If you are an e-merchant, entrepreneur or even simply curious about e-commerce, you have surely already wondered what the best e-commerce solution in the world is ?
So, is there really only one perfect solution ? How to identify the ideal e-commerce platform? But above all: How to choose the right e-commerce solution for you?
What is the best e-commerce platform?
Before starting to know if Shopify, Magento, Prestashop or other is the best e-commerce solution in the world, it is important in my opinion to define what the perfect e-commerce solution is.
And there already, we are going to have a little problem. Indeed, the perfect solution for you may not be that of your e-commerce neighbour. Explanations.
A perfect solution for a craftsman, an SME or for an e-commerce giant?
You can imagine that in e-commerce solutions, some are suitable for small sites, others for larger sites and finally some for e-commerce behemoths.
An online sales site like Cdiscount will not have the same needs and problems from a technical point of view, natural referencing and other than the site of an artisan butcher who sells 99% of his production locally.
Identify your needs before choosing the right e-commerce solution for you.
Wanting to have the best e-commerce platform is understandable, but above all it must be adapted to your needs. Hence the importance of defining your needs upstream of your e-commerce project.
We are going to publish a list of questions to ask yourself when defining your e-commerce project in order to help you choose the best solution, but here are the big questions to ask yourself.
Do you want to manage the technical part?
If you want to focus on your business and delegate the technical part, not manage updates or version problems and you are allergic to technical talk, then you may need to turn to SaaS solutions like Shopify.
Shopify is indeed a simple solution to take on the merchant side (ergonomic) and you can entrust all the technical part to an agency like Pikka.
Do you have specific needs?
Are you a private sales site? A dropshipping site? A site with high traffic peaks (during sales, at Christmas, etc.) Do you have a huge customer base? Or on the contrary few products? All of this can influence what will make one platform or another the best e-commerce platform for you.
What are the criteria for defining the best e-commerce platform?
Choosing your online sales solution is important, it commits you financially and will determine a large part of your productivity and your sales. For information, you can read comparisons like " Shopify vs Prestashop "
Apart from your specific needs as a merchant, it is also necessary to take into account “pure” platform criteria. For instance :
Is the e-commerce platform you are going to choose in good financial shape?
This is a criterion that I find very underestimated by merchants, but the health of companies, open source or not, of e-commerce software is to be taken into account! You wouldn't want to do an ecommerce migration on a solution that will close in 6 months or that can't invest in its development?
Likewise, if you are the biggest customer, this can be a problem because you risk paying for all the modifications and financing the R&D of the platform.
Some e-commerce platforms are even sometimes under the regime of bankruptcies or corporate restructuring. It's always risky for merchants. It is therefore up to you to verify this information before signing.
On the Shopify side, you can be sure, the company is listed on the New York Stock Exchange and must therefore publish figures regularly on its financial health.
Beware of falsely "free" solutions
The best platform is rarely free. Many vendors are drawn to open source because it sounds like “free” to their ears.
You should know that nothing is more false than that. Open source generally requires higher maintenance costs than SaaS and a solution like Shopify is sometimes even 80 to 90% cheaper than solutions like Magento in TCO (Total cost of ownership)
In addition, if you launch a Prestashop site, even yourself without an agency, it is almost impossible to do without certain paid modules.
Be careful, therefore, to calculate the real cost of the project as a whole and not to be fooled by simplistic talk of apparent gratuity.
The ideal platform for your online business
You see that even if we are “pro shopify” (by choice after having tested all the other solutions for more than 15 years, see " 5 reasons to choose Shopify ") it is necessary to do three things in order to find the right solution e-commerce for your business.
- Clearly define your project and your needs upstream
- Identify the e-commerce solutions best suited to your needs
- Analyze all costs associated with the project
Once this work is completed, you will therefore have a beautiful, solid e-commerce project to present to any agency to obtain an e-commerce quote and create, with the most suitable platform, the project of your dreams.
Obviously, we at Pikka would be delighted if you are interested in Shopify to offer you our services so don't hesitate!
