eCommerce development has come a long way since the beginning of platforms such as Amazon. It has been witnessing year-on-year growth at a pace 3 times higher than the physical retail space. For aspiring entrepreneurs and businessmen already having established their brick-and-mortar retail presence, eCommerce development is a new realm to explore.
However, eCommerce development isn’t just limited to specialized businesses today. Even large enterprises with operations not even remotely related to eCommerce are now exploring this domain, thanks to the desire for more eCommerce services by customers and the readily available systems for its setup.
But how will you approach eCommerce development services for your business plan? What resources and platforms would you put into action for your eCommerce portal?
This post will let you explore some of the most popular eCommerce platforms you can leverage to implement your business idea into an eCommerce store.
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Here’s a quick rundown of the best for each type of business.
Table of Contents
Shopify for Small-Scale Businesses
Shopify is undoubtedly the easiest to set up among all the top eCommerce platforms available today. It is a great option for those looking for a straightforward, easy-to-use, customizable ecommerce solution. As of the second quarter of 2018, the platform has already accumulated over a Billion orders. What makes it best for aspiring eCommerce entrepreneurs is an easy development process and quick scalability. The platform includes ready-to-use templates for easily customizing your eCommerce website.
If you want to add new features to the store, you can add apps and third-party extensions to the platform to manage the store more efficiently. But you may be wondering that as a small business, you probably would need experts to understand analytics and other relevant information involving the game of numbers. So how does Shopify help you deal with analytics?
For starters, integrating apps such as Conversific can relieve you from the trouble of understanding the metrics of analytical dashboards. These apps analyze data, then calculate and present meaningful information for owners to understand and optimize their eCommerce website.
Shopify Lite is a free, no-code solution that lets you create a beautiful online store and take payments from anywhere in the world. This lightweight version of the platform provides all tools necessary for eCommerce development at costs as low as $9 per month!
It’s perfect for small businesses, entrepreneurs, artists, and anyone who wants to sell products online.
BigCommerce for Businesses Seeking Growth and Expansion
BigCommerce is a powerful, fast, and easy-to-use ecommerce software that lets you create your store quickly. Similar in function to Shopify in many ways, BigCommerce is more suited to businesses seeking expansion rather than just getting started with an eCommerce business. The best thing about this platform is that it can be set up without needing to be an expert in coding.
The BigCommerce platform provides 24/7 email and chats support to solve any major issues faced by store owners.
Its tools make it easy for you to sell your products, manage inventory, and even make changes in real time. Moreover, you can enjoy the benefits of having your website without needing any technical know-how by using Big Commerce’s templates.
A potential USP of BigCommerce for small businesses is the no-nonsense approach in the platform interface. It eliminates all unnecessary extensions, and most of what you’ll find would be useful additions to the overall eCommerce experience.
Another benefit of BigCommerce is its unlimited bandwidth for eCommerce websites, allowing more customers to access your website at any given time. Major companies such as Toyota have leveraged BigCommerce to develop an eCommerce portal to help customers conveniently purchase accessories and fittings.
Magento for Large and Well-Established Enterprises
Magento is a popular open-source shopping cart software that was originally developed by the German company Magento. If your business has enough funds to pump in investments for the most sophisticated eCommerce platform, Magento is the way to go.
However, Magento takes itself away from the friendly platform environment of the other two platforms on the list. So development on this platform would require the support of an eCommerce development company.
As a successful entrepreneur willing to take your business to an eCommerce platform, you’d have to hire Magento developers to use it to its fullest extent.
Magento has the ability to meet many scalability and flexibility requirements that most other eCommerce platforms do not. Magento also offers a community edition of the platform, which is free and can be used by medium and small businesses specifically requiring Magento for eCommerce development.
The open-source platform has also been recently acquired by Adobe, which makes its potential much greater. With access to Adobe’s expertise in Machine Learning and AI, Magento has an even higher scope for progress.
Investing in Magento not only meets complex business needs but also promotes better user engagement and website profit, which is crucial for large enterprises.
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Top 3 eCommerce Platforms of 2023
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Squarespace
Squarespace is one of the best platforms for building a simple and elegant website. The easy-to-use interface and drag-and-drop templates make it possible for anyone to build an attractive site without technical knowledge or web design skills. You can also customize your website with a wide range of features and premium themes, as well as add eCommerce solutions like Woo Commerce.
You can also add a blog and sell products without ever needing any additional software. If you want more customization, Squarespace offers pro plans with additional features such as custom domains and SSL certificates.
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Square Online
Square is a great option for small businesses, especially if you don’t have a lot of capital to spend on inventory.
Square’s system lets you create custom items and list them on your website in a few easy steps. Moreover, if you’re more advanced, Square has built-in tools that help you automate shipping and inventory management.
You can use Square Online as your website and simply link it to your Square account in order to process transactions.
The downside of this is that you will not have the same security features that other online platforms offer, so fraud protection may be more difficult.
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Shift4Shop
Shift4 is a cloud-based order management system for retail businesses. Shift4 offers a wide range of features that make it easy for small retailers to grow their businesses. With its intuitive interface and flexibility, you can use Shift4 as your online store or use it as the backbone of your whole operation. You can even use it in tandem with other platforms like Magento or WooCommerce.
Shift4 integrates with all major payment processors like Stripe and PayPal. In addition, you don’t need any programming knowledge—everything is drag-and-drop from within the Shift4 dashboard. The scalable solution also allows you to take advantage of automated discounts based on customer preferences without any custom coding.
Takeaway
When it comes to starting a new ecommerce business, there are many different platforms and applications you can use. We have compiled a list of the most popular options for you.
The six selected platforms have unique options, features, and customization, which make them perfect for the specific scale of businesses, as mentioned above.
It is likely that your business plan/idea will measure at one point between these three in the scale of measurement of the eCommerce website size. Now that you know the best eCommerce platforms for your business, the next stage in the plan of action should be to choose the best ecommerce development company to get started with your eCommerce website development.
PixelCrayons, with its 18 years of expertise and an average eCommerce developer experience of 5+ years, offers industry-leading services for all types of businesses, from startups to SMEs and large enterprises. So whatever your idea may be, we’re ready to listen and serve you.
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