e-commerce

Crucial Aspects to Consider when Picking an E-commerce Platform

It isn’t an easy task to choose an e-commerce platform for your business. There are a myriad of factors to consider such as industry trends, your target demographic and more. So, the question arises, how do you know if the decision you’re making is the right one?  

Well, before diving into that particular answer, let’s take a step back and see what exactly an e-commerce platform is. 

An e-commerce platform is a software solution that helps to consolidate a business’ operational needs and integrate them into an online framework for selling services and products. 

In addition to the usual business tools, it contains features like a wysiwyg website, purchasing platforms, and sales management tools. Businesses can concentrate all of their management tasks in this way, resulting in a lot of saved time and improved speed. Whatever the business, having an e-commerce platform increases profitability and discourages the use of temporary fixes. Businesses can build a visually appealing online store using an e-commerce platform without having to be web development experts.

With that little lesson on e-commerce platforms, let’s dive into the aspects that you should consider when it comes to picking the right e-commerce platform. 

Social Media Integration 

It goes without saying that maintaining a solid social media brand profile is crucial. Whether it’s Facebook, Instagram, Twitter etc, the massive reach these platforms provide cannot be understated and thusly an e-commerce platform’s success or failure depends highly on its ability to handle social networks.

A good e-commerce platform should enable a direct connection with the sales platforms of these social networks and publicise product catalogues. Another thing to consider is the view from a customer’s perspective, who, in some situations, won’t even have to leave the social network they are surfing to finish the transaction.

The integration can go even further by providing share buttons for purchased goods and enabling social login. This fosters a sense of neighbourhood on your platform because, after all, the finest marketing you can do is having your customers spread the word.

User Experience
e-commerce

While things have gotten more technical as time has gone by, it’s important to always keep in mind a platform’s simplicity of use. That is not to say that features offered by an e-commerce platform should be kept simple, but rather, the platform should be tightly designed so that it can incorporate a host of complex technical improvements while keeping the process of use as simple as possible for the end user. 

How many items can be sold 
e-commerce

Some businesses may have a fair many products for sale, and, unfortunately, not all e-commerce platforms can handle huge catalogues with the same efficiency. It’s key to make sure that the technology must be able to quickly transmit information such as product features, photos, descriptions etc, from the catalogue to the online shop. It’s also important to have a quick edit option available in cases of stock and price changes. 

Customer Support 
Customer Support

Customer service should be accessible around-the-clock, every day of the week as the online store would be. It is crucial to understand both, how an e-commerce platform responds to customer support inquiries under various conditions, such as atypical hours, unique online traffic problems, typical waiting periods, etc, and, how data from each customer’s order history, preferred items, and other sources may be transferred to the platform.

Competitive Price
Dollar Signs

The cost of e-commerce platforms isn’t as high as you would think.

Free open-source platforms like Prestashop incur expenses only for setup and plugins. Price is ultimately only a small part to be considered when comparing options, other factors such as cost-effectiveness, effort, and features should weigh more heavily into the decision.

Amount of Features  
e-commerce platform

An e-commerce platform may include a number of services, which can range from web hosting to security. Having a large array of features is an important point of consideration, as you can never know what you may need in the future, it’s better to have a feature you may never use than be in a critical position where you need a feature that you don’t have. 

Conclusion 

There are many different kinds of e-commerce platforms available, but if there is one thing that should guide your decision, it should be how well it meets the demands, both current and potential, of your business. Having an e-commerce platform will expand the audience you can reach and improve traffic to your store, in addition to enhancing the entire sales process and raising consumer confidence in your brand.

With all this in mind, you may be thinking, “where exactly can I find a platform that will give me all this and more?” Well, you don’t have to look too far, simply visit this link here and we can set you up with an e-commerce platform that perfectly suits your needs.

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