One of the most important decisions you’ll make for your ecommerce business is the platform you choose to build it on.
A great ecommerce platform can provide many benefits, including:
- Increased revenue
- Improved customer satisfaction and retention
- Reduced costs
- Increased efficiency
- Better search engine ranking
- Great customer support
- Integration with apps and plugins
- Greater scalability
- Enhanced security
So, it’s crucial to take your time and do your research to find the best platform for your store.
In this article, we’ll discuss all nine benefits of picking a great ecommerce platform. Let's check them out!
The 9 benefits of using a good ecommerce platform
Picking a good ecommerce platform for your store can save you a lot of hassle in the long term.
Here are nine benefits of using a good ecommerce platform:
1. Increased revenue
The first and most obvious benefit of a great ecommerce platform is increased sales.
But why is that?
Aren't your sales based on things like your product and marketing?
Well, for a large part, yes. But what do you need to create things like your product page, checkout page, and abandoned cart reminders?
That's right, a great ecommerce platform!
A well-designed platform with a user-friendly interface will make it easy for customers to find the products they want and make a purchase.
Additionally, a platform with features such as abandoned cart reminders and customer reviews can help to increase conversion rates.
2. Improved customer satisfaction and retention
This next section covers two benefits at once, which are almost directly related to each other.
First, a great ecommerce platform can lead to improved customer satisfaction. A platform that is easy to use will make for an enjoyable shopping experience for your visitors.
That's especially true if your platform allows you to incorporate things like a live chat for your customer service!
A direct benefit of improved customer satisfaction is that it leads to greater customer retention. In other words, customers are more likely to purchase from your store again in the future!
Features such as loyalty programs and customer profiles can also help to create a more personalized experience that will keep customers coming back.
3. Reduced costs
Another benefit of a great ecommerce platform is reduced costs.
This can be achieved in two ways:
- You pick a platform that enjoys economies of scale and therefore has relatively low monthly fees.
- You pick a platform that offers features that save you time (and, therefore, money!).
- Or a combination of both!
An example of a platform with relatively low monthly fees is ShopBase. Their Basic plan of $19 per month already gets you loads of crucial features:
But what features allow you to save a lot of time?
Well, some examples include automated order fulfillment and order tracking, which can help reduce your order fulfillment costs.
4. Increased efficiency
Next up is a benefit that's great in pretty much all aspects of life, increased efficiency!
As we mentioned before, a platform that automates certain tasks like order fulfillment or inventory management will free up your time so that you can focus on other important things.
But have you also thought about features such as real-time reporting and analytics? These can definitely help you to make better and more efficient decisions for your business!
Here's an example of Shopify's conversion funnel analytics:
These are some great things to know if you want to optimize your ecommerce purchase funnel!
5. Better search engine ranking
One of the benefits of an SEO-friendly ecommerce platform is that it can help you to rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs).
This is because such a platform is designed to meet the needs of search engines, making it easier for them to index and understand your site.
As a result, your site is more likely to appear in SERPs when people search for terms related to your business.
And, when your store appears more often on search engines like Google, it will increase traffic and sales!
If you are seeking strong SEO performance, then WooCommerce is an ecommerce platform you should check out.
The reason for this has to do with the way WooCommerce works.
WooCommerce is open-source software and a plug-in for WordPress. To open a store using WooCommerce, you must take care of the hosting part yourself.
The result is that you have complete ownership of your store, unlike on other ecommerce platforms. Therefore, you can change any SEO-related specifics for your store and optimize it to rank in the best way possible.
To conclude, not only is WooCommerce very SEO-friendly right out of the box, but it also works on top of WordPress, which is already recognized as an excellent platform for SEO. (For example, you could start a blog next to your ecommerce store!)
6. Great customer support
When running an ecommerce store, you not only want your visitors to have access to good customer support, but you sometimes need customer support yourself as well!
And guess what? An excellent ecommerce platform will offer great customer support.
For example, Shopify has an excellent support team that offers 24/7 support:
They offer award-winning support via phone, chat, email, or Twitter. But they also have a large Shopify community forum where you can connect with other merchants to learn and get support.
You can also find answers to your questions through the Shopify Blog, tutorials, webinars, and the Shopify Youtube channel.
It's perhaps the best support offered among top ecommerce platforms, and we think it has something to do with the man leading Shopify:
… We love real teams with real friendship forming. None of that is even about product, or market fit, or timing. It’s all about people. Treating everyone with dignity.”
Tobias Lutke, CEO, Shopify (source)
7. Integration with apps and plugins
It doesn't matter which ecommerce platform you pick; there is a high likelihood you will have to install additional apps or plugins to get the exact functionalities you need.
And if you want your store to run smoothly with those apps, your ecommerce platform must integrate with them.
In short, a great ecommerce platform will offer a wide range of integrations so that you can choose the most relevant ones for your business.
Many good ecommerce platforms will offer some kind of app store where you can find apps and plugins designed to connect to your store seamlessly.
For example, here is an image of the app store on BigCommerce:
8. Greater scalability
Another benefit of a great ecommerce platform is that it can improve scalability by allowing you to easily add new products, categories, and features as your store grows.
Not to mention, you'll need a platform that can handle the increased traffic and sales volume!
This benefit is especially huge if you're running a high-volume ecommerce store.
In 2015, Gymshark's website (then built on Magento) went down for eight hours straight during Black Friday.
The crash cost Gymshark an estimated $143k in sales and a loss of customer trust!
Since then, Gymshark migrated to Shopify Plus and never had any more problems related to scalability. What's more, they grew to a $1.2+ billion company with a 900-strong workforce.
9. Enhanced security
In today's digital world, security is more important than ever.
With all the data passing through your store, it's important to have a secure and reliable platform.
Good security not only protects your customers' information but also helps you avoid costly data breaches and the negative publicity that comes with them.
A great ecommerce platform will provide various security features, such as SSL encryption and fraud detection. Moreover, it will be hosted on a secure server that can protect your customers’ data from being compromised.
As an example, all stores powered by Shopify are PCI compliant, which means that you can keep all payment info and business data safe:
5 Great ecommerce platforms to use in 2024
Are you excited now to pick a great ecommerce platform for your store?
That's great!
But where do you find some of the top ecommerce platforms?
If you're unsure of which ecommerce platform to pick, take our quiz here to get a personalized recommendation based on your needs:
And don't worry; here is our top-five list! Plus, if you want to read about the platforms in more detail, we highly recommend checking out this article here.
1. Shopify
Shopify is arguably one of the best - if not the best - ecommerce platforms out there.
Its goal is to make it easy and affordable for beginner entrepreneurs to enter the booming ecommerce megatrend, so you will want to consider this one seriously.
Shopify is one of the best ecommerce platforms for the following seven reasons:
- It is easy to start a Shopify store as a beginner
- It is affordable and provides value and scalability
- It offers world-class customer support
- It has the speed and security you need
- It provides marketing tools and SEO
- It is mobile friendly
- And lastly, it provides resources and apps specifically for dropshipping stores!
Among others, Shopify offers 70+ professional themes, 100+ payment gateways, an excellent support team, mobile device support, and much more!
Pricing
Shopify's pricing plans range from $39 to $399 per month:
Luckily, the cheapest plan, 'Basic Shopify,' is sufficient for most ecommerce store owners.
For some, $39 per month may sound expensive, but there's a lot of hidden value in that number. For example, you won't need to pay for hosting!
For more information about Shopify's pricing plans, check out our in-depth article here!
Tip: Have you already created your Shopify account? If not, sign up by clicking this link here to get a free 3-day trial + pay $1/month for the first 3 months!
2. WooCommerce
WooCommerce evolved from a commercial theme creation business called WooThemes in 2008 to a full-out ecommerce solution in 2015.
Since then, it has become one of the fastest-growing ecommerce platforms, with over five million websites using it, which is about 30% of the ecommerce market.
The main difference between Shopify and WooCommcerce is that Shopify is more suitable for beginners and includes hosting, while WooCommerce requires you to take care of your own website hosting.
Pricing
WooCommerce is completely free to use!
That's because WooCommerce is open-source software and a plug-in for WordPress.
However, as mentioned before, WooCommerce takes care of the ecommerce part of your site only, and since it's a plug-in, web hosting will be left up to you.
So while the platform is 'free,' you should not forget to factor in the budget to pay for the cost of hosting, which is anywhere from $20 to $30 for a VPS (Virtual Private Server) or cheaper for a Shared Host.
If you are interested in WooCommerce, simply click here to sign up!
3. BigCommerce
BigCommerce is another ecommerce giant like Shopify. It was founded in 2009, has 60,000+ merchants, and is active in over 150 countries.
It's a fully hosted and established platform that is great for both beginners wanting to start small and for those more tech-savvy folks who like to tweak the HTML and CSS of their stores.
When comparing BigCommerce to Shopify, BigCommerce offers better SEO performance, more built-in features, more support for product options and variants, and has just a single core product; its ecommerce platform.
Meanwhile, Shopify offers many third-party plugins (although sometimes at a cost), is easier to use, and has world-class support.
Pricing
BigCommerce offers three main pricing plans (which are almost equal to Shopify), ranging from $29.95 to $299.95 per month:
Considering the long list of features included with the Standard plan of $29.95 per month, it will probably be enough for most ecommerce stores.
With many sales channels, including point of sale, single-page checkout, real-time shipping quotes, and professional reporting tools, you will have a lot of power for a reasonable price.
So, if you want to try out BigCommerce, click here to get your free 15-day trial!
4. ShopBase
ShopBase might not be the first name that comes to mind when starting an ecommerce store, but the great thing about it is that it provides a very affordable and effective entry into dropshipping.
It's an ecommerce platform designed with dropshippers as its main clients.
So, each of the pricing plans comes with the following:
- An automated online store builder (get a fully functional store in a single click).
- A native AliExpress connection.
- Free upselling and cross-selling tools to maximize profits.
- A monthly list of winning dropshipping products to sell.
Pricing
The pricing makes ShopBase an excellent choice for a beginner on a tight budget.
With a 14-day free trial and a starter package at $19 per month, what's not to like? All of ShopBase's plans are about 30% lower than Shopify's, which will be the deciding factor for some.
So, curious to try out ShopBase's free 14-day trial? If so, click here!
5. Shift4Shop
Let's end the list with Shift4Shop, an ecommerce platform that currently has over 200k customers and processes approximately $200 billion per year.
You can check out all of Shift4Shop's features here!
Pricing
The pricing is the part where Shift4Shop steals the show.
The platform has an ecommerce plan that is entirely free!
The downside?
Well, if you have a sharp eye, you have already seen it in the small letters at the bottom of the pricing page.
The free plan is only available for US customers!
So, if you don't qualify for the free plan, you may end up paying a monthly fee similar to Shopify:
Again, if you're new to dropshipping, the Basic Store plan is a good place to start at $29/month. It offers everything you need to get started.
So, looking to try out Shift4Shop? Get your ecommerce store started for free here!
Note: Want to sell vaping, CBD, wine, or other restricted products? Shift4Shop has several high-risk payment providers, making it possible to sell these products (that other platforms may prohibit).
FAQs about ecommerce platforms
Still not sure what to do regarding your ecommerce platform? We hope that one of these FAQs may help you!
What is an ecommerce platform?
An ecommerce platform is a software solution that enables businesses to manage their online sales from start to finish. This includes everything from setting up a website to processing payments and managing customer orders. (More info here)
What is the best ecommerce platform?
Shopify is the best ecommerce platform overall. It is the third-largest retailer behind Amazon and eBay. Shopify Plus is also used by well-known corporations like Pepsi, Heinz, and Tesla.
Is Amazon an ecommerce platform?
Amazon is not an ecommerce platform. Instead, it is an online marketplace because it's an existing website where you sell products amongst other retailers.
Which ecommerce platform is best for dropshipping?
Shopify and BigCommerce are the best ecommerce platforms for dropshipping. They offer all features you need to start a successful dropshipping store.
Summary
Before we go to the conclusion, we've created a quick summary of this article for you, so you can easily remember it:
- Picking a great ecommerce platform has many benefits for your business, including increased revenue, better search engine ranking, great customer support, greater scalability, enhanced security, and improved efficiency.
- Some of the best ecommerce platforms to use in 2024 are Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, ShopBase, and Shift4Shop.
- For more information about the best ecommerce platforms, check out this article!
Conclusion
As an ecommerce business owner, it's essential to choose a platform that can provide you with the tools and features you need to succeed.
A great ecommerce platform should offer a robust set of features, an intuitive interface, and reliable customer support. It should also be scalable so you can easily add new products and grow your business as your needs change.
And don't forget about the ability to track your sales, customers, and inventory levels.
By choosing a platform that offers all of these features, you can be sure that you're giving your business the best chance for success!
Want to learn more about ecommerce?
Ready to move your online store to the next level? Check out the articles below:
