What is an eCommerce platform?
An eCommerce platform is a way to create an online experience that allows you to make sales and fulfill orders—no matter where your clients are.
While most people think that an eCommerce platform is just a tool that lets them showcase products and accept payments online, a true eCommerce platform is much more than that. Your eCommerce platform should be an easy-to-use complete business command center from where you have full control of everything from inventory to sales. It should allow you to process payments, but should also give you seamless access to all of the tools you need to sell online, including (but not limited to!) your own online store.
They offer an opportunity to the customers to conveniently deal online with devices on hand. The old-Styled way of making eCommerce portals has been replaced with modern cart generating software. These online development applications come with various features as well as qualities. Reduced time, development effort, physical server cost, and staff cost are a few of their benefits.
Why eCommerce?
E-commerce is a huge part of the economy and is vital to businesses that sell their products or services online. E-commerce gives businesses the ability to reach more customers than traditional retail. With so many people making their purchases online, it is the fastest-growing retail market. Statistics show that 96% of Americans with access to the internet have made a purchase online. E-commerce offers consumers a more convenient way to
shop for the products or services they need without having to visit a retailer’s physical location to make a purchase. While many industries and sectors have struggled throughout the year due to pandemics, e-commerce has seen a highly successful 2020. Its growth has been massive and is set to continue well into 2021. Online sales have strengthened this year in the absence of brick-and-mortar stores being open, with online sale records set to be broken. Companies with online stores have been able to reap the rewards while those without have been playing catchup, desperately trying to reconnect with their audience. The shift to e-commerce has been a setback for many brands, but one that many major brands have managed to hurdle past and begin to see the benefits of in terms of sales. But for small and local businesses, making the jump to online is a far larger one. And with stores across the country dealing with the economic repercussions of the lockdown measures, it's understandable why many small businesses are asking if it is worth it.
For many, the impact of the pandemic has been a warning shot. According to a recent study by PayPal Canada, two in three (67%) small businesses now accept online payment, with just under half (47%) having adopted this since Covid-19 was declared a global pandemic in March. A separate survey by Microsoft Canada found similar results. Spurred on by the looming threat of physical store closures and initiatives to get small businesses into e-
commerce, many have made the big leap. But has it been a benefit to them or another struggle in a year plagued by them?
The biggest draw right now for having an online store is that it gives stores an opportunity to connect with the customer base they have lost. Your custom range is not limited by how many people you can have in a store at once or your local regulations. And regardless of whether it is via delivery or curbside pickup, many people are seeing the draw of nonphysical shopping, especially in the midst of the pandemic. Even after lockdown measures were relaxed and stores reopened, shoppers have been hesitant to return to stores over fears of Covid-19. This is despite the fact that studies have found that small, local businesses are far better at following health guidelines set out by the government: 79% of businesses in one survey were found to go above and beyond the requirements, with a further 90% finding it very easy to regulate how many people are in a store at one time in line with social distancing guidelines.
Source:*Forbes, January 21, 2021, online version
Why Shopify is the best eCommerce platform?
E-commerce is a growing part of not just retail, but the economy as a whole. Small businesses should look to selling online as not just an increase in revenue, but a way to further connect with their audiences and expand their name. While brick-and-mortar is far from gone, online sales are becoming a major part of how we shop. There is one thing that we can do this year, and that is to support our local businesses to make them online. Here Shopify comes. Shopify is arguably the best platform for eCommerce. The main reason for it is it is
easy to use. Its robust platform comes with complementary tools and features for multi-channel selling, so you can sell directly through your website, at your retail store, on social media and third-party marketplaces, and everywhere in between. Plus, Shopify handles all aspects of your business—you can use its best-in- a class suite of business tools to build a complete business command center. Shop Pay handles payment processing, Shopify POS administers in-person sales and Shopify Fulfillment can help you get products into customers’ hands. And those are just a few of the many powerful tools and apps that work together seamlessly as part of the Shopify ecosystem. You can also tap into our extensive library of third-party apps that can extend your experience
with Shopify even further. With all of these powerful features, you can set up your business with little technical know-how and budget and scale to an international online brand without changing platforms along the way.
The Shopify Company reported that it had more than 1.7 Million businesses in approximately 175 countries using its platform as of May 2021. According to Builtwith, 1.58 million websites run on the Shopify platform as of 2021. The total gross merchandise volume exceeded US$61 billion for the calendar of 2019. As of 2021, Shopify is the largest publicly traded Canadian company by market capitalization.
Source: *Wikipedia
Best in Class Features of Shopify
1. Hosted solution
If you’re just launching your online business, web hosting can be a real challenge. Hosting a shopping cart demands some level of technical support and much spare time, which is something startups are particularly short on. However, Shopify is a cloud-based setup and hosted solution where you no need to worry about servers or databases. You can access your store from anywhere with admin login details & an internet connection without any setup.
2. 24/7 Technical Support and Easy to Maintain
You do not need to keep a number of resources to maintain your Shopify store. Shopify ensures 24/7 technical support; hence, you can reach customer care whenever any issues arise. They will pick the call or direct yon on live
chats.
3. Fast, Responsive, and Reliable
Speed is the crucial factor for the success of an eCommerce site as it helps to stimulate your sales. The faster your web pages load, the more your site retains the users. Shopify also offers the best in class security as well as integration among the payment providers. With a built-in speed checker, it enables the users to complete payments at the nominal loading time.
4. Reduces Errors & Data Duplicity Issues
In the case of entering information in multiple fields and forms, the manual data entry includes the possibility of errors and duplications. Moreover, issues appear when the errors are not properly tracked. Shopify comes with
automated solutions to simplify the data entry process and remove data duplicity.
5. Payment Gateway
Maintaining an effective payment system is a vital step for the eCommerce store for getting paid by customers. Shopify has got its own payment gateway and deals with a variety of payment methods.
6. Advanced Functionality
Shopify provides advanced functionality to you with a plugin/application style platform that enables you to download, install as well as customize the site. Besides the features to enhance sales and social media promotion, it also offers inventory management, accounting, and business reporting.
7. 14-Days Free Trial
If you want to test the features of Shopify, you can use its free trial pack. The only thing you need to do is create an account by providing a few contact details and answer a few questions about your initiative. After creating the
account, you will get a 14-days free trial where you can test all the features of Shopify. You can add the product, create product variations, create collections and link them, change storefront design, language support, Product filter, Store setup, and dashboard settings.
8. Visually Appealing Online Store
Shopify is equipped with a wide range of professional templates, which enables you to create a unique and visually appealing online store. It includes a variety of themes, but it is not limited to the online theme editor.
Shopify developers and designers can develop the Shopify themes locally with a Theme kit.
9. Why hire Shopify Developers?
Building a successful online store is not only boosted by the ease of browsing and extreme appearance, but it requires continuous support of the developer to make the store more convenient and leading among its competitors day by day. If you are seeking assistance in establishing an online store, a valid suggestion is to hire Shopify developers. Today, Shopify developers are gaining an edge over web developers as business owners are seeking Shopify developers to design Shopify stores. Shopify is based on Ruby on rails and everything it returns the data in an object so technical assistance is required to filter it out to present on the web. The developers have good hands-on experience in HTML5, SaaS & jQuery with liquid code understanding.
Well, if this is the first time you are launching an eCommerce site then it is pretty easy to underestimate the amount of effort that goes into an online business. Hiring a few web developers, designers, and marketers won’t be enough to get your site up and running. Many decisions need to be taken right from the start resulting in a huge impact on your business. The Shopify Expert/Agency has good hands-on experience in HTML5, SaaS & jQuery with liquid code understanding. So hiring a Shopify Expert/ Agency, who is both skilled and well-experienced enough to get you off the ground can be of much help.
High-end Quality Work – They aren’t just any developers; they do specialize in Shopify development. This means they see how Shopify functions and have broad information concerning all the payment
gateways, navigation, inventory systems, and checkout logic.
Saves Time – Different specialists require distinctive periods for finishing a similar activity. So regardless of whether you have an ambiguous thought of what you want; an experienced developer can go through their extensive information to accompany the correct solution.
Customer Experience – Hiring a Shopify Expert/Agency helps you to design highly customized functionality with the aesthetic theme to draw traffic and can provide customer experience.
In summary, Shopify is a complete eCommerce cloud-based platform. It is affordable and saves more time and resources. If you want full control over the platform and setup of the store quickly with minimum maintenance, then Shopify is an ideal platform for you. As a Shopify Partner, Hadodo can assist you in many ways to launch your eCommerce site with minimal internal resource and less headache.