Ecommerce Platforms
An Ecommerce platform is the heart of an ecommerce website, it's the software that allows you to upload and sell your products. These platforms normally take care of the backend systems within an ecommerce website, for example, Shopify takes care of the payment system within the Shopify ecommerce platform.
Your choice of ecommerce platforms normally depends on one of the following factors:
- The size of your online ecommerce business,
- Your budget.
Some platforms cope better with larger businesses which have thousands of products and millions of customers, so this will be a factor to consider. The majority of our clients require ecommerce websites which have between 10-1000 products. The following ecommerce platforms will easily be able to cope with this number of products.
Regarding your budget, there are three main areas to focus on when choosing an ecommerce platform.
- Monthly ongoing fees,
- Initial development cost,
- Payment fees
Hosted platforms like Shopify will charge a monthly fee regardless of how many items you sell on your ecommerce website. On the other hand, Woocommerce is a open source platform which you host yourself which means you don't need to pay a monthly fee, however, you will need to maintain the platform and pay for your own hosting. When you self host your platform you will need to update the software regularly to ensure the website runs efficiently and securely.
Shopify
Shopify is the complete package when it comes to ecommerce platforms. It allows you to get up and running in a remarkably short period of time. The subscription based software includes hosting and takes care of the checkout process so you don't have to worry.
Shopify has a number of off-the-shelf themes which you can install to get your website up and running in no time. Initially, we would normally recommend installing a premade theme to get your website online, taking orders, and making money. Then we would recommend our clients look into customisation or bespoke themes to suit their needs as and when they arise.
Woocommerce
Woocommerce is an open-source ecommerce platform which is built on top of WordPress. The platform is easy to use and similarly to Shopify, offers a broad range of off-the-shelf plug-and-play themes which help to get your ecommerce website online as soon as possible.
The Woocommerce platform is highly customisable and is hosted on your own server as opposed to Shopify which is hosted by themselves. This adds a layer of complexity as you will need to update the platform yourself to ensure it runs smoothly and securely.
Custom Built
There's another option when creating an ecommerce site, custom built software can be useful for bespoke ecommerce systems which don't follow the normal standard ecommerce platform layout. For example, businesses which only have a few products and require lots of customisation which wouldn't be possible when using a standard ecommerce platform.
We don't have many requests for this type of ecommerce website, however, our developers are skilled in this area and have experience developing custom built ecommerce websites.
Creating An Ecommerce Website
We think there are two main factors that need to be considered when designing a successful ecommerce website:
- Search Engine Optimisation & Marketing
- User Experience & Web Design
Good SEO will bring paying customers to your website, and good user experience will easily guide paying customers through to the checkout.
The Web People have a team of specialists who can help with regards to search engine optimisation and user experience.
