Despite a tanking economy, the businesses that survived the crash quickly started adapting their selling methods, because,even with an economy going down the drain, it was clear that the Internet would hold the key to the future of saleToday’s consumer has time management and convenience on their mind when it comes to purchasing those sweet luxury or necessity items that you’re marketing to them.But, to be on your A-game, you have to be using the right platform to maximize your sales potential.Whether you’re struggling to create a pre-ordering option within your current ecommerce marketplace,or you’re anxious to find out how your warehousing setup will interact with your online store,there are plenty of ecommerce options out there that can help your business succeed.
1.Symphony Commerce
The first ecommerce platform I want to talk about is a SaaS (software-as-a-service) type of solution.Of course, I’m being a little biased by putting this first, because I believe that SaaS can be a wonderful solution for businesses of any size — not just big businesses that can afford the overhead cost of farming projects out.Symphony Commerce isn’t for everyone,though.While the pay-as-you-go pricing makes it an ideal option for a small but fast-growing company,this is a platform for businesses that are already running at full speed.If you’re still in the do-it-yourself phase of getting your business together, it would be better to build a small but functional online store with a site builder such as Squarespace.
2.Squarespace
No matter which Squarespace template you select — which is another strength of the platform,as you can choose beautiful layouts without having to know a stitch of code — you’ll be allowed to upload an unlimited number of items to your online store and have full control of your inventory management,meaning that it’s easy to offer different variants of the same product type as well as control your inventory stock.This is definitely an ecommerce platform for the type of business that you can run from your living room, and while your site will look great,Squarespace won’t offer you a lot of capabilities in search engine optimization (SEO) or customer relationship management (CRM).Still, it’s a great platform for any type of business from small retailers to professionals wanting to sell their services.
3.Magento
Magento is an extremely elastic ecommerce platform in that it can fit the needs of small or large businesses,making it probably the most scalable platform on this list.While Magento can be a great option for growing companies, it is a platform that’s more mature (i.e., complicated to use) than the average platform meant for first time ecommerce retailers.While that shouldn’t deter smaller business owners when it comes to integrating Magento into their workflows, I do suggest that you make sure you’re confident in your ability to learn the ins and outs of using such a sophisticated platform before implementation.
4.CommerceHub
CommerceHub is a cloud based service that allows retailers to dramatically increase their inventory and product offering to the consumers that support their business.The cloud based technology thatCommerceHub offers can empower startup ecommerce companies — who traditionally have had to compete with larger retailers to find sourcing partners — to reach 100 percent compliant integration with any product source and allows those retailers to effectively become the middle man between wholesalers and the consumers.Like other solutions on this list,CommerceHub isn’t necessarily for the early-stage startup as before you can drill down relationships with suppliers, you first have to have created a strong sales funnel that can support a product-delivery pipeline.
5. Drupal Commerce
Users of Drupal Commerce can easily customize their workflows, which makes this option ideal for marketers who don’t necessarily have a great deal of expertise working in the backend of ecommerce platforms.Drupal commerce is also extremely flexible in that it’s highly modular and configurable,which means that it’s built to scale.But this probably isn’t an option for the do-it-yourself entrepreneur.In order to use Drupal Commerce to its full potential,you’ll at the very least need to hire an in-house developer that can help you set up workflows and the overall configuration of how you want your commerce platform to function.
6.Shopify
As the name would suggest, Shopify is all about helping you set up an online store so that you can sell online,and in my opinion, it’s one of the more powerful all-in-one ecommerce platforms out there.With Shopify, you can upload an unlimited amount of products with easy control over variants and overall inventory.It also comes with a discount code engine, and you won’t have to pay for transaction fees.The real beauty of Shopify — and what makes it scalable for any type of business — is their app store, which offers over a 1,000 helpful apps both free and paid.There are more than enough ecommerce platforms out there that can help you fulfill every vertical you want your digital market place to cover.However, picking an ecommerce solution means investment in both time and money.Before settling on any platform I encourage you to do an internal audit of your current needs.For example, you could be in the market for a relatively cheap solution now, but, as you scale, you know that you’ll need your ecmmerce platform to integrate with other systems like a CMS and CRM.If this is the case a platform like Squarespace might seem enticing in the early goings but could end up costing you in the long run due to its low scalability.You might instead choose Drupal Commerce, as it’s an extremely elastic solution that can integrate with almost any other platform.
Source: Entrepreneur
Peter Zmijewski is the founder and CEO at KeywordSpy.His expert knowledge on Internet Marketing practices and techniques has earned him the title “Internet Marketing Guru“ He is also an innovator, investor and entrepreneur widely recognized by the top players in the industry.