Top 5 Mobile Commerce Platforms for Enterprise Businesses

All set to amp up the mobile commerce presence of your wholesale business? Looking forward to exploring new markets by making buying on the go easier for your clients? Want a seamless solution that makes it easy to buy on any wireless device?

You certainly are thinking in the right direction. The way B2B ecommerce has swiftly gravitated towards mobile selling is proof enough of the success of m-commerce for large businesses. 

Why M-Commerce For Enterprise Ecommerce Businesses

M-commerce sales are expected to grow 4X in just five years from 2016 to 2021. And the most important aspect of this growth is that large businesses are a big contributor to this trend. Did you know that; 

• 70% of B2B queries are made on smartphones
• 60% of B2B buyers say mobile played a significant role in their purchase decision

Mobile has given every party involved in a large business a better chance of growth. Be it the brand owners, the distributors, suppliers, vendors or the clients, all can benefit by adapting m-commerce for faster and efficient business.

The Advantages Of M-Commerce For Enterprise Ecommerce Businesses

Now that you know how selling on mobile devices is changing the game for large businesses, it is equally important to check out the benefits of m-commerce. Here they go:

• Wider reach and accessibility by reaching close to 3.8 billion people who have access to smartphones. There still are markets where mobile is the only source of buying/selling online and clients are increasingly adapting to this modus operandi.

• Speeds up buyer journey by offering faster and more convenient mobile apps. This makes product enquiries faster and easier and also helps in doing business from anywhere, anytime.

• Mobile commerce opens up new marketing opportunities for large businesses. It not only gives you a new marketing channel but also helps you sell better implementing easy mobile sharing options through your apps.

• By offering mobile sites and apps you can also gain better insights into customers’ browsing and buying behaviour. This helps you pitch better to your customers and offer them the kind of product and services they are looking for.

• Mobile sites and apps help you schedule your notifications and messages when your customers are browsing through your pages. Reaching customers at the right time boosts your chances of engaging and converting them.

• Mobile commerce helps you offer better customer experience by making browsing, payments and search easier. Also, the mobile devices can be taken anywhere giving you a 24x7 opportunity to stay connected with your customers.

• M-commerce allows you to show personalized content to your clients easily. You can target your enterprise ecommerce customers better by offering conversion oriented content tailor made for their requirements.

• One of the greatest benefits of mobile apps for large businesses is their ability of geolocation tracking through mobiles. This helps in directing your customers to your nearest stores or routing their orders through your nearest vendors/warehouses. 

With so many benefits, going mobile is a winning business strategy for large businesses looking for quick growth.

Features Needed In A M-Commerce Ready Enterprise Ecommerce Platform

Now that you know the benefits m-commerce for large businesses, it is time to choose the best platform to power your business. But before we go into evaluating the best m-commerce platforms let us understand what are the features we need to concentrate on.

Here goes the list of features to look for in the best mobile commerce solutions for enterprise businesses:

• Easy Development that helps in building mobile-ready stores without cumbersome coding effort
• Next-generation technology that builds m-commerce websites that are ready for future
• Responsive and customizable themes which can be optimized for various device-screens
• PWA online stores that work like mobile apps even on entry-level devices
• Fast loading, lightweight sites that also work during poor or broken internet connection site
• Auto upgradable mobile commerce platform that keeps pace with fast changing technologies
• Offers mobile app builders to create apps for better m-commerce presence and conversions
• Facilitates easy mobile payments through multiple gateways and wallets
• Built-in marketing features that help in offering personalized offers and deals
• Support for multiple languages and currencies for reaching customers in diverse countries

Along with the complete set of enterprise-grade features if your chosen platform offers all the above features, it certainly is a solution worth considering for your large-scale business.

 5 Best Mobile Commerce  Platforms For Enterprise Businesses

Readymade m-commerce platforms are the first choice of large businesses planning to sell on mobile without going through long development cycles. Large B2B and B2C businesses can grow and reach new markets without much effort by powering their business with one of the top m-commerce platforms with enterprise-grade features.

Here is the list of 5 best mobile commerce platforms for large-scale high volume businesses: 

StoreHippo

StoreHippo is one of the top mobile commerce platforms with a gamut of enterprise grade features for high-volume B2B and B2C businesses. Mobile-first principle is at the core of StoreHippo’s architecture. This makes stores powered by StoreHippo fast-loading, high-performance and inherently mobile ready. 

With a strong focus on building easy to use, scalable and customizable solutions for  large-scale businesses, StoreHippo mobile commerce solutions are suitable even for very large businesses with presence in multiple countries.stores for businesses of all sizes.

StoreHippo offers PWA stores, which implies that all stores built on the platform look, feel and function like mobile apps when they are opened in a browser. This gives the added advantages to the enterprise ecommerce stores as they can work even when the internet connectivity is poor or lost. PWA stores work seamlessly even on entry-level devices making it possible for large businesses to reach clients and vendors in far-off locations.

StoreHippo comes with free mobile responsive themes designed to give irrespective of the device size. Storehippo has an inbuilt mobile app builder and you can make Android and iOS apps without any coding or additional cost. Large businesses with multi-store setup can build multiple apps for each storefront using these app builders.  StoreHippo’s multilingual capabilities make it possible to have multilingual support in the mobile apps.

StoreHippo mobile commerce platform also aids m-commerce marketing using a host of inbuilt marketing tools. You can engage customers in real-time with in-app notifications, speed up checkouts with 50+ integrated payment gateways and opt for one-click checkout for faster conversions.

StoreHippo m-commerce solutions come with a mobile admin that makes running and managing business on the go very easy. StoreHippo’s social sharing gives easy options to share and market products through various platforms like Facebook, WhatsApp etc. making it easier for enterprises to reach their customers using different touchpoints. 

Although StoreHippo’s basic m-commerce features are available for all its plans, the enterprise features are available only with the higher plans.

Magento

Magento is one of the well-known platforms with enterprise features for large businesses. It also helps in building mobile commerce solutions for large businesses. Magento stores come with responsive themes that adjust to different device sizes. 

With Magento, enterprise brands can implement mobile-friendly checkout using multiple payment gateways integrations. This makes it easier to engage clients and speed up the ordering process. Magento also has PWA which builds mobile sites that are easy to use as mobile apps and searchable on all search engines thus giving SEO benefits to large businesses. 

Magento has also introduced mobile optimization initiatives, which basically helps brands improve the mobile experience for their customers. Magento mobile commerce platform comes with extensions called Magento App Builders, which help enterprise businesses build their mobile apps.

However, Magento forums have complaints from users reporting multiple issues of these mobile app builder extensions. These app builders offer temporary solutions only and the apps do not reflect all the features of a customized store for large business. Another most repeated complaint is the compatibility issue as many of the app builder extensions are compatible only with a selected Magento version. Also, Magento mobile commerce platform has different  community and enterprise versions which hinders  a seamless experience.

Also, Magento has great enterprise features but syncing the changes to your apps and enterprise website would require an experienced Magento developer. There will be a constant need to replicate and manage all the changes to your mobile site and update the app accordingly. Magento’s security issues are also a major concern especially as the business scales up it becomes buggy.  The ongoing maintenance fee for Magento enterprise ecommerce solutions is also high.

BigCommerce

BigCommerce comes with mobile commerce solutions for B2B and B2C large scale businesses planning to sell on mobile.  Brands can build mobile-optimized pages and implement mobile-optimized themes using BigCommerce.

However, to convert the online store for your high-volume business into a completely mobile-ready portal you will have to rely on BigCommerce extensions and pay for them on top of your subscription charges. 

Building mobile apps also needs extensions and a good understanding of BigCommerce platform. After building the apps you will have to sync all customizations of your store and make changes to reflect them in your mobile apps. 

Users of BigCommerce mobile commerce platform have written about problems in doing changes and implementing workarounds on large sites to make them completely mobile-ready. Most of them have issues with the developer oriented architecture of the platform which makes it essential to have a full IT team that understands the platform well. 

The overall cost of BigCommerce subscription becomes pricey in the long run owing to the extensions and time consuming customizations. Many BigCommerce users also voice their concern about the limited mobile readiness of the platform despite its claims otherwise. 

Shopify

Shopify offers enterprise solutions to brands along with features that help them sell on mobile devices. Shopify comes with free and paid mobile responsives themes for wireless mobile devices of all sizes. Shopify mobile commerce platform’s mobile shopping carts make checkout  easier on all devices.

However, Shopify was not designed for mobile and the mobile part was glued in the platform as an afterthought. The apps based architecture of Shopify requires a number of different third-party apps to implement all the features and flows of a large-scale business. 

The mobile functionality on Shopify stores also needs a host of apps and syncing a host of apps becomes cumbersome as any issue with even a single app will also be replicated in their mobile extensions. Moreover, not all apps come with mobile extensions which means you will need to search and pay for a new extension altogether. 

To make a perfect mobile-ready enterprise store with  Shopify mobile commerce platform, you will need a team of developers who are versed with Shopify’s Liquid. Shopify also has paid app builders built by third-party providers. You will have to sync these with other apps to mirror all your store’s customizations. 

Another issue with Shopify is that it slows your site speed due to usage of too many apps.  All these paid apps cost a lot on top of the subscription charges. 

WooCommerce 

WooCommerce open source platform helps brands build their mobile apps and stores with  

plugin-based solutions. A host of WooCommerce plugins and extensions are designed to make mobile-ready enterprise online stores for big businesses. 

Among these plugins, some are equipped to turn the stores into a quasi mobile app along with making the site mobile-ready for selling on wireless devices. WooCommerce offers plugins and extensions for mobile app builders to build apps for enterprise ecommerce sites. These plugins are paid and you can choose from the many options available. 

However, not all WooCommerce plugins are mobile-friendly which makes it difficult to use them for large sites with high volume business. Making these workarounds and plugins do their desirable functions is quite a task and requires experienced developers with a knack of working on WooCommerce platform. 

Also, paying for the extensions can make your budget slip out of hand despite WooCommerce being open-source. Also, constant monitoring and finetuning is needed to sync the mobile commerce extensions with your site. 

Along with these you will have to take care of the hosting, updates and overall maintenance of your WooCommerce store which makes the overall setup costly. 

How To Choose The Best-Fit Mobile Commerce Platform For Your Large Business 

Mobile commerce is the best way for large businesses to add a new revenue stream to the business. Along with making you popular with your clients through word of mouth it also establishes your brand as futuristic and customer-centric. You can get marketing ROI by implementing the insights from your mobile apps data to your marketing strategies. 

However, to get the best out of your initiative you would need comprehensive and easy to use mobile commerce solutions that give your business a competitive edge. In this article we have presented the top m-commerce platforms suited for large-scale businesses. However, you need to evaluate each one of them according to your specific requirements and the features they offer. 

So get ready to explore them one by one before you take the final decision. Go for the first hand experience and explore their features by listing for a free demo or trial. How about starting right from the top with StoreHippo mobile commerce platform? Ready to go, book your free demo right away!