If you have decided to start an E-commerce business and now you are confused from which platform you should start. Then, this article will help you to choose the right E-commerce platform for your business.
These days creating an E-commerce website/store is quite easy. Now, you don’t need to go through wordpress custom plugins or themes to create an E-commerce store. You can easily create and set up your online store within a day with Shopify. Even, there is something better than shopify came, claude commerce. And, more is going to come, every AI Chatbot company is getting into E-commerce.
See, creating your own E-commerce website is just 1% of an E-commerce business. Things start afterwards, like how you’re gonna sell products. To sell products online you need to do marketing through meta or Instagram. And, it takes lots of time and money. If you have a good amount of money and have a unique product to sell. Then, start with your own E-commerce store, create demand through meta ads, and sell it. But, before you start your E-commerce business, first learn to Calculate the Real Profit of an E-commerce Product.
Choose the Right E-commerce Platform for Your Business
Amazon
See, Amazon will always be my first choice. On Amazon, you get customers who are seriously interested in buying a product. And, the best part is you get immediate marketplace traffic. So, you don’t need to run meta ads and test creatives to find the right audience for your product.
On Amazon, what matters is how good your product is. And, if a few competitors are already selling that product, then your product listing and pricing plays a vital role. So, before you pick a product to sell on Amazon, do proper research around it. And, learn Amazon PPC Ads even before you pick a product.
If you are building a business on the basis of white labelling then Amazon can really help you build a brand. Once you start making money through amazon, you can invest some of it in meta ads. And slowly, you can divert traffic to your own website.
Multi-Channel Fulfilment
And, the best part is amazon does offer Multi-Channel Fulfilment. So, if your inventory is stored in Amazon Warehouse. And, if you order through another platform, you can place a Multi-Channel Fulfilment Order. Amazon will fulfil the order.
Amazon also offers multiple options to ship your products, Self-Ship, Easy-Ship and FBA. In self-ship, you ship products through a third-party courier service and you have to update tracking details for each order. In Easy Ship, Amazon Transport Service will pick orders from your warehouse. And, in FBA you send products to multiple amazon warehouses and then amazon ships faster when order comes. And, Amazon FBA is useful when you want to scale faster.
So, in short, if you have a product that is already selling on marketplaces and you can offer at better pricing. Or, you are starting a brand, where you will get products from the manufacturer by placing your brand name. Then, you can choose Amazon.
Shopify
If you want to build your own brand from scratch and you have a good amount of investment or funding, then nothing better than Shopify. Shopify even offers a 3 months trial. So, it means you get 3 months to design your store perfectly.
Creating an E-commerce website with Shopify is quite easy. Even, you have no past IT experience, you can still build your own E-commerce store. Shopify does offer an AI Chatbot. So, if you want any feature in your store, you can just tell the Chatbot and it will develop for you. Alternatively, you can try apps from Shopify App store to integrate features.
After 3 months of free trial you have to pay. Shopify offers four plans: Basic, Grow, Advanced and Plus. If you are starting just now and don’t have any sales basic plan is enough for you to build store. In the basic plan you can do everything, from creating customised stores to integrating payment gateway.
Fully customizable checkout
Yes, by default shopify checkout is quite basic and not good as per today’s standard. That’s why, for faster checkout shopify offers Fully customizable checkout in its plus plan.
However, there are some companies that offer faster checkout through their custom code. Which you can implement in your store, even when using a basic plan.
Personally, I will suggest you to use Razorpay Payment Gateway and Razorpay Magic Checkout with your shopify store. Because, they offer it for free. Yes, there are payment gateway charges that you can check but no monthly payment required.
So, if you want to quickly launch your E-commerce Store, then nothing is better than shopify. Shopify offers good integration with Meta. And, meta pixel works quite well with shopify. You get accurate data of sales. And, there are so many features of shopify, which you can find out yourself, do try their 3 months trial.
WordPress (WooCommerce)
If you are from an IT background and want full control over your E-Commerce store, then you can choose WooCommerce. See WooCommerce is basically an open-source commerce platform for wordpress. That gives you full control over checkout your data and your costs.
WordPress is a content management system. And, it uses PHP scripts and a MySQL or MariaDB database to store and serve your content. It allows you to choose custom themes and plugins. You can host wordpress on a lowest $5-7 server using Digitalocean or Vultr. And, when your traffic increases you can upgrade your server.
If you are already selling through amazon or any other E-commerce marketplaces. And, I don’t want to pay monthly to shopify. Then, you can create your WooCommerce store using hosting at a very minimum cost.
See, wordpress is highly technical. Because, sometimes websites get crashed due to internal error or some plugin updates. In that scenario, you should know how to fix things. If you have a tech team, then yes I will suggest you to go with WordPress. Or, if you want things to be easy then still nothing better than shopify. And, you have to do so many optimizations to make WordPress websites faster and mobile friendly. But, in shopify things auto happen in the background.
Etsy
Etsy is like Amazon, but it’s for independent creators, artists who want to sell their handmade unique products. So, if till now you are selling your handmade products through Instagram. Then, you can definitely try Etsy. You can sell digital products online through Etsy.
The best part about Etsy is anyone can set up their digital shop of creative goods and can manage their own inventory and reach a global audience. People do also sell Vintage goods and Craft supplies as well on Etsy.
When to choose an E-commerce platform?.
If the product you are going to sell is already available on marketplaces. Or, your product is better than existing products available in the market. Then, you don’t need to invest money in meta ads initially. You can simply start by listing your product on marketplaces like Amazon. And, then can run PPC Ads to sell it. So, to test demand cheaply you can go for marketplaces. And, if you want to have an Established business with an audience, then you should do Amazon + Shopify together.