If you are responsible for running a physical store, it is you who decides what kind of products to stock, how to display them, and how your store should be organized.
You have the opportunity of doing the same when you undertake your eCommerce website development. You do, however, need access to the right tools in order to make your eCommerce web design effective.
eCommerce platforms help web developers in building online stores quickly.
They help businesses in selling their services and products, and even in managing their marketing chores like discount coupons, newsletter emails, up-selling, cross-selling, and so on.
This article brings you a list of the best eCommerce platforms that you can use to run an effective online business.
We encourage you to look at each of these and pick the one that best fits your eCommerce web design goals.
#1 WooCommerce
In case you are already running a WordPress website and just missing the shopping cart piece, WooCommerce may be your best bet.
Instead of starting all over again with a new eCommerce platform, this WordPress plugin will seamlessly integrate with your WordPress website providing you easy access to the wonderful tools for building your eCommerce store.
When you use WooCommerce for your eCommerce web design,
- You will be able to manage orders, create discount coupons, and look at sales reports from the dashboard already provided by WordPress.
- You will find adding new products to be very easy as it will be like creating a regular post. You get all these benefits because WooCommerce is a plugin for WordPress, so it offers an interface like WordPress.
- It saves your time & effort to go through the learning curve of getting acquainted with a new eCommerce platform.
Recommended post: 7 Reasons why small businesses should use WordPress for eCommerce website development
2. Drupal Commerce
Drupal happens to be one of the most frequently chosen options when you are planning to undertake web development of any kind of site.
It gives very tough competition to WordPress owing to a very healthy market share when it comes to the percentage of internet-supported by Drupal.
It is worth mentioning that Drupal provides you with the flexibility of making pretty much any kind of website using it.
- As far as Drupal Commerce is concerned, it is a separate module that helps you in building your eCommerce website quickly on top of your preexisting website.
- It is also one of the best ways of accomplishing quick levels of scale in a very short amount of time.
- The best part about using Drupal is that there is a huge community of users and web programmers behind it, so it is easy to get support by turning to social pages, forums, and blogs.
3. OpenCart
OpenCart is a popular eCommerce platform that is based on a self-hosted model and gives you full control over your eCommerce web design. You are free to install OpenCart on your machine or take your store to the cloud.
However, you may need some coding skills to get the most out of your OpenCart website.
But when it comes to administration like CMS, customer lists, marketing campaigns, orders, and product categories, you can manage it without any technical skills.
If you need some customizations on your OpenCart eCommerce website at an affordable cost, you may consider hiring OpenCart developers in India.
Recommended post: Why OpenCart & why should you hire OpenCart developers in India
4. Magento
There is a very good reason why Magento is one of the leading open-source eCommerce platforms.
For starters, it packs in more features than you will probably ever need.
This, however, opens new pathways for marketing and connecting with your customers.
- Using Magento makes it easy for you to do things like recurring payments, discounts, and membership plans
- Are you someone who would like to take complete control of your website design and functionality? You should give Magento a serious look if you answered yes.
- It has a lot of similarities to WordPress and has a strong community.
- You will have the opportunity of picking from scores of themes, and there are tons of extensions for you to experiment with.
5. PrestaShop
PrestaShop is a relatively new player in the eCommerce platform arena yet it has quickly made a name for itself because of the ease of using it and its beautiful user interface.
When you use PrestaShop for your eCommerce website development, you do not need a lot of experience to install any of the supported plugins and get your eCommerce website development underway. This makes PrestaShop very attractive to small businesses that are just starting up as they find it easy to work with.
6. Shopify
Shopify makes it easy for you to create a fully functional online store quickly. It has a lot of apps that you can integrate and add any feature to your Shopify website.
The secret to the speed that Shopify offers to create an eCommerce website, is its drag-and-drop builder which is very easy to use. This helps you to set up your online store quickly and begin selling.
Shopify brings along the vital features that are needed by every eCommerce website, like a built-in app for shopping cart purposes that can support scores of payment gateways and tons of integrations with third-party software and services.
7. Joomla
While Joomla is considered to be one of the best content management systems, it can be easily used to build an eCommerce website too.
All that you will need to do is install an appropriate extension, just like you set up WooCommerce for WordPress.
- Joomla is a breeze to set up and maintain.
- There are multiple free eCommerce extensions available for the platform and you can add products in the same manner as you publish posts.
Conclusion:
There are several options for you to choose an appropriate eCommerce platform to build your online store. However, you do need to consider your requirements, budget, timeframe, and technical skills before you decide. We hope that this blog post will help you to determine the best eCommerce platform for your website.
