Many of our readers will remember the days when getting a business website up and running involved the addition of “shopping cart” functionality. The platforms and tools for businesses to sell products online have come a long way from the days of setting up a shopping cart and being left to fend for yourself on all the other bells and whistles needed to promote and sell your wares.
Now, major platforms have been established to set-up and maintain an impressive eCommerce presence – all for a fraction of the cost required just a few years back. Options like Shopify, Magento, WooCommerce and BigCommerce are all worth looking into, and by thinking through the following considerations, you can make a great choice for your business whether modernizing an existing eCommerce presence or starting something new.
Industry and Size Matters
The size and overall maturity of your business is a good indicator of which platform might fit best. There’s a major difference in getting set up to sell apparel versus selling enterprise software subscriptions. Magento, for example, has always been strong for larger business that want to run their eCommerce platform in house and build heavily around the platform customizing it to their needs. Shopify, however, is built right into the cloud with all the tools an online business getting started would need to feature products, sell and get the reporting data you’ll need for internal accounting.
Integration Matters
When it comes to the data organizations want and need to get from their eCommerce platform, everyone is different. You might manage customer email lists in one system, credit processing in another, accounting in another, inventory management in yet another. All of these systems need data to flow smoothly and the eCommerce platform tends to sit right in the middle. So, a flexible platform is needed when lots of subsystems need to be fed information. This is where WooCommerce might be the best option given its massive number of plug-ins to support data in and out of the platform.
Digital Marketing Matters
If you’re not using digital ads, social media or paid search to sell your products, you’re certainly in the minority. Today, eCommerce platforms can even play a part in seeing the results of this outreach. Of course, the destination of your marketing is your eCommerce platform, but platforms that can measure and use the substantial amount of data generated to measure the effectiveness of your ad spend are worthy of consideration. BigCommerce has a number of capabilities in its product set to weave in your digital marketing strategy.
For more information on the development of your eCommerce website, please contact us today at (845) 735-3555 or visit our website at www.superiortechnology.com.
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