How to Choose the Right e-Commerce Platform for Your Business
Choosing the right e-commerce platform is critical to the success of your business because you’re not only selecting features, but you’re also choosing challenges you will face as your business grows or changes. Scalability, flexibility, and cost of your platform are essential when choosing the right e-commerce platform.
Make sure to create a list of what types of features you will need to achieve your marketing goals before looking at different platforms. While some platforms are better SEO-focused, others will require coding skills. Choose the platform which fits your needs, goals, and features best.
Top e-Commerce Platforms to Consider
WooCommerce
WooCommerce is a direct WordPress plug-in with many features, especially for those businesses that have a website and are jumping into e-commerce for the first time.
While WooCommerce has high customizability and built-in analytics, this platform also benefits from 24/7 customer support. The plug-in is free, but you’ll have to pay for other related costs.
WooCommerce is an excellent fit for businesses that need a customizable platform, know WordPress well, and have coding chops. WooCommerce isn’t a great platform to scale your business and doesn’t allow for SEO. In addition, Woo also lacks social media marketing support.
Shopify
Shopify is a trendy e-commerce platform of choice for those who rely on social media marketing to sell. The platform is simple, flexible, and scalable for small to medium-sized businesses. No coding skills? No problem! Shopify has a drag-and-drop interface that allows you to build your site quickly and easily without coding. Shopify focuses on selling and provides excellent customer experience management and up-sell features.
Big Commerce
Big Commerce can handle massive stores and offers strong SEO performance. It’sIt’s simple one-page checkout experience can assist with sales conversion. Big Commerce is highly customizable if you have ninja coding skills and excellent customer support. Expect to pay a higher price tag for many features that other platforms include in their basic plans.
OpenCart
OpenCart is an open-source and free-to-use platform. Although the basic version is free, you can choose add-ons, which range in cost from free to $100 to increase the feature set of your platform. OpenCart has good SEO capability, is mobile-responsive, and can be the right option for a tech-savvy small business owner who wants to save on their platform.
The platform also requires a great deal of coding ability, and their customer support isn’t strong. When something goes wrong, you may need to tinker with your site yourself while OpenCart works on getting back to you.
Squarespace
Squarespace offers excellent design from a simple drag-and-drop interface based on several templates. This platform is most popular among design-focused and content creation professionals.
Squarespace also seems to attract small business owners with its flexibility. This platform also allows you to offer unlimited products on your site. Suppose your business is focused on e-commerce or has a high sales volume. In that case, Squarespace may not be suitable for you as it doesn’t have much SEO or CRM capabilities.
Magento
Magento, by Adobe, has gained popularity in Asia. North American companies have begun to realize the power behind this e-commerce platform. Although you need coding expertise to excel with this platform, the open-source nature makes it incredibly flexible and scalable. Many extensions and features are already available, or you can build your own. With Magneto, it’s easy to make an e-commerce site that looks really good.
Magento is a smart choice for small or large businesses that can handle a more complicated interface than Squarespace. While there is a free version of Magento, the enterprise cost is $2,200 per month. That can make it challenging for growing businesses to expand in the e-commerce world.
Finding the best eCommerce platform for your business that matches your coding skills, expectations for growth, and feature set can be challenging. Call us today to find out how Visual Web Group can assist you in getting the most out of your e-Commerce platform by booking a complimentary session with us. Contact us today for a complimentary consultation to see how Visual Web Group can get you started on an e-Commerce platform that fits your goals and your business budget!
