Statista reveals that e-commerce sales worldwide are expected to grow to 6.54 trillion USD by 2022, with online shopping being the most prevalent online activity worldwide. Businesses not engaging in digital commerce may not sustain or drive business growth in the coming years. So, if you think this is the right time to choose online e-commerce platforms and partner with service providers for e-commerce website development and mobile app creations, then you are on the right track.
Equipped with smartphones, tablets, IoT-enabled voice assistants, and 5G data speed, every consumer prefers online shopping. No businesses can survive without an online presence in such a scenario. Unless of course, they are ready to bear considerable losses and suffer the cost of opportunity lost in terms of customer dissatisfaction.
So, there is no escaping e-commerce website development for any business that aims to enhance the brand experience for its customers in 2020.
The next step is to choose the best suited from the plethora of online e-commerce platforms that can augment your business by creating a user-friendly website. Now, this is a crucial decision to make as the preferred online e-commerce platform should not only be cost-effective but also align with your business requirements. Moreover, it is also worth remembering that many reputed e-commerce web solutions offer the scope of customization. This essentially means you can buy a basic version and then get it customized with the help of an e-commerce solutions partner.
Many of the leading e-commerce website design solutions are open-source and are available for free. Additionally, few themes and plugins are also available through open source, while many of them are licensed. To navigate this melee of options, you need the assistance of a digital and e-commerce service provider for seamless end-to-end execution of e-commerce website development project for your business.
To help you make this important decision, here’s a list of 5 leading online e-commerce platforms that you can explore before selecting the most feasible option. However, it is also recommended that you define strategic objectives, resource allocations, and expected outcomes you want to accomplish by launching your webstore.
Top 5 Online E-commerce Platforms for 2020
While there several open source and licensed online e-commerce platforms, here are our top 5 for your consideration.
Shopify: A Canadian e-commerce company, Shopify, is a leading provider of an e-commerce software platform for businesses. Statista reveals that businesses built on Shopify have registered a 59% increase in sales in 2018 as compared to a 21% increase experienced by the global e-commerce market. With more than one million merchants worldwide using Shopify, it is one of the most popular online e-commerce platform for webstore solutions.
The platform allows building a user-friendly and customized website at an affordable cost supporting small to medium to large scale businesses. Shopify offers a self-service function, which means you can host a website with little or no technical knowledge.
Using Shopify, businesses can develop a store, manage inventory, integrate payment gateways, promote products and services, process orders, and ship merchandise. Along with a wide range of free and paid themes and design templates, Shopify is an all-in-one solution that offers add-on functionalities like POS, Social Media selling, and SSL certification.
BigCommerce: BigCommerce is another online e-commerce platform that is available as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). BigCommerce is getting traction among startups, as it offers bespoke web designs powered by stunning front-end templates. Additionally, when you choose BigCommerce as your trusted e-commerce solution, you can work directly with the company.
The platform offers an in-box online e-commerce platform solution with which you can build an online shop from scratch and maintain it continually. Additionally, it allows website owners to add blogs, search marketing campaigns, launch coupons, and discounts. It has a set-it-and-forget-it security feature while ensuring the best ROI for your business.
Magento: Magento is a power-packed e-commerce website development platform loaded with state-of-the-art features and numerous extensions to support the needs of modern businesses. It’s an open-source online e-commerce platform solution used by more than 25,000 active sites with the highest number coming from the US. Magento is popular, because they have a considerable force of third-party developers who work strenuously to innovate the platform and augment its capabilities.
As one of the leading online ecommerce platforms for enterprises, Magento offers features like payment and shipping processes integration, search engine optimization, analytics and reporting, marketing and promotion, customer servicing, and many more.
Drupal Commerce: Drupal Commerce is yet another name in the list that creates a revolutionary and highly engaging e-commerce experience for businesses. It is an open-source platform facilitating low-cost e-commerce web development. Drupal Commerce is highly scalable. It can support the dynamic needs of the business through feature and usability enhancements, social selling, payment gateways integration, mobile responsive design, and third-party integrations.
The best part though, its built on enterprise Content Management System (CMS), creating an alignment between content and offerings to drive online sales through search engine optimization. Drupal Commerce catalyzes business performance by offering highly tailored ecommerce web solutions. It is a community-driven platform where hundreds of direct contributors work and share their knowledge. The platform supports multiple languages and multi-currency, helping businesses to flourish globally.
WordPress: WordPress, the popular content management system (CMS), offers a highly successful e-commerce web solution called WooCommerce. WooCommerce is a free e-commerce plugin explicitly built to work seamlessly with WordPress. This allows users to manage their web store and sell using all the e-commerce features. WooCommerce is a sophisticated yet economical plugin that works well if you have a WordPress site. It offers various extensions like integration with major payment gateways, product add-ons, shipping, bookings, live chats, tax calculations, and many more. WooCommerce has more than 300 extensions and a 1000 plugins.
How Katalyst can help your Business Implement Leading E-commerce Solutions in 2020
E-commerce web development is the need of the hour. No business can sustain in isolation without catering to online customers. The mentioned above are one of the best in class e-commerce platforms that enterprises can utilize in 2020. Katalyst Technologies offers cutting-edge digital and e-commerce solutions. Schedule an appointment today with our e-commerce experts and explore how your business can leverage the power of digital commerce