Best Platforms for E-Commerce Websites

E-commerce websites are electronic commerce which many people confuse with only buying and selling products through digital media but its more than this. You can buy or sell products, can enjoy online payments, online auction, online ticketing, or internet banking. E-commerce includes transferring of data. Sometimes e-commerce website is also known as e-business.
BRIEF HISTORY
Before getting in to further detail just have a brief look on the history of e-commerce. E-commerce basically started in 1979 as business started sharing electronic documents for the sake of business deals. Later on in 1990’s eBay and amazon jumped in and modernized e-commerce. E-commerce Website development can be conducted using many forms like e-mail, online catalogs, shopping carts, electronic data interchange, file transfer protocol and web services. It gave many blessings either you are seller or buyer e-commerce has make business easier.
It offers services 24/7/365 and gives the option of doing business worldwide. It save’s consumers time for traveling and finding product according to their demand. Due to its versatile offers, it has become an emerging business option for cooperation.
PLATFORMS FOR E-COMMERCE WEBSITES
Now the question arises how to convert your physical shop or business to an E-commerce online website or shop? There are many platforms through which we can make business online. Some e-commerce platforms are paid and some are unpaid. According to the online surveys, there is a list of paid and unpaid platforms created on user’s choice. For paid platforms, we have Shopify, bigcommerce, Volusion, wix and 3d cart on top of the list and for unpaid we have Magento community edition, Prestashop, woo-commerce, x cart, os commerce and opencart.
Free platforms for e-commerce website are self-hosted. When you decide to use a free platform for your online business, first of all, u have to buy a domain and web hosting. There are many themes and plugins available in an open source free platforms moreover anyone can create a plugin for their use. It has great content management system which supports best search engine optimization. Hence unpaid platforms are cut above the rest as they provide more flexible features than funded e-commerce website platforms.
SOME FAMOUS FREE E-COMMERCE PLATFORMS
When you finally decide to make your business online the thought that delay your working is what platform should be used to make it happen. After surveying many platforms used by well-known business in the market there is few software which will help you decide what should be used for an emerging business. This discussion will help you to integrate the pros and cons of different platforms and make you choose the right one that fits your business.
1. MAGENTO COMMUNITY EDITION
Magento community edition is a free open source environment it assures flexibility for handling business and spread it worldwide. When you use Magento there is no need of being a developer but when you want to extend plugin or theme you should know the programming so when you want to customize any function a developer should be there.
Magento community is a very large community which helps new users. It works on core systems with add-ons extensions. Moreover, it provides 50 payment gateways. It is SEO friendly which improves traffic on your site and helps developing mobile responsive sites.
2. PRESTASHOP
It is another free shopping cart platform for online stores and websites. It possesses 400 contributors for GitHub. Prestashop is a platform that requires less time for the installation process. It powers 270,000 stores and approximately one million community members. Another reason for choosing it is its support to multiple stores and international stores within one backend. Also, it contains reporting and forecasting abilities. Prestashop is the one which introduced free cloud e-commerce and it is offered at no cost to end users. Prestashop is fully hosted and supported version of Prestashop e-commerce website platforms.
3. WOOCOMMERCE
WooCommerce powers 30% of all online stores existing. It is a free plugin of WordPress that helps to convert an online website and online store. WooCommerce is a cheaper solution of all. It offers free Facebook advertisements and Facebook stores extensions. When you use WooCommerce it gives you full access of your data. It is flexible and user-friendly and can work with all types on themes in the market like shopping carts etc. You can get support by Wordpress forum. To improve search engine optimization and traffic on your website it uses Yoast SEO and makes it highly optimizable.
4. X CART
X cart has been founded in 2000. It possesses many features that any modern online store demands today. It is supported by both MAC and PC and offers many enterprise features at the affordable price it has this ability to create unique custom-made mobile commerce design that stands out.
X cart supports 75 payment gateways which tend to increase its demand. Adding to its brilliant features it is both hosted and self-hosted with high customization. Recently its cloud version is released named X cart NEXT, it is a hosted platform and allows certified developers to add custom functions.
5. OS COMMERCE
Os commerce is a PHP based platform for e-commerce websites. It offers over 7000 free integration. Os commerce gives extra security to the online stores for safe data handling of customers and easy shopping. It is a hosted version and the user has to pay $8 per month. It is not a complex program moreover it does not require any technical knowledge. Os commerce develops websites in multiple languages.
CONCLUSION
Shortly, all the discussion above will make your way easy to choose a platform for your online website or online store. Every software provides many services and the user can choose according to their need and requirements of their online store. It is best to use software that is a free open source and you can modify it according to your need. It does not matter what budget you have or what features and functions you want you should keep searching because there will be a right solution for your e-commerce site.