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The boundaries between traditional commerce and e-commerce become more blurred over the years, as more and more companies are moving part of their sales and marketing to e-commerce platforms, no matter what type of business they do. In this context, statistics indicate that about two billion people around the world purchased products via the Internet, and that the volume of global retail sales via the Internet in 2018 reached 2.8 trillion US dollars; It expects it to reach about $5 trillion annually by 2021.
Choosing the right platform to launch your online store is an essential component of a successful business website that takes your business to greater heights. The road to creating successful online stores will not be without bumps and obstacles, but it will become much more difficult if it is not accompanied by knowledge of the principles that underpin online sales, and what the use of e-commerce platforms is supposed to add to your business. In this article, we will explore the best e-commerce platforms and learn how to choose between them, and let's start by identifying their types.
What are e-commerce platforms?
E-commerce platforms are computer programs that enable businesses and individuals to sell products and services over the Internet. Sales need software to manage their own operations such as accounting, order management, and inventory management. E commerce platforms piece these pieces together to make one consistent and integrated program.
Types of e-commerce platforms
E-commerce platforms can be classified according to many criteria, including:
1. License to use
The developers of e-commerce platforms set a set of conditions that must be respected when using these platforms. These terms are called a license to use, and the user of the platform must respect them, or else he will be subject to legal prosecution. There are two main types of licenses to use e-commerce platforms: closed licenses and free and open source licenses.
For closed licenses, you are required to use the platform as it is, and you are not entitled to modify it or sell your copy of it; As for open source licenses, the holder allows the holder to use it in the way he wants, and to modify it, and some of them stipulate that the modifications you make are available according to the terms of the original license itself.
2. Sales quality
E-commerce platforms may be used to build stores that sell different types of merchandise. Among the electronic stores are those that specialize in tangible goods, which are goods that usually need places to store them, such as computers, phones, and clothes; Among the stores, there are electronic goods that are stored on the platform and are allowed to be downloaded against payment of an amount, such as e-books, pictures, and music. There is a third type of electronic store, which is specialized in providing services such as study and training on the network.
3. The nature of the parties involved in the sale process
When looking at online stores, we find that they do not always target the same audience, so the parties involved in the sales process differ. Most of the famous online stores target individuals, their main goal is to reach the customer who will consume their goods directly. However, this is not the case for all stores. Among the stores are companies that sell their products to other companies, such as cloth companies that provide raw materials for clothing manufacturers.
4. Quality of hosting
Another important criterion for rating e-commerce platforms is the quality of hosting. About a decade ago, those wishing to use e-commerce platforms had to configure all the work requirements themselves, they are the ones who buy or rent the servers that the platform will work on, and they adjust the settings of the platform after installation, and they continue to monitor and maintain the settings throughout the duration of the work . This means that the setup and operation costs are high.
The matter has changed a lot in recent years. The cost of the first option has decreased with the emergence of cloud solutions, and another option has appeared, so the business owner can open an online store and continue his work daily without having to worry about technical matters. E-commerce platforms are divided according to the type of hosting into two main types, which are e-commerce platforms hosted independently, and e-commerce platforms provided as a service.
a. Hosted Independent Ecommerce Platforms
In this case, the e-commerce platform is available in the form of a program - or a software package - that is installed on a server run by the business owner, who sets up the server and installs the platform on it, and then monitors the platform and server during their work, and maintains and updates them if necessary. Those who choose this type of e-commerce platform resort to renting virtual servers from a cloud solution provider.
The most popular of these platforms are Magento, WooCommerce, and OpenCart.
B. E-commerce platforms offered as a service
In this case, e-commerce platforms follow the principle of "Software as a Service, SaaS". This principle is based on the platform being easy to use and ready for store owners to deal with without having to think about the technical and technical aspects that the platform owner takes care of. Thus, the store owner's focus is on the essence of his work, which is to work on developing his trade and what this requires of marketing, attracting customers, following up on sales and inventory, and other related operations.
Examples of these platforms are Shopify and BigCommerce.
How do you choose the right e-commerce platform for your store?
The choice of platform on which you will work should be subject to clear criteria. There is a trap that many fall into, instead of focusing on the goals of the business and the impact of the platform on partners from potential customers and sellers, the attention is focused on the many and varied features and functions that may not be commensurate with the nature of the activity or its goals, so the cost increases without this being reflected on the store’s activity.
So, define your online business goals before you start researching e-commerce platforms for what can achieve those goals. What do I want to do and what will this or that platform provide? Here are the most important criteria to look at before choosing an e-commerce platform for your future store:
Software Requirements
E-commerce platforms differ in their infrastructure requirements. While it takes just a few clicks to get started with a service platform, standalone platforms need to set up the infrastructure they will run on. Regulatory measures may force you to be in complete control of the store's workflow. In this case, you will resort to setting up the infrastructure yourself, which means making sure that there is a technical team, or at least a technical person who has good skills in managing the operating systems and setting up the platform to be chosen, monitoring and maintaining them.
If you are an individual who does not have a technical background or a small organization that does not require regulatory procedures to choose a specific infrastructure, it will be more suitable for you, and the least expensive to choose between e-commerce platforms provided as a service.
The Total Cost
Launching an online store requires developing a plan with the expected costs, whether they are capital invested or operating costs. For companies, a poor estimate of the total cost of ownership leads to exceeding the specified budget and the resulting impact on the rest of the company's projects and priorities. For individuals and small businesses, the impact is even greater, as uncalculated costs can lead to project failure even before getting customers.
The total cost of e-commerce platforms includes platform setup costs:
- Initial costs: These include the costs of purchasing a license for the platform and adjusting its settings, including the cost of labor, and the cost of moving to the platform if the store operates on another platform.
- Maintenance and exploitation costs: It includes periodic costs such as the cost of hosting or subscription (monthly or annually), and circumstantial costs such as repairing errors if they arise.
- Upgrade costs: These include the costs of moving to new versions of the platform, changing the subscription, or making or customizing the interface.
There are hidden costs, which are not directly included in the costs of e-commerce platforms, but you should pay attention to them, such as:
- Costs associated with shipping (the percentage the service provider takes from each sale).
- Payment-related costs, such as processing electronic payment cards.
- Plugins costs for the trading platform and its extensions. Some e-commerce platforms provide paid extensions for those who want specific functionality and features.
Ease of SEO
Optimization for search engines is very important for all websites, especially businesses. It is not enough to set up an online store to get sales, but you must work daily to reach the first positions in the search results for topics related to your field. So, you should be careful to choose an e-commerce platform that enables you to reach your desired goal.
Here are key SEO factors that e-commerce platforms should allow for control and customization:
- Browsing Link Texts.
- Page titles, here are the titles that appear on the tab and address bar of the browser.
- The URL path of the page.
- Metadata descriptions.
- Alt texts for images (ALT tags).
- Headings, ie the internal headings of the page.
- rel=canonical tag to prevent duplicate content issues.
Multiple languages support
What is the language of the audience your online store is targeting? Does the store provide him in the language he understands better? Does your target audience have multiple languages? These are questions whose answers contribute to choosing the right e-commerce platform for you.
Language support in e-commerce platforms can be divided into two main parts which are the support in the control panel and the support in the interface. Interface support means that the language can be used to communicate with the visitor, via navigation menus, product names, and other interface elements. The support in the control language means that the store can be managed using this language. It is not strange to find a store that offers products in Arabic while it is run by people some of whom do not speak Arabic, and this is because they use another language in the control panel.
Customizability
When it comes to customization, there is always a balance between the possibilities offered by e-commerce platforms and the effort and cost required to exploit these possibilities and get the most customization, whether it comes to customizing the look or functionality of the store. In other words, there is always a direct proportion between assignability and cost, which means that the question must be asked “Does the return on activity from the allocation justify the cost and effort I am going to spend on it?”.
In general, free-hosted e-commerce platforms have a greater ability to customize appearance and functionality, while service-format platforms focus on providing a number of free templates to quickly customize the appearance and some offer the ability to customize functionality for specific types of subscriptions.
Integration with other services
Famous e-commerce platforms have a range of add-ons and methods of communicating with external services in order to expand the range of functions they provide to e-store owners, some of these add-ons are paid and others are free.
These add-ons include services such as delivery, electronic payment methods, marketing tools, and email lists. For organizations, it may be desirable to have a method of integrating the enterprise management software (ERP) and e-commerce platform. If the desired add-ons are not present, it is possible - as necessary - to consider the possibility of developing them, which requires software capabilities.
Reports and Analytics
Reports and analyzes enable you to identify the status of the store and sales, the nature of visitors, the best-selling products and other data that help the business owner in increasing its performance, identifying and overcoming deficiencies, and developing marketing strategies with clear and achievable goals.
Popular e-commerce platforms provide tools for basic reports and analysis on sales and store activity. As for in-depth analytics, it varies from platform to platform, and sometimes varies according to the type of service subscription.
Best E-Commerce Platforms
There are dozens, if not hundreds, of e-commerce platforms of all kinds. In the following lines, we will learn about 6 of the best e-commerce platforms according to the criteria that we have defined in the previous paragraphs.
WooCommerce
WooCommerce is basically a plugin that turns WordPress websites into ready-to-use stores that have advanced customizability. WooCommerce is highly SEO-ready and offers a huge number of WordPress themes and designs that can be used in the store.
You don't need to pay to use WooCommerce, but like any standalone e-commerce platform you need hosting, and a lot of the basic functionality is provided through add-ons, mostly paid. Setting up WooCommerce will not pose a problem for those who have experience tuning WordPress sites, but it is different for those who do not have experience with it, although the availability of educational resources on WooCommerce in abundance helps to overcome this barrier.
Strength Point
- Best readiness for search engine optimization.
- Highly customizable.
- Generally acceptable support for Arabic and for multilingualism.
- There are plenty of WordPress experts to help out when needed.
- The ability to complete sales with one click.
Shopify Platform
Shopify belongs to e-commerce platforms provided as a service, and is one of the most popular platforms, especially among beginners and those without a technical background, who can use the drag and drop feature to set up the online store.
The platform offers plans for a monthly or annual subscription, the price of which varies according to the features available to the store, and the prices range from $ 29 to $ 300 per month, in addition to a percentage of each sale. The platform also has a marketplace for free and paid apps for additional functionality or specific features.
The Shopify platform is suitable for stores that rely on dropshipping, Facebook ads, or Instagram marketing, but it is not suitable for stores that rely a lot on visitors coming from search engine results, as stores that use Shopify do not rank well on search engines. .
Weak Points
- Not good at configuring for search engines.
- Check-out is not customizable.
- Lack of free store templates (10 at the time of writing). Some templates need to be modified to suit the direction of writing in Arabic (from right to left) or translation to show messages in the storefront in Arabic.
- Advanced features require development experience.
BigCommerce Platform
PG Commerce is similar to Shopify in that it is a service-format platform, and is relatively easy to handle for those without a technical background. The platform adopts a monthly or annual subscription model, by providing three subscription plans, ranging in price from $29 to $249 per month. PG Commerce does not take a percentage of sales but it does set a sales limit for each plan, after which you must move to the next plan ($50,000 per year for the first plan).
PG Commerce scores well for its search engine optimization, and offers plenty of features built into its subscription plans.
Weak Points
- Decreased display speed.
- High cost for high-selling stores.
- The absence of the possibility of upgrading the deal and completing sales operations with one click.
- Lack of free shop templates (7 at the time of writing). Also, some templates need to be modified to suit the direction of writing in the Arabic language (from right to left) or translation so that messages appear on the storefront in Arabic.
3dcart Platform
3D Cart is one of the oldest e-commerce platforms offered in a service format, although it is not as widespread as Shopify and Bug Commerce itself. 3DCart offers four subscription plans priced between $19 and $229 a month, an annual sales limit of $50,000 to $1 million, and doesn't take a percentage of sales.
Beginners may take longer compared to Shopify and Bug Commerce to set up and customize the store. The templates and store designs that are available look professional albeit with outdated design methods, and therefore you may need to use developers to modify them. The 3D Cart platform comes with a lot of ready-to-use features and features in the shipping solutions available.
Weak Points
- old designs.
- It does not support the Arabic language.
- The platform's user support reviews are not good.
- Longer learning time for beginners.
OpenCart Platform
OpenCart is a free and free standalone e-commerce platform. Installing and setting up OpenCart requires technical expertise, but managing products, orders and other functions is easy via the control panel. The platform has the basic functionality of e-commerce platforms. It also has a lot of add-ons to get additional features and to integrate with other services such as electronic payment services.
The OpenCart platform comes with a clean and responsive store template, but you will need to purchase or develop a theme if you want a look that is specific to your store. Although the platform itself is free, the total cost may be high due to the need to pay for hosting and platform additions and if you need support in order to diagnose store problems. OpenCart is suitable for beginners in the field of e-commerce with a technical background.
Weak Points
- You need to adjust the default settings in order to configure it for search engines.
- Technical skills required for setup.
- You need plugins often.
- Slow to show if the store is large.
Magento Platform
Magento is a free e-commerce platform, available in a free standalone version, and a service version for large corporations. Magento is highly customizable, so you can have unique stores unlike any other.
The total cost of using the Magento platform is high, and it requires good software capabilities; In this sense, it is not suitable for beginners in e-commerce, but it is suitable for medium companies that have technical and financial resources and are looking for unique stores.
Weak Points
- The high cost.
- The need for software and technical skills.
- The need for servers with high specifications.
- There is no free support for standalone users.
Mistakes to avoid when choosing between E-commerce Platforms
In this article, we learned about the most important criteria in choosing between the many e-commerce platforms available in the market, and we also went through the best platforms to choose between them. In conclusion, we mention three mistakes that should be avoided when preparing to launch the online store and while choosing the e-commerce platform that it will work on.
First: the needs are not clearly defined
This is perhaps the greatest mistake you can make. Lack of clarity of needs leads to confusion in selection, loss of time and effort, and consequently increased cost and possibly project failure.
Second: Choosing a platform that does not adapt to the services you need
If you have an off-the-shelf system that you work on every day, in accounting or marketing for example, and it serves its purpose, it would be a mistake to choose a platform that it cannot integrate with. This means that e-commerce platforms that offer linking tools with your business system (existing or future) should be preferred.
Third: focus on products rather than user experience
E-commerce isn't just about displaying a range of products and checkout pages, it requires you to be able to help your customers with tools to search, display educational videos, provide product reviews, and offer engaging educational content. Whatever business model you adopt, this aspect of user experience is essential to staying competitive. Make sure the platform you choose makes this task easy for you.
Ecommerce platforms FAQs
Do you have any further inquiries? We've got you covered, though. These popular and typical queries concerning e-commerce platforms are provided.
What is the largest ecommerce platform?
In terms of traffic, Amazon is the biggest international shopping platform. But when it comes to e-commerce software systems, WooCommerce dominates the industry.
With a 37% market share, WooCommerce is the preferred e-commerce platform globally, according to Statista. With 15% and 14% of the market, Square space Online Stores and Woo Themes placed second and third, respectively.
What is the best ecommerce platform for startups?
Excellent e-commerce platforms for startups include WooCommerce, Shopify, and Squarespace.
Not which e-commerce platform is ideal for startups should be your inquiry. Which e-commerce platform is suitable for my company, should you ask yourself instead? You would definitely pick a different platform than a start-up that sells antique items if you sell online courses.
What are the most popular ecommerce platforms?
WooCommerce and Squarespace are the two most widely used e-commerce platforms. Their market share is the largest. However, that is a really broad generalisation. Even if these platforms dominate the industry, it could be worthwhile to research which ecommerce platform your peers prefer.
We advise conducting preliminary study. If you are aware of others in your industry that operate an online store, find out if they are satisfied with their platform. Alternately, look for reviews on well-known websites with your industry in mind. You may often find extremely frank information concerning online goods sales on Reddit.
What is the best ecommerce platform for small business?
Depending on the type of small business you run, you may choose the finest e-commerce platform for it. Nevertheless, a lot of proprietors of small businesses favour user-friendly e-commerce platforms. Instead of being open-source, these platforms are often hosted solutions.
Solutions that are hosted include Squarespace and Shopify. They often need less initial effort than open-source programmes like WooCommerce. Having said that, WooCommerce is, in our humble view, the greatest open source e-commerce platform. But each e-commerce option provides benefits for small enterprises on its own.
The ecommerce templates provided by Squarespace are a convenient solution for small companies to launch their online presence. Shopify is a popular option because to its simplicity of integration with other systems. WooCommerce appeals to small companies vying for visibility on SERPs because to its SEO skills.
What is the best ecommerce platform for Instagram?
The finest ecommerce platform for Instagram sales is Shopify. It is quick and simple to integrate apps from the Shopify app store. Apps are available to assist with shipping, abandoned cart retrieval, customer service, and other tasks.
You may link to your social network accounts on any legitimate e-commerce platform. But Shopify distinguishes itself by making it simple for users to do social shopping on Instagram (and TikTok, for that matter!) with tools like Heyday, a conversational artificial intelligence chatbot.
Which eCommerce platform is best for big business?
The Best Enterprise Ecommerce Platforms
- Shopify Plus – Best Overall Enterprise Ecommerce Platform.
- BigCommerce Enterprise: – Best for Onboarding Speed.
- Squarespace Enterprise – Best for Personalized Support.
- Magento Commerce: – Best for Pro Web Developers.
- WooCommerce for Enterprise – Best Low Cost Option.