The eCommerce industry has exploded in recent years. This lets more businesses turn to online platforms to reach customers worldwide.
As per Statista, in 2021, retail e-commerce sales amounted to approximately 5.2 trillion U.S. dollars worldwide. And, by 2026, global retail eCommerce sales will reach up to 8.1 trillion dollars.
It shows how fast the eCommerce industry is growing in the market.
However, choosing the technology to develop an online store is one of the vital aspects of its success. But there is no one-size-fits-all solution to develop eCommerce sites.
The availability of various options (like Magento, Shopify, WooCommerce, etc.) with their own features and benefits makes it challenging to determine the best one for your project.
Moreover, each technology has its drawbacks. For instance, Magento requires a certain level of technical expertise to customize, and WooCommerce may not be suitable for businesses that don’t use WordPress as their CMS. Shopify’s built-in features can come at a cost, and more others.
Besides choosing the technology, selecting a reliable eCommerce development company is another essential aspect for successful online store development.
Stay tuned to the blog post to understand which technology is best for building eCommerce websites. Here, you will get more insights than just selecting a technology.
Let’s start by looking at what you should check before choosing the right technology.
Choosing the Right eCommerce Website Development Technology
To ensure your online store is a success, it’s important to take a holistic approach when evaluating your options.
Business Needs
Start by considering your business needs, such as the number of products you plan to sell and the features you need to provide a seamless customer experience.
Evaluating your business needs and understanding what features and functionality you require to run a successful online store is essential. For example, if you plan to sell many products, you’ll need a platform to handle high traffic and transactions.
Budget
Once you’ve identified your business needs, it’s time to evaluate the costs of each platform. While a robust platform with many features may seem appealing, it may also have a high price tag.
It’s important to choose a platform that offers the necessary features and functionality within your budget. However, it’s also important to remember that sometimes a more expensive platform may be better if it offers more value in the long run. So, it’s essential to choose a platform that aligns with your budget.
Technical Expertise
Next, consider the technical expertise required to set up and customize your chosen platform. Some platforms may require more advanced technical knowledge, while others may be more user-friendly.
It’s important to choose a platform that you and your team feel comfortable with. However, for this aspect, you can also choose an eCommerce development company for effectively developing online stores.
Factors to Consider When Choosing an eCommerce Web Development Platform
Scalability
When choosing an eCommerce platform, it’s important to consider scalability. With your business expansions, your eCommerce platform should be able to grow and scale with it. Make sure to choose a platform that can accommodate the rising needs of your business.
Security
Security is a critical factor to consider when choosing an eCommerce platform. Choosing a secure platform is essential to establish credibility and a reputable online presence. Look for a platform that offers secure payment gateways, SSL encryption, and other security features to protect your customers’ sensitive information.
User Experience
A user-friendly online store gives a seamless user experience to customers. Besides enhancing impressions, it also helps you increase conversion rates. Your customers should be able to navigate your site easily, quickly find what they are looking for, and complete their purchases without any obstacles.
Choose a platform that offers a user-friendly interface, easy navigation, and fast page load times to ensure a positive customer experience.
Integration With Third-Party Systems
Integration with third-party systems, such as payment gateways, shipping providers, and marketing automation tools, is important for streamlining your operations. Choose a platform that offers easy integration with the third-party systems you use to make your business run smoothly.
Mobile Responsiveness
With the increasing use of mobile devices, choosing an eCommerce platform that offers mobile responsiveness is important. Your online store should be easy to navigate and use on a mobile device to provide a seamless customer experience.
Search Engine Optimization
Search engine optimization (SEO) is crucial for driving traffic to your eCommerce site. Choose a platform that offers built-in SEO features, such as the ability to add metadata and optimize product pages. This helps your site rank higher in search engine results.
Different eCommerce Website Development Platforms
WordPress (WooCommerce)
As per WordPress.com, this CMS platform powers around 42% of sites on the web. Apart from developing blogs, WordPress also lets you develop complex web solutions like an eCommerce store.
Yes, you read right. With the WooCommerce plugin, it is possible to transform a WordPress site into a full-fledged online store.
WooCommerce Benefits and Limitations
| Benefits | Limitations |
| Cost-effective: WooCommerce is free to download and use. There is no licensing required to use this WP plugin.
You can add it to your existing WordPress site, which makes it an affordable eCommerce solution. |
WordPress Specific: You cannot use WooCommerce without WordPress-enabled websites.
This makes it complex to use this WP plugin to transform sites (built into another platform) into online stores. |
| Flexibility: It’s easy to customize and extend WooCommerce using a wide range of free and premium themes and plugins.
One of the great things about WooCommerce is that it can be used to sell all kinds of products, from physical goods to digital products, subscriptions, and even appointments. |
Slow Site-Loading Issues: Using WooCommerce can sometimes slow down your site performance.
However, there can be various reasons behind it, like hosting, poorly coded theme or plugin, or sometimes a high number of products in your catalog. |
| Scalability: WooCommerce is scalable, meaning it can grow with your business. It can handle stores of all sizes, from small businesses to large enterprises.
With built-in caching and optimization features, this WordPress plugin can also handle high traffic levels. Additionally, it offers a variety of performance optimization plugins that can be used to enhance your store’s performance. |
Additional Expenses: Though, WooCommerce is free to install and download, you still have to pay some additional costs to execute your online store successfully.
For instance, to set up a payment gateway other than PayPal, you have to pay for that. |
| User-friendly: WooCommerce is user-friendly and easy to use, even for those with limited technical expertise.
It offers a variety of tools and features to help you manage your online store and provide a positive shopping experience to your website visitors. |
Overall, WooCommerce is a versatile eCommerce platform that can be used by a wide range of businesses and organizations to sell products and services online. It is customizable and scalable and offers a variety of features and tools to help businesses succeed in the online marketplace.
Shopify
Another widely used eCommerce platform on the list is Shopify. It is an all-in-one solution for businesses to create and manage online stores. It is also well-suited for those who are not tech-savvy. Within a few clicks, Shopify lets you set up an online store and start selling the products. So, with Shopify eCommerce website development, it is easy to set up and launches your online store without any hassle.
Now, to see whether Shopify is the right choice for developing online stores or not, let’s see its benefits and limitations.
Shopify Benefits and Limitations
| Benefits | Limitations |
| User-friendly: Shopify is user-friendly and easy to use, even for users with little technical knowledge.
It provides a simple drag-and-drop interface for designing and managing your online store. |
Transaction fees: Shopify charges transaction fees for using third-party payment gateways, which can add up over time, especially for businesses with many transactions. |
| Wide range of features: Shopify offers many features to help businesses manage their online stores, including inventory management, order processing, shipping, and payments. | Cost: Shopify is not open-source and offers a variety of pricing plans. It can be more expensive than other eCommerce platforms, especially for businesses with many products or high traffic levels. |
| Security: Shopify is a secure platform that provides SSL encryption for all transactions and offers built-in security features to protect against fraud and data breaches. | Limited Design Options: Unlike other platforms, Shopify offers limited design options. It can be a limitation if you want to give a unique look to your online store. |
| Customization: Shopify offers a variety of themes and templates that can be customized to fit your business’s branding and style.
It also offers a wide range of third-party apps and plugins that can be used to add additional functionality to your store. |
Not Suitable for All Businesses: Shopify may not be the best fit for all businesses, especially those with extensive customization needs. |
| Customer support: Shopify provides excellent customer support, including 24/7 support via phone, email, and live chat.
It also offers a large knowledge base and community forums where users can get help and support from other users. |
Ultimately, we must say Shopify is a robust eCommerce platform with a wide range of features and tools. By investing in Shopify development services, you can undoubtedly develop a feature-rich and top-notch online store for your business.
Adobe Commerce (Magento)
Magento is an open-source and customizable eCommerce platform. It is well-suited for businesses that need a robust online store with high customization and scalability. It is popular among businesses of all sizes.
Irrespective of the number of products and scale of your business, Magento can be an ideal solution for you to serve your purpose.
Magento Benefits and Limitations
| Benefits | Limitations |
| Customization: Magento offers a high level of customization, allowing businesses to create unique and personalized online stores.
It offers a wide range of customization options, including themes, templates, and plugins, as well as the ability to make extensive code customizations. |
Cost: Magento is a more expensive option compared to other eCommerce platforms.
Investing in Magento development services can be costlier for businesses with fewer products or low traffic levels. It requires a larger investment of time and resources to set up and manage. Moreover, you can also refer to this post to get an idea of the cost of building a Magento website. |
| Scalability: Magento is highly scalable and can handle large volumes of traffic.
It is a good fit for businesses that need a robust eCommerce solution that can meet their growing business needs. |
Complex to Set Up and Manage: Magento can be complex and difficult to set up and manage.
Users unfamiliar with web development or eCommerce find it difficult to understand. It requires technical knowledge and may be overwhelming for new users. |
| Multilingual Support: Magento offers multilingual support. This makes it an ideal solution for businesses that operate in multiple countries and need to offer their online store in multiple languages. | |
| SEO-Friendly: Magento is SEO-friendly and offers a variety of SEO features to help businesses improve their online visibility and search engine rankings.
This includes things like SEO-friendly URLs, sitemaps, and meta tags. |
|
| Customer support: Shopify provides excellent customer support, including 24/7 support via phone, email, and live chat.
It also offers a large knowledge base and community forums where users can get help and support from other users. |
OpenCart
OpenCart is a PHP-based eCommerce platform that lets business owners create and manage online stores. It is free to use and easy to customize and extend with additional functionalities. It is considered one of the most user-friendly and powerful eCommerce platforms.
A large community of developers and users contributes to its development, making it constantly updated and optimized for the latest trends and technologies. With its intuitive interface, robust features, and affordable pricing, OpenCart is a great option for businesses of all sizes looking to establish an online presence.
OpenCart Benefits and Limitations
| Benefits | Limitations |
| Multi-Currency Payment System: OpenCart multi-currency payment system lets the admin enable multiple currency displays for the product cost on the website.
This eradicates the hassle of calculating prices in local currency for website visitors. |
Limited features: Compared to other eCommerce platforms, OpenCart has a limited number of built-in features, which can limit the functionality of an online store. |
| Multi-Store Management: OpenCart offers managing multiple stores with one installation.
Installing OpenCart into one store will let you add multiple stores to your admin panel. It removes the need to repeat the installation process. |
Less Popular: Compared to Shopify and WooCommerce, OpenCart is not widely used. It means there will be fewer resources available to encounter problems. |
| Affordable: OpenCart is a cost-effective eCommerce solution compared to other platforms, making it ideal for small businesses and startups. | Other limitations are it is difficult to set up and configure, especially when you need to become more familiar with web development or coding.
Its UI can be overwhelming for users, making it complex to get started with the platform and use it effectively. |
| Other benefits of OpenCart include SEO-friendliness, customizability, user-friendliness, and others. |
Drupal
Another open-source and free-to-use content management system on the list is Drupal. It lets you organize, manage, and publish your content. It is written in PHP and has distributed under the GNU license. This means anyone can download and share it with others.
Being a robust CMS platform, you can use it for developing large and complex web solutions.
Moreover, it can handle complex forms and workflows, making interacting with other sites or technologies easier.
Drupal Benefits and Limitations
| Benefits | Limitations |
| Flexibility: Drupal is a flexible CMS platform that lets you handle different content types like video, text, blog, real-time statistics, etc.
This also makes it possible to customize the software to meet specific business needs. |
Complexity: Building a website on Drupal requires careful planning and organization. It can take longer than other CMS platforms.
It requires advanced knowledge and a few basic things to install and modify. |
| Security: Drupal has a proven track record of security and follows an organized process for verifying and publishing possible security problems. | Slow Performance: Compared to other CMS platforms, Drupal has a slow performance.
Web solutions developed on Drupal will generate big server loads and never open with a slow internet connection. |
| Scalability: To handle a high level of traffic and large amounts of content, you can consider investing in Drupal development services.
Including government agencies, and major corporations, Drupal is used by many large organizations. |
Limited Number of Modules: Unlike WordPress, Drupal has a limited number of modules.
And using third-party modules requires to be optimized on time; otherwise, it can hinder your site performance. |
| Multilingual support: Drupal has built-in support for multiple languages, making creating multilingual websites easier. |
Lightspeed
Lightspeed is an eCommerce software and a POS (point of sale) solution. Its functionalities are geared toward retail firms such as grocery stores, toy stores, pet shops, and others.
It comes with various features such as customer tracking, employee reporting, inventory management, and others set it apart from other eCommerce platforms. This one-stop platform lets merchants simplify, scale, and provide exceptional customer experiences worldwide.
By hiring a Lightspeed development service provider, you can leverage the full potential of this eCommerce platform and develop a top-notch online store for your business.
Lightspeed Benefits and Limitations
| Benefits | Limitations |
| Order Management System: Lightspeed makes order management smoother. It lets you customize your checkout at the consumer’s convenience.
Moreover, Lightspeed offers hassle-free shipping solutions for a better customer experience. |
Learning Curve: Though Lightspeed is user-friendly, it comes with a learning curve for businesses that are new to POS systems or technology. |
| Reporting: Analyzing and figuring out how your eCommerce store performs is vital to stay ahead in this competitive market.
Lightspeed gives you an overview of website traffic, conversion, bounce rates, etc. |
Cost: For businesses with multiple locations or a large number of users, Lightspeed can be expensive.
It comes with a complex pricing structure, with additional fees for add-ons and integrations. |
| Apps and Plugins: Lightspeed offers robust plugins and applications to sell faster.
Lightspeed comes with 90+ applications that anyone can install and extend their online store’s functionality. |
|
| Result-Driven Marketing Tools: Lightspeed offers a wide array of marketing tools to help your online store to grow.
It helps buyers find your online store with effective marketing and optimization techniques. |
So, it was the description of some popular eCommerce platforms. Now, let’s move towards understanding the difference between some top platforms to make an informed decision before choosing one.
Battle of Different eCommerce Platforms
Lightspeed vs Shopify
Comparing Lightspeed and Shopify has always been a topic of debate. Since both are the top POS providers and offer seamless eCommerce integrations, choosing the relevant one between the two is difficult.
So, let’s see Lightspeed vs Shopify war to understand whether to consider Lightspeed development services or Shopify development for developing online stores.
Target audience: Lightspeed is primarily designed for brick-and-mortar businesses that want to expand their operations online, while Shopify is designed for businesses that operate primarily online.
Pricing: Lightspeed’s pricing structure is more complex than Shopify’s, with additional fees for add-ons and integrations. Shopify offers more transparent pricing, with a flat monthly fee for its basic plan.
Features: Lightspeed offers advanced inventory management and analytics features designed to help businesses manage their online and offline operations. On the other hand, Shopify offers a range of eCommerce features, such as abandoned cart recovery and multi-channel selling.
Customization: Lightspeed offers more customization options than Shopify, with various themes and integrations available. However, Shopify’s app store offers a wider range of third-party integrations than Lightspeed’s app store.
User experience: Both platforms are designed to be user-friendly and easy to use, but Lightspeed may have a steeper learning curve for businesses that are new to eCommerce platforms or technology in general.
Ultimately, choosing between Lightspeed and Shopify depends on various factors, including your business needs, budget, and technical expertise.
If you want to expand your brick-and-mortar business online, Lightspeed may suit you. Whereas, if you want an eCommerce platform with a wide range of eCommerce features, Shopify will be better for you.
Shopify vs Magento
Another common topic for battle is Shopify vs Magento. Though both are significant players, they differ in models, pricing, and programming languages.
However, which works well depends on your budget, objectives, and expertise. To choose one, let’s see the factor-based comparison between both platforms.
Cost: Shopify is not open-source and comes with monthly paid options. Whereas Magento also has different pricing plans with a free-to-use option with hidden costs.
Ease of Use: Shopify is easy to set up and use even if you are less tech-savvy. On the other hand, you will require technical assistance to set up and manage the Magento eCommerce platform.
Flexibility: Shopify comes with fewer flexibility possibilities, whereas being harder to manage, Magento is more flexible.
Payment Processors: Shopify lets you choose from 100+ payment gateways and offers its own Shopify Payments.
In contrast, Magento supports 150+ payment gateways.
Integration Capabilities: Shopify enables you to easily integrate with third-party services for integrating additional functionalities.
Conversely, Magento offers various third-party integrations to help businesses manage their online stores.
Customization: Magento offers more customization options than Shopify, with a range of themes, plugins, and extensions available. However, this also means that Magento may have a steeper learning curve and require more technical expertise to set up and manage.
Features: Magento offers a wider range of features than Shopify, particularly in the areas of inventory management, order management, and product customization. Shopify, on the other hand, is designed to be more user-friendly and easy to use.
Conclusion
To conclude the topic, we must say choosing the best technology depends on various factors, including your business needs and budget.
So, carefully considering your goals, expenses, and technical capabilities will help ensure that you choose the right technology to help your business succeed online. It will even help you hire a reliable eCommerce development company for your project.
