eCommerce and Businesses: A Sneak-Peek At The Most Popular eCommerce Platforms

Believe it or not, eCommerce has shaped the future of the commercial world. It has been evaluated that by the year 2020, the number of brick-and-mortar stores will be reduced to a few.

Today, online presence has become a huge sign in the commercial world. Therefore, retail business owners are moving online to create strong visibility among potential users who spend their quality time browsing branded products rather than simply surfing the internet.

Amazon, eBay, Etsy, and a few others on the list are the top-ranking marketplaces from where consumers love to shop;

Reason:

  • Strong Online Presence
  • Easy Navigation
  • Availability Of a Wide Range Of Products
  • Strong Customer Support
  • Shop From Multiple Vendors
  • Provide Fascinating Shipping & Payment Services

Moreover, to build a huge marketplace like above-stated is not easy. Managing and maintaining require a huge investment of time and money. Don’t you agree? But did you ever think, which technology is used to build a comprehensive marketplace?

Earlier, when eCommerce just stepped in, Magento was the only technology that offered the features to develop a huge marketplace. But today, with the advances in technology, you will find the list of most popular eCommerce platforms that are providing features and plugins you can integrate into your own. So, it's a do-it-yourself kind of thing. Plus, getting exposed to a wide audience doubles your opportunity and profit-earning scope.

However, the dilemma still lies which platform to choose to develop an alluring and easy-to-access eCommerce marketplace that will help you in uplifting your business performance.

Being a writer, I researched on the leading platforms and drew a conclusion. Hope this helps!

Let’s begin:

Magento is an open-source technology best suited for big enterprises with vast product variants to show in the marketplace. It supports multi-vendor functionality.

This platform requires a team of engineers to build a customised store tailored to your requirements. Magento provides a simple infrastructure; the rest, you have to build the entire marketplace on your own, seeking the help of a reliable developing partner. Furthermore, hosting your marketplace domain is also your responsibility. As a consequence, the maintenance cost of the server also adds to your pocket, which is apparently high-priced.

It is best suited for big enterprise owners who are ready to invest a considerable amount of time and money in implementing a gigantic marketplace with multi-vendor functionality.

Shopify is a paid platform with all the resources, a kind of Do-It-Yourself. Once you register your store with Shopify, you get the structure, themes, plugins, and add-ons ready. There are many themes, making it easy to pick the aesthetic one that fits your business nature. Registration requires your store name, email address, and company name, and you are ready to start selling your first product with Shopify.

The interesting thing is that you need not take the pains of hosting your Shopify domain, server, and Google rankings. Shopify will look after these focal parameters. Besides, product promotion is also not your responsibility. Shopify itself will promote your products and increase your profit margin by 2X.

P.S: As it’s freemium, a 15-day trial account is provided to let you acquaint with the working of the platform. Plus, you are open to tweak the code of plugins or add-ons if required.

Best suited for small owners who like to customize their storefronts picking their choice of themes, plugins, and add-ons. For pricing, you can visit the website.

WooCommerce is an open-source plugin powered by WordPress. Being a hard-core WordPress extensible plugin, you need to connect with WordPress first and get full access to WooCommerce. It’s similar to Magento in various aspects.

  • Domain Hosting
  • Theme Purchase
  • Server Maintenance Cost

WooCommerce & Magento are both open source technologies. But the above-stated factors reduces the possibility of choosing them the suitable platform for future.

Best suited for big enterprise/ small business owners who are ready to invest a good amount of time and money in implementing a well-defined storefront.

BigCommerce is similar to Shopify. But compared to BigCommerce, Shopify offers alluring themes and easy-to-configure plugins/extensions.

 P.S.: Shopify and BigCommerce have one unique feature, i.e, you can link your business domain with the Shopify or BigCommerce store and increase your audience reach. Plus, the URL generated is routed with SSL (Secure Sockets Layer).

It is best suited for small owners who like to customize their storefronts, choosing from a selection of themes, plugins, and add-ons. For pricing, visit the website.

Yes, it’s true! Having a strong online presence is a huge sign in the commercial world. Therefore, entrepreneurs must prioritize choosing the eCommerce technology that best fits their business requirements.

Below is the perfect example of choosing the best eCommerce platform based on the three major constraints: Time, Budget, and Engineering Efforts.