Fortunately, a new breed of business software integrates all the needed commerce and business functionality into a single ecommerce platform via a software-as-a-service (SaaS) model. With an infrastructure that unifies business applications and the data that feeds them, it is possible to create relevant, engaging and personalized online experiences.
Last but not least, there are the transaction fees. In essence, whenever you sell something with either of the platforms, they will charge you a small fee (for processing the payment, delivering the money to your account, etc.). Those fees change quite often, so I won't get into that here, but just be aware that they exist. Usually, they sit around 2%-3% per transaction but make sure to check the exact numbers before signing up with either of the platforms.
BigCommerce is the world’s fastest-growing e-commerce platform, powering more than 90,000 stores. You’ll get everything you need to create a successful online store, including a securely hosted site, shopping cart, product catalog and more. Themes and point-and-click design features make it easy to build a gorgeous site without any design or technical skills, while powerful built-in marketing and conversion optimization tools help you promote your business and sell more.
LemonStand is a refreshingly customizable cloud based eCommerce platform that helps fast growing retail brands and subscription eCommerce companies create beautiful online stores that stand out from the crowd and sell more. Features an infinitely flexible storefront design engine, including the ability to check out on your own domain, customize the entire checkout process and even A/B test different designs. Comes with built-in features to sell standard one-time products, or recurring subscriptions without requiring an extra app. You can even sell both seamlessly together to maximize revenue and growth. A full featured content management system (CMS) and blog is built-in to enable advanced and integrated content marketing from a single platform And there are no transaction fees or penalties for using your payment processor of choice.
eComchain is Cloud-based eCommerce platform hosted on AWS. Its unique offering is its B2B2C model, first of its kind for Manufacturers, Distributors / Dealers and end Consumers for various verticals of the business. With eComchain, a manufacturer can reach out to a network of dealers and distributors on the eComchain's B2B eCommece platform. These network of dealers and distributors can in turn reach out to their end consumers through their branded specialized sites on the same eComchain platform hosted by the manufacturer.
The WooCommerce module is used to create the perfect shopping page for your site. This module uses the WooCommerce plugin to display and customize your shop pages. It comes with various layouts that allows you to show your products either as a slider or list view, and gives you the ability to choose the category you want to highlight. It also comes with a Product Category module that allows you to create various layouts that's sorted based on the products categories.
Birchbox has a two-pronged business: it offers a subscription in which the company charges members $10 a month to receive “personalized mix of 5 hair, makeup, skincare, and fragrance samples.” Birchbox also has an online shop that allows customers to purchase full-sized products. As of 2015, Birchbox had more than 800 brand partners and more than a million subscribers.
At its core, e-commerce refers to the purchase and sale of goods and/or services via electronic channels such as the internet. E-commerce was first introduced in the 1960s via an electronic data interchange (EDI) on value-added networks (VANs). The medium grew with the increased availability of internet access and the advent of popular online sellers in the 1990s and early 2000s. Amazon began operating as a book-shipping business in Jeff Bezos' garage in 1995. EBay, which enables consumers to sell to each other online, introduced online auctions in 1995 and exploded with the 1997 Beanie Babies frenzy.
I wonder how the tests were done, especially that I work on Magento and have own thoughts comparing Shopify and other platforms. Magento is a big thing, packed into community version, Yes, its slow, but it can be tweaked. Btw its no.1 platform in usage currently wordlwide. So your guides is a bit skewed I think……. Magento is not absolutly pricey, I can set it for free on $5 VPS on Digital Ocean
To take advantage of all the new features, such as full-with content blocks, we’ve redesigned the regular posts layout in Storefront. Ever since Storefront was first released the layout for posts was made of 2 columns, one being the post meta, and the other the content itself. In this new version, the content now spans the entire width of the container. Here’s a before/after comparison:
Another challenge is the ability to transfer product information from e-commerce to platforms like Amazon and eBay. Companies using these platforms also need to export sales data and analyze it in accounting or ERP solutions. While there are hundreds of tools to export and import data to and from Amazon, not all e-commerce platforms offer robust features for this purpose.
CUSTOMER SERVICE – Additionally, with a commercial solution you benefit from the support structure. Open source solutions such as WordPress are often community driven and you are therefore dependent on that community to provide support. While that can also work very well – if you are in desperate need of help at 3 am on a Sunday, it’s nice to have a guarantee it will be there.
One important thing to point out is to not get overly excited with WooCommerce’s seemingly attractive pricing too much. While, yes, the platform itself is free, and all the components needed to make it operational (including PayPal payments, etc.) are free, you might need a number of paid extensions to get some helpful additional features. This will grow your bill.
