E-Commerce Platform: Why Do Businesses Need to Have One

When it comes to selling products online, businesses have two options – creating their website or selling on a marketplace. 

Both these options have their own set of pros and cons, and there is no one-size-fit for all solutions. However, industry experts believe that businesses with their eCommerce are better off and can do better.

Let’s check out the below-given statistics:

• There are around 26 million eCommerce sites worldwide and with every passing day new ones are being launched.
• In the US alone, there are more than 9.5 million eCommerce sites, and new ones are being launched every single day.
• According to estimates, global retail e-commerce sales were around 4.9 trillion dollars in 2021.
• In 2021, mobile e-commerce sales increased by 15.2% over the previous year to $3.56 trillion.
• The average conversion rate for all e-Commerce companies was 1.53% in 2021.
• It’s predicted that 95% of all purchases will be made online by 2040.
• Only 2.86% of visitors to e-Commerce websites make a purchase.

Irrespective of your business – retail shops, restaurants, etc, if you don’t have an e-Commerce website, you are leaving money on the table.

Small businesses need to accept the reality that the world has moved online. Consumers even if they buy something offline, do check the product online. 

Believe it or not, your customers are online, and having your e-Commerce platform has many advantages. Many companies, irrespective of their size, have started hiring Laravel developers who help them develop e-Commerce platforms. 

How will an eCommerce Platform Scale up the Business Growth? 

1. Attract new customers

The immediate benefit of having an e-Commerce platform is that you open the option to attract new customers. With e-Commerce websites, you can achieve it through the process of search engine optimization (SEO). 

As per reports, 81% of retail buyers engage online research before buying anything. It means that if you don’t show up in search results, you are losing direct customers. When you start showing on a search result, it adds incredible value to your business. 

You can only achieve this in a much better manner when you have a perfect online address – an e-Commerce platform.

2. Start private labelling

A private label product is created by a contract or outside manufacturer and marketed by a retailer. Retailers define each & every aspect of the product, including the internal factors, packaging details, and labeling structure, and finally, they pay for it and get it created and delivered to their location.

For e-Commerce sellers, private labeling is on the rise. If you own your brand and channels, you can sell what you want. 

Even if you start to sell generic products, branding them and selling them across the platform and sales channels give you more opportunities to build trust which leads to recurring business. With a private, you can collect customer data (the next point discusses the advantage).

3. Use customer email lists and market to them

When you have your website, you can market to your customers directly. Unlike marketplaces, where buyers are customers of the marketplace and not of the seller, selling directly to customers means that you get to collect their contact information – the details are priceless. 

If you plan to launch new products or there are discounts, you can directly reach their inbox. It increases your sales. In a marketplace, getting repeat customers is quite difficult for businesses, your e-Commerce makes that easy for you.

4. Sell as you like

If you are currently selling on generic websites, you need to list products or showcase them as per their format. However, when you run your own e-Commerce website, you have the freedom to list products as per your needs. 

For example, you can change the color scheme for some products if you think that will attract more customers. Not only the physical look, but you also have the option to change the product price, delivery price rules, and much more. You can experiment with different offers to conclude which offer works best.

5. New market acquisitions

When you have your business online, the sky is the limit. You can reach customers with your products all over the world. Once you have acquired customers in one geographical area, you can explore new geographies to increase new sales opportunities. 

Having an online store gives you the freedom to investigate independent logistical choices and keep up a consistent shipment schedule wherever you wish. Shipping coverage and quality are important factors in determining your company’s success in this cutthroat market.

6. Implementing Automation

With scaling up a Business, a lot of complexity, a pile of work tasks, and repetition in the process add up which requires concerned attention. To overcome these problems, Businesses must opt for Automation software. 

This would effectively help businesses to get their tasks done in the background along with focusing on the core activities like creating campaigns, enhancing the product line as well as managing the existing products efficiently. 

There are several tools & plugins available for automating your tasks. Tools for push notifications as well as Email replies you can leverage best-in-market tools that are easily available to use free of cost for streamlining your response process and effectively staying connected with potential leads and providing them with in-time support for chances of high conversion rate.

7. Integrating Effective Payment Options

Payment options that are quick as well as easy to connect with their desired platforms like UPI, NetBanking, etc are the most preferred ones. 

Visitors look forward to streamlined & secure Payment options that help them to pay for their products or services at their convenience and also prevent any threat to their payments.

Reputed e-Commerce Platforms have trusted Payment options integrated with renowned payment brands like Razorpay, GooglePay, Reputed Banks, etc. Coupons & deals are a favorable add-on to make your payment options much more appealing for visitors. 

These coupons or discount deals help visitors buy their desired products at a discounted rate, increasing your chances of customer retention.

Best Technologies to Build Your e-Commerce Platform 

1. WooCommerce

One of the well-known, self-hosted frameworks for WordPress websites that use open-source features is WooCommerce. It is a versatile platform with excellent, specially designed features and capabilities. It provides top-notch shop management with WooCommerce, which has a good initial selection of all the functionality required for e-Commerce websites.

As of July 2022, 46,398 of the top websites worldwide, or 6,322,323 websites,  used WooCommerce.

2. Laravel

One of the well-known e-Commerce frameworks is Laravel. The most creative strategy can be developed once you work with an Indian Laravel development business. 

It is an open-source framework written in PHP that employs the model-view-controller (MVC) design pattern and includes all aspects of object-oriented programming. The framework uses straightforward troubleshooting to make finding and fixing bugs easier.

In 2022, Laravel development has been a 2X popular option for PHP framework development. Laravel is used by more than 761,321 active websites right now.

This framework’s strong adaptability aids in the creation of scalable and versatile e-Commerce features. It provides compatible outsourcing integration for creating e-Commerce stores with all the features needed to operate effectively.

3. Shopify

One of the well-known hosted e-Commerce platforms, Shopify, allows developers to create both a simple and remarkable online store with no technical effort. With separate subscription and outside tools, it streamlines store settlement and management.

This framework can create a smooth user experience by integrating the e-Commerce shop with more than 100 additional applications. For instance, it only takes one click to activate Google Analytics and Smile.io. 

4. ReactJS

ReactJS is one of the highly preferred Web Frameworks for e-Commerce Development. The technology possesses core abilities to integrate logic in front-end projects simultaneously. Reusable components, feature-rich libraries, enticing UI Frameworks, templating systems, interface state synchronization, and routing are some of the key ReactJS features available for the users to leverage & bring out the best results.

There is a large ecosystem with numerous tools and libraries based on the React library. The create-react-app command-line tool, the React tools for Chrome browser and the React-DOM package are recognized ecosystem elements. React is a great choice when creating a complex web project like e-Commerce as it possesses fully-fledged libraries. 

5. Magento

PHP was used to create the open-source e-Commerce platform known as Magento. This framework may be quickly installed on dedicated servers or in the cloud (PaaS). 

Magento is a performance-driven, scalable, and adaptable framework that is a crucial component of Adobe Experience Cloud for an e-Commerce website. Consequently, it is simple to link with Adobe components such as consumer data and information systems, analytics, etc.

6. Angular

One of the top front-end JavaScript Google-driven frameworks is Angular. It is a low-code open-source framework that may be adapted to a variety of well-known e-Commerce systems. The framework has a tonne of helpful resources, such as AngularFire and Angular Components, as well as adaptable time-saving elements.

Conclusion

Having an effective product development strategy for e-Commerce is essential for every business to build an engaging e-commerce platform as well as ultimately increase sales. 

You should research mobile optimization if you want a profitable e-Commerce website. To ignore e-Commerce is to essentially ignore the vast majority of your potential clients.

It allows you to acquire loyal customers, grow your brand, be creative with marketing, and a lot more. If you have not explored this option as of now – get started.

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