Covid 19 has shown its profound impact on the businesses. The pandemic has forced us to follow the lockdown in our houses and social distancing to stay away from traditional stores. In this situation, retailers are finding new and innovative ways to continue their business services.
However, now to overcome this challenge, retailers have to launch their stores online and no other option has left out for them. By launching online stores retailers open several opportunities to grow their business and it is not only beneficial in the Covid19 situation but also considered as an effective strategy for the long period of time.
Benefits to launching E-store
- Mark your presence at international market
- Exclude geographical regions
- Easy to launch
- No operational cost
- 24/7 service
The major benefit to launch your online store is low development cost. As with traditional stores, you have to invest a huge amount including operational cost and human resources.
With E-store, you can develop your own website and integrate advanced several features including customized themes and plugins. There are many E-commerce platforms, such as Magento and Shopify which helps you to easily develop your store with drag and drop functionality. If you want to leverage all the benefits of the E-commerce platforms, partner with an Ecommerce development company.
Let’s know the popular E-commerce platforms and their features
Best E-commerce platforms to launch your store
3dcart
This US-based ecommerce platform is considered one of the best alternatives to Shopify, with an unique dropshipping plan that starts at $9.99/month. 3dcart is an all-in-one website builder for online stores, including a shopping cart, CMS, blogging platform and newsletter marketing among other built-in features.
- Launched in – 1997
- Starts at $9.99/month with no transaction fees
- Headquarters – Fort Lauderdale, Florida
- CEO: Gonzalo Gil
- Built-in marketing suite.
BigCommerce
This platform is known as the future of E-commerce platforms. It was launched with the motive to support businesses. BigCommerce delivers several themes and customized templates to their customers. Offers an opportunity to the users to develop their own store by providing advanced features such as integrated point of sale software, social media integration including Facebook and Pinterest.
- Launched in – 2009
- Incorporates fully featured CMS
- Headquarters – Austin, Texas
- CEO: Brent Bellm
- Helps to boost online traffic with effective SEO strategies
Shopify
This name will not be new for you, it is a topmost platform which is considered to develop your E-commerce website. According to Wikipedia, Shopify Inc. is a Canadian multinational e-commerce company headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario.
The company reported that it had more than 1,000,000 businesses in approximately 175 countries using its platform as of June 2019, with total gross merchandise volume exceeding $41.1 billion for calendar 2018. However, this platform is easy to use and fully responsive. This platform is rapidly increasing in the market and able to meet the modern requirements.
- CEO: Tobias Lütke
- Founded in 2004
- For advanced security deliver SSL encryption technique
- Inbuilt features – to support 3D models based videos
- Users don’t require any technical skills to launch their creative online store.
- Fully Hosted and mobile friendly
- Features – 24/7 support via phone and instant messaging or email.
WordPress
WordPress is the most popular platform across the globe. It is widely used by the developers. This platform is based on open source and free attributes with advanced functionalities. It is friendly with a MySQL or MariaDB database. Along with this, WordPress is a fast, responsive, and powerful E-commerce platform. Developers allow to deliver the look as they prefer by extensive themes available on the same or they can also integrate third party themes to the website.
- Written in: PHP
- Supports Operating System – Unix-like, Windows, and Linux
- Known as open source content management system
- Offers several additional plugins and is supported with API integration.
- Fully customizable
- Based on plugin architecture
- WordPress developers don’t require any technical skills.
Magento
Magento is the foremost choice for the developers to bring retail stores. It is empowered by thousands of retailers. This platform is written in PHP and created by Zend Framework.Written in PHP and integrated with advanced flexible cloud solutions. Magento platform helps retailers to rapidly grow and launch innovative solutions with modern extensions and functionalities such as Catalog and inventory management. It is the one stop solution to launch retail based websites.
- License: OSL v3, AFL v3
- Developer(s): Magento, Inc
- Helps to boost sales with different rewards and strategies.
- High performance
Conclusion
These are the best E-commerce platforms that you should know to launch your online store in the market. The above mentioned platforms are dominating since long and have their unique functionalities. It’s all on the developer to know how they utilise it as per their project requirements.
Marie Weaver
Marie Weaver is a Tech Consultant at well established IT company specializing in enterprise web application development, mobile apps, IoT, Cloud and Big Data services. She provides valuable insights to help tech companies, startups and large enterprises build their brand.