The Covid-19 pandemic that was unleashed in the early 2020s has resulted in an acceleration of the digitisation of services, process that had already been in place for several years, but whose timeframe was abruptly shortened by the need to continue business despite the various restrictions imposed by the health emergency. For this reason, many shops opted to use the’e-commerce, which allowed them to continue their online activity using the parcel shipments, and take advantage of the numerous platforms that allow such a site to be developed even by those who do not have much experience in this area or do not have a large budget to devote to the realisation of the portal.
In this article, we will look at the main features of e-commerce platforms and list the best options for opening your own online sales channel.
What are e-commerce platforms and how they work
Before listing the best e-commerce platforms to set up your own online sales portal, let us look at the main features of these tools, which allow you to manage all aspects of your online business, from graphics to marketing strategies.
Specifically, an e-commerce platform allows a seller to placing their products in a virtual shop and to make them visible to customers, and thus to manage orders, payments, logistics and warehousing, as in a physical shop. In addition to these more administrative processes, other processes related to the promotion of activity and products, which can be managed using a good e-commerce platform.
Many of these platforms are available on the market, thus enabling traders to choose the solution best suited to your type of business, target customers and all other needs that influence the success of an e-commerce site. When choosing the e-commerce platform to be used, therefore, several factors must be considered, among which one must not overlook one's own technical skills, as, according to them, one can orient oneself towards a more or less user-friendly platform.
Furthermore, there are platforms that also differ according to the type of product you want to sell, allowing you to customise the sales methods, for example by including the possibility for customers to subscribe to a product sold periodically. Another factor to bear in mind is the size of its business, and thus the number of products you intend to offer for sale on the e-commerce portal, and, last but not least, your budget, which will ensure that one will move towards more or less expensive solutions, depending on one's financial means.
Once you have made the appropriate considerations on these elements, you should also know that the various platforms with which to develop your e-commerce site fall into two macro-categories in particular, namely open source and SaaS-based platforms.
Platforms open source are software in which most of the functions have already been developed by others, and these are freely available to all and can be modified by those with the technical skills to do so. Platforms SaaS, Instead, they are cloud-based software, and the technical and updating part is carried out by the platform provider, who is paid a monthly subscription and sometimes a percentage of e-commerce sales. In these cases, no special technical skills are required to set up your own site, but it should be borne in mind that the customisation options are rather limited for your international parcel shipment.
Some of the best e-commerce platforms
Now that we have seen what factors to consider when choosing the platform on which to develop your e-commerce, let us look at some of the best of these platforms, listing their features, advantages and disadvantages.
For example, one of the most used platforms in Italy is Prestashop, It is a free open source software that is very easy to use and therefore also chosen by those who do not have much technical programming knowledge. It also offers an e-commerce statistics section and multi-language and multi-currency support, ideal for those who want to reach customers abroad.
Another widely used open source platform is Magento, made available by Adobe in several versions, including a free version and a paid version for larger companies with more advanced tools. Magento offers numerous possibilities for customising one's portal and implementing marketing strategies, but the overall management of e-commerce is rather complex, often requiring the help of experienced developers.
Another of the most popular platforms is Woocommerce, created in 2011 as a WordPress plugin, to which it adds all the functions necessary to manage an online shop, both as a free open source version and as a hosting service, which includes installation on Aruba hosting, daily updates, unlimited backups, and a support service. This platform allows one to customise one's e-commerce in many different ways, and is chosen by most online sellers precisely because of its ease of use, which is combined with the great potential offered by WordPress.
We conclude this list by talking about Shopify, a very popular platform that falls into the category of SaaS platforms, i.e. those that charge a monthly fee, on the basis that charges are higher for those who charge more. Its popularity is due to the fact that it is extremely easy to use even by those without technical skills, so that in just a few hours the site can be up and running. Thanks to its many functionalities, therefore, the seller can take care of the development of their e-commerce portal completely independently, without having to worry about the technical aspects, which are handled directly by Shopify.
In addition to these, there are numerous other platforms for creating one's own e-commerce, all with different functionalities and features that set them apart from the others in order to be able to deliver one's products worldwide through a express courier. The key thing, if you intend to open an online sales channel, is to carefully analyse and compare all the different options in order to choose the most suitable platform for your online shop.
