In present days, starting an ecommerce business has become an easy task to do. To start an ecommerce business, you only need an ecommerce website and customers to buy from your ecommerce website. The first thing that might come to people’s mind before starting an ecommerce business is, how to start an e commerce website. In this case, most people get confused to choose which platform for their ecommerce website. Before starting the discussion on “which is the right platform for your e commerce website”, let’s have a look on the current e-commerce market statistics.
According to Statista, retail e-commerce sale is expected to reach 6.54 trillion US dollars in 2022, as one of the most popular online activities worldwide in online shopping. As the customers are more depending on online shopping, it is believed that around 95% of the purchase will be made through e-commerce. The graph shown below will help you in understanding about the e-commerce sales growth rate in the coming years.
[Source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/379046/worldwide-retail-e-commerce-sales/]
Since you have got some ideas about the e-commerce market statistics and about the e-commerce industry, now it’s time to move on how to choose the right platform for your ecommerce website development which will help your ecommerce business. The two platforms that come to mind when planning to develop an ecommerce website are Shopify and WordPress. The reason why these two platforms are chosen is because it is the most used platform by startups, small and medium businesses. And you can find both advantages and disadvantages of these two platforms in the coming sections below.
E-Commerce: Definition
E-commerce: Electronic commerce or internet commerce refers to buying or selling products through an online medium with the help of the internet. The idea of ecommerce took 2 decades before and Ecommerce business was possible from 1991 onward when the internet was open to use for commercial purpose.
E-commerces Website: Definition
An Ecommerce website is an online medium or online portal that helps people to buy products and sell their products with the help of the internet. In 1992, the first online bookstore was available to the public, the “Book Stacks Unlimited”. Books Stacks Unlimited began as a dial-up bulletin board.
In 1994, Amazon was launched as the first e-commerce website. As you can see the growth of Amazon and became the top e-commerce website. On the other side you can see new e-commerce websites such as Anotah. E-commerce websites have evolved a lot over the years.
The different types of e-commerces websites are as follows:
- Business-to-Business: Online transactions are performed between two companies (Example: Alibaba).
- Business-to-consumer: Online transaction of products between a company and a consumer(Example: Wal-Mart, Anotah etc.)
- Consumer-to-consumer(C2C): Online transaction of goods and services between consumers( Example: OLX, eBay )
- Consumer to business: Individuals offers products to companies(Example: Amazon)
- Business-to-Government(B2G) – Online transaction of products and services between companies and government organization
- Consumer-to-Government(C2G)- Online transaction of products and services between consumer and government organization.
E-commerce platforms
If you are planning to start an ecommerce business, the first thing you need is an ecommerce website. Developing an ecommerce website has become an easy task to do. First of all you should have an idea about which platform you are going to choose and then you can start to code for an ecommerce website.
As discussed above Shopify and WordPress are the most commonly used platform for e-commerce website development. But now a question arises is that, among these two platforms, which is the best? So lets us discuss both these platforms in detail so that in the end you can find an answer.
What is WordPress?
WordPress is a free content management system, primarily used to create websites. To get the hosting services you can download the self-hosted version of WordPress and change the code according to the users need. To build an ecommerce website in WordPress you need a WooCommerce plugin which helps to buy and sell products on your WordPress website. The WooCommerce plugin makes clear that WordPress alone cannot provide an e-commerce solution to its users. WordPress platform is not only for an e-commerce website but Shopify is created specifically for e-commerce websites.
In WordPress you can see hosted solutions and self-hosted solutions. For the users who are using self hosted services can customize their website to any extent that is possible. In this case you have to consider things like development cost, WooCommerce plugins, hosting costs and so on.
In WordPress, the security of your website is the responsibility of the owner. The maintenance of the website is also the owners responsibility. You have to buy an SSL certificate of your website if needed and it’s your responsibility to update all the plugins.
WordPress powers almost one-third of all the websites in the world, but all of those websites won’t have an e-commerce solution.
In Shopify you can see fixed price plans, but in WordPress the CMS software is free and users have to spend money on the plugins, hosting, templates etc.
Like Shopify, WordPress is not that easy to handle, to get the website up and running you need the help of experts or website developers.
What is Shopify?
Shopify is an e-commerce platform that allows anyone to build and launch their e-commerce website. With the help of Shopify platform you can easily create an e-commerce store in both offline and online. Shopify is a platform that is used by beginners to experts in e-commerce. Shopify has helped everyone with their desired needs. In Shopify you can see a wide range of templates, and you can easily customize the templates to create your e commerce website which can meet your e-commerce business.
The main reason behind why most people use Shopify is that without any design and technical skills they can easily build their e-commerce website. With the help of shopify platform you can also edit the CSS and HTML files of the website. Those people with coding knowledge can easily customise the website with this.
The above discussed points clearly shows that Shopify is an all in one ecommerce website development platform where you can easily create a website and publish. Another advantage we get from the Shopify platform is hosting, that makes it another easy step to use the service. To access this service user has to only log in with the username and password. From the hosting service it’s clear that Shopify’s servers run everything and the user doesn’t have to bother about other software installations for hosting the website.
Yon can use the Shopify services with a basic lite plan starting at just $9. And you can also see other Shopify price plans like Shopify Plus, Shopify Basic and more. Choosing the plan mainly depends upon the business type. If you are a small scale business you can choose a basic lite plan and for a large scale business most of them use the Shopify plus plans and above that.
Shopify provides 24/7 customer support services which makes the user more comfortable. All the shopify websites have a built-in SSL certificate. When we check the security assurance of the website, it is completely taken by the Shopify team itself.
The interesting advantage of the Shopify platform is from the backend of your website, you can get information like complete list of analytics and other reports of your website. From analytics reports you can get datas like real-time users of your website, traffic to your website, top visited page and more.
Wrapping Up
Now the choice depends upon your business. You can choose any platform according to your online business demands. Both the ecommerce platforms are suitable for the online business. If your business needs more features, then you can go with the Shopify platform. In other cases, if you need an appealing look to your website by customizing the website, then go with the WordPress platform. The e-commerce website platform is not only the reason behind the success of your business, you also have to do effective marketing to reach more customers and you will start earning from your ecommerce business.
Vinoth Balakrishnan
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