It is widely known that eCommerce sales are experiencing rapid growth, with Statista projecting global retail eCommerce sales to reach $8.1 trillion by 2026. For individuals interested in establishing an eCommerce store, selecting the appropriate shopping cart software is an essential decision.
Not only must the chosen software meet the specific needs of the business, but it must also be user-friendly, well-supported, secure, and deliver high quality and performance. This article presents the key factors to consider when selecting eCommerce marketplace software. However, before delving into these factors, let’s examine the significance of choosing the appropriate software.
Importance of Choosing the Right eCommerce Software
Selecting the appropriate eCommerce software for your business is similar to laying the correct foundation for a house. Each software offers distinct features, advantages, and expenses, but making an incompatible choice can result in squandered resources, additional expenses, and missed opportunities for expansion. Let us examine how selecting the right software impacts your eCommerce enterprise.
- Growth: How fast can your business expand?
- Operating expenses: This encompasses the expenses associated with building your eCommerce platform and ongoing development and maintenance costs.
- Customer engagement: You can regulate how your customers interact with your business.
- Objectives: The correct eCommerce software will enable you to achieve the service you intended to provide.
It is critical to observe that numerous eCommerce vendors concentrate on design, user experience, branding, and content. However, actual eCommerce challenges are encountered in the business process, customer engagement, and lead generation. These processes can assist you in determining whether your eCommerce platform is generating a healthy ROI.
Important Factors to Consider While Picking an eCommerce Software
In order to help aspiring business owners make the right decision for their businesses, we have curated this list of the most important considerations while choosing eCommerce software.
Customization/Integration
When evaluating potential eCommerce solutions, it is crucial to consider the customization and integration options available. Customization and integration can help tailor the product to meet your current and future needs more effectively. Ideally, the eCommerce software should offer custom branding capabilities, enabling you to add logos and color schemes to your storefront and landing pages.
Additionally, many eCommerce solutions support third-party integrations, which can provide you with more data, streamline processes, and add features that are not included in the original system. For example, integrating your eCommerce platform with analytics solutions can give you new insights into customer buying patterns and other valuable information.
Similarly, integrating your system with online marketing and social tools can help you expand your customer base through targeted social media marketing campaigns.
Customer Experience
In eCommerce, customer experience plays a pivotal role in determining success or failure. A poorly designed website can cause potential customers to abandon their shopping carts and look for alternatives. Nowadays, a positive customer experience, rather than the cheapest price, often leads to successful sales.
Therefore, it is crucial to consider customer experience as important as back-end functions when designing eCommerce software. The software should be optimized to enhance customer experience at every stage of the customer lifecycle, starting from when prospects land on the website to the final checkout and shipping stages.
SEO-Friendly
For the success of your online business, it is crucial to have an eCommerce platform that is optimized for search engine optimization. By making your website SEO-friendly, you can improve its visibility to consumers searching for products or services online.
Therefore, it is essential to choose an eCommerce software that has strong SEO capabilities, including the ability to keep up with Google algorithm changes and edit meta tags and descriptions. Building organic SEO takes time, but an eCommerce software that incorporates best practices can make this task much more manageable.
Mobile Friendly
According to the latest statistics from June 2021, there were 173.3 million mobile buyers in the United States, and this number is projected to reach 187.5 million by 2024. The growing trend of using mobile devices for making purchases highlights the importance of having a mobile-friendly eCommerce store.
Therefore, it is vital to select an eCommerce marketplace platform that enables you to build a platform that is optimized for mobile devices. This ensures that shoppers can easily browse and purchase from your website using their smartphones or tablets.
Technical Support
When selecting software, customer support is crucial, particularly when it comes to eCommerce platforms. It is essential to have the assurance that you can get in touch with support personnel if you encounter any issues with the software. Therefore, it is recommended to choose an eCommerce software that offers different support channels, such as live chat, email, or phone support.
Software that provide an account manager or sales representative can also be beneficial, as they can offer personalized assistance to help you achieve your eCommerce goals.
Cost of Implementation
Being aware of the cost of implementing an eCommerce platform can help you plan your expenses and forecast your return on investment. Certain eCommerce software provide plans that comprise several elements like website design, security, functionality, regular hosting, and maintenance. It is crucial to remember that the initial development expenses are not the only ones you should consider.
Maintaining and upgrading an eCommerce website requires additional costs, especially if you didn’t conduct proper research before launching the site.
Ease to Use
Prior to finalizing an eCommerce software, it is important to know the amount of time you can spare to learn it. If you lack technical expertise, it is advisable to opt for a software that is user-friendly and uncomplicated. The software you select should enable you to establish an attractive eCommerce website without requiring excessive patience.
It is recommended to seek out features that simplify the shopping experience for your customers and streamline your online sales process.
Business Size
If your website is expected to feature a vast product inventory, it is vital to select the appropriate technology and evaluate its scalability and performance capabilities. If the software is not scalable, it could lead to problems when updating products in the backend while customers are simultaneously browsing the product catalog.
Moreover, a large product database can adversely affect the website’s performance if the software lacks the capacity to manage the load.
Payment Processing
To reduce any obstacles during the checkout process and improve the chances of successful purchases, it is recommended to provide customers with a range of payment options. In addition to widely used choices such as PayPal, Stripe, and Apple Pay, it is also essential to include local payment gateways, particularly for international websites, in your eCommerce platform.
Over to You
Selecting the appropriate eCommerce software is a crucial initial step when starting an eCommerce business. It is essential to conduct thorough research beforehand since switching eCommerce software at a later stage can be a time-consuming, costly, and frustrating process. The setup of establishing your business’s online profile, importing inventory, and selecting a theme can consume significant time and effort, which can be better utilized in other aspects of your business.
It is crucial to ensure that you make the correct decision the first time. Choosing the right eCommerce software streamlines the day-to-day tasks of processing online sales. An eCommerce software like Yo!Kart that integrates all aspects of your business leads to smoother operations and provides opportunities for business growth.
