To grab the right share of $1.25 million online sales, any business should have an ecommerce site. As more people are moving towards online shopping, it has become immense important to have online presence and experience more sales. To run an ecommerce store, you need to select the best suitable platform. There are three choices to pick from: hosted e commerce platform, open source ecommerce platform, and hosted shopping carts. In this piece of writing, you will come to know about the popular platforms coming under all three categories. Read to know and pick one for your online presence.

Open Source Ecommerce Platform

Open source platform is becoming popular to develop ecommerce websites. The reasons behind are easy to download, ease in hosting, and flexible installation process. Best options in open source platform are following:

1-      PrestaShop

Free PrestaShop ecommerce solution helps launching and running an online store successfully. Free download, quick installation, ease of use, being impressive, all make this platform the preferred choice of ecommerce business owners. It offers many payment modules to sell products while facilitating the customers. PrestaShop themes are also available in a large variety that could be modified as per specific requirements. Due to lacking multiple user interfaces, the platform is suitable only for small to medium-scaled ecommerce businesses. To enhance the functionalities, addons for PrestaShop ecommerce could be installed.

Advantages of PrestaShop platform

• Platform management is dynamic in nature.
• It has eBay integration.
• It carries stock management.
• It offers cross selling feature.

2-      Magento

 If you want to see your business growing while engaging the customers at the same time, go for Magento to develop your ecommerce website. In Alexa top one million sites, this is the #1 platform with both paid and free versions. With flexible and scalable solutions, Magento helps a business grow at fast pace. It’s a cost effective approach to keep the functionality, as well as look and feel of your e store. To enhance the functionalities and features of a Magento store, there are available thousands of extensions and apps. Magento developers are certified and the platform has global partners’ network.

Benefits Of Magento Platform

Main advantages of using Magento as your best ecommerce partner are following:

• It has free CMS and it’s cost effective for any scale of online business.
• Stunning design templates are available for free.
• Hundreds and thousands of Magento extensions
• The store based on Magento platform is easy to manage.
• It’s cross browser and cross mobile devices compatible.

Hosted Shopping Carts

By using this ecommerce platform, you can pick the CMS of your choice. Proper checkout mechanism and in itself shopping cart make these the preferred choice of e business owners. Main options coming under this head are following:

3-      Foxy Cart

It helps developers in creating powerful ecommerce solutions without wasting time. Foxy Cart makes high conversions possible for the merchants while making checkout faster. The look and feel of the platform could be customized and changed.

Advantages Of Using Foxy Cart

• It’s compatible with diverse business demands.
• It can be coupled with coupon codes.
• It offers one page checkout.
• It helps controlling tax.
• It helps selling digital products.

4-      Digital Product Delivery

Commonly called as DPD, this platform helps selling digital products or the downloadable content. It takes little time to upload digital products on DPD and start earning. No deductions in sales are made in this platform like per sale fees, commissions, and charges.

Advantages Of Using DPD

• It’s convenient to use.
• It hosts digital products.
• It’s linked with affiliate marketing.
• It’s a mobile friendly platform.

Hosted Ecommerce Platform

These ecommerce platforms charge the business owners against hosting the site. Being the site owner, you can access the infrastructure while the technical back up being provided by them. There will be no personal choice of hosting service, and you will have to rely on the available option only. What’s good about these platforms is the safety and security that ecommerce business owners demand. Main options included in hosted ecommerce platforms are following:

5-      Shopify

Using this ecommerce platform, you can impress your clients while providing them secure shopping cart. Shopify provides full control of your store’s appearance like layout, content, colors, and even domain name. There are above 100 templates available to choose from. Or, you can design your store using CSS and HTML.

Advantages Of Using Shopify

• It’s convenient to use.
• It has attractive interface.
• It has unlimited bandwidth.
• It has powerful features.
• It has effective marketing tools.
• It has multiple design options.
• It has above 70 payment options.
• It’s user friendly.

6-      HighWire

With this ecommerce platform, you can build your e store and start selling immediately. HighWire facilitates multi channel selling like on your e store and on Facebook, Google, eBay, and even on mobile devices.

Advantages Of Using Highwire

• It’s the best choice of e business owners.
• It’s easy to use.
• With beautiful design, it carries creativity.
• The interface is attractive.
• It offers cross selling with channels like Facebook, Ebay, and Bonanza.

These are the most commonly used platforms by merchants and developers. While picking anyone, do consider your business needs. Every platform could be customized by adding features and extensions.

What do you think about these ecommerce platforms? Share your experience!