How to Choose a Platform for eCommerce in 2022

Online E-Commerce Shopping – Free photo on Pixabay

In 2022, more and more of the world’s commerce goes online. If you have something to sell (from art objects to craft foods and drinks), you might have thought of making your own online store. You don’t have to make it yourself from scratch, as many platforms are available. But which is yours? You can compare them on Riselane and choose the one that fits your needs best.

Costs

No platform is free, you understand. Even if it offers you free hosting and services, it anyway results in fees from your income. The platform may be free if your number of products is small and may become paid after a certain threshold.

Platforms differ in their payment policy as well. Some may offer smaller or even zero transaction fees if your income is below a certain mark or if you sell a certain type of goods. For example, BigCommerce offers 0% transaction fees for CBD stores. NB: if you later decide to connect a paid app or expansion, you have to pay for it separately.

Payments Support

How do you choose your payment system? It depends on many factors: what you sell, where you deliver, and what is popular among customers. It can be:

•  credit cards;
• standalone electronic payment systems;
• payment systems within messengers;
• cryptocurrency;
• cash on delivery.

It’s up to you what to choose. When selecting the platform, make sure it supports your necessary payment systems or allows for connecting third-party gateways. There are specialized crypto-based platforms (like CryptoCom), but major ones like Shopify, WooCommerce, or Magento support it too.

Goods Support

Which goods do you sell? If they are physical, there’s nowhere to go from packing and shipping them, taking pictures for their pages, checking the condition if it’s used or DIY, and so on. It’s different with digital goods. There are specialized platforms that focus on digital items, like Sellfy or Big Cartel, and there are versatile ones. Make your choice according to what you sell.

Device Support

In the world we live in, most customers do their online shopping on their mobile devices – phones and tablets. The share of those sitting in front of a PC gets smaller every year. So you better have a custom mobile app for your store, showing your entire assortment, easy to navigate, allowing customers to make purchases and payments, add products to wish lists, share pages if they want to consult with someone else, and so on. Still, there has to be a traditional website as well. So, here are the questions to consider:

• Does the platform provide both a website and an app?
• Does it have its own app builder?
• Does the app builder support custom designs?
• Are there both iOS and Android apps?

Check these issues before choosing a platform. As for recommendations, Magento is great when it comes to the mobile representation of your store.

Product Management

Navigation is close to everything. A customer will only be satisfied if your site lets them easily and quickly find what they want. It’s easy when you are, say, a painter, so you just offer several rows of pictures to choose from. And what if you sell clothes, home appliances, tableware, or any diverse array of goods? Along with types, there are colors, sizes, and other details to navigate across.

As you choose an eCommerce platform for your store, make sure it allows for navigation and makes it easy. As an example, you should visit some existing stores on this platform to understand whether it’s capable of delivering an experience that feels easy and intuitive.

If you want to focus on this, there is PrestaShop. This platform specializes in delivering the best cart-related experience for shoppers.

Customer Support Options

Contacting customers during your marketing campaigns is great, but more often, your customers need to contact you. Just leaving your phone on the page isn’t enough, as you see. So you should provide as many ways to contact you as possible so that customers can choose theirs.

The perfect way to do it is right from your store. The customer taps or clicks a phone number, a Messenger or WhatsApp icon, and the app opens, so they can write to you directly. On-page chatbots are also fine. Make sure your platform supports these types of communication, and, in your turn, make sure you or your employee is available all through the working hours.

If you don’t offer your customers 24/7 support (think of it!), let them specify when they want to be called back. Well, you know it if you have ever had troubles with online purchases. Now just choose the platform that offers the best solution to these issues.

Expansion Support

Sooner or later, you will add other tools. It costs nothing to create a basic Instagram account or an official Facebook page. But to make the most out of them, you will need to establish the connection between your products, your customers, and your site. This can be enhanced with expansions that are sometimes called apps. What can these apps do?

• Contact your customers directly and remind them about products left in their carts, alert them about discounts and giveaways, and send them questionnaires;
• run your advertising campaigns, show pop-ups on other sites, partner with other stores on the same platform;
• connect third-party resources, like your social media pages;
• analyze your results with various metrics, to tell which of your actions help your store prosper and which have little or no positive effect.

In the beginning, you can be satisfied with the default features of the platform. But as your business grows, you might feel more and more need for extra tools in your advertising, marketing, or bonding with customers. That’s when you think of apps or extensions. The platform that supports most extensions is arguably Shopify. However, others have it too, like Wix or Magento.

Everything Is Well That Sells Well

Wise men say only fools rush in. If you can’t help launching a shop online, you’d better take your time, decide what you sell (that’s the easiest), and see how it’s sold and who buys it. According to this, you can create your vision of the perfect store and choose the platform that fits it the best.

If you have any questions or experience of creating an online store on any of these platforms, welcome to the comments! Ask and tell whatever you want.