what is best_
When launching an eCommerce business it’s vital you get the technology right, so we have reviewed the top 3 eCommerce solutions on the market to help you decide which is the best option for your business.
Magento
Magento is the world’s most powerful eCommerce platform on the market, it helps power a range of organisations from small businesses to large enterprises. There are two solutions with Magento, a free Open Source edition, and an even more powerful enterprise edition.
In May of last year, Adobe acquired Magento, which fills us with confidence as they’re now backed by the global leader in designing & delivering digital experiences, meaning Magento has even more resource behind them to help you succeed.
Magento provides businesses with a flexible shopping cart system, as well as flexible & scalable tools to manage the design, content and functionality of your store. On top of this, Magento also provides a multitude of powerful marketing, search engine optimisation & catalogue management tools. Which is all ‘out of the box’.
Magento is perfect for businesses seeking to grow & scale relatively quickly, allowing you to go from a handful of products to thousands in a short amount of time.
We’ve recently developed a website with hundreds of categories & thousands of products each with their own alterations – www.bulgin.com. Where we combined both Magento & WordPress to allow for an even better experience.
Woocommerce
Woocommerce is an open source eCommerce plugin for the world’s most famous CMS – WordPress. It allows small to large organisations to offer an effective eCommerce platform for any kind of product (physical, digital or even affiliate).
Woocommerce can be used in brand new WordPress developments or even added onto your existing site. Implementing Woocommerce’s base product is quick, easy & simple, however, many of our clients require customisation due to their requirements.
Woocommerce has a number of positive traits and is supported by many WordPress developers who have deep knowledge in implementing, configuring & customising the platform, including the 300 + extensions available to expand on the base platforms functionality.
Woocommerce is targeted towards specialist shops, with a smaller number of items & less user demand. It isn’t able to scale as well as Magento but works incredibly well for smaller online presences.
One of our clients, Care & Independence required a specialist online store which advertised their products but due to the nature of their product & sales process, they were unable to sell online.
Utilising WooCommerce allowed us to remove the shopping cart and guide users to contact their sales teams instead. This shows that WooCommerce can be designed & developed to suit your exact business processes.
Sitecore ECommerce
Sitecore is a global leader in customer experience management and offers an incredibly powerful content management system, combining this with their eCommerce aspect will allow you to tie in the content, commerce & experience into a single platform.
Having all three aspects in a single platform allows you to tailor exactly what your users view. Helping to create meaningful interactions and turn each one into a transaction by utilising personalised offers across your site.
Sitecore has an invaluable toolkit that enables you to constantly evolve your eCommerce platform. With 6 key eCommerce features, it gives you complete control to drive a successful commerce outcome:
Catalogue
Allows you to create and manage sellable items. Items can be added to multiple catalogues, categories, and inventory sets. You can also have different promotions added to each item.
Inventory
Allowing you to manage multiple inventory sets attached to one or more storefronts. From tracking shipments to reserving inventory functionality, Sitecore offers it.
Pricing
Sitecore’s pricing management allows you to create and manage multiple pricing scenarios. Allowing you to manage prices by date, by the quantity and allow multiple purchasing options.
Customer
The customer management functionalities that Sitecore offer really allow you to drill down and understand them. You’ll be able to add tags to customer accounts for easy grouping, as well as tracking their accounts to offer personalised discounts & promotions to select customer groups.
Order
Have full control over the entire order process. Capturing and managing orders using Sitecore’s order management functionality will provide you with support payment integration, the ability to amend existing orders (adding new items), as well as having the ability to globally cancel, hold and set fulfilment dates.
Promotion
22 Promotions are available out of the box, meaning that you don’t need to reinvent the wheel and they can be used to promote individual or multiple products within a group.
Sitecore is great for business of all sizes that are looking for more control over each aspect of their digital presence making each visitor feel welcome and keep on returning.
Our client Hidden Hearing, the UK’s leading provider of hearing tests and high-quality hearing aid technology needed an online presence to be personalised for different visitors. Sitecore allowed us to develop the perfect solution for Hidden Hearing as it fulfilled their requirements and continues to generate high-quality leads by providing personalised experiences.
Still not clear on which solution best suits your requirements? Get in touch or call our sales team on 020 7993 5485. They are always happy to listen to your requirements and offer advice. No matter which solution you pick, our developers have a wealth of knowledge to perfect your project.
