easy to work with. I’ve had great experiences & would recommend their services to anyone.

Ruthie Miller, Sr. Mktg. Specialist

Salesforce, Houston, Texas

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I believe, Magento is one of the best eCommerce platforms available today, with editions, a range of community open-source, massive, large-scale enterprise SaaS-based systems.

Conclusions:

Certainly, it doesn’t matter how many recommendations you get from your friend or from any other sources,  You need to think twice while choosing an e-commerce platform.

Based on the recommendations above, you can go with any of it or other platforms that you like.

 If you want your Ecommerce software development, Andolasoft is here to help with all your stuff. Our expert developer will develop an amazing ecommerce websites for your business

Want to build your own eCommerce store? Talk to our Experts!

Top Areas and Features to Know for Successful E-Commerce Entrepreneur

The flexibility of E-commerce development is growing fast. So today’s entrepreneurs are looking to establish a good online presence through eCommerce business because of the massive consumer base.

eCommerce industry is also expanding and providing opportunities for success and sustainability of the business.

Now, eCommerce has become the dominant feature for all business over the world. Industries like jewelry & accessories, household goods, consumer gadgets, phone accessories, and sports & outdoors gear are generating huge profit through eCommerce.

According to the statistics, the eCommerce business is expecting to grow double like 45% compared to the present 18% in rural and semi-urban areas.

Let’s have a quick look at the statistics of the eCommerce market,

  • There are expected to be 600,000 commercial drones in use by 2018, and almost half of Americans would be willing to receive deliveries by drone.
  • A 2015 survey showed customers spending almost 60% of their online shopping time on their mobile devices. That translated to only 15% of purchases made on mobile.
  • By 2021, it is predicted that early adopter brands that redesign their websites to support visual and voice search will increase digital commerce revenue by 30%.
  • By 2019, B2B firms will spend more on e-commerce technology than online retailers do.

(Source: https://www.disruptiveadvertising.com/ppc/ecommerce/2018-ecommerce-statistics/)

E-Commerce

According to the statistics, in 2017, retail e-commerce sales worldwide amounted to 2.3 trillion US dollars and e-retail revenues are projected to grow to 4.88 trillion US dollars in 2021.

e-commerce

“By 2022, brick and mortar retail spaces will be little more than showrooms.”

 – Eddie Machaalani & Mitchell Harper, CO-CEOs of BigCommerce

“M-commerce sales worldwide reached an estimated $1.357 trillion in 2017 or 58.9% of eCommerce spending overall. By 2021, m-commerce will account for 72.9% of the eCommerce market.”

If you’re looking to become a successful online entrepreneur, you may be tempted to get into e-commerce.

With the advanced technology, it’s become pretty simple to develop eCommerce website/store for your first sale.

But you need to consider some crucial planning for your success, here you go:

1. Do Market Research and Understand tout Target customer:

Market research and reaching to the target audience are the most important things to get established in the eCommerce market.

Every buyer has different choices and marketing style. You need to understand what the target audience is looking into.

With a good strategy and analysis, the buyer’s persona can help you to reach your target audience and solve their problems. This also helps you to align your messages with motivations to purchase.

2. Maximize Visibility and presence on Social Media:

Social media is putting a high impact on the eCommerce market and this has become a crucial ingredient for reaching out to your target audience.

People are embracing social media with the help of their Smartphones and getting real-life information about product and service.

So it’s time to maximize the social presence of your brand and engage with your audience.

The recent report says that more than 70% of consumers are from social media referral source and consumers are also searching the vendor information in Social Media.

It’s very necessary to maximize your potentials in various social media channels through engaging contents and collect positive customer reviews, feedback, and testimonials to boost e-commerce conversion

3. Focus on Customer Experience

Customer experience is the most vital thing in eCommerce segments and you need to represent your business in such a way for the consumers so that they can feel the value and influence to purchase.

Customer experience is a great challenge for any entrepreneur. You have to make it more user-friendly with great design, easy navigation, appropriate pricing, provide free shipping, and simplify the shopping cart.

For the sustainable eCommerce business, you need to invest in your consumers and understand their touch points before they come into your buying cycle.

For smooth and enhanced customer experience you need to integrate live chat on the website and support assistance is much required.

4. Secure and Seamless Checkout Process

Normally people are very much hesitating to provide their personal information at the time of purchase or in the checkout process.

Consumers are always looking for some secure source from where they can do the transaction securely and they have the fear to fall in unauthorized hands.

You have to make the checkout process much secure so that consumer will understand and happy to share their financial details.

The checkout process must be in few steps with quick guides for the hassle-free and seamless transaction. Effective CTA (Call to action) buttons can also take the users confidence for secure transaction.

5. Adopt SEO

Well planned SEO strategies can maximize any organization profit to 10X more. Search Engine Optimization helps to maximize the visibility of your business and customers can found that quickly.

Adoption of SEO in eCommerce business helps you bring more traffic to the website and that eventually leads to conversion.

The SEO process is very much cost effective to bring your products and services in front of the consumer.

Conclusion:

To establish yourself as a successful entrepreneur in the eCommerce market, you need to do proper research on your target market as well as the audience and their buying persona.

The demand for eCommerce is growing and you need to make your website or eCommerce store secure and implement a seamless checkout process to get users trust.

We at Andolasoft do develop eCommerce applications and stores for various brands and online business organizations.  Thanks to the service of the experienced eCommerce developers, our customers are pretty happy with the services we offer.

Are you looking to develop a secure and user-friendly eCommerce application to be a successful entrepreneur in the eCommerce market?

We are here to help you. Let’s discuss.