How to choose the best among various available eCommerce platforms?

How to choose the best among various available eCommerce platforms?

There is always a crucial question in front of eCommerce store owners regarding which platform to use for carrying out the day- to- day online business activities. With so much of options available, it is difficult to make the right choice to propel your eCommerce business to great heights. It is all about the features, functionalities and user experience provided by your eCommerce platform that makes all the difference in your online business activities.

To help out our eCommerce store owners in making the right decision, we will provide you a clear insight about various eCommerce platforms like OpenCart, WooCommerce, PrestaShop and Magento. Let us explore these eCommerce platforms one by one.

OpenCart- Introduced in year 2008, OpenCart is an amazing eCommerce platform that can handle the diverse business needs of various online stores with great ease. The platform is bundled with large number of eCommerce tools and features that can enhance the online shopping experience of your targeted customers. It is a wonderful platform which offers a great deal of customization features without any steep price. Some of the merits and demerits of this eCommerce platform are as follows: Merits - Offers quick installation and configuration facility for beginners as well as experienced customers.

- Comes with a wide range of free and third party extensions or themes to improve store performance.

- Compatibility with various devices through a responsive web design.

- Has an interactive admin interface for performing various back end activities.

- Supports a wide range of payment and shipping methods.

- Provides customization features in a quick and smooth manner.

Demerits - Suitable for small and medium eCommerce stores.

- Caching and other SEO functions are performed through extensions.

WooCommerce- It is not any standalone CMS platform and is integrated within the WordPress. With this integration, it is now much easier for this platform to work with the WordPress environment and is also capable to utilize various WordPress based themes and extensions. This eCommerce platform is so popular that it is the first choice among various specialized companies who want to grab the maximum out of WordPress and WooCommerce. It comes with a wonderful set of extensions that has the potential to improve the functionality of an online store to a great extent. Here are some of the merits and demerits of this eCommerce platform which are mentioned below: Merits - The platform focuses on WordPress for enhancing the store functionality.

- It is available for free of cost for downloading purposes.

- Comes with easy to use feature.

Demerits - The store owners need the assistance of premium extensions for improving store functionality.

- Not of much use if you are not a WordPress user.

PrestaShop- It is a fully open source shopping cart platform which is built for small to medium sized eCommerce stores. No doubt, it is a free software but site owners can purchase additional modules for improving store functionality. Take a close look at some of the merits and demerits of the PrestaShop platform.

Merits - Comes with a user friendly or interactive admin panel.

- It is lightweight in nature and loads quickly.

- Can be installed easily without any assistance.

- Offers better search, store functionalities and SEO friendliness.

Demerits - Does not contain important eCommerce functions like wishlist, order tracking, product comparison, affiliate marketing, testimonials and other such features.

- Does not have capability to handle large scale eCommerce stores.

Magento- This eCommerce platform was created in year 2001 but it has gained immense popularity within a short period of time. It is available in two formats namely- the Enterprise version which is a paid premium version and the Community version which can be downloaded free of cost. Some of the various merits and demerits of this platform are mentioned below: Merits

- Highly scalable and customized eCommerce solution.

- Support for multiple currencies and online stores.

- Offers great SEO performance and enhanced payment security.

- Provides timely issue resolution with the help of a dedicated community of Magento developers and users.

- Comes packed with a wide range of Magento themes and extensions.

Demerits - Extensions and themes are very expensive to purchase.

- Ideal for big eCommerce stores due to advanced features that comes with a high price.

- Requires a good hosting service for better store performance.

- Installation is a difficult task for beginners in the field of eCommerce business.

If you are thinking about making a strong impact in your particular online business segment, you need to embrace the right eCommerce platform for you. However, before making any selection regarding the eCommerce platform, you need to have a better idea about the size of your online business, level of features and customizations required, business operational cost available, conversion rates and other such facilities. Wait for a little introspection and you will be better equipped to take the right decision regarding the selection of an eCommerce store.