Small or Large scale, every business required strong ecommerce platform support to grab online customers. Ecommerce platform helps you to manage complex product and sales related task. Ecommerce platform offers different functionality and options, provide various measurable statistical reports. Once you decided to start your business online, first thing comes in your mind to choose a right eCommerce platform, to provide better user experience and simple accessibility feature. If your business targeted to different products like grocery, electronics, and mobile, fashions, etc. then you required a bigger eCommerce platform supports. On the other side, a small group of products needs single support platform.
Ecommerce platform on a merging state in the online business market. In 2015, global online retail sales (included B2B and B2C) reached to $22.1 trillion worldwide and expected to reach $27 trillion in 2020. In 2017, customer experience is the most important factor for generating online revenue to improves customer retention, customer satisfaction and up sales and cross sales. Ecommerce platform helps you to change big and small elements on your site to improve customer experience. Nowadays people are moving towards mobile devices, keeping in mind most of the eCommerce platform are now offering mobile and tablet device supports.
Another primary benefit of using custom eCommerce platform is to manage complex transaction activity. Small or Big, any transaction with complex functionality can easily handle through custom eCommerce platform, with predefined fields such as weight, delivery place, quantity, etc. Keep in mind that, when you are using custom price filters all field are mention correctly, else your price may vary every time.
Monitoring your visitors is crucial, especially when you wish to convert most of them into customers. Custom reports generated by your eCommerce platform are important because they tell a clear picture about business performance. Custom reports like visits, sales, stocks, bounce rate are important to take an effective decision.
According to Datanyze reports, WooCommerce is the most preferred eCommerce platform with 28.15% acquisition market share. In just five months the WooCommerce growth increased to 2.3% makes it a leader in Ecommerce platform. Although Magento is holding its position in 2nd rank, installed in 228,037 websites globally. In a recent report, 26% of total eCommerce website are hosted in the USA, that makes it 1st in global eCommerce market. Most of the eCommerce website are used for selling clothes and accessories, secondary it is used to sell electronics and sports goods.
How to Select Right Ecommerce Platform
1. Type of Product You Are Selling
Always select your eCommerce platform to depend on your product type and features, to track your website and sales performance confidently. There is various types eCommerce platform designed to provide different features, based on your Physical or Digital product may help you to choose the best source. For example, physical good required more custom configuration such as size, weight, and color, while digital products required less configuration, but high security. You can compare custom eCommerce platform based on your unit sold, As some eCommerce platform charge based on per transaction, Also In some cases, international delivery charges may vary on the traditional cart.
2. Hosted or Self-Hosted?
Whether your business is small or large, you need to understand the meaning and importance of hosted and Self-Hosted eCommerce cart. If you are new entrepreneur looking start your business online, I would suggest you choose hosted eCommerce cart for hassle free eCommerce experience. So let’s get started with their definition.
Hosted eCommerce Cart: In general term hosted eCommerce cart are used for creating simple and easy shopping website, as most of the design and features are predefined. You can select the option provided by hosting provider. Most of the features are available in the store. The cart provider controls all the security and hacking related issue. If you don`t have the technical knowledge and your product not required too much modification, then hosted eCommerce cart is the right option for your business
Self-Hosted eCommerce Cart: In the self-hosted website, you buy a hosting space from the store provider, and you can design your store and implement complex functionality through HTML and CSS coding. Self-Hosted eCommerce cart is a better option when you want complete control over your sales process. If you are selling different types of product where the user can customize by color, size, and shape, then Self-Hosted eCommerce cart is the best option for you.
3. Security Measures
Every year some website lose billions of their precious data, due to misunderstanding necessary security measures. Some common security guidelines are using a complex password, change the password after a certain time interval and taking backup regularly. But apart from those, your website required one extra layer of protection with SSL Certificate. An SSL certificate is a digital signature that works as protected shield to secure all the data transmission between your website server and end-user browser, to know more about SSL Certificate and their types – Click Here. If you already aware about SSL certificate and looking for strong SSL Certificate at a lower price, then SSL Certificate from RapidSSL is the best option for your small and medium scale business.
4. How Are Your Customers Paying?
Ecommerce website cannot be reliable on one payment option; these payment alternatives are varied in a different location. In some countries, cash on delivery is more preferred, same as in some countries payment through cheque also accepted. Based on your payment mode, you can compare and choose a custom eCommerce platform that accepts multiple payment options. These preferences can help your customer to shop confidently, eliminate any payment restriction while purchasing any product from your store.
5. Payment Integration
No matters how large or small business you have, smart payment integration is required for every type of business. Smart payment integration can help you to obtain payment from multiple payment facilities, and you can run your business without any payment interruption. Selecting best payment integration service is crucial because it should full fill your business needs. Identify your business nature like B2B or B2C first, then select your payment gateway based on your customer preferences. Currently, there are three types of Payment gateway integration eCommerce Plugins, Checkout Page, API Integration.
eCommerce Plugins: This is the most common method to integrate your payment portals with your payment gateway partners. Generally, eCommerce Plugins comes with hosted eCommerce platforms, to ensure maximum payment support and user security. These processes are generally easily to install and no required a professional technical resource.
Checkout Page: In checkout payment integration, the user needs to fill custom created embed form. Once the user fills out the form He/She direct to secure payment page for checkout, and webmaster can customize the pages based on design and information required to fill.
API Integration: This is method are used when owner required full integration support. In API integration, the user can create complete payment interface on their site to control over payment flow. API integration is beneficial if you are looking to monitor customer experience in every stage of payment.
6. Design
The most important factor in your online business is your store layout, and every business required a fantastic design to get user attention. In eCommerce platform, if you choose hosted plan then you can select variety theme offer by eCommerce provider and customize little bit according to your choice. There is no required for professional coding expert because most of the features and plugins are easily available in the store. On the other hand, Self-Hosted eCommerce platform offers you to use custom design theme on your website, and you can add or remove any elements or features according to your business requirement. In Self-Hosted eCommerce website, you required a professional designer and coding expert, so that you can structure your site design from home page to inner page.
7. Reporting:
Every online business is evaluated on the basis their performance, and various reports rate these performances. To take effective decision for your business growth, you required individual reports such as sales performance, visitors flow, inventory management and a traffic channel for analysis. Some eCommerce provider offers general performance reports, but if you want to build custom reports for your website, you can create these reports on a self-hosted platform, but it required some complex technical support.
8. Technical Resource
Technical resources are required if you are looking to implement complex functionality related to your products. Sometimes you may face some standard error in your content, image, design and checkout. Even an experienced technical expert person review the resource option to understand the complete process. Make sure before you select your eCommerce platform, ask them to provide resource section and other option to contact them in the case of emergency.
Conclusion
For long-term business growth, selecting a right eCommerce platform is important. In every online business, becoming a leader is only possible if you have the right amount of knowledge and technical support. Providing best user experience is the only key to converting your visitor into customers.
