It is very difficult to choose an appropriate ecommerce platform for your business because of many options available. You can select among two directions while selecting an eCommerce platform one is SaaS based that provide license of use and other is open source platform that provide the source code publically available for downloading and viewing. The SaaS based platforms are Shopify and BigCommerce and Open source platforms are Magento and Woo commerce. If you large number and variety of products then use Magento and if have limited products that Shopify and Woocommerce is the best option.
A hosted eCommerce solution can be used with ease and you can easily build online store. With right efforts you can learn how to use and customize the system. There are less technical hurdles than installing and designing software. To boost sales and create revenue generation the most fireproof way is to adopt a high-quality template for eCommerce store. It is more difficult to manage online store than to run physical store because you not only sell products but you have to find out different ways to present them so that customers get attracted online and buy there and then. The first and far most important thing while selecting online store is whether it will create desired conversions or not.
At the initial level you may think about the price you have to pay, hosting, customer visibility or some other things related to promotion. Must prepare a list of “must haves” you may have to include in your ecommerce website.
Before going for ecommerce store one must integrate with payment options to accept payments from customers. There must be a gateway that should be compatible and support with the eCommerce platform being selected and capable of securely moves funds from your customers’ bank account into company account. The chosen payment gateway must support either in core or via an extension.
The design of your eCommerce store is very important after finalizing the payment gateway. Some want natural, sleek and simple storefront while others go for bright colours and large images of the products. The look of the store can be modified with free or paid themes which few eCommerce platforms offer. One can easily apply by clicking button in administrative settings or by uploading a file to the server. The number of themes may differ from platform to platform.
The security of the eCommerce store is very important and customer data is incredibly valuable and should remain confidential. The customer data can be secured by two ways: one by adopting PCI Security Standards applicable to websites that store and accept payment information and make you feel relaxed that you have secure payment gateway and that abide by the standard. The other way of securing customer data is through SSL certificates that permit browser to process sensitive transaction carefully. Few platforms allow choose additional security perks and packages such as monitoring Dos attacks and fraud protection. These options are useful in future when your store grows in popularity and size.
The forms, content and pages should be simple and unique and solve the purpose of opening an eCommerce store. An ecommerce store should have the ability to reach high rank during searches. That can be possible with amount of desired and reliable content available. If your platform has a weak Content Management System (CMS) even simple content blocks will be difficult to add and store success will suffer.
While choosing a platform for your ecommerce store you should also take a look of support documentation that is available and other resources like FAQs, Video walkthroughs, support forums, Q&A areas, Hows and detailed guides. The platform should have the ability to add new features without migrating to a new platform and allows scaling up and down according to your plan.
Therefore, find below are some important features while choosing an eCommerce platform for your online business.
- Intended Payment Gateway
- Additional Security
- Review free or paid designs and potential cost
- Simple and easy content
- SEO-optimized eCommerce theme
- Online Support
- High-quality template
- Conversion boosting
- Detailed Documentation
- Facility of Upgrade
- Impressive User Interface
- Extended Catalogue filtering, sorting and categorization options
- Mobile ready theme
- Functionality
- Demo of the Software
- Log in and Walk through standard tasks such as adding/editing a product,processing an order, view reports and segment customers
Before making a final decision check for organic ranking, friendliness of product URLs, cleanliness of source code, other biggest sites that use particular platform, reviews, locate forums etc. Behind the successful running of eCommerce platform things like marketing, merchandising, descriptions and images, customer service, prompt delivery, security and creating niche and loyal customers need to be considered and should drive your attention.
