It is nothing but a stand-alone software solution that can help you in taking your brand online or selling your products and services online. Allowing you to streamline your processes starting from inventory to sales, these softwares make your user experience smooth and easy for your customers.
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Are you a small or medium-sized enterprise (SME) looking to expand your business and reach a wider customer base? Look no further! BigCommerce, the leading eCommerce solution, is here to empower your online venture and help you achieve remarkable success.
It is nothing but a stand-alone software solution that can help you in taking your brand online or selling your products and services online. Such softwares helps you in setting up your online shop. These softwares offers features like – self-service portals, website designs, product listings, online payments, sales reports, inventory management, and CRM. These eCommerce softwares helps sellers, setting up shop online in super easy steps using eCommerce solutions. These applications are designed to build, deploy, and manage an online shopping website where merchandise can be displayed, sold, and bought.
Certain free and open-source eCommerce software solutions, available in the market, help you build fully–integrated online eCommerce software without investing a large fortune. Often, these platforms come with in-built modules and widgets to get embedded into your existing interface to create multi-vendor eCommerce platforms. Both on-premise and hosted solutions are available to meet the varied requirements of customers using different eCommerce website solutions. While the former will give you more control and flexibility over content management, the later will lower installation and management expenses.
With the rise in demand for integrated online store softwares, vendors today are offering easy, customizable ecommerce solution tools to meet a business’s varied and essential requirements to build an A-Class ecommerce website.
The growth of the ecommerce sector is never ending and the way today’s ecomm applications span their reach across verticals is outstanding. It is expected that by 2023, the ecommerce software market size will cross $ 6.3 billion. Many killer ecommerce software solutions are taking the market to the next level by providing advanced integration capabilities and personalization.
Let’s take a dip into the top ecommerce software vendors in terms of their market share and company size.
Each vendor has a story, and that makes comparing enterprise ecommerce software platforms challenging. However, implementing an ERP system in your business, requires an eCommerce platform that supports ERP integration, as enterprise eCommerce solutions without ERP integration turns out to be more costly. Few leading enterprise eCommerce software providers include Shopify Plus, Magento, BigCommerce, and more.
Growing from small to medium, every business needs solutions that can power their business and make them future ready. When it comes to online shop softwares, you will find them all similar in regards. But those for medium sized businesses differ in pricing, setup, features, and installation. The following comparison will help you Understand more and make the search easier.
Setting up an online store always requires big investment. But, setting the same without draining your wallet, you need custom or tailored ecommerce software solutions that are made just for your small business. From aggregating salient features for online visitors to making your online storefront more creative, here’s a comparison of certain ecomm platforms for small businesses.
Selling online can help you gain visibility with a deluge of prospective customers. Ecommerce softwares helps you understand how to create an ecommerce website. Willing to take your business online !!! Here is a list of advantages that online stores could offer.
a. These softwares offer a level playing platform with top brands.
b. It allows small artisans and entrepreneurs to showcase their products to a larger customer base and gain instant visibility across the online platform.
c. Promoting your business is easier online, and helps gain online visibility across top ecommerce platforms and reaches more customer base. Creating an instant buzz on big day sales, discounts and more is easy.
d. It allows you direct customer reach and interaction.
e. Keep your shop open 24×7.
f. Online transactions help close deals instantly. Comfortable payment options allow customers to buy more products online.
Having an inhouse IT team is always a plus. It can help you in building your online store from scratch. However, there are now plenty of ready-to-use, off-the-shelf applications available that can be customized according to your eCommerce business requirements. Zepo, Shopify, and BuildaBazar are a few such retail eCommerce software platform solutions that allow you to build personal online stores in easy steps.
a. Analytics and Reporting: Identifying trends and buying patterns of customers can massively help you sell more on your platform, and this can only be sorted out through analytics and reporting. It can further smoother your journey in selling by providing your insights and stats on keywords, demographics and clickstreams. Tracking user interest, shipping, and marketing your products better from the customer data to improve revenue streams gets easier.
b. An Integrated Blog or Articles Section: It helps in integrating blog sections on your site. Blogging on different product-centric topics or content helps in driving more traffic to your website. It allows you to have an upper hand over your competitors through blogging, as you can increase your visibility of your products through content generated on the blogs.
c. Multiple Payment Options And Shipping Gateways: One of the best features these software applications offer are multiple Payment Gateway. Payment gateways help in processing payments from customers by authorizing debit/credit cards, UPI Ids etc. So providing multi bank purchase options to customers can be breathtaking and can ease transactions for sellers and customers. On the other hand, having a band of shipping carriers integrated on the website can also ease the process of shipping products to customers faster.
d. SEO Features: Content is the king. And the right content and content strategy can help attract customers to your eCommerce website. Publishing content on different media platforms can help you lead the customers ultimately to your website. However, by adding fresh and unique content to your website, you can get better results in SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) through eCommerce software. These softwares enables optimum SEO and guides you to write appropriate meta descriptions, and product descriptions, add relevant keywords and also write better blog posts. This ultimately improves your site’s quality and increases keyword density to avoid plagiarism.
e. Omnichannel: Providing customers with better freedom through a combination of multiple channels can help the customers make better buying decisions. With this, customers can have more options for research by toggling from blogs, posts, testimonials, social media links, etc., and increase their point of sales purchases. Website owners can offer more platforms for sales and advertising.
f. Enhancing Product Management: Managing an ecommerce site with 100s of products can be challenging. However, using a platform with a product management feature can help you manage your list of products by exporting product information to update, help adjust pricing, and more. Reviewing and editing margins from your products range becomes easier with this feature, which can ultimately help enhance your responsiveness to market changes.
g. Site Security: Having security certificates to your website helps in providing an authentication or a safety guarantee and a confidence to users to visit your site. Buyers are always worried about their financial data. Safeguarding it through security certificates can take your buyers’ trust away. So the necessary encryption of your financial information can be achieved by acquiring SSL certificates for your sites, safeguarding user data by a two factor authentication, installing firewalls & addressing privacy policy.
h. Mobile Compatibility: Smartphones are the device of the era, and integrating responsiveness of your site in smartphones can bring a higher probability of an increase in purchases. Having a built-in-App feature in your software for your ecommerce website can be outstanding.
i. Universal Standards: Ecommerce software applications are a technological brilliance that enables you to showcase your list of products online and sell online by maintaining the same standard of product to everyone, locally or globally. Standardizing the products can reduce the cost of delivery to the customers and also affect market prices. This feature helps standardize products on your website, globally, in terms of quality and brand image.
j. Richness (Video, Audio): Selling products without adding proper or good quality photos or videos can be disastrous. Actually, photos and videos can describe the success and failure of your ecommerce business. Clear images of products helps sell your products faster on your website. Ecommerce softwares with better quality image filters will help in filtering low quality images and videos. It helps customer analyze products to the best degree and also measure the brand image of your ecommerce business and brand as well.
k. Personalization: Appearance or looks matter. Looks attract your customers and allows them to want to check out your product list or through the site. Attractive images and looks of your products and website, allows your business to stand out among the rest. Having this feature with your ecommerce software helps in customizing themes and templates of the website design and is a pure plus.
l. Third party system integration and System Plugins: Making it easy for multi-tasking, today, Majority of ecommerce softwares can integrate with various business apps or third party platforms. Tasks like accounting, email marketing, order fulfillment, payment processing, vendor management and more can be done on finger tips. Catering customers at lighting speed requires such features and thus a third party integration feature is a must for ecommerce softwares.
m. Business Intelligence: A business intelligence feature in your ecommerce software enables you to accommodate your business marketing campaigns to fit your budget and also match your preference for visualization, custom formulas and drill downs. Such features help you know your customers’ location, what pages they visit or engage with most, what product they visit most on your site etc. These insights can help you retarget your customers by customizing your product and services.
n. Inventory Management System: Worried about keeping the customers or losing them in the long run, that’s where an Inventory management feature in your eCommerce software can become your breaking point. Effective inventory management can not just monitor all your stocked products but also track the stock of more demanded products by your customers. These systems sometimes come with in-built integrations that connect your accounting system, barcoding strategy, and more, making the overall sales order processing easier by providing real-time information on products for packaging and delivery
There is a variety of ecommerce softwares available in the market, with various solutions for small to large scale businesses. However, the best of these softwares are categorized based on three parameters – Licensing model, Sales Scenario, and Data Exchange. Choosing the right software is tough. So a better understanding of these categories will allow you to make wise decisions in choosing the right kind of ecommerce software, suitable for your business.
i. On-Premise Ecommerce Tools: A one of its kind solution where it requires the users to make a one-time investment in the initial phase is termed as on-premise ecommerce tools. These kinds of investments include hardware and software installations. Apart from the initial investment, the user also has to bear the cost of software updates and support annually along with the cost of maintenance and data migration.. Furthermore, one needs to have technical knowledge to handle such software. However, these softwares are secure, reliable, and customizable. Platforms like Hybris, IBM WebSphere, Intershop Communications, Oorjit, and Sana Communications are a few examples of this kind of eCommerce platform. Due to over investments, it is not considered for small businesses.
ii. Software as a Service (SaaS) Ecommerce tools: One of the most popular, based on cloud models, Saas ecommerce platforms are one where all the applications are managed as well as hosted in data centers. Here, users have to pay on the basis of the type of subscription they opt for. These softwares are affordable, easily scalable, hosted and upgraded on a regular basis by the service providers. However, Saas lacks data security and offers limited integration with backend systems which gives less control to the users. However, these can be considered the best among the categories available in the market.
iii. Open-Source Ecommerce Tools: These kinds of tools facilitate their users, especially small business owners, with a free platform. Possessing extreme technical knowledge is not necessary, however, basic web designing knowledge can be a plus to start a business with this tool. Users can install, configure, maintain and control the ecommerce software and modify source codes too. These platforms come with multiple plugins, add-ons and extension options, which can enhance performance. However, standard integration with backend is not possible with these kinds and the cost of hosting decides their flexibility. Few examples of these are Magento, PayCart, PrestaShop & Thelia.
The eComm Tools market includes a variety of sales cycles ranging from B2C to C2C. Therefore, the best eCommerce software platforms are designed to cater to each sales cycle. The types of software falling in this category are:
i. B2C or Business-to-Consumer: The most common ecommerce ecosystem, where businesses sell products to consumers for their use. Webstore from these companies are free to use and free to all. Even, just inquiries won’t require a login. However, to place an order you need to login. These platforms are actually the best in the market for small businesses as they are generally involved in sales, where they involve no middleman.
ii. B2B or Business-to-Business: A B2B is a segment where businesses sell products to other businesses. Such a sale is not direct and is called a trade sale. Logging into them is the only way to access such stores. Such stores offer products at wholesale rates and with discounts and assortments. There are an array of the best B2B eCommerce platforms.
iii. C2B or Consumer-to-Business: In such an ecosystem, customers sell products to companies. In this model, customers get proposals from companies, customers review bids and ultimately choose a company that caters to their needs.
iv. C2C Consumer-to-Consumer: In here, customers trade with other customers. eBay is a classic example of such an eCommerce environment.
Ecommerce websites are loaded with data that include user data, product info and other product and user based information. Ecommerce stores use this data to provide exclusive offers like discounts, cashback and other deals for the users that differ for different user accounts. All data is stored in databases in the backend systems like CRM (Customer Relationship Management) and ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning). This information is retrieved upon requirement. The data is created, displayed, stored, calculated and recreated by a way called business logic. For the sake of better functionality, business logic and databases are connected well. The exchange of data among the duo takes place as per the type of connection secured between the two. The data exchange for retrieval of information takes place in two types – integrated and interfaced. So, an eCommerce software is either integrated or interfaced.
i. Integrated eCommerce Tools: In this type of ecommerce platform, installation of a part of a software solution in the backend systems results in the connection between the database and the business logic. The best ecomm software is one which can integrate with backend systems to offer more control to users. The data stored in the backend can be reused in the front end. This kind of eCommerce software doesn’t require any investment as the business logic and database of the backend is simply re-used in the front end instead of recreating them. For B2C and B2B trade such platforms are preferred more. An example of an integrated eCommerce tool is Sana Commerce.
ii. Interfaced eCommerce Tools: In such platforms, connection between the database and business logic is established manually as the ecommerce software is set up on the top of the backend. This leads to the duplication and recreation of information present in the backend. Such softwares has its own database and business logic, which is regularly synchronized. Magento is a fine example of one such platform.
Explaining in simple terms, Self-hosted ecommerce platforms provide absolute control of the customization of your business. Setting up and running the platform on a shoestring budget is easy, but it is time consuming and requires a higher level of maintenance. However, with a Hosted Ecommerce platform you can set up your online business as quickly as possible as all the technical aspects are taken care of by the software team. But, these platforms cost more and are not much self customizable. So, the choice remains with you, how you want to run a business, through short term convenience or long term flexibility and control.
a. Business-to-Business (B2B): In this model, various enterprises extend their products and services to other business houses. Eg. Web-hosting Service Provider.
b. Business-to-Consumer (B2C): The most common among all, the B2C model is one where the business sells goods and services to an end user. It is quite similar to the traditional retail market, only this is online. A good example of this model will be Amazon Shopping.
c. Customer-to-Customer (C2C): In this type of model a customer sells products and services to other customers through online platforms just like ebay…
d. Customer-to-Business (C2B): In such a model, customers sell products to companies. In this model, customers advertise their services, get proposals from companies, customers review bids and ultimately choose a company that caters to their needs.
e. Customer-to-Administration (C2A): A model where a public organization or an agency is involved in the electronic business directly with the customer is called C2A model.
f. Business-to-Administration (B2A): This is a model where a public administration receives products directly from Business Enterprises. The top eComm platforms provide business automation, online monitoring of goods and services, access to customer news, data analytics, easy transfer of funds and many more facilities to create an ecommerce store.
With growing technology, the electronic market is growing over every business area, including banking and finance, education, retail ecommerce, wholesale business, manufacturing, auctions, entertainment, etc. Name a field and ecommerce solutions have touched it.
With more customers juggling to shop online everyday, the ecomm industry is booming. The hassle free experience of ordering from home/office has given the industry an edge over traditional commerce.
Moreover,the constant upgradation of ecommerce platforms with robust ecomm tools and incorporating sophisticated technologies to offer better customer service and enhance shopping experience for users is booming their existence. The ecommerce environment is one of the major ecosystems booming rapidly with every passing day.
To capitalize their market, ecom platforms are throwing an array of features like AI to voice search and more. Predicting the ecommerce future is impossible, however we can make it sure that every company will strive to enhance its services, widen its product offerings, and improve the delivery time.
a. Better Personalisation and User Experience: The growth and adoption rate of ecommerce platforms is non stop and ever-rising and will continue to rise more in the coming time. However, touching the modern customer’s demand and expectations can be challenging. So these platforms need to upgrade their offerings to meet the modern customer expectations. Most customers will choose platforms that offer a shopping experience that of a physical store. Thus ecomm retailers will adopt the best platform that allows the possibilities to personalize in order to enhance user experience.
b. Video Content: Ecommerce platforms today sell products by showcasing product photos, however, photos are not enough. It cannot depict all features and address all queries of the user. Thus, this led to the inception of videos. Product videos provide more understanding and details of the products, compared to images and these help ecommerce platforms to convert more. Product video provides an experience similar to that of a physical store and thus, ecommerce platforms are using more videos to capitalize their market.
c. Application of AI & Blockchain: The tech-driven ecommerce industry is already leveraging the power of chatbots to address queries of customers 24X7 and to offer them a better customer experience. With the onset of AI, in future, the chatbot will become smarter and these will be combined with revolutionary technologies like blockchain to offer a fulfilling shopping experience to customers.
d. SubscriptionModels: Major ecommerce platforms today offer a subscription model where the customer can subscribe to get a package consisting daily use items delivered to them every month. In time, more platforms are going to adopt such a model to make it a part of their product inventory.
e. Accessibility from All Devices: Customers never visit ecomm stores from a single device. They may visit the store from various devices at various times. Making the site compatible with all the devices is a big plus. Having accessibility from all varieties of devices leads to an increase in the ROI.
f. Enhanced Customer Journey With Personal Recommendations: In the race to win customers and strengthen the buying journey , ecommerce platforms, today, use technologies and various algorithms to track likes and dislikes of the users. Customers today receive personalized recommendations based on their buying behavior on the website. These recommendations enhance customer experience. E Commerce companies would continue to use such features to offer personal guidance and offer more to customers.
Security is a major hurdle today in this technological world. Before buying or opting for an ecommerce software, make sure your software platform provides encrypted data transactions?
