An ecommerce platform is a software application that handles different types of commerce. Businesses use an ecommerce platform to setup their online presence and begin offering their products or services to consumers. An ecommerce platform is popular with business owners that are not experienced web developers and have no coding experience. These ecommerce platforms can help businesses quickly setup their online stores, provide them with hosting, enable them to add products or services, offer a payment gateway, calculate shipping costs, and provide detailed sale reports. Most ecommerce platforms require a monthly subscription.
An ecommerce platform is normally setup with hosting that is provided by the platform. You will need to have a domain name for your store, but you can easily setup your store directly through the platform provider. With thousands of competitors online, you definitely want to go with a popular ecommerce platform, so that you can quickly set everything up and begin competing with other stores that are already selling products or services in your niche.
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Ecommerce Store Mistakes:
Shopify
Shopify is the leading ecommerce solution with over 800,000 online stores and over $63 billion worth of online sales. It is definitely the best ecommerce solution for webmasters that want to get their own online store up and running quickly. All of the development for your online store can be done in just a few clicks. The platform is quite flexible and you can easily scale up your store with more products or features. Shopify has an app store where you can find free & paid add-ons for your store.
BigCommerce
BigCommerce is a leading ecommerce platform that offers extreme scalability for large online stores and government agencies. It has more features and sales tools than any of its online competition. BigCommerce offers very unique SEO features and multi-channel integration that can help your online business make it to the next level. This is a great ecommerce solution for businesses that need complex features or those that focus primarily on selling products through other major platforms.
These are the ecommerce platforms that we recommend for business owners. Shopify is the perfect solution for small or medium sized business that want to launch their first online store. Their ecommerce platform is easy to use and works well for anyone with little or no coding experience. The platform offers a ton of features to customize your website and provides customers with a unique shopping experience. BigCommerce is another popular ecommerce platform that you can use but it is mostly recommended for large businesses, corporations, government entities, and those that need to build larger websites with many unique features.
None of the ecommerce platforms offer everything that a store wants. There are some needs that may be left without a solution. These ecommerce platforms are a starting point for businesses that want to quickly launch their online stores. You can eventually add unique features to your online store by having someone develop a custom store for your business.