What is e-commerce ?
E-commerce, by its broadest definition, is any transaction of goods and services done over the internet. More colloquially, it refers to buying an item or service online with an electronic payment method, such as a credit or debit card or a digital wallet service. The item could be physical (a vinyl record), digital (an mp3 download), or a service (a music streaming subscription).
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| Most famous E-Commerce platform |
When talking about e-commerce companies, there's a broad range of businesses involved in making online stores work. Payment networks and digital wallet services ensure payment processing. Shipping and logistics companies make sure packages are delivered. And online stores connect buyers and sellers.
For the purposes of this article, we're focusing primarily on online stores. But those stores may operate in any one of the several flavors of e-commerce:-
- Business-to-Consumer (B2C):- This is the kind of e-commerce that comes to mind when most people hear the word. B2C e-commerce is when a business sells a good or service to an individual consumer. Some examples of B2C e-commerce operations include Amazon, Walmart's online stores, JD.com and Alibaba's TMall.
- Business-to-Business (B2B):- A business selling a good or service to another business. This can be done in the form of wholesalers like those found on Alibaba.com. It could also be businesses that offer software-as-a-service to other businesses to help manage their companies. Software-as-a-service is a term used to describe a software product offered to customers on a subscription basis and generally accessible through the internet.
- Consumer-to-Consumer (C2C):- C2C e-commerce businesses create a marketplace to connect buyers and multiple sellers online. eBay originally got its start as an auction clearinghouse for consumers to sell their unwanted items to other consumers, and it's a prime example of C2C e-commerce. Amazon also offers a marketplace for consumers to sell unwanted items, and Alibaba operates similar online marketplaces in China. In the context of this article, consumer-to-consumer e-commerce companies are businesses that merely facilitate e-commerce through their platform.
- Consumer-to-Business (C2B):- A consumer-to-business transaction is when a consumer sells an item to a business. Instead of listing an item on a marketplace like eBay, C2B e-commerce companies buy items directly from consumers. They might then turn around and sell them on an online marketplace. An example would be companies that buy used smartphones, including eBay and Gazelle.
So what is an ecommerce platform ?
An ecommerce platform is a platform that enables everyone to easily create, customise and host functional online stores, create, sell and market products, manage inventory, accept and process payment, offer real time shipping quotes and track shipping, and many more. In return, users pay the platform monthly fees.
So what are the major benefits of using an ecommerce platform ?
First of all, ecommerce platforms save you time and let you focus more on the marketing and selling side of the businesses. They let you create, customise, and launch online stores and start selling right away, instead of spending a huge amount of time on coding, designing websites and online stores, and maintaining the web hosting and server.
Ecommerce platforms are also very secure and experience little to no downtime. Plus, you will also be able to provide great customer service to your customers with seamless payment and shipping integration.
Note: in this overview, there are three main types of ecommerce platforms: Open Source, SaaS (Software as a Service) and CaaS (Commerce as a Service) we cover, to give you a taste of each.
At present, even if economy going down the drain, it was clear that the Internet is playing the key role and has become the key future of sales. Today’s customers have time management and convenience on their mind when it comes to purchasing necessity or luxury items that you’re selling. But, to become a part of internet sales revolution, you have to use the right platform to maximize your business potentials.
If you want to create a pre-ordering option for your current E-commerce marketplace, you could be curious to find out warehousing setup to interact with your E-business store. There are several e-commerce platforms available in the market today that can help you to succeed in E-business.
In this article, we are going to find out some of the best platforms that a small a business owner should use to boost up their online business. Here are some of the particular in a row.
Top 5 e-Commerce Plateforms:-
1. Symphony Commerce
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| Symphony Commerce e-Commerce Website |
It is a bit more than a typical SaaS platform; in fact, Symphony Commerce markets themselves as an E-commerce service provider. The best part of Symphony Commerce is the pay-as-you-go pricing policy, which makes it an ideal option for a fast-growing industry.
Symphony Commerce is a unique platform for all types of businesses that are already running at high speed. If you’re still in to do the position of getting your business together, it would be better option to build a small but functional online store with a professional website builder.
Website:- https://ignitetech.com/softwarelibrary/symphonycommerce
2. Squarespace
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| Squarespace e-Commerce Website |
Squarespace is a fully loaded E-commerce platform. It is affordable and can help you sell out your product online as a small business. Meanwhile, with Squarespace E-commerce platform, you can choose beautiful layouts without knowing a stitch of code. Apart from it, you can upload any number of items to your online store. By having full control of your inventory management, it is an easy platform that offers different variants of the same products to control the inventory stock.
Squarespace is a kind of e-commerce platform that you can run from your living room for the type of business and your site look unique with it. Meanwhile, the best part is it has capabilities in search engine optimization SEO and CRM. Therefore, it’s a great platform for any type of business to sell the products & services.
Website:- https://www.squarespace.com
3. Magento
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| Magento e-Commerce Website |
Magento is extremely elastic E-commerce platform which is suitable for all small or large businesses. To be frank, it is the most scalable platform in this list of e- e-commerce. Just because of the open sources it owns lots of popularity. Meanwhile, adding features with Magento is extremely easy and you can add a free extension that tracks unique visitor behavior as well as you can also suggest them the items based on online offers. Therefore it is a great option for growing companies, it has more mature than the average platform meant for new e-commerce retailers.
Website: www.magento.com
4. Drupal Commerce
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| Drupal Commerce e-Commerce Website |
Drupal Commerce is the actionable and powerful e-commerce platform that is only built within CMS (content management system). With Drupal Commerce, you can easily customize workflows, which makes this platform an ideal for marketers, basically for those who don’t have a good deal of expertise working in the backend. It is extremely flexible in that it’s highly modular and configurable. But this isn’t a platform for the do-it-yourself tycoon. However, it is a full potential platform that can help you set up workflows and the overall configuration of how you want your website to function.
The best part is that it is a highly valuable tool that doesn’t come with licensing fees which is not only a powerful solution but an affordable platform as well.
Website:- drupalcommerce.org
5. Shopify
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| Shopify e-Commerce Website |
To set up an online store and sell out online service or product Shopify can help you better. According to my experience, it’s one of the powerful and all-in-one e-commerce platforms out of others. Therefore it is the most popular e-commerce building platform in the market.
Meanwhile, after choosing Shopify for your online store, you can upload any number of products and it is easy to control over variants and inventory. Apart from it, Shopify comes with a discount code engine i.e. won’t have to pay for transaction fees.
The best part of Shopify is that one can choose marketing plugins with it to boost SEO, sales apps and can also help you customize your product list. Meanwhile, it can help you to track your followers and see who has converted into the sale or can be converted with little affords.
Along with it, Shopify has so many options to choose from that if you’re unseasoned in the e-commerce landscape, also this is a powerful tool that doesn’t require a strong tech background.
Website:- www.shopify.com
However, there are so many e-commerce platforms out of these platforms that can also help you fulfill a vertical of your digital market platform. But, make sure that picking an e-commerce solution means it an investment in for time and money. Therefore, before making any decision, I encourage you to get in touch with one of the best e-commerce website development companies, who can help you to choose e-commerce platform according to your business needs and also can make a professional website or online e-commerce store for you.
