Seven Top E-Commerce Platforms in 2020
By: Faiza Neshika Athman
Tags: Ecommerce, Online Marketing, Online Shopping, Online Store, Online Business

Seven Top E-Commerce Platforms in 2020

The pace of evolving of digital commerce for the last four years has been tremendous from using digital wallets to mobile and social integration.

Its important to understand how digital commerce has changed in the last four years especially if your planning to start a new ecommerce business in 2020.This article will focus on major highlights that will shape and influence ecommerce now and in the future.

The world of ecommerce has utilized a large amount of data like artificial intelligence in their program in order to be the best in the ecommerce business. Players like Amazon has incorporated artificial intelligence in their daily operations leading them to be the best in the ecommerce business. These has force other ecommerce business wanting to compete to follow suit. The level of customization has evolved a great deal especially in the usage of two features; reorder and subscription services. This customization is using data of customers based on their shopping history and preferences.

They have gone a notch higher by improving the user experience such as AI, AR VR in the past years. The task can be; integrating a chat system or call to action buttons. This are all designed to improve the use experience to be the best. According to Toshi Mogi, Frog’s Assistant Vice president of Strategy and Innovation, “The customization trend will only increase in 2018”.

Customers are attracted to usage of digital wallet because of ease of usage this has led to an increase of ecommerce store adding to their payment option to their websites.

This is a positive sign for ecommerce and it show the market is viable for upcoming start up to invest in payment features that indicate customers really want to use for their daily transaction.

Is the mobile user’s conversion rates still low or has it increased? According to Smart insights, “…although mobile accounted for 59% of all sessions by device on e-commerce sites, these mobile browsers made up just 38% of revenue.’’ And then later concluded that, “Mobile users are on the site to consider purchasing and make up their minds as to what products they want. As a result, they are extremely important and should never be ignored. The fact they go to desktop to make the purchase does not mean you can neglect the mobile experience.” (See related article, Here’s Why Mobile Payments Are the Future of Commerce).

When it comes to conversion rate the analytics play a significant role. Every ecommerce has a built-in analytic system in their website. Remember, it’s imperative to collect relevant data unorder to learn the customer behavior which is the central role in all the conversions. Simply put, usage of analytics helps a great deal in the success of running an ecommerce business.

Its important to have the right combination of business model and ecommerce platform that will spur the success of your business in this cutthroat competition. Because the kind of traction in the ecommerce world depend solely on the technology you are equipped with. It’s advisable to use a platform that meet your distinct features requirements to your individual business model.

Whether you want to launch a multi-vendor marketplace or a conventional ecommerce store. I have assembled a list of seven ecommerce platforms that will help to get started in 2020.The last decision is yours depending on the type of platform is best to use for your ecommerce business.

1. Shopify

This is an online ecommerce business based in Canada and founded in 20014.It is helping online business across the globe. It mainly concentrates on the trending social commerce and mobile shopping. Shopify has always invested heavily on technology and manage to be in the midst of the evolving ecommerce trends. It added new features in her business such as customers can continue shopping without leaving their social media platforms.

The Good:

They have round the clock technical support via live chat, shopify community forum, phone as well as tutorials. You are able to abandoned cart recovery. They also have plethora of themes, plugins and extensions. In addition, for $9 you can integrate Shopify link directly with your account and to make it an ecommerce.

The Bad:

You are charge a fee if you do not use Shopify payment system. In addition, as an online business owner you will require to invest heavily in order to acquire useful and practical features example use of “liquid”, coding language use by Shopify. It requires the shopify store owners to pay extra to get customization according to their specifications.

The Verdict:

Ecommerce entrepreneurs who are starting out for the first time can benefit from using conventional ecommerce solution being offed by Shopify. In addition, it is easy to use and very fast to launch your ecommerce business. They offer arrange of packages and you can choose depending on your requirements and size of your budget. The range is between $29 to 299$ per month.

2. Magento

It was launched in 2008 and is an ecommerce website for businesses. It’s great because is very reliable and has greatly grow tremendously to be one of the most popular ecommerce platforms in the current market. It has very well-known customers known around the world who are operating under Magento Website such as Burger King, Huawei, Liverpool F.C.

The Good:

The offer the following; usability and manageability, more than 9000 plugins and extensions to make room for scalability, open source and unlimited customization options, free social media extension and extensive resource library for demos.

The Bad:

It’s not everyone who can afford to use Magento because its packages price range are on the high end. The basic version is free but getting an enterprise version you will need to pay at least $20,000 per year. In addition, if the business owner is not a programmer or have a team of programmers working for the company, then be prepared to invest in third party programming costs as well.

The Verdict:

Magento is best to serve enterprises operating online stores and have huge volume of products. It’s not suitable for SMEs due to high costs charges, complex store set up and the technical management requirements.

3. YoKart

This is a turnkey and features rich ecommerce marketplace offering solutions to build multi-vendor stores such as Amazon, eBay and Etsy. Its true, there are various ecommerce platforms offering multi-vendor version, however, YoKart specializes in this particular field. It has recently upgraded (YoKart V80) offering a wide range of features. In addition, it allows store owners to expand and reach global level as a result of offering multilingual and multi-currency features. Moreover, there is in build analytical tools, plethora of payment gateway, rewards and discount coupon management features.

The Good:

They offer a readymade multi-vendor market place. How does it work? The marketplace owner gets the source code of the website and not the framework. Plus, with a lifetime license.

In addition, it is mobile friendly platform and dedicated apps using Android and Apple devices can plug into the system. All price packages offer same features apart from the Start Up. They also have video tutorials, detailed manuals and FAQs for the store owners and merchants. They give 12-month free technical support, inbuilt product catalog system and multi lingual and multi-currency.

The Bad:

In order to customize your store, will require a developer with extensive knowledge of PHP. They mainly specialized for SMEs. However, if you’re a large-scale enterprise you will need to have expert to help in customize your store. They are not an open system like Magento. Her packages known as Startup and GoQuick Packages offer default themes

The Verdict:

When your start up you can utilize YoKart to its full potential because of her cheap package costing $250.It offers hosted solution for one-year license. This is a good method to test the viability of your business model. Once your business is successful, you can easily upgrade to higher versions like GoQuick, GoCustom Lite and GoCustom.

4. BigCommerce

It has more than 55,000 online stores since inception.it is lauded as one of the best ecommerce software providers. They have well known globally brands stores such as Martha Stewart, Toyota and so forth. It has helped many businesses from SMEs to Big enterprises launch their online store platforms. It especially come in handy for store owners who lack basic coding skills because BigCommerce has a large variety of built in features.

The Good:

The offer a huge built in feature such as newsletters, coupons, shipping, tax and analytics. There is no transaction fee. They have a responsive theme both paid as well as free. You can access BigCommerce consistently have a good user experience both on desktop and mobile. In addition, have easy store integration with other social media sites like Facebook, eBay and so forth. Moreover, they offer easy setup wizard, tutorials, demos, videos with detailed guides and visuals illustrations.

The Bad:

It offers very few free themes (only 7 free themes) as compare to other ecommerce platforms that offer over 20 free themes. The other themes are charged to the store owner. In addition, it’s not offering multi-vendor system in her platform which means is not suitable for store owners who have multi vendors sites.

The Verdict:

BigCommerce is suitable for entrepreneurs who want an online store but have no knowledge of programming or team of programmers as staff. If you don’t mind using the 7 free themes or are ready to budget to buy more premium themes, then BigCommerce is an ideal solution platform for your online business store.

5. VTEX

VTEX is located in Brazil and is a cloud-based ecommerce platform. It is estimated has a gross merchandize value $1.8 billion in 2016.It has a variety of customers some known globally such as Staples, Wal-Mart, Coca-Cola, Whirlpool, Disney, Sony, Lego, L’Oréal etc.

The Good:

If offers Password Free Checkout which is so different from the rest of the ecommerce platforms. This particular feature is believed to have significantly boost organic traffic by 30% and increase in revenues by 30% and a rise in conversion rates by 54%.

The Bad:

The technology being used by VTEX is based on SaaS model and therefore a store owner cannot have complete ownership of his or her ecommerce store or its source code. However, the company claims that cloud-based ecommerce technology operates faster than conventional setups.

The Verdict:

Big businesses with huge annual turnover of over million dollars and have a number of monthly transactions can greatly benefit from using VTEX because of the significant conversion rates. VTEX charge very high fees so is not suitable for small, medium enterprises (SMEs) to operate online stores using their platform.

6. WooCommerce

It is an ecommerce platform that uses a free WordPress plugin and therefore easy to use. The platform offers a shopping cart and a secure payment gateway. The platform needs to add additional plugins to serve the store owners who have multiple stores on different platforms.

The Good:

The platform is easy to use and manage admin. They offer unlimited products categories, secure gateway payments, extensive range of plugins and extensions of different types. Most importantly, they have a good shopping cart that work tremendously.

The Bad:

As much as installing WooCommerce is free, remember there are additional costs required to be paid especially when you want to integrate the shopping cart with the system. In addition, if you don’t know how to use WordPress then you will not be able to use WooCommerce. The biggest letdown when using WooCommerce is it cannot scale up. When your business grows, your turnover increase, products, as well as your customers on your database, the platform starts to slow down because cannot handle the huge traffic on your online store.

The Verdict:

It is a good option especially when you are small, medium enterprises (SMEs) and want to use WordPress websites because it does not require of a lot of technology investments. In addition, when you’re a online store owner and don’t anticipate having large high-volume turnover then is suitable to use WooCommerce platform.

7. Tictail

This is an online marketplace that mainly focus on customer designs, community integration, user friendly and overall ecommerce attractiveness. The platform is easy to use and can easily set up a virtual store within a short period of a few minutes.

The Good:

It doesn’t require technical knowledge for setting up your virtual store online. When you upgrade to Tictail Plus allows you to customize website according to your preferences. This platform enables you to have your own domain name and therefore will benefit a lot through SEO.

The Bad:

The platform does not offer payment options which is a huge inconvenience especially when other ecommerce platforms offer a variety and your spoilt for choice. The platform takes a commission from every sale you make on the platform. However, the custom shop (pay reasonable fee every year) frees the store owner from paying anything additional to Tictail from each sale happening on the platform.

The Verdict:

Tictail is a great platform to start your online store especially when you’re a small medium enterprises (SMEs) to test the water and see whether your business can scale up to be a million dollars turnover. However, the platform is not designed to serve large enterprise businesses such as Marth Stewart, Burger King, MacDonald and so forth.

Final Thoughts:

The curated lists is designed to help a potential online store owner to make a wise decision and to choose a platform that is suitable and meet their requirements .Remember, all these eCommerce platforms discuss on this article serve different kind of businesses .The pros and cons outlined on this article does not mean there is a problem on this platform. When choosing a platform to launch your online store, it’s important to always bear in mind that ecommerce platforms are not a one size fit all solutions that will work for everyone in the market. Choose wisely before launching your virtual store because different business models and the size of the operations call for different ecommerce platforms to use. Good luck in your business endeavors.