Top E-commerce platforms for your online store

It is indispensable for businesses to use e-commerce websites and Mobile Apps if you are running an online store. Most of the SME have already created their online stores and started blaming about the poor performance of their websites. Some business owners have doubts relating to payment gateways, social media strategy and search engine optimizations for their e-commerce store. You have to consider many factors while choosing the E-commerce technology for your online store. This blog will help you to wisely choose the best technology for your online store if you don’t have a prior knowledge relating to website technology.

Hosted E-commerce Vs CMS systems

There are mainly two categories of the e-commerce platform. You might have heard about shopify, one of the best hosted e-commerce platform. You will not have the access to the servers for these hosted services. While CMS systems are self hosted on server where you have access. Magento and wordpress are the most common example for these systems.

Hosted systems have the advantage of better technical support, low development cost and user friendly dashboards. Whereas CMS systems have better functionality, customizability and it can support large stores and complex websites. Now lets analyse some of the best ecommerce softwares currently popular in India.

shopify-E-commerce platforms
  1. Shopify

Shopify is the most famous hosted e commerce platform in India right now. Whether you sell your products on your store, website or social media, shopify can help you reach your goals. You dont need any design skills to create your store. You will get many features including :

  • Option to fully customize your online store
  • Single step order processing
  • Add new sales channels in seconds
  • Manage unlimited products and inventory
  • Track sales and inbuilt marketing

The benifits of shopify include Large number of add-ons tools as well as beautiful and professional templates, 24/7 customer support (phone, email, chat) and SEO Compliant.
The drawbacks are slightly more expensive if you are looking for a long term project and the back-end UX is slightly complex.

magento-E-commerce-platforms
  1. Magento

Magento is an open source e-commerce website platform released in 2008. An interesting news is that many giants like Huawei, Pepe Jeans, and Liverpool F.C. have Magento websites. Scalability and reliability are what it makes Magento on top of other e-commerce platforms.

You should have a high level of programming skill to run Magento websites. Thus if you are a store owner with a team without programming skills, its not advisable to go for Magento.
For an Enterprise level online store with a huge volume of products, Magento is the right choice.

woocommerce-E-commerce-platforms
  1. WooCommerce

WooCommerce is one of the WordPress platforms which is used for developing e-commerce websites and presently about 22% of the best 1 million e-commerce websites are hosted on it, addressing it the most popular platform.  It is a free e-commerce plugin developed for WordPress. It comes with a secure payment gateway and a shopping cart that both work absolutely great. Since it works on WordPress, it does not need any powerful servers requirements. However, if you demand further advanced features, there are loads of add-ons which you require to buy. Also, it has a a huge WordPress support community.

E-commerce-platforms-oscommerce
  1. OsCommerce

OsCommerce is one of the newest open-source platforms available. It is an online e-commerce solution that offers a wide range of out-of-the-box features that lets your online e-commerce platforms to be structured moderately and quickly with ease. OsCommerce is easy to install and and an easy to use interface. It supports a large number of plugins and add-ons adding the most functionalities. It can be used on any web server that has PHP and MySQL installed.

drupal
  1. Drupal Commerce

As we all know, Drupal is the second most content management system that comes after WordPress. Drupal Commerce is used to develop eCommerce websites and applications of all sizes. The excellent trait about Drupal Commerce is the truth that it isn’t just software that has a restricted set of predefined functions, but also it can do out-of-the-box. When it comes to blog integration and content marketing, Drupal Commerce is much more comfortable than other e-commerce content management systems. It allows for easy implementation of SEO strategy.

ecmmerce-opencart
  1. Opencart

Opencart is another open source content management system for eCommerce. As a well-known CMS for e-commerce, Opencart has well-discussed weapons. It has a lot of documentation, forums, and articles. It gives one of the simplest to work backends. However, its support systems are not as comprehensive as compared to the other platforms listed. Moreover, Opencart is seo-friendly.

  1. BigCommerce

If you are not satisfied with the features of shopify, you can try BigCommerce. If you are a store owner without programming knowledge, then it is definitely a good option. Currently more than 55,000 stores are running with Big-commerce. Famous brands like Toyota is one of the clients of Big commerce.
The major drawback of Big commerce is that it only provides 7 free themes, whereas other hosted platforms provide more free themes. But you can buy premium themes and get all kinds of customization for your unique store.

There are plenty of other e-commerce platforms available in India including Opencart, OsCommerce, Drupal, WooCommerce, Zepo etc. It is better to consult an IT expert before starting your online store. He can guide you to choose the right platform after considering features, ease of use, pricing, marketing tools, back end features etc. Since the Indian e-commerce industry is growing with a rapid pace, the e-commerce platform technology will also develop very fast.

zepo-ecommerce-platform
  1. Zepo

Zepo is an easy interface for developing e-commerce stores, especially for newbies. Mumbai-based Zepo holds more than 1200 eCommerce shops at the moment. It was hosted by Rackspace servers, therefore you can expect a much better speed as compared to most of the platforms.

katrocket
  1. Kartrocket

KartRocket is an e-commerce software platform. Delhi-based KartRocket has powered over 1900 stores via its platform. It includes a very good selection of storefront templates. It has a decent backend interface. Moreover, has a better understanding and feel of the local market.