Best platform for eCommerce Development
If you are a business owner, then you must know that meeting business objectives is not that easy, no matter what. The truth is that a business becomes successful based on customer experience, operational efficiencies, marketing strategies, and the kind of team that you have. Along with all these factors combined, another crucial factor that plays a key role in making your online business success is the kind of eCommerce platform that you choose.
The eCommerce platform that you opt for should be highly scalable and suited for long-term growth. Some of the popularly used eCommerce platforms include BigCommerce, Magento, WooCommerce, and Shopify.
Selecting the best-suited platform among the popular ones is the path to unlock the performance metrics of your business. The decision depends on numerous factors that entrepreneurs should carefully consider.
However, before we go on to determine the best platform for eCommerce development, let us have a quick understanding of an eCommerce platform.
What is an eCommerce platform?
An eCommerce platform is a typical software application that allows online businesses to handle their websites, marketing, sales, and other operations. All fundamental business functions are unified into a single solution in an eCommerce platform offering better collaboration. eCommerce platforms provide better visibility of data across organizations. Today, the eCommerce platforms have moved from being a single-purpose software that enables people to buy products and services online.
The best cloud-based eCommerce platforms integrate both the front-end and the back-end systems, thereby, providing an integrated business environment that is scalable, customizable and has a plethora of automated functionalities. Now, the question that might crop up is why should organizations use an eCommerce platform for a successful online business.
Why use an eCommerce platform?
Whether you plan to expand your brick-and-mortar store or start a business from scratch, choosing the best eCommerce platform is a must. The reason is that in addition to providing scalability to your business and protection to your data, an eCommerce platform offers a variety of other benefits like:
- Product management suite
- Enhanced search options
- Personalizing sales and services like payments options, mobile apps, marketing features, and others
Moreover, eCommerce platforms offer entrepreneurs an ability to customize their product information and its solicitation to match their retail needs that is beneficial for both the business owners and the customers.
eCommerce platforms are beneficial for online businesses but to leverage the benefits of choosing the right platform is essential. Hence let us do a comparative study of the most popular eCommerce platforms so that we can make an apt choice.
Best eCommerce Platform Comparison
Comparing the top most eCommerce platform and choosing the best
As far as eCommerce platforms are concerned, each of them has its set of advantages and disadvantages. Business owners must evaluate their business requirements and choose a platform.
Let us now have a close look at the top-most eCommerce platforms, namely BigCommerce, Magento, WooCommerce, and Shopify.
Magento:
Magento is an on-premise platform and is opted by brands who have heavily invested in their IT infrastructure and development teams. However, in recent times Magento2 the open-source and cloud version of Magento is taking over. With Magento, you can have complete control of your eCommerce instance while the disadvantage includes manual patch, bug updates, requiring the integration of the entire site. If brands are not doing these timely updates, the chances of data breaches and lack of PCI (Payment Card Industry) compliance are higher with Magento.
BigCommerce:
BigCommerce is an open-source SaaS platform provider with low cost of ownership and highly flexible APIs. The specialty of the BigCommerce platform is its sophistication, customization, and flexibility, making it one of the unique eCommerce platforms. This is one of the reasons why BigCommerce has become the number one SaaS platforms for mid-level enterprises. At the same time, BigCommerce also provides an assortment of highly advanced built-in features to small businesses. The only downside of BigCommerce is that it has a steep learning curve when compared to other SaaS platforms because of the complexity of its built-in features.
WooCommerce:
WooCommerce is an open-source eCommerce platform that offers a cart solution along with a brand’s content on WordPress. Most often, this platform is used by start-up businesses because using WordPress in WooCommerce is easy. Some of the problems of WooCommerce is its lack of scalability, and often a high cost associated with developers.
Shopify:
Shopify is a public-funded SaaS eCommerce platform. It is popular among start-ups and brands with SKU (stock keeping unit) count less than 100. Some of the advantages of Shopify include a quick learning curve, making it easy even for amateurs eCommerce practitioners. The result is that new brands can quickly launch their website to the market.
But at the same time, Shopify has a restricted API call volume, high transaction fees, and non-customizable URL structure. According to Internet Retailer, BigCommerce and Shopify are among the fastest-growing eCommerce platforms for B2B as well as B2C sites. But still, brands prefer to choose BigCommerce when compared to Shopify primarily because of its built-in features and no transaction fees.
Getting started now!
Reading this blog post, start-ups and mid-sized enterprises might feel that they can opt for the BigCommerce platform for their online business because it is a platform with no risk and no obligation. But that is not the right approach. The prerequisite for every business is unique. Hence, the eCommerce platform needed will also vary. However, that is not a decision that amateurs can take, and only experts must be consulted for the same. If you are still thinking, stop doing so and get in touch with us at Vajra Global and our experts will help you in deciding the best eCommerce platform.
They have years of experience in this field and have worked for a plethora of clients, and our team will put in that extra effort to understand your requirements precisely. It is time that your website outperforms your competitors. Take the plunge and see the difference.