How to Choose the Best Platform for Your E-commerce Website

The global e-commerce market is growing fast. The experts suggest that worldwide e-commerce sales will reach US $4.47 trillion by 2021 and that the number of digital buyers will exceed 2.1 billion.

So if you are going to launch an e-commerce business, you are heading in the right direction. In this article, we will explain to you how to choose the best platform for your website and achieve the desired results. So let’s get started!

Know what you need

Before you start comparing different platforms with one another, you should get a clear understanding of what site you actually need.

So close your eyes and imagine how a perfect website for your business looks like. Try to describe what you see – define the design of the website, its style, and its features.

Does your website have a blog? Are your customers allowed to leave reviews on your website? Does the domain name of your site match your brand name?

List the key features of your future website and specify your business goals. It will help you to choose the right platform and build the site of your dreams.

Set up a budget

The next step you should take is to decide how much money you are going to spend on a platform for your e-commerce website. And after that, you should consider all the choices that meet your budget.

Some business owners believe that the more money they will spend on an e-commerce platform, the higher the results they will get. But they are not completely right.

Some platforms consciously overprice their services. It means that the rule “the higher the price you pay, the better the services you get” doesn’t work here. If you want to make the right investment decision, you should do research and attentively read real customer reviews.

Focus on your products

Depending on the number of products you are going to sell, you can choose a simpler or more sophisticated platform. If you plan to add less than 20 products to your website, you don’t need to overpay for the platform that offers 1,001 extra features.

But if you are going to sell a wide range of products, you must pick an advanced platform that allows you to separate products into categories and create custom filters.

“As a business owner, you should understand that your primary task is to create a website that is easy to navigate. If you make it easy for your customers to discover the products relevant to their needs, you will double your sales,” says Kimberly Nielson, a digital marketer at Studicus.

Check integration options

To grow your e-commerce business, you will have to integrate a variety of third-party tools, applications, and plugins to handle different aspects of the work of your website. And it means that the platform for your website should provide a great variety of integration options.

In case if you choose a platform that is not compatible with marketing tools, SEO plugins, and project management software – you will face lots of problems. Your website will not work as smoothly as the websites of your competitors work. So it will be more challenging for you to attract customers and grow sales.

For this reason, before you start designing your website, you should make sure that the platform allows integrating third-party tools. If it doesn’t, you should consider another option.

Estimate the amount of content

To make the right choice, you should take into consideration the amounts of content you are going to publish. If you plan to post new articles, videos, and images daily, you should find a platform that allows managing content in a hassle-free way.

Well, if it’s your first e-commerce website, the chances are that you have no idea what content strategy to choose. In this case, you should get help from professionals in the field. You may get a consultation from a freelance content strategist at platforms like Upwork or Freelancer, or use content writing services like GrabMyEssay and TrustMyPaper.

The experts will help you to estimate the approximate amount of content to produce and to choose a platform that suits your business model the most.

Take care of security

Do you want to secure your website from hackers and viruses? Do you want to prevent a customer data breach? Then you should choose a platform that provides ultimate website protection.

If you don’t want to put your e-commerce business on risk, you should think twice before you start using this or that platform. You should make sure that one hack attack or technical glitch will not ruin all your efforts.

Consider each and every option

Newbies in e-commerce business tend to make a big mistake – they rush to pick one of the most widely used platforms like Shopify and BigCommerce without even considering other options. They don’t understand that every company is unique, and there is no one perfect solution for all businesses.

Even if a popular platform works well for a hundred different companies, there is no guarantee that it will work well for your business. So if you want to create an ideal e-commerce website, you should consider all platforms available in the market.

And you should take a closer look at the 10Web platform. It’s an excellent option for building, hosting and managing WordPress sites. 10Web provides access to dozens of stylish templates, premium plugins, and analytics tools. Don’t hesitate to check it out!

Wrapping it up

If you don’t want to be mistaken when choosing a platform for your e-commerce business, you shouldn’t rush to make a final decision.

Analyze the advantages and disadvantages of every platform and focus on the goals you want to achieve. Consider a few choices in detail, and make sure that your decision is well-informed. Then you will pick the platform that matches your business perfectly.