E-Commerce Platforms

If you are not an expert and wants to know “how to build an E-commerce store” here is how. In this blog post, web design company in saudi arabia will walk through the whole process of building a professional E-commerce.

1. Choose an appropriate platform for your business
2. Choose a reliable technical partner that you can depend on
3. Write a success plan from A to Z Clearly

We will dig deep into the best Ecommerce platforms that exist in the market today. Hopefully, at the end of this post, you will be able to choose the best one.

Your best E-commerce will be mentioned here and it will be one of these four platforms, why these four specifically?  Well, these are the most famous and the most being used.

When you start to build an online business, “choosing an appropriate E-commerce platform” will be one of the most critical decisions in your journey to build a successful online store.

At first, it will be difficult to understand how can small differences in performance of platforms affect my store and its popularity?  take my word for it, it will.

The correct choice will help you to success fast and it will make your store developability good enough to overcome obstacles and the more important it will save your time and money.

Here are the questions that we will address in the following sections of this post.

1. What is the best platform that will suit your needs?
2. What is the advantages and disadvantages of the Magento platform and  When to use Magento?
3. What is the advantages and disadvantages of the WooCommerce platform and  When to use WooCommerce?
4. What is the pros and cons of the OpenCart platform and  When to use OpenCart?
5. What is the pros and cons of the Shopify platform and  When to use Shopify?

Here is some analytics that will help you to take the correct decision.

1. Users that leave your store and their cart increase by 30% when the checkout process takes an extra two seconds.
2. 87% of users leave their cart because checkout time exceeds 7 seconds.
3. 50% of users that access your store by a smartphone want to see the full page is loaded in less than 2 seconds or less.
4. Some platforms provide free out of the box features that are paid in others.

In this comparison, we are looking at many standards and we will give the platform a score from 0 to 100.
Score from 0 to 59: think twice before choosing this platform.
Score from 60 to 75: you can make it ready after some developing and work.
Score from 76 to 100: you can use it right out of the box.

Here is the meaning of scores

The overall score is the mean of performance + features + scalability + ease of use
Performance score is based on ( page load time + Google PageSpeed Insights score + Mobile friendly  + user experience + search engine optimization score )

Feature score is based on how much and how good marketing features exist in the platform. Scalability score is based on the ability to sell across multiple channels (such as integration with Amazon products) as your business grows online and how to integrate ` the online store to shipping companies such as Aramex, Simsa, Visa, MasterCard, Payday Payment, or Pay on Delivery.

Magento

Magento was released in March 2008 and statistics show that 25% of stores are built using the Magento platform, it is an open source e-commerce platform.it Has gained the confidence and great mobility of users of E-commerce stores, and in February 2011 eBay announced the acquisition of the platform. Then Adobe acquires it in May 2018 for 1.68 billion dollars. So it is one of the most popular e-commerce platforms in the world, so many international companies and famous brands such as Burger King, Huawei, Pepe Jeans and Liverpool F.C. using Magento even in the Saudi market there are many large stores such as Jarir Bookstore and Xcite Ward C Abdellatif Jameel Electronics have been using Magento platform.

Advantages of creating an online store using Magento:

1. Magento is the most compatible platform with Google.
2. Ease of use it is the strongest globally and locally in the establishment of E-commerce stores.
3. More than 9000 additions are available for this platform and this number is increasing.
4. Magento is the safest platform for e-stores.
4. Magento contains innovative techniques, such as knowing at which stage people abandon their shopping cart and leave the store.
5. The Magento platform contains a wide resource library to explain the components of the platform as well as presentations, explanations of new plugins, warehouse management and everything about e-commerce stores, how to handle and manage them.

The disadvantages of creating an e-store using Magento:

Magento is not for everyone, especially if the e-store owner has a limited budget or does not have a large number of products. To keep surfing Magento, you need an advanced hosting with powerful servers. To host a Magento e-store is not as easy as it is available on the WooCommerce platform. You also need a specialized developer in Magento platform, also be prepared to invest in the costs of custom solutions and the cost of having technical support provided by a specialized company. We are happy to assist you here in Internet Solutions Company. We have specialized developers in Magento platform. We also offer all services related to e-stores and the design, development, training, and management of electronic stores and creating an effective marketing plan.

Our opinion of using Magento:

For large and medium-sized companies that have a huge number of products, the Magento is a perfect choice. It is not recommended for low budget customers or who have a limited number of products due to expenses related to programming, development, and maintenance as you should have technical support.

WooCommerce

WooCommerce Store that based on well-known content management system WordPress, it is a name that does not need to be defined in the e-commerce world. Comes with a secure payment gateway and a fast and simple shopping cart, WooCommerce is easy to use for any client,

It is an open-source software solution with tens of thousands of developers around the world, so you will not face any obstacles to solve any technical problem you are facing, whether that support is free or paid. WooCommerce and WordPress are compatible with search engines, light in page loading, small in size, very flexible, compatible with all the development plugins that your site may need.

Advantages of creating an e-store using WooCommerce:

1. Easy to manage your store through an easy and smooth management dashboard.
2. the possibility of adding unlimited product categories and adding more than one vendor on the platform.
3. WooCommerce is built upon WordPress platform so there is a wide range of plugins available from all types.
4. Secure payment gateway.
5. A good shopping cart.

The disadvantages of creating an e-store using WooCommerce:

The biggest problem with WooCommerce is its inability to expand. As your business grows and more vendors, products, and customers get into your database, WooCommerce starts to slow down and not be able to perform well.

Our opinion of using WooCommerce:

WooCommerce is a good option that is applicable if your store does not contain a huge number of products.

Shopify

Shopify, one of the most important online store platforms, Shopify company is located in Canada, it helps online businesses around the world with a strong focus on e-commerce across different social networking platforms and mobile shops. Since its establishment in 2004, Shopify has always maintained a good pace in the development process and has made use of advanced e-commerce technologies, Shopify have developed powerful additions to the platform such as social shopping or marketing through social networking platforms so that customers will be able to buy from your e-store without leaving their social platform.

Shopify advantages :

1. The possibility of establishing the store quickly and launching it.
2. The platform contains a large range of designs in English, plug-ins, and additions.
3. For $ 29, you can integrate Shopify directly with your Facebook account and launch your e-store.
4. The platform contains a mobile-compatible shopping cart, mobile apps for the seller and many other features available on smartphones.
5. 24/7 technical support through live chat, telephone, and tutorials, as well as the powerful Shopify forum.
6. The possibility of integrating it with the global payment gates easily.

Shopify disadvantages:

Even with all the advantages of Shopify listed above, there are some negative aspects of this platform. The main downside is the lack of access to the site’s source and payment per month, high commissions on each sale, in addition to the lack of editing ready-made templates and the possibility of expansion. A platform like Shopify displays a few templates to choose from. Of course, all these templates are professionally equipped for e-commerce specifically, but their range is very narrow compared to the ambitions of users, especially if it compared to a flexible software such as WordPress and wooCommerce.

Will your store be in Arabic? Unfortunately, Shopify is available to users in the Middle East, but it does not support Arabic as a user interface, and will, therefore, need technical development to localize the store.

Also, if you want any additional feature – not one of the features offered at Shopify – you have to hire a special developer to develop it for your account, unlike the WordPress and wooCommerce that offers a huge number of plugins and add-ons that do almost everything.

Our opinion of using Shopify :

E-commerce professionals outside the Middle East can rely heavily on the Shopify platform, but if you are a novice who needs a quick solution to create an e-store, you can use Shopify. Yes, it’s easy to use and can help you set up an online store quickly. Depending on your requirements and budget, you can choose from Shopify plans that range from $ 29 to $ 299 per month.

OpenCart

Compared to other open source platforms, OpenCart is actually easy to use and lightweight. It’s free and has a great community of users that you can depend on if you have problems while designing your store. It is recommended for startups because it does take a lot of time to customize the store from scratch. Because of its ease of use, the total cost of creating an online store is less.

For example, you do not have to pay to hire web developers to develop your store, because the design templates are not expensive, and you do not initially need any paid extensions.

Advantages of creating e-stores using OpenCart:

1. The costs of starting your e-store are very low.

2. The available features can be relied upon, OpenCart has a strong index and it can take in many products which help in the process of the checkout of the many and increasing orders.

3. The store can be managed by an average person. He/She can control its settings well and easily. Also, Opencart does not absorb resources and does not need high hardware resources like Magento.

The disadvantages of creating e-stores using OpenCart:

When you look at the list of Magento features compared to OpenCart, there is no real comparison. Magento Stores wins an overwhelming victory.

Whereas :

1. OpenCart performance is not strong, so sometimes you should get good extensions to improve performance.
2. Although being easy to use for beginners, which means that customization options are lower than those that exist in Magento. You might think of OpenCart as one of the few open source e-commerce platforms that professional web developers prefer to avoid.

Finally, here are some points that will help you choose between these platforms:

There is no single e-commerce platform that fits all requirements, but the more accurate your requirements are, the better the solutions available to you. All the e-commerce platforms discussed in this article are designed for different types of business requirements. The pros and cons shown are not about the bugs available on the platform but they have been introduced to help you make an accurate decision to choose a platform that serves your needs the best.