A Rundown Of The Popular e-Commerce Platforms

Marketing your products online is now considered one of the best ways to garner sales, acquire an increasing amount of profits and elevate your company’s visibility. However, as easy as it is to build an e-Commerce site, choosing the right platform to launch it requires quite a lot of thoughtful consideration.

The scope of e-Commerce sites have undoubtedly seen a tremendous growth in the recent years. Implementing them with a few customisable features after setting them up will just not cut it any more. The rise in technology and awareness among the users point towards expectations that are sky high. Selecting the right platform that is integrated with the social media, a hassle-free user experience, search engine optimisation and much more need to be incorporated into the site to rise above the immediate competition. A lot of new trends have been growing in popularity that have made the user experience that much more simpler. Payment gateways that are now even more secure, vibrant photographs, strategies concerning with the retention of customers are a few aspects that have made transactions on through online stores a breeze for both the buyers and sellers.

The number of Content Management Systems and e-Commerce platforms have increased by the day making the task of zeroing in on one a tough one. Following is an overview of the more popular ones for you to consider for a successful run in the e-Commerce world.

Magento
Magento is by far one of the most favoured of the platforms for around 20% of the e-Commerce sites.

With the largest number of plugins and marketplace extensions available that can be used to customise features to fit one’s needs, a reduced overall cost, seamless integration methods and more SEO friendly than the other platforms, opting for Magento is indeed a no-brainer. However, Magento is more compatible with retail stores of a large scale as opposed to the smaller, more niche ones.

OsCommerce
Quite a large number of sites built on open source use OsCommerce. Magento can be the most preferred option but OsCommerce is among one of the oldest and is often the most reliable.

Installation involves a simple method, user interface is quite smooth and the plugins available offer a host of functionalities. However, one of the areas that OsCommerce suffers from is the security feature. Although a large community is actively involved with its proceedings, software updates are outdated.

Shopify
Shopify is increasingly gaining momentum and is becoming one of the more preferred platforms for web and logo designers next only to Magento.

The popularity almost makes it synonymous to e-Commerce platforms. Shopify offers a multitude of beautifully crafted templates to choose from, has an extremely secure payment gateway, customer support, plugins and a customised feel to the website. Its ability to constantly upgrade itself to suit the changing times, also makes it one of the most trusted platforms to build an online store on.

WooCommerce
WooCommerce is a slight deterrent from the list as it is one of the plugins of WordPress. As a result, it comes preloaded with most of the essentials and functionalities.

Many of the sites that use WordPress as a theme use WooCommerce for its customisable features and cost effectiveness. Although it has an easy installation and integration procedure, it would still be a long while before bigger retail stores think of adopting this plugin as a platform for their store.

OpenCart
Some of the primary features of OpenCart is the ease with which it is operated from the back-end and the CSS that can be subjected to edits from within the administrative panel.

Since it had its inception in the year 2007, OpenCart has fewer codes. This signifies a greater amount of work for the web developers due to the development of a series of codes for most of the functionalities. It is recommended for its sleek interface and an extreme ease of use.

BigCommerce
An e-Commerce shop inevitably needs a seemingly limitless capacity for storage and BigCommerce provides you with just that.

With out-of-the-box built in features like gift cards, user reviews, options to add endless products and the availability of a completely functional website make it a stiff competitor to Shopify. The range of security and the page loading speed also work in BigCommerce’s favour making it a giant in the field of e-Commerce platforms.

To surmise, every e-Commerce platform has an array of features that must be analysed and only when they are found compatible should they be considered for the launch of your store. Enlist web designing services to aid you in building the perfect site for your store and rise above the competition.