Thinking of building or re-platforming your eCommerce website? You need to choose an e-commerce platform. Before that, define the parameters that will influence your final choice, like budget, functionality, issues you hope to resolve, channels you want to cater to, maintenance, risk management, platform architecture, scalability, and required IT skills.

Let us narrow our options to three popular eCommerce platforms; Shopify, Sitecore, and Optimizely. We will examine their characteristics and see whether they align with your business needs. Read on for further insights into this choice.

Shopify

Ideal for SMEs and small businesses. The legacy integration work required is considerably less. Building, licensing, and maintenance costs constitute a reasonable % of your gross merchandise value or GMW. This web application provides you with a broad spectrum of templates or themes. They are professional in appearance, aesthetically pleasant on the eye, and contemporary in nature. Customize them to suit your branding requirements and sell products online and offline. Most importantly, you need no coding skills to create an eCommerce website on Shopify. However, Shopify is a developer’s joy because it allows them full access to HTML, CSS, and Liquid, which is Shopify’s own templating language.

As a hosted solution, it lets you build and manage your Shopify eCommerce store from within a web browser. You pay monthly rent to use Shopify. Gain access to Shopify payments, its in-built payment system, for a “Starter” fee. Shopify also provides the option for numerous third-party payment gateways, but every transaction attracts a certain processing fee. An easy-to-use, modern, and intuitive interface offers a good user experience. You can also set up a variety of sales channels. The comprehensive point of sales functionality and hardware offered truly deserves mention.

However, Shopify is not known for its inventory friendliness, and shipping will require additional help from outside. Overall, Shopify is one of the best eCommerce-hosted solutions. It is particularly useful if you plan to dropship or sell in many countries using different currencies.

Optimizely

Rebranded from Episerver, Optimizely has a robust heritage in B2B eCommerce. B2B eCommerce is slightly different from B2C eCommerce. It has unique requirements for invoicing, payment on account, and custom quotes. So if you plan for a B2B eCommerce store, opt for Optimizely.

Optimizely is a unified platform that offers web content management, predictive analysis, multiple-channel marketing, and eCommerce. You can deliver real-time personalization to create an omnichannel experience for your end users. Collect customer data and generate behavioral data insights. You can use them to drive better customer engagement, enable repeat purchases, and enhance customer satisfaction.

Its content editor is also easy to work with, while the intuitive interface decreases time-to-market. By taking advantage of quick upgrades available in Optimizely, you can keep your eCommerce website updated at all times. Other benefits of using Optimizely include a well-designed automated architecture, transparent pricing models, and a PaaS (Platform as a Service) model. Harness the power of the cloud using this. Most Optimizely users have reported challenges associated with 3rd party data integration. It also needs to improve its documentation by making it more cohesive and easier to navigate.

Sitecore

Templated layouts, visual editing, pre-built components, built-in personalizations, and other integrated innovations have elevated Sitecore from being just a CMS to a SaaS(Software as a Service). Make content your differentiator with Sitecore. Additionally, if you give equal importance to building customer relationships and your eCommerce capability, then you should definitely opt for this eCommerce platform. It offers robust analytics and easy customizations to enhance customer experiences. Offering Sitecore as a SaaS makes it more agile.

A robust solution provider partner program makes gaining support, tailored resources, and geographic proximity easy. Sitecore is designed to scale. It can handle enormous volumes of traffic and content. Additionally, it offers a wide range of 3rd party integrations, robust risk management features, and superb content management features. However, this enterprise-level CMS is also somewhat complex and challenging to learn. Hence, both support and training are required. It is also relatively more expensive.

Conclusion

Each eCommerce platform has certain advantages. Understand that there is not one platform that can satisfy all your needs within your specified budget. So, be ready to compromise on a few requirements. With due diligence, you can find an eCommerce platform that will align perfectly with your business and IT needs, deliver your core functionality, and affordably scale your business. So, take time to research before coming to a decision.