E-COMMERCE WEBSITE PORTAL
E-Commerce portal
Electronic commerce, commonly written as e-commerce or eCommerce, is the trading or facilitation of trading in products or services using computer networks, such as the Internet or online social networks.Electronic commerce draws on technologies such as mobile commerce, electronic funds transfer, supply chain management, Internet marketing, online transaction processing, electronic data interchange (EDI), inventory management systems, and automated data collection systems.
E-commerce businesses may employ some or all of the following:-
- Online shopping web sites for retail sales direct to consumers.
- Providing or participating in online marketplaces, which process third-party business-to-consumer or consumer-to-consumer sales.
- Business-to-business buying and selling.
- Gathering and using demographic data through web contacts and social media.
- Business-to-business electronic data interchange.
Factors in deciding best eCommerce portal
Type of business
The kind of business you will be conducting depends upon your end-customers. The ecommerce business that you are conducting can be B2B, B2C, C2B, C2C, B2A, A2B. The dynamic of your business conduction decides how your store can be created. Based on your end-user, you have to optimize the product detail pages to showcase the price differently to different end-customers. Usually, ecommerce portals that allow you to create an online store are for B2C based businesses, but additional functionalities can count in.
Integrations
The ecommerce portal to build a store is already with the required ecommerce tools like payment gateway gateways, shipping service providers, tax calculators, etc. But, is that all? There can be unlimited possibilities to grow your business and take it to the next level. The integration of sales channels, CRM, and several other features can be helpful in your online journey. For instance, you can compare the online store builder with an ecommerce platform because ecommerce platforms offer end-to-end solutions for ecommerce business. When you compare them, you can find more profitable options to go ahead with.
Pricing and payment
You need to believe that you can’t get it all for free! When you are selling your products in a market, you ask for the price, and so will ecommerce store builders. Your challenge here is to find the most affordable and yet the best option that can help you create your store and manage it. Also, you compare the cycle of the payment.
Security
For online businesses, safety is the utmost concern. Though every business will claim that it’s most secure, you need to compare the additional certifications if they are offering any to make your business more secure. If not, check if the portal is allowing you to add external security patches to your website.
Scalability
It can be considered as a critical factor when you are building an online store. When you are choosing an ecommerce portal, you need to be far-sighted. Think about the tools and features that the e-commerce portal is offering you in the beginning and count on the additions. When you grow as a business, your requirements will change with time. You can’t simply keep migrating between the online platforms available online. That’s why you compare based on the advanced functionalities these platforms will be offering.
Customer Service
Your business is set for the customers. A single happy customer is capable of bringing hundreds of other customers. The ecommerce giants like Amazon have already raised the bar of customer’s expectations. That’s why it’s essential for you to and other upcoming businesses to meet the demands of customers, else you will be left out of the race. In order to improve customer service, you can enable 24*7 call support, email support, or even live chat options. While opting for an ecommerce portal, you must check the mode of support they are offering also if they allow you to integrate external tools to improve your services.
SEO-friendliness
Call it an essential requirement of an online store builder. More will be the options to optimize your ecommerce store, more comfortable it will be for you to rank your business. When you store to rank well for your offerings and serve the requirements of the customer, it will automatically help your business flourish.
