What is the best ecommerce website solution to promote and sell products online?
I intend to setup an eCommerce website to sell products online, what are the best eCommerce solutions out their. I know of WordPress, is this the best option to use, or is their something better?
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Jan 31, 2017
Hi,
There are many eCommerce platforms with excellent features other than Wordpress that can be used to start an online store, different platforms have different advantages some are better in price, some are better in functionality, feature, design, uniqueness and so on. To choose the one that’s best for you.
Please have a look at these top 5 eCommerce platforms you should consider for launching your online business in 2017. I hope this will help you to select the right platform according to your requirements.
http://www.inc.com/bill-carmody/top-5-ecommerce-platforms-for-2017.html
Feb 18, 2016
Hi Justin,
Since you have already mentioned your two key requirements, which are product promotion & selling, you need an ecommerce solution with good marketing features & an intuitive checkout process.
Usually, almost all ecommerce solutions provide the basic marketing features, but you would have to look deeper into each to find out how easy they are to use for a laymen.
As for the easy checkout, it is difficult to say that a readymade shopping cart will be optimized for your target audience already. So, it is crucial that the platform you choose allows you to customize the shopping cart and checkout process.
In my knowledge, checkout process of Shopify & BigCommerce is not much customizable. And since, other people here have already mentioned the likes of WooCommerce & Magento, I should rather introduce a new one, which is Yo!Kart. It scores pretty well on the factors we have discussed here, and is flexible enough to meet needs of different types of ecommerce startups. You can find more about it here: www. yo-kart .com
Dec 19, 2014
All depends on budget and features you are looking for...it sounds like you may be in startup mode, so there are many options like Magento, Shopify, BigCommerce, Volusion, etc. All have different models such as rev share, cloud, on-premise, etc.
Dec 19, 2014
Have you tried checking "Shopify" and "OZcart" out ? I would say you can try checking them out !
Dec 18, 2014
Hi Justin, great question.
As Jeff Klingberg correctly pointed out, the answer to your questions lies mainly in the type and size of your operation, and your budget at this time. One question many developers dont consider is who will be left to run the store once the project is over. If your budget is small, and the new store needs a developer, that an additional cost you need to factor in.
There's a lot of possible options but below is a short list of one's we've developed for clients and know.
Magento - lets get this out of the way. This is one of the most robust platforms out there but also one of the more complex. This is for big stores that want heavy customisation. But if you are not a developer and want to run the store back-end yourself, you'll face a steep learning curve. Plus the overall development costs for these tend to be quite higher than you may expect if you're an SMB.
Shopify - great hosted platform but has anyone directed you to their pricing? Too expensive in my opinion considering the alternatives. If you have the budget and want something up quick that looks pretty sleek, then this is for you.
WooCommerce, PrestaShop, OpenCart, osCommerce, ZenCart, Drupal Commerce, WordPress eCommerce, UberCart, JigoShop, VirtueMart csCart, Cart-66 and a few others are either plugins themselves or require a variety of plugins to be customised to get the shop where you want it. Additional customisation plugins can be purchased and in many cases are extremely affordable (ie: a coupon generation plugin if the theme didnt already come with one).
If you're new, and your store is small (ie: 1 - 100 SKUs) then have a look at WooCommerce, OpenCart or PrestaShop. Your customer's experience is ultimately the most important thing and any one of these solutions can do it if its developed correctly.
If you need more help deciding on a particular system, drop me a PM and I can give you more insights.
Dec 18, 2014
I believe that is a very open-ended question. How many SKUs will you have? Do you want to host it yourself or have it hosted elsewhere? How much money are you willing to invest upfront and on a monthly basis.
Wordpress and one of its many shopping cart plugins is best suited for best hosted e-commerce no matter the number of SKUs.
If you want a comprehensive hosted e-commerce site, then there are any number of platforms available for your store. Which one is dependent on the number of SKUs you will have, if you want integrated marketing services, and how much you are willing to invest monthly.
Keep in mind that while Wordpress its shopping cart plugins like Woocommerce are free, you will need to purchase a variety of premium plugins to fully program the store to meet your customers needs as well as yours.
Dec 18, 2014
Hi Jeff
A maximum of 1000 SKUs would be used, I am able to host a platform myself if required. Thanks for the feedback about the other plugins required to make WordPress functional as an eCommerce website. At this point I was keeping my mind open to all possibility as technology is changing so quickly.
Dec 18, 2014
Here's the issue with hosted platforms like BigCommerce. It is separate from your website and you have a separate URL for your store. Wordpress and its shopping carts can easily handle 1000 SKUs.
Dec 18, 2014
Wordpress is a great platform for a website. If you do use it, my favorite shopping cart plugin is Jigoshop. A lot of people also use Woocommerce, but I personally like Jigoshop better, the support is better is well.
Dec 18, 2014
Magento community edition is the best from our experience. If you are looking out for hosted ecommerce solution, checkout Shopify.com.
Let me know if you need more details...
Dec 18, 2014
Shopify seems to be a popular choice. I was not aware of Magento, sounds interesting
Dec 18, 2014
Ok.. Magento community edition is open source and can be customized to your needs as well.
PrestaShop looks easy to integrate. Their charges were 2% of sales