In today’s time, every business needs an online existence to grow and expand globally. There are several eCommerce websites where a business owner can develop their desired eCommerce website, add products and sell them online. These eCommerce platforms provide excellent solutions for small businesses as well as large-scale companies helping them grow their business and reach out to consumers globally.
The difficult task is building an eCommerce website if you are a non-technical person who does not know any development languages. A couple platforms do have options for users to set up their eCommerce store. A lot of eCommerce websites are built using WordPress or Magneto. WordPress was released/founded in the year 2003 whereas Magneto is a bit younger founded in 2007. Both WordPress and Magneto are open-source platforms written in PHP.
Below is a list of some top eCommerce platforms:
Magento
Shopify
WooCommerce
BigCommerce
Wix
Open cart
Squarespace
Here is some more information about these platforms with Pros & Cons:
Magento
Magento is an open-source e-commerce platform written in PHP. Multiple PHP frameworks are used, including Laminas and Symfony. Open Software License (OSL) v3.0 is used for Magento’s source code distribution. In May 2018, Adobe Inc. acquired Magento for $1.68 billion. Volunteers and open source software contributors helped Varien Inc., a US private company headquartered in Culver City, California, develop the software. The platform has been used to create more than 100,000 online stores. Magento-based systems sold $155 billion in goods in 2019.[3] Magento holds a 2.32% market share in global e-commerce platforms as of April 2021.
Pros:
• Magento is highly customizable
• Strong SEO Tools for SEO Optimization
• It provides customizations and optimal scalability.
• Multiple customizations available at the root.
• Community Support, as it has huge community of developers & support.
Cons:
• It is costly will paid edition.
• Need development skill while developing E Store
• Requires Hosting Plan
• It’s plugins are costly.
Shopify
Shopify Inc. is a Canadian multinational e-commerce company headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario. The Shopify platform also offers online retailers a suite of services, including payments, marketing, shipping, and customer engagement tools.
In May 2021, the company reported that the platform was used by approximately 1,700,000 businesses worldwide. The Shopify platform is currently running on 1.58 million websites, according to BuiltWith.
Pros:
• It has inbuilt hosting service
• It is SEO optimized
• There are various themes available
• It has large community
And there are various payment gateways are available
Cons:
• It is expensive than other E-Commerce platforms
• There is hosting service is inbuilt but it is paid
• The transaction fee is higher
• There are most plugins which are very expensive
WooCommerce
WooCommerce is a flexible, open-source commerce solution built on WordPress. The company started in 2008 as Woo-Themes and in 2017 decided to focus exclusively on eCommerce. WooCommerce empowers small and medium businesses to build exactly the store they want and sell online. Our legacy as an all-remote company endures, growing from three founders in Norway, the United Kingdom, and South Africa to more than 150 team members in 32 countries.
Pros:
• Free to use and distribute
• Extensible: you can add features that don’t currently exist
• Can be used to implement a complete E-commerce funnel
• Full control of your content and store
• Wide variety of themes and plugins (a lot of them free)
• Readily available support
Cons:
• Needs some knowledge of two platforms: WordPress and WooCommerce, for efficient administration
• Even though the core WooCommerce plugin is free, many extensions are not
• Capital costs for a WooCommerce site need to be budgeted for. It is not cheap
• Expert knowledge is needed to add new functionality
• Specialist E-commerce site builders are needed in order to implement a robust site
• On-going maintenance is the responsibility of the store owner
• WooCommerce by itself will not fulfill the E-commerce funnel
BigCommerce
BigCommerce is a platform that provides SaaS e-commerce. It has great features like search engine optimization (SEO), grouping and segmentations, web hosting and more. It allows users to create and manage their online stores according to their wishes and requirements. It has various customizable temples easy to setup store.
Pros:
• Strong SEO marketing tools
• Various customizable templates
• Multi channel selling
• Support available on phone, live chat and email
• Large community
Cons:
• Sales limit with each plan
• No mobile application feature
• Lack in scalability
Wix
Wix is like other ecommerce ready made easy to use websites as it offer excellent drag and drop site builder facility. You don’t have to stress out yourself because of coding and don’t worry if you don’t have any technical knowledge regarding creating a website. You have to do just a simple task: pick a stunning template, choose your theme and customize it and you have your e-commerce website now. It is completely free, but if you want profession features like domain & hosting for ecommerce you must go for their premium plan. Its premium plan varies from $16 to $45 per month.
Pros:
• It is completely free for simple website.
• Drag and drop features make easy to setup
• Need less technical skill
• Large list of creative modern templates
• Easy customization facility
• Best for Beginner and small ecommerce
Cons:
• It offers weak SEO features.
• Some lacking features compares to other platforms
• Not suitable to large or medium ecommerce business
• Best for less than 100 products
OpenCart
OpenCart is an online store management system. It is PHP-based, using a MySQL database and HTML components. Support is provided for different languages and currencies. It is freely available under the GNU General Public License. As of May 2016, 342,000 websites were using OpenCart.
Pros:
• There is large database of plugins are available
• There is an extensive active community support
• There is Ajax real-time functionalities
• It is very easily customizable
• It is very efficient
• It is very perfect for beginners as admin panel is very user friendly
• It has admin panel mobile support
Cons:
• Functionalities scale is less than other options
• It can’t update easily
• The paid plugins are erroneous
• There is less support of CSS and JS
Squarespace
As per the above research, Squarespace is the best platform to build eCommerce websites. Squarespace, Inc. is an American website building and hosting company which is based in USA. It provides software as a service for website building and hosting, and allows users to use pre-built website templates and drag-and-drop elements to create and modify webpages.
Pros:
1. There are many templates offered that are ready for publication.
2. Most Squarespace templates rely on photography.
3. The backend design is easy to use.
4. It’s an all-in-one platform.
5. Squarespace is offered in a bundled approach.
6. Customer support is always available with Squarespace.
Cons:
1. There is no phone support.
2. Pricing is more expensive with Squarespace.
3. There is an overall lack of advanced marketing tools.
4. There is no support for third-party apps, plugins, or extensions.
5. Editing and adding content can sometimes be difficult.
By using different platforms like Shopify, Magento, BigCommerce, etc., We at Next Generation Technologies is competitive in delivering e-commerce solutions in India to business of every scale. Our team of professionals designs e-store with two objectives in mind: better customer experience and increase in sale. We boast to announce that so far we have achieved our objectives by designing attractive and SEO- friendly e-stores.
