When you look for the perfect platform to build your online store, you have hundreds of options in front of you. Some platforms are attractive in terms of their simplicity while some others might attract you with their competitive pricing. However, these are not the vital factors that must guide your choice. Here are the questions you must ask yourself before going forward to select the best ecommerce platform.
Size of your stock
This is the prime consideration for choosing your ecommerce platform. It is good to choose a platform that charges you the smallest money for the services you get. Some businesses might choose to provide alternative payment methods for a few of their products.
What you are selling
It is important to ask what you are trying to sell. Depending on whether you are selling digital or physical goods, there might be a phenomenal difference. Figure out the shipping costs when it comes to physical goods. Identify platforms that meet your product needs at best.
Payment modes
If you do not wish to use PayPal which is the most popular and easy payment processor online today, you must look into providing some arrangements as most ecommerce platforms do not prefer third party payment processors.
Who will host the domain
If you wish to make modifications to how your ecommerce store looks from time to time, it is advisable to go for a self-hosted version of the store. Locate the platforms that will support a self-hosted store. Most platforms today enable you modify your store as and when you want it happen in a live environment.
The payment plan it offers
It is important to choose a platform that suits your budget. It is good to grab plans that let you pay a standard monthly charge instead of asking to pay a small percentage of the profits you make with your store hosted on their platform.
An overview of the popular ecommerce platforms
• Shopify has over 120,000 online customers. Talking of building your own online store, Shopify is the leading platform today. This is a great platform to sell clothing, furniture and digital books. The majority of the themes and addons offered by Shopify address the needs of these products more than others. Hence most customers looking forward to sell these items find this their most favourite choice. Shopify community provides an excellent support in case you have any problems using it during the setup and post-setup process.
• Volusion is the best platform if you wish to sell outdoor products, home furniture and equipment. It is an understood fact that every ecommerce platform will support different areas of goods. If you are opening a store for selling bikes, foods and modern home furniture, this can be your perfect choice. The shopping cart software offered by Volusion comes with features for product merchandising, ecommerce SEO, site design, order processing and online marketing. The additional benefits offered by this platform are credit card processing, fraud protection and domain names.
• WooCommerce is for those merchants that are adventurous and are open to taking up challenges. Before using it, you must know how to set up the Woocommerce WordPress plugin, how to create themes for a new online store and how to develop unique plugins to improve your store.
The final word
Before choosing the right platform for your ecommerce venture, you must have answered a plenty of questions in order to make your mission a success. However, if you want a straight forward experience that is simple but profound, Shopify can be the best option to start with. The principal advantage of this platform is to enable you with a transparent experience of how the store works for the merchant as well as the customer.