Things to Check Before Choosing the Best Platform to Build E-commerce Website

While it is easy to find a host of off-the-shelf solutions to roll out your online store it is rather difficult to choose the best platform to build an e-commerce website that would be the ideal fit for taking your business online. With so many good-to-go options in the market, differentiating the best platform from a host of others remains a daunting task.

To begin with, you can find many solutions that fulfil your basic requirements and create a decent website in no time.

But is that enough?

Just having a website won’t suffice as to make your business really work you should also think from the customers’ perspective. Isn’t it the customers who decide the ultimate success of any business?

They surely do!

So, the best platform to build an e-commerce website would be one that not only takes care of your requirements as a business owner but also facilitates the needs of your customers.

E-commerce platforms are preferred by etailers over custom solutions, as they shorten the effort and resource involved in developing a website from scratch. However, many turnkey solutions are built on the premise of one-size-fits-all. While this might work for SMBs in their initial days, gradually the limitations of the platform might make it difficult to use it for a growing business.

To qualify as the best platform to build e-commerce website, the solution has to be thoroughly tested on certain key parameters. Ensuring these parameters are well in place would be the first step towards the success of your online business.

Before you take the final call check if the platform you are choosing qualifies on the following pointers:

1. Ready for Mobile Commerce

Mobile commerce is growing at an exponential pace and as of now, up to 80% of online sales of e-commerce websites come from the mobile channel. Having a mobile ready site is no longer an option but a matter of survival. After all, no business can afford to lose 4 out of 5 orders just because it hasn’t got a good mobile site.

This automatically implies that the best platform to build an e-commerce website has to be one which offers an easy mobile solution as well. If the turnkey e-commerce solution of your choice does not provide this must-have feature, you should start looking for a mobile-ready e-commerce platform.

Also, take care that the e-commerce solution you have shortlisted is built on future-ready technology and allows you to create mobile-ready sites that work seamlessly on all devices and even slow networks.

2. Seamless User Experience

Customer is the king.

Their experience while shopping on your online store has a long term effect on your business. If your website provides a simple and hassle-free shopping experience, your customers will keep coming back to buy more. If the opposite they will not only leave your site but will also tell others about their negative experience.

So another important prerequisite of the best platform to build an e-commerce website is that it offers a simple user interface and editable shopping cart. The site performance and loading speed should be fast to stop users from switching to other sites. Also, the order process should be aligned towards conversion and customers should get easy payment and checkout options.

Seamless user experience goes a long way in making your business successful.

3. Beautiful Design Themes and Templates

Your site design can make or mar your business. Humans have a definite liking for beautiful and attractive designs that engage them longer. A beautiful design influences customers and their buying decisions. An e-commerce solution cannot qualify as the best platform to build an e-commerce website unless it offers a simple design layout along with options to allow easy display of products. Clear display always gives your products a better chance of conversion.

A great e-commerce package should provide beautiful design themes that are mobile responsive and can be changed easily. Go for an e-commerce solution that offers you a rich library of beautiful themes and templates to improve your conversions and ROI.

4. End to End Solutions

Setting up an e-commerce business needs a lot of integration with third-party providers. Negotiating separate deals with payment gateways, logistics providers and other third party service providers is a cumbersome job. So the best platform to build e-commerce website would be one that allows you to go for these integrations seamlessly.

Apart from these must have integrations, there are a host of other features that can make you launch and business growth easier. For example, if your e-commerce solution offers SEO ready features, tools to run quick marketing campaigns, Apps for extending store functionality etc it can save costs on many overheads and make it easier for you to promote your business.

Decide on the best platform to build an e-commerce website on the basis of the ease it offers in terms of making your life easier. Go for a platform that takes away the burden of sourcing and integrating third-party providers and gives you an end-to-end e-commerce solution.

5. Flexibility and Scalability

Most of the websites have to move away from off-the-shelf solutions as these fail to scale up with the growing business. The migration is a painful task and involves considerable effort, downtime and numerous bugs.

The best platform to build an e-commerce website in the above scenario would be one that scales up with your business growth and allows you to make changes. Also, it should provide for customization that allows you to tweak the platform inside out according to your brand and business needs.

Conclusion

Now that you are aware of the key pointers that can have a profound effect on your business, you can make an informed decision and opt for a platform that helps you in growing your business.

Bonus Tip

Consider the customer support services of your platform before labelling it the best platform to build an e-commerce website. A company that provides extremely good post-sales services is a must have to save you out of troubled waters in the long run.

StoreHippo e-commerce platform offers all the above advantages and some unique features like a multi-seller marketplace, multilingual website, geo-location based currency conversions and many more.

Get your own StoreHippo Trial Store for free and explore the numerous advantages before you take the final decision.