Informational Guide to Start an Ecommerce Platform in 2020

Ecommerce is quickly becoming the preferred mode of shopping for the world. Especially in 2019, it has been one of the most imperative, interactive, inventive, transformative, and interesting years for ecommerce till now.

After conducting proper research, we have formulated an informational guide before starting an ecommerce platform in 2020. Let us start by recognizing what has been achieved by e commerce giants in the year 2019.

• Gross sales of the Amazon will be 43% of U.S. e-commerce sales in 2019 which was 28% in 2015.

Amazon’s landscape focuses on consumer usage and engagement trends which made the number rise to nearly twice in 4 years period. Amazon’s sale has surpassed $200 billion and has shown steady growth from the past many years. This growth has been propelled by the increasing retail category by depth and breadth, significant technological innovations, major foray into Omni channel retail.

• TikTok enters the Ecommerce sector

TikTok is a social media video app for creating and sharing short lip-sync comedy and talent videos. TikTok is now testing ecommerce related features that would allow retailers to market their products easily. They conducted a test in the US where the author could add a link in their bio or post which would redirect them to another browser within the app.

• Alibaba set a sales record on Singles Day, the world’s largest 24-hour shopping event

Alibaba’s gross merchandise value crossed last year’s $30.5 billion in a single day sale. At the end of the sale, the GMV stood at 268.4 billion yuan which was a 26% rise from last year’s figures. It was the 11th edition of the annual single-day event, the double 11 shopping festival which falls on the 11th Nov.

 

These achievements of ecommerce giants inspire startups to be a part of this profitable wave. Aspiring entrepreneurs should focus on what the future has in store for their potential ecommerce brands. Here are some stats that are predicting the growth of ecommerce in 2020.

• In 2017, eCommerce sales were responsible for $2.3 trillion worldwide, and it is expected to be nearly doubled by 2021. The projected global sales for 2020 come out to a predicted $3.9 trillion.
• Statista predicts Amazon’s market share of the U.S. eCommerce retail market to hit 47% in 2020. (16) To put it in perspective, that is more than Apple (3.8%), eBay (6.1%), Wal-Mart (4.6%), and Wayfair (1.3%) combined.

Influencing Factors that persuade Shoppers to Shop Online

Shoppers from all around the world have been shopping online for most of their products. A Survey by Google has survey 4 major countries where the ecommerce sales in high. Top reasons for shopping online were:

• Fast Shipping – Consumers in the U.S. are much more interested in fast shipping times than in-store pickup.
• Mobile Payment (UPI Enabled) – Quick and easy access to mobile devices along with slashed data prices have brought digital payments to the forefront of retail transactions, especially in the case of UPI. This is also evident from the fact that the number of merchants accepting them has increased to over 10 million in a short span of two to three years.
• Discounted Prices – Incentivize repeat visits with promos and coupons. While U.K. consumer habits are related to their U.S. counterparts, they are more inclined to buy from the same store twice.
• Testimonials – Brazilians value product reviews from other customers nearly 2X as much as shoppers in the U.S. or U.K., so make sure they can find reviews on the top of the product page.

Ecommerce Trends to keep a watch in 2020

• Multi-channel selling – most online sellers start their online journey with only one channel but that is not the case with the buyer. Buyers perform their sales from different touch point which makes the seller lose their potential customers. Multi-channel retailing is a practice to sell particular merchandise on the channels where the target audience would preferably shop.
• Direct to Customer – as the name suggests, it means an entrepreneur selling their products directly to the end-user without the meddling of third-party retailers, middlemen, and wholesalers. The multi-channel retailer is falling apart because of the margins being very small.
• AR and VR are becoming more commonplace – Many ecommerce marketplaces are already using augmented reality and virtual reality on their ecommerce website and even their offline store. Customers want to try on their products so businesses introduced AR and VR to try virtually than physically.
• Flexible payment option for big purchases – Especially in the case of premium products, entrepreneurs should understand that customers believe making huge online payments as a risky investment. While developing an ecommerce marketplace, flexible payment options like providing breakdown payments, or net banking transfer should be available.
• Smart home assistants and voice search- People are more and more relying on smart home assistants and voice search while purchasing a product. Ecommerce businesses are being a part of the customer journey and influencing them to make their buying decision in different possible ways. Ecommerce is using the power of voice search and home assistance to influence customers.

Ecommerce platforms to start an online store in 2020

Shopify: One of the biggest names in ecommerce development, Shopify is an easy-to launch platform. It has become popular among aspiring entrepreneur as it is easy to use and makes launching an ecommerce website easy.

Strengths:

This platform uses a single dashboard to manage order, shipment and payment

The pricing starts from $9 to $299 per month.

Features like amazon integration, different pricing plans and hosting included helps in building your business from the ground up.

Offers own payment gateway i.e. Shopify pay

Weakness:

You can use popular payment gateways like PayPal and stripe but Shopify charges extra money for these changes.

If you will be managing higher sales then you must not consider Shopify

If you are considering to launch a mobile app for your business then Shopify will burn a hole through your pocket.

Magento: An adobe company, Magento is the most customizable ecommerce platform. According to BuiltWith report, Magento has been ranked third position globally. A huge merchant community and old traditions make this platform solid and trustworthy. Magento provides two types of packages: Magento Open Source and Magento Commerce (cloud solution).

Strengths:

Some of the big names in the industry trust Magento for the digital requirement like Nike, HP Inc., and The North Face.

Clients receive support for their troubles from the  community

It is optimized for search engine and have features that will make the website ranks higher

Customizable platform for the different needs of the client

Weakness:

Costly as compared to most ecommerce platforms

Customization requires an experienced developer

The open-source version of Magento requires lots of customization to develop an ecommerce website.

Yo!Kart  – Yo!Kart is a multivendor ecommerce platform that is fully customizable. It is a self-hosted solution with a lifetime license.  YoKart also offers ready to launch mobile applications that provide superior online experience. It is an ideal platform if you are looking to launch mid-size and large scale enterprises with multi-vendor functionalities.

Strengths:

• This platform is Inherent  multivendor platform
• You can launch your ecommerce multivendor website within a week
• Budget-friendly as clients have to pay once and they get the lifetime licence
• The Platform also has ready to launch mobile applications
• The platform guarantees high performance and claims to handle 1 million products.

Weakness:

• The platforms code are partially encrypted for security purposes
• YoKart does not offer free trials

Woocommerce – 30% of total online stores are powered by woo commerce with 1M+ download. Popular among masses woo commerce is a WordPress toolkit provider to extend the experience. According to BuiltWith reports, Woocommerce is the best ecommerce platform on earth..

Strengths:

Woocommerce is an open source platform

For people who are already using WordPress, Woocommerce is free

Lets you sell physical and digital products.

Fully customizable

Weakness:

The hosting and extension that comes along is not entirely budget-friendly.

Does not have a particular support team for clients

Should have an experience in building websites

Quick eSelling: Quick eSelling is another ecommerce platform that deserves a place in this list. As written on Quick eSelling website, it is only intelligent ecommerce platform to offer free website & mobile app with unlimited ecommerce features. The platform has launched in 2015 and gained massive popularity due to its free ecommerce store set up plan.

Strengths:

• Quick & easy set up
• Zero coding is needed
• Single platform to manage web & apps
• Comes with multiple payment gateways
• Easy integration with popular online marketplaces

Weakness:

No iOS app in free plan

Prestashop – an open-source, cloud-hosted ecommerce platform to easily launch a website. There are 3 options for aspiring entrepreneurs to launch an e-commerce website. They can either download it for free, customize it on their own or pay for preta ready which is a hosted version.

Strengths

• According to the needs of the customers both hosted and self hosted version are available
• It has features which make it search engine friendly and optimized
• The platform can be easily customized and has a huge community of support if needed

Weakness

• The add-ons which any ecommerce website must have are expensive
• The client’s needs to have basic development skills to work on the platform
• Support is available but it is paid

Conclusion

The global stats, predictions, and trends are in favor of ecommerce. The customers are already influenced to buy any and every commodity online thus creating a huge window for ecommerce startups. In this blog we have mentioned all the information an entrepreneur would need before starting an ecommerce platform. Stats that will push him to make the decision, influencing factors that will help him decide the USP of the website and top ecommerce platform to choose their technology partner.

Ecommerce – DepositPhotos

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