Mas­ter­ing Ecom­merce Plat­forms: A Com­pre­hen­sive Guide

What are Ecom­merce Platforms?

This is the 101

Ecom­merce plat­forms play a cru­cial role in facil­i­tat­ing online trans­ac­tions between busi­ness­es and cus­tomers. You could say they’re the place where those trans­ac­tions ​“happen”and their infra­struc­ture. With the rise of e‑commerce, these plat­forms have become essen­tial for busi­ness­es of all sizes, and key to reach­ing audi­ences and stream­lin­ing operations.

Put sim­ply, an ecom­merce plat­form is a soft­ware or online tool that allows busi­ness­es to cre­ate and man­age their online store. It pro­vides a plat­form for sell­ing prod­ucts and ser­vices online, mak­ing it eas­i­er for busi­ness­es to reach a wider audi­ence and increase their sales. These plat­forms come with a vari­ety of fea­tures that make it eas­i­er for busi­ness­es to set up and man­age their online store, from cre­at­ing prod­uct list­ings to pro­cess­ing pay­ments and man­ag­ing inventory. 

The impor­tance of ecom­merce plat­forms for busi­ness­es can­not be over­stat­ed. The glob­al ecom­merce mar­ket is expect­ed to reach $6.35 tril­lion by 2027. Run­ning an ecom­merce site is quite clear­ly a must.

Bench­Mark Corporate

But as we said ear­li­er, what’s even more impor­tant than hav­ing an ecom­merce plat­form is choos­ing the right one, and hope­ful­ly, doing it before going all in, get­ting the devs to cus­tomize your site and load­ing up your prod­ucts only to real­ize it runs super slow or learn­ing you need to spend some extra hun­dreds a month to keep your inven­to­ry in sync, or keep your site secure and your infor­ma­tion (and your clients’ infor­ma­tion) safe.

So, with­out fur­ther ado, here are the dif­fer­ent types of ecom­merce plat­forms avail­able, each with its own set of fea­tures and options. We’ll cov­er the par­tic­u­lars and you can decide which type is best for your busi­ness depend­ing on your spe­cif­ic needs and budget.

Types of Ecom­merce Platforms

Let’s take a clos­er look at the dif­fer­ent types of ecom­merce plat­forms and what sets them apart. 

Open Source

Open source plat­forms are free to install and open to the pub­lic, mean­ing any­one can access and mod­i­fy the source code. This type of plat­form is high­ly cus­tomiz­able, giv­ing busi­ness­es the flex­i­bil­i­ty to tai­lor their online store to their spe­cif­ic needs. Some pop­u­lar open source plat­forms include Magen­to, WooCom­merce, and PrestaShop.

These plat­forms stand as cham­pi­ons of flex­i­bil­i­ty and cus­tomiza­tion. They offer busi­ness­es the free­dom to access and mod­i­fy the source code, tai­lor­ing their online store to spe­cif­ic needs. 

But that comes at a price (although open source plat­forms are tech­ni­cal­ly free to use). Open source plat­forms demand tech­ni­cal exper­tise for cus­tomiza­tion. That means a strong Dev team and many hours. The com­mu­ni­ty-dri­ven sup­port and a large pool of devel­op­ers con­tribute to their growth and pro­vide a valu­able resource for busi­ness­es but still, the cus­tomiza­tion jour­ney can be time-con­sum­ing, and secu­ri­ty risks loom. Open source plat­forms save you a sig­nif­i­cant amount of mon­ey on licens­ing fees. But they are not free. 

SaaS

Soft­ware-as-a-Ser­vice eCom­merce plat­forms, or licensed plat­forms, are cloud based solu­tions oper­at­ing under a recur­ring fee mod­el. Users pay a fee to access and use the plat­form, but the code and infra­struc­ture remain the prop­er­ty of the plat­form provider. Exam­ples of SaaS eCom­merce plat­forms include Shopi­fy and enter­prise solu­tions offered by Adobe, Sales­force, Ora­cle, and SAP. 

This mod­el pro­vides busi­ness­es with a con­ve­nient and has­sle-free way to set up and run their online stores, as the plat­form han­dles much of the back­end infra­struc­ture and maintenance.

Glos­sary of eCom­merce Terms

These plat­forms are man­aged by the provider, mean­ing you don’t have to wor­ry about main­tain­ing servers or han­dling tech­ni­cal aspects. The provider takes care of every­thing, from secu­ri­ty to updates and main­te­nance in exchange of a month­ly or year­ly sub­scrip­tion fee to use the plat­form. This makes it a great option for busi­ness­es that don’t have a ded­i­cat­ed IT team or tech­ni­cal exper­tise. It’s also good if you need to get your site up and run­ning quickly.

Most of these plat­forms offer user-friend­ly web­site builders, mak­ing it easy for busi­ness­es to cre­ate their online store with­out any cod­ing knowl­edge. They also come with a vari­ety of cus­tomiz­able tem­plates and themes, allow­ing busi­ness­es to cre­ate a unique and pro­fes­sion­al-look­ing store.

How­ev­er, SaaS plat­forms have lim­it­ed cus­tomiza­tion options com­pared to open source plat­forms. Busi­ness­es may also face restric­tions on the num­ber of prod­ucts they can sell or the pay­ment gate­ways they can use. More­over, as busi­ness­es grow, the month­ly or year­ly sub­scrip­tion fees can become more expensive.

Open SaaS

Open SaaS plat­forms com­bine the ben­e­fits of both open source and SaaS plat­forms. They pro­vide an open-source code­base, allow­ing busi­ness­es to mod­i­fy their plat­form, while also offer­ing host­ed soft­ware as a ser­vice. These plat­forms offer the flex­i­bil­i­ty and cus­tomiza­tion options of open source plat­forms, while also pro­vid­ing the ease of use and man­aged ser­vices of SaaS plat­forms. Our favorite exam­ple is Big­Com­merce.

One of the main advan­tages of Open SaaS plat­forms is their scal­a­bil­i­ty. They can han­dle high vol­umes of traf­fic and sales, mak­ing them suit­able for grow­ing busi­ness­es. Addi­tion­al­ly, they offer a wide range of cus­tomiza­tion options, allow­ing busi­ness­es to cre­ate a unique and per­son­al­ized online store.

How­ev­er, Open SaaS plat­forms can be more expen­sive than both open source and SaaS plat­forms. They also require tech­ni­cal exper­tise to set up and man­age, whether in house or through an agency. It may be a prob­lem for small­er busi­ness­es on a tighter bud­get, but hir­ing an eCom­merce agency can actu­al­ly be a very good idea.

Mar­ket­place Platforms

This type of ecom­merce plat­form allows busi­ness­es to sell their prod­ucts on exist­ing mar­ket­places, such as Ama­zon, eBay or Etsy. These plat­forms are known for their large cus­tomer base and stream­lined sell­ing process. 

They pro­vide busi­ness­es with a ready-made audi­ence and the infra­struc­ture to sell their prod­ucts, mak­ing it an attrac­tive option for those look­ing to reach a larg­er cus­tomer base. One of the main advan­tages of mar­ket­place plat­forms is the built-in audi­ence and estab­lished trust that comes with sell­ing on a well-known mar­ket­place. Busi­ness­es also ben­e­fit from the mar­ket­place’s infra­struc­ture, such as pay­ment pro­cess­ing and ship­ping options. How­ev­er, mar­ket­place plat­forms come with their own set of lim­i­ta­tions and fees. Busi­ness­es may have to pay a com­mis­sion on each sale and may not have as much con­trol over their brand­ing and cus­tomer expe­ri­ence. It’s also impor­tant to note that busi­ness­es are com­pet­ing with oth­er sell­ers on the same mar­ket­place, which can make it hard­er to stand out and build a loy­al cus­tomer base. 

B2B Ecom­merce Platforms

In today’s dig­i­tal age, ecom­merce has become an essen­tial aspect of busi­ness oper­a­tions. From retail giants to small busi­ness­es, most com­pa­nies have an online pres­ence to reach a wider audi­ence and increase sales. There are two main eCom­merce busi­ness mod­els, dif­fer­ing most­ly in the par­ties involved and the type of trans­ac­tions: B2C and B2B.

B2B stands for busi­ness-to-busi­ness, mean­ing that a com­pa­ny sells goods or ser­vices to anoth­er com­pa­ny. This mod­el typ­i­cal­ly involves larg­er orders, longer term con­tracts and longer sales cycles. More­over, B2B trans­ac­tions often involve nego­ti­at­ed con­tracts and pric­ing, and require spe­cial­ized knowl­edge or expertise.

B2C, on the oth­er hand, stands for busi­ness-to-con­sumer and, as the name reveals, involves sell­ing prod­ucts or ser­vices direct­ly to indi­vid­ual con­sumers. B2C trans­ac­tions tend to be small­er in scale but much more fre­quent, and gen­er­al­ly, more impulse-dri­ven and more demand­ing in terms of UX, which is increas­ing­ly impor­tant in B2B eCom­merce any­way, because B2B users are indi­vid­u­als too. 

Read more about B2B and B2C here

It could be argued, and we often have, that ulti­mate­ly, all ecom­merce is B2P (Busi­ness to Peo­ple) but there are spe­cif­ic issues for B2B mer­chants that require ecom­merce plat­forms specif­i­cal­ly designed to cater to the unique needs of busi­ness­es sell­ing prod­ucts or ser­vices to oth­er busi­ness­es. Tai­lored to facil­i­tate the com­plex­i­ties of whole­sale, bulk, and enter­prise-lev­el trans­ac­tions, they go beyond the typ­i­cal fea­tures of busi­ness-to-con­sumer (B2C) plat­forms, pro­vid­ing func­tion­al­i­ties that specif­i­cal­ly address B2B require­ments. These include:

Cus­tom Pric­ing and Quoting:

B2B trans­ac­tions often involve nego­ti­at­ed pric­ing, vol­ume dis­counts, and con­tract pric­ing. B2B plat­forms pro­vide fea­tures that enable busi­ness­es to offer indi­vid­u­al­ized prices based on cus­tomer seg­ments, con­tract terms, or order quantities.

Cat­a­log and Inven­to­ry Management:

B2B plat­forms allow busi­ness­es to man­age exten­sive prod­uct cat­a­logs, includ­ing vari­a­tions, attrib­ut­es, and hier­ar­chi­cal struc­tures. These plat­forms also have advanced inven­to­ry man­age­ment fea­tures to account for large and fluc­tu­at­ing stock levels.

Bulk Order­ing and Integration:

B2B trans­ac­tions typ­i­cal­ly involve large quan­ti­ties and com­plex order process­es. B2B ecom­merce plat­forms stream­line the order­ing expe­ri­ence by allow­ing busi­ness­es to place orders in bulk, upload spread­sheets, or inte­grate with their enter­prise resource plan­ning (ERP) systems.

Cus­tomer Account Management:

B2B plat­forms pro­vide robust cus­tomer man­age­ment capa­bil­i­ties, allow­ing busi­ness­es to man­age cus­tomer accounts, assign user roles, and set per­mis­sion lev­els. This ensures a per­son­al­ized and secure expe­ri­ence for each busi­ness customer.

Do whole­salers, dis­trib­u­tors and man­u­fac­tur­ers need dif­fer­ent functionalities?

Most cer­tain­ly yes.

Dis­trib­u­tors will need cus­tomized pric­ing, account login, and net terms for almost all their cus­tomers, because they are the con­nec­tion between man­u­fac­tur­ers and whole­salers. The same will apply to some man­u­fac­tur­ers who need to hide B2B pric­ing for their con­sumer prod­ucts, mak­ing it vis­i­ble only through account login. 

Although whole­salers who sell direct­ly to retail­ers will need these fea­tures too, they also need to offer one-off pur­chas­es, so they will need fea­tures like vol­ume pric­ing and guest check­out too. Some man­u­fac­tur­ers may need busi­ness­es to sub­mit files to get the right prod­uct, and sev­er­al options per prod­uct, not just a SKU.

The ide­al B2B plat­form should be able to give to each their own, and it shouldn’t be a nightmare.

Check out our FAQs on B2B eCom­merce plat­forms for more on this.

Not all ecom­merce plat­forms are cre­at­ed equal. And not all of them have the fea­tures and capa­bil­i­ties required by mer­chants to meet the intri­cate demands of their B2B and Hybrid busi­ness­es. Here are a few that do.

Oro­Com­merce:

The mas­ter­minds behind Magen­to focused on the B2B eCom­merce mar­ket and devel­oped an open-source, mod­u­lar plat­form tai­lored specif­i­cal­ly for B2B busi­ness­es using the Sym­fony framework.

Oro­Com­merce boasts a wide range of B2B mar­ket­place and dig­i­tal com­merce fea­tures that come ready-to-use, such as per­son­al­iza­tion, local­iza­tion, an advanced pric­ing engine with cus­tomer-spe­cif­ic pric­ing, work­flow automa­tion, cus­tomer reten­tion tools, and inte­gra­tion with Oro­CRM. These fea­tures are designed to cater to the unique needs of B2B mer­chants, mak­ing it a promis­ing option for busi­ness­es look­ing to expand their online presence.

It may be a bet­ter fit for larg­er, more tech­ni­cal­ly-savvy busi­ness­es, while small­er com­pa­nies may find it more chal­leng­ing to ful­ly uti­lize its capa­bil­i­ties. Nonethe­less, with its expe­ri­enced founders and tar­get­ed fea­tures, Oro­Com­merce is cer­tain­ly a plat­form to watch in the B2B eCom­merce space.

VTEX:

VTEX is a cloud-based com­merce plat­form geared towards medi­um to large enter­pris­es found­ed in Brazil in 1999. A key play­er in the MACH alliance, it’s flex­i­ble and scal­able to accom­mo­date increased traf­fic and expand­ed cat­a­logs and offers robust order man­age­ment fea­tures, which is ide­al for busi­ness­es with com­plex needs, as is the case of B2B companies. 

How­ev­er, the learn­ing curve may be steep. Imple­ment­ing VTEX may require some learn­ing, espe­cial­ly for busi­ness­es new to omnichan­nel strategies.

Big­Com­merce:

Our favorite choice, Big­Com­merce offers a B2B edi­tion that pro­vides fea­tures specif­i­cal­ly designed for whole­sale and enter­prise-lev­el busi­ness­es. This includes func­tion­al­i­ties such as cus­tomer groups, cus­tom pric­ing and dis­counts and sales rep masquerade.

You’re free to scale your busi­ness to new heights with­out being lim­it­ed by clunky tech­nol­o­gy or out­dat­ed soft­ware. Your online shop­ping expe­ri­ences are future-proof, so you can adapt to any tech­no­log­i­cal dis­rup­tion that may come your way. More­over, you can cre­ate high­ly per­son­al­ized front-end expe­ri­ences on mul­ti­ple chan­nels, giv­ing your cus­tomers the shop­ping expe­ri­ence they deserve. Last, but not least, you get the flex­i­bil­i­ty to expand into new ter­ri­to­ries, lan­guages, and cur­ren­cies. Your busi­ness growth is only lim­it­ed by your abil­i­ty to scale. The sky’s the lim­it and the bot­tom line is yours.

Shopi­fy Plus:

IDC Mar­ketScape rec­og­nizes Oro­Com­merce, VTEX and Big­Com­merce as lead­ers in B2B Dig­i­tal Com­merce. How­ev­er, after shift­ing its focus to mid­mar­ket and enter­prise com­pa­nies, Shopi­fy came to hold a sig­nif­i­cant posi­tion in the mar­ket, cater­ing to busi­ness­es of all sizes, from star­tups to big enter­pris­es, includ­ing B2B companies. 

Shopi­fy Plus is renowned for its scal­a­bil­i­ty and cus­tomiza­tion, pro­vid­ing an adapt­able ecosys­tem for B2B ven­tures. It offers fea­tures like cus­tom pric­ing, bulk order­ing, and seam­less inte­gra­tions with tools such as Net­Suite and Sales­force. The downside?

Most of these are not native fea­tures. Mer­chants sell­ing in mul­ti­ple cur­ren­cies can set fixed pric­ing for dif­fer­ent mar­kets or use cus­tom round­ing rules, but they can only do this if using Shopi­fy Payments. 

Also, mer­chants on Shopi­fy can only have a sin­gle auto­mat­ic dis­count applied at a time. More­over, Shopi­fy does­n’t sup­port a large vol­ume of API calls per sec­ond. This is a prob­lem because enter­prise brands have a lot of dif­fer­ent sys­tems they rely on (ERP, OMS, PIM, etc.) and keep­ing every­thing cur­rent can have a huge impact on the expe­ri­ence of the end consumer. 

This becomes prob­lem­at­ic for large amounts of data and impacts per­for­mance. Shopi­fy relies heav­i­ly on its app store to fill gaps in its core func­tion­al­i­ty, which can lead to slow­er store per­for­mance as more third-par­ty apps and scripts are added, and it may become hard­er to con­trol and man­age store performance.

Final­ly, Shopi­fy can­not sup­port dif­fer­ent cat­a­logs / store­fronts in a sin­gle instance (MSF) or BOPIS, local deliv­ery, accel­er­at­ed check­outs (buy now pay lat­er or dig­i­tal wallets).

Sync­ing a prod­uct cat­a­log with 25,000 SKUs would take over 2 hours on Shopi­fy Plus (lim­it­ed to 10 calls per sec­ond) com­pared to a minute on Big­Com­merce (400 calls per second).

Read more about Shopi­fy issues

If you want to know more rea­sons why indus­try ana­lysts like Gart­ner and For­rester do not eval­u­ate Shopi­fy for B2B, check out this post:

Read more about how Shopi­fy com­pares to oth­er B2B eCom­merce plat­forms.

B2C Ecom­merce Platforms

B2C (Busi­ness-to-Con­sumer) ecom­merce refers to the process of sell­ing prod­ucts or ser­vices direct­ly to con­sumers online. It dif­fers from B2B (Busi­ness-to-Busi­ness) ecom­merce, which involves trans­ac­tions between busi­ness­es. B2C ecom­merce plat­forms are designed to pro­vide a smooth and effi­cient shop­ping expe­ri­ence, ensur­ing that con­sumers can eas­i­ly browse, select, and pur­chase products.

There are many ecom­merce plat­forms and their suit­abil­i­ty for B2C ecom­merce depends on the spe­cif­ic needs and resources of the busi­ness. Here’s a list of some pop­u­lar ones.

Shopi­fy: Easy to use, ide­al for a wide range of indus­tries. How­ev­er, it can be expen­sive due to trans­ac­tion fees and costs of third-par­ty apps.

WooCom­merce: Offers great cus­tomiza­tion and is inte­grat­ed with Word­Press. The draw­back is the need for self-man­ag­ing host­ing and security.

Big­Com­merce: Known for scal­a­bil­i­ty and built-in fea­tures, but lim­it­ed in theme cus­tomiza­tion and has sales lim­its on plans.

Adobe Com­merce (Magen­to): High­ly cus­tomiz­able and scal­able, but has a steep learn­ing curve and may not be cost-effec­tive for small businesses.

Shopi­fy Plus: Offers advanced fea­tures for large busi­ness­es, but is quite cost­ly and may be exces­sive for small­er operations.

Sales­force Com­merce for B2C: Excel­lent for cus­tomer rela­tion­ship man­age­ment but com­plex to set up and gen­er­al­ly more expen­sive, mak­ing it less suit­able for small to medi­um businesses.

Hybrid Com­merce

There’s B2B, B2C and a blend of both, known as Hybrid Com­merce, or B2B2C.

There’s a third mod­el. B2B2C stands for ​“busi­ness-to-busi­ness-to-con­sumer”. This com­bines both B2B and B2C process­es and strate­gies, offer­ing com­pa­nies more flex­i­bil­i­ty to expand and access new mar­kets, and offer­ing con­sumers more choice and con­ve­nience. An inter­me­di­ary busi­ness facil­i­tates the sale of prod­ucts or ser­vices between the B2B busi­ness and indi­vid­ual con­sumers, like a relay race of sorts, one com­pa­ny pass­ing the baton to anoth­er that takes it to the con­sumer, at the fin­ish line.

Learn about oth­er key eCom­merce terms here

Essen­tial­ly, hybrid com­merce demands an eCom­merce plat­form that is ver­sa­tile, agile, and capa­ble of uni­fy­ing var­i­ous aspects of both dig­i­tal and phys­i­cal retail.

Cus­tomers expect to switch between online and offline chan­nels with­out any fric­tion, so a good Hybrid ecom­merce plat­form must pro­vide the tech­no­log­i­cal back­bone that allows cus­tomers to inter­act with a brand across dif­fer­ent chan­nels while ensur­ing a con­sis­tent, uni­fied shop­ping experience. 

More­over, eCom­merce plat­forms in hybrid com­merce setups must effi­cient­ly han­dle and inte­grate data from diverse sources – from in-store pur­chas­es to online inter­ac­tions. This data inte­gra­tion is key to under­stand­ing cus­tomer behav­ior, per­son­al­iz­ing expe­ri­ences, and mak­ing informed busi­ness decisions.

Hybrid com­merce requires plat­forms that can scale and adapt to the evolv­ing needs of both B2B and B2C process­es. The plat­form should sup­port a business’s growth, whether it’s adding new online chan­nels, expand­ing into new mar­kets, or inte­grat­ing advanced tech­nolo­gies like AR and VR.

The rise of head­less com­merce, where the fron­tend (cus­tomer-fac­ing side) is decou­pled from the back­end (data and pro­cess­ing), is piv­otal in hybrid com­merce. It allows busi­ness­es to cus­tomize cus­tomer expe­ri­ences for each chan­nel while main­tain­ing a uni­fied back­end man­age­ment system.

Here’s a brief out­line of the main ecom­merce plat­forms for hybrid com­merce, their strengths and weaknesses.

Big­Com­merce:

Big­Com­merce is high­ly scal­able and flex­i­ble, cater­ing to both B2B and B2C needs with ease.

It boasts robust inte­gra­tions and API capa­bil­i­ties, facil­i­tat­ing seam­less oper­a­tions across var­i­ous chan­nels. Renowned for its user-friend­ly inter­face, Big­Com­merce allows for exten­sive cus­tomiza­tion, which can only be good for user experience.

Big­Com­merce offers a vari­ety of B2B fea­tures and add-ons you won’t find any­where else. It makes things super easy for hybrid busi­ness­es with B2B and B2C cus­tomers, allow­ing them to offer dif­fer­ent price lists and trans­ac­tion­al options with one uni­fied solution.

Read more about Big­Com­merce here

How­ev­er, the plat­form can become more cost­ly as you add more fea­tures and the selec­tion of free themes is some­what lim­it­ed, poten­tial­ly impact­ing the aes­thet­ic appeal. Nev­er­the­less, Big­Com­merce remains high­ly suit­able for hybrid mod­els. Its abil­i­ty to man­age B2B and B2C oper­a­tions effi­cient­ly makes it an excel­lent choice for busi­ness­es seek­ing a plat­form that is robust and versatile.

Adobe Com­merce (for­mer­ly Magen­to):

Magen­to excels in cus­tomiza­tion and scal­a­bil­i­ty, mak­ing it ide­al for busi­ness­es with spe­cif­ic needs as is the case with B2B2C. It offers robust B2B fea­tures and mul­ti-store capa­bil­i­ties, enhanc­ing its ver­sa­til­i­ty. But it requires seri­ous tech­ni­cal exper­tise for set­up and ongo­ing man­age­ment and the total cost of own­er­ship can be high­er than that of oth­er platforms.

WooCom­merce: 

WooCom­merce is high­ly adapt­able, inte­grat­ing seam­less­ly with Word­Press and par­tic­u­lar­ly cost-effec­tive, mak­ing it a great choice for small to medi­um-sized busi­ness­es. How­ev­er, com­plex­i­ty can increase with the addi­tion of plu­g­ins and extra host­ing and secu­ri­ty mea­sures might be needed.

Sales­force:

Sales­force is ide­al for busi­ness­es requir­ing robust CRM inte­gra­tion in their hybrid com­merce strat­e­gy. It cer­tain­ly excels in cus­tomer data man­age­ment. Advanced ana­lyt­ics and mar­ket­ing tools are avail­able, enhanc­ing cus­tomer insights and engage­ment. The prob­lem is the very steep learn­ing curve and the fact that it’s almost invari­ably more expen­sive than its competitors.

Shopi­fy: 

Shopi­fy is known for its user-friend­ly inter­face, mak­ing it acces­si­ble to a wide range of users.

A wide range of apps and themes are avail­able, enhanc­ing its appeal. But it’s not real­ly that suit­able for com­plex B2B needs yet.

Shopi­fy offers the option to use a Blend­ed Store­front for B2B& B2C on a sin­gle instance, but it can­not dif­fer­en­ti­ate between a B2B cus­tomer and a B2C cus­tomer, which means dis­count codes, gift cards, cart noti­fi­ca­tions, ship­ping set­tings & rates apply to both B2B& B2C cus­tomers. They all have the same exact shop­ping experience. 

Read more about poten­tial issues with Shopi­fy here

Also, trans­ac­tion fees can sure­ly accu­mu­late over time, mak­ing Shopi­fy much more suit­able for straight­for­ward B2C or small-scale B2B operations.

Hybrid Com­merce (dis­am­bigua­tion)

That’s the prob­lem with buzz­words. They buzz. There’s anoth­er type of Hybrid Com­merce, which refers to the inte­gra­tion of dig­i­tal and phys­i­cal retail chan­nels to cre­ate a cohe­sive and immer­sive shop­ping expe­ri­ence. Hybrid com­merce is the com­bi­na­tion of online and offline (what we used to call IRL) shopping.

Busi­ness­es embrac­ing Hybrid Com­merce can ben­e­fit from enhanced cus­tomer rela­tion­ships, scal­ing agili­ty, and expand­ing their cus­tomer base because sim­ply put, more is more. And cus­tomers find online com­merce more con­ve­nient, and in-store inter­ac­tions more per­son­al­ized, so it’s also a win-win for them.

Of course, that con­ve­nience requires great effort and coor­di­na­tion behind the scenes. While Hybrid Com­merce presents numer­ous advan­tages, busi­ness­es should con­sid­er poten­tial chal­lenges such as high­er work­loads and respon­si­bil­i­ties asso­ci­at­ed with stor­age or taxes.

Some exam­ples

Omnichan­nel Retail:

Retail­ers offer­ing a con­sis­tent expe­ri­ence across their web­site, mobile app, and brick-and-mor­tar stores.

The Latin pre­fix ​“omni” means ​“every­thing,” and Omnichan­nel refers to a sales strat­e­gy that allows con­sumers to inter­act with a brand across mul­ti­ple chan­nels: web­site, social media, email, phys­i­cal stores and more. The super­pow­er of Omnichan­nel is that it allows chan­nels to talk to each oth­er. That is, a cus­tomer can start shop­ping online and fin­ish in a phys­i­cal store or research a prod­uct on the phone and then buy it from the com­put­er – all while main­tain­ing the same shop­ping cart and cus­tomer experience. 

eCom­merce glos­sary of key terms

Click-and-Col­lect Services:

Cus­tomers click to order online and then pick up their pur­chas­es at a phys­i­cal loca­tion. Click-and-Col­lect, also known as BOPIS (Buy Online, Pick-up In Store), merges the con­ve­nience of online shop­ping with the imme­di­a­cy of phys­i­cal retail. It not only reduces ship­ping costs and wait times for cus­tomers but also dri­ves addi­tion­al foot traf­fic to stores. Busi­ness­es can lever­age this ser­vice to upsell or cross-sell prod­ucts dur­ing pick­up, enhanc­ing cus­tomer expe­ri­ence and increas­ing sales.

In-Store Tech­nol­o­gy: Mod­ern phys­i­cal stores are increas­ing­ly adopt­ing dig­i­tal tools like AR fit­ting rooms, QR codes for prod­uct infor­ma­tion, mobile check­out, and inter­ac­tive kiosks. These tech­nolo­gies not only ele­vate cus­tomer expe­ri­ence but also pro­vide valu­able data on cus­tomer pref­er­ences and behav­ior, which can be used for per­son­al­ized mar­ket­ing and inven­to­ry management

Social Com­merce:

Anoth­er exam­ple of Hybrid com­merce is the com­bi­na­tion of social media brows­ing with instant pur­chas­ing options. Social Com­merce is a rapid­ly grow­ing facet of hybrid com­merce. Plat­forms like Insta­gram and Face­book allow users to pur­chase prod­ucts direct­ly through their apps, mak­ing the shop­ping expe­ri­ence incred­i­bly seam­less. This inte­gra­tion of social media and e‑commerce cap­i­tal­izes on the user’s social expe­ri­ence, tap­ping into impulse buys and peer recommendations.

What does this have to do with ecom­merce platforms?

Well, some are bet­ter at omnichan­nel, mul­ti­chan­nel, BOPIS and social com­merce than others.

For exam­ple, Shopi­fy offers seam­less inte­gra­tion with Face­book, Insta­gram, and oth­er social net­works, enabling busi­ness­es to sell direct­ly through these chan­nels. Big­Com­merce also sup­ports strong social media inte­gra­tions, allow­ing for direct sales and mar­ket­ing on plat­forms where cus­tomers spend a sig­nif­i­cant amount of time. These plat­forms make it eas­i­er to lever­age social media for dri­ving sales, engag­ing with cus­tomers, and pro­vid­ing a uni­fied shop­ping expe­ri­ence across var­i­ous social channels.

Big­Com­merce, Shopi­fy Plus and Adobe Com­merce are good for omnichan­nel due to their robust inte­gra­tions and scal­a­bil­i­ty. These plat­forms pro­vide advanced ana­lyt­ics, inte­gra­tions with var­i­ous mar­ket­places and social media plat­forms, and effi­cient inven­to­ry man­age­ment, cru­cial for a suc­cess­ful omnichan­nel approach.

Head­less Commerce

We know. It sounds bad, but it’s a good thing. 

Head­less com­merce is a mod­ern eCom­merce archi­tec­ture that sep­a­rates the front-end (cus­tomer-fac­ing aspect) from the back-end (prod­uct, order man­age­ment, and oth­er processes).

Unlike tra­di­tion­al eCom­merce sys­tems, which are mono­lith­ic, inte­grat­ing all process­es in one frame­work, Head­less pro­vides more flex­i­bil­i­ty, allow­ing inte­gra­tion of new tech­nolo­gies and chan­nels with­out over­haul­ing the entire system. 

By decou­pling front-end and back-end sys­tems, head­less com­merce allows busi­ness­es to swift­ly inte­grate new tech­nolo­gies and chan­nels, as changes in one sys­tem don’t affect the oth­er. This sep­a­ra­tion fos­ters inno­va­tion and quick adap­ta­tion to mar­ket trends. Real­ly great for scal­a­bil­i­ty and agili­ty. What brings every­thing — all those lit­tle heads- togeth­er? APIs.

While par­tic­u­lar­ly ben­e­fi­cial for B2B, Enter­prise, larg­er or rapid­ly evolv­ing busi­ness­es, head­less com­merce may be exces­sive for small­er com­pa­nies with less com­plex require­ments since the tran­si­tion to and imple­men­ta­tion of head­less requires care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion of exist­ing sys­tems, tech­ni­cal exper­tise, and finan­cial planning. 

Lead­ing Ecom­merce Platforms

If you asked ​“What is the best eCom­merce plat­form?” we’d have to say ​“It depends”. Most­ly on you, what you need, and what you can do about it. That is, the spe­cif­ic needs of your com­pa­ny and the resources avail­able to you. 

What we can tell you is which are some of the lead­ing eCom­merce plat­forms, and which are the best plat­forms for spe­cif­ic needs and com­pa­ny types.

Largest Ecom­merce Platforms

It is a well-known fact that big­ger does not nec­es­sar­i­ly mean bet­ter, but in the realm of ecom­merce plat­forms, size often equates to exten­sive resources and capabilities,although some­times big things can get too com­plex too soon. Any­way, here are the big play­ers in the world of ecom­merce platforms.

Known for its head­less com­merce archi­tec­ture, Com­merce­tools is ide­al for enter­pris­es need­ing a flex­i­ble, API-dri­ven approach. This plat­form is best suit­ed for large-scale oper­a­tions requir­ing cus­tomized user expe­ri­ences. How­ev­er, it may not be the best fit for small­er busi­ness­es due to its com­plex­i­ty and cost.

Adobe Com­merce offers robust, cus­tomiz­able eCom­merce solu­tions, ide­al for busi­ness­es look­ing for exten­sive cus­tomiza­tion and con­trol. While it excels in scal­a­bil­i­ty and fea­tures, it requires a steep learn­ing curve and sig­nif­i­cant devel­op­ment resources.

Sales­force Com­merce Cloud is known for its CRM inte­gra­tion and strong focus on cus­tomer expe­ri­ence. It’s a great choice for enter­pris­es with a focus on cus­tomer data and per­son­al­ized shop­ping expe­ri­ences. The main draw­back is its cost, which may be pro­hib­i­tive for small­er businesses.

Ora­cle Com­merce is anoth­er big one, offer­ing com­pre­hen­sive solu­tions for large busi­ness­es. They pro­vide exten­sive fea­tures but often come with high costs and complexity.

The sig­nif­i­cant advan­tage of being a large plat­form is the abil­i­ty to offer a wide range of advanced fea­tures and inte­gra­tions, cater­ing to com­plex busi­ness needs. On the flip side, the poten­tial down­side is that these plat­forms can be over­whelm­ing or too much to han­dle, and finan­cial­ly out of reach for small­er busi­ness­es or startups.

Most Pop­u­lar Ecom­merce Platforms

Pop­u­lar­i­ty in eCom­merce plat­forms often cor­re­lates with ease of use and ver­sa­til­i­ty. Here are some of the most pop­u­lar eCom­merce plat­forms. You can also check user reviews on com­par­i­son sites like Capter­ra or G2, with authen­tic feed­back from ver­i­fied users, includ­ing insights on pric­ing, fea­tures, and user experience. 

As a Word­Press plu­g­in, WooCom­merce offers exten­sive cus­tomiza­tion and is pop­u­lar among Word­Press users. Ide­al for full con­trol over the online store but requires a good under­stand­ing of Word­Press and might strug­gle with high-traf­fic websites.

Shopi­fy is renowned for its ease of use and robust fea­ture set, per­fect for small to medi­um busi­ness­es. While it offers great tem­plates and inte­gra­tions, it can be lim­it­ing for high­ly com­plex customizations. 

Plat­forms like Wix or Square­space are also gain­ing trac­tion for their user-friend­ly inter­faces and sim­plic­i­ty, suit­able for small­er busi­ness­es or indi­vid­u­als who pri­or­i­tize ease of set­up over exten­sive customization.

Big­Com­merce is anoth­er pop­u­lar choice, known for its scal­a­bil­i­ty and com­pre­hen­sive built-in fea­tures. It’s suit­able for a range of busi­ness sizes, and par­tic­u­lar­ly for ​“fast-grow­ing, expe­ri­ence-dri­ven mid­mar­ket com­pa­nies look­ing for a mul­ti ten­ant SaaS B2B dig­i­tal com­merce plat­form”, accord­ing to the 2023IDC Mar­ketScape report, which rec­og­nized Big­Com­merce as a Leader for its devel­op­er and busi­ness user-friend­li­ness, flex­i­ble MACH archi­tec­ture, and open SaaS ecosystem. 

Ecom­merce Plat­forms for Small Businesses

When you’re small, almost any­thing can make you or break you. eCom­merce plat­forms are cru­cial for small busi­ness­es to thrive in the dig­i­tal mar­ket­place. Select­ing the right plat­form depends on sev­er­al fac­tors includ­ing cost, ease of use, fea­tures, and scal­a­bil­i­ty. Here is a brief overview of some pop­u­lar choices:

WooCom­merce, suit­able for those famil­iar with Word­Press, is cost-effec­tive with a mod­er­ate learn­ing curve. It boasts exten­sive cus­tomiza­tion options and a wide array of plu­g­ins, though some may add to the over­all cost.

Shopify’s all-in-one solu­tion is known for its ease of use and com­pre­hen­sive fea­tures, as well as quick time to mar­ket. It offers a range of pric­ing options, mak­ing it suit­able for dif­fer­ent bud­get sizes. Shopi­fy’s user-friend­ly inter­face and vast array of design themes make it ide­al for busi­ness­es with lit­tle tech­ni­cal expertise.

PrestaShop is known for its pow­er­ful fea­tures, it’s a good choice for busi­ness­es look­ing to scale. How­ev­er, it might not be as cost-effec­tive as it seems due to addi­tion­al costs for plu­g­ins and themes.

Wix offers an intu­itive drag-and-drop inter­face, mak­ing it easy for begin­ners to design their web­sites. It’s suit­able for small-scale busi­ness­es due to its sim­plic­i­ty and affordability.

When select­ing a plat­form, con­sid­er not only the imme­di­ate needs but also the poten­tial for future growth. Small is beau­ti­ful. Noth­ing wrong with that. But per­haps your small busi­ness is suc­cess­ful and grows, and that‘s when you’ll think if choos­ing an e‑commerce plat­form that only works for small busi­ness­es was such a great idea. If you run a small busi­ness the best ecom­merce plat­form for you is one that will let you oper­ate on your resources now, but will be able to grow as your busi­ness does. Scalability’s the word.

Spe­cial­ized Ecom­merce Platforms

Spe­cial­ized E‑commerce plat­forms cater to unique busi­ness needs and indus­tries. Here are some examples:

Plat­forms like Gum­road are specif­i­cal­ly designed for dig­i­tal prod­ucts. Gum­road sim­pli­fies the sell­ing process of dig­i­tal goods like e‑books, music, and soft­ware. It offers stream­lined pay­ment pro­cess­ing and file dis­tri­b­u­tion, mak­ing it a go-to choice for cre­ators and dig­i­tal entrepreneurs.

Social E‑commerce plat­forms allow busi­ness­es to lever­age their social net­work pres­ence for sales. They pro­vide tools for sell­ing direct­ly through social media plat­forms, enhanc­ing cus­tomer engage­ment and sim­pli­fy­ing the pur­chase process. Insta­gram inte­grates prod­uct dis­cov­ery and pur­chas­ing direct­ly with­in the plat­form where­as rapid­ly grow­ing Tik­Tok for Busi­ness uses its engag­ing for­mat to offer prod­uct pro­mo­tion and direct sales

Depend­ing on the indus­try, there are oth­er plat­forms tai­lored to spe­cif­ic needs like sub­scrip­tion ser­vices, event tick­et­ing, or niche prod­uct sales. These plat­forms offer unique fea­tures like recur­ring billing, event man­age­ment, spe­cial­ized prod­uct cat­a­logs, and indus­try-spe­cif­ic mar­ket­ing tools to cater to their spe­cif­ic mar­ket segment.

If you oper­ate on a spe­cif­ic and pop­u­lar ver­ti­cal with unique needs, chances are there’s a spe­cial­ized plat­form wait­ing for you.

Com­par­ing Ecom­merce Platforms

There are sev­er­al aspects to con­sid­er when choos­ing an ecom­merce plat­form that will not make you hate ecom­merce plat­forms and the key, as if often the case with dif­fi­cult choic­es, is to know what to com­pare. We have cov­ered most of those aspects here. And you can also check our series where we com­pare Big­Com­merce against oth­er pop­u­lar plat­forms such as PrestaShop and Shopi­fy Plus.

There are sev­er­al fac­tors that usu­al­ly dri­ve mer­chants to change ecom­merce plat­forms and those are the key things to look for and compare.

In a nut­shell, they can relate to three things — poor per­for­mance, poor scal­a­bil­i­ty, or poor you (high or unpre­dictable costs) — and com­bi­na­tions thereof. 

Read more about good rea­sons to replat­form here

• Key Per­for­mance Issues:

Issues such as poor cus­tomer expe­ri­ence, inef­fi­cient process­es, dif­fi­cul­ties in han­dling increased traf­fic, slow page load times, out­dat­ed web expe­ri­ences, fre­quent down­time, and increased secu­ri­ty threats are major per­for­mance red flags.

• Key Scal­a­bil­i­ty Issues:

The inabil­i­ty of a plat­form to evolve with chang­ing cus­tomer needs, such as lack­ing omnichan­nel sell­ing options or cus­tomiza­tion flex­i­bil­i­ty, restricts a busi­ness’s growth. When the cur­rent plat­form can­not sup­port the com­pa­ny’s expan­sion or becomes a road­block rather than a facil­i­ta­tor, it sig­nals the need for a more scal­able solution.

• Key Cost Issues:

Lega­cy plat­forms often entail high­er oper­a­tional costs, includ­ing main­te­nance, ded­i­cat­ed devel­op­ment resources, and the slow pace of devel­op­ing new fea­tures or updates. And then there’s the unfore­see­able: hid­den costs asso­ci­at­ed with ​“free” plat­forms, such as main­te­nance costs, expen­sive plu­g­ins, and high-cost cus­tom devel­op­ment solu­tions. When the cur­rent plat­form caus­es sig­nif­i­cant finan­cial bur­den or resource allo­ca­tion chal­lenges, affect­ing the abil­i­ty to inno­vate and devel­op new fea­tures time­ly, it’s worth con­sid­er­ing alter­na­tive, more cost-effec­tive platforms.

Choos­ing the Right Ecom­merce Plat­form and why bigcommerce

In this sec­tion, we should give you some tips and advice on how to choose the right ecom­merce plat­form. We sure­ly don’t believe there’s such a thing as a one size fits all when talk­ing about ecom­merce plat­forms, so the best ecom­merce plat­form will be the one that best fits your spe­cif­ic busi­ness needs and resources. That doesn’t mean we think that all plat­forms are equal. 

We have been Big­Com­merce part­ners since 2011, and that’s because we think it is the best plat­form for B2B and hybrid mid­mar­ket com­pa­nies, which is the audi­ence we most­ly serve, and a very wor­thy choice for small­er busi­ness­es that want to go big at some point.

Learn why we con­sid­er Big­Com­merce the best eCom­merce plat­form for B2B. Or sched­ule a call to get a demo and see for yourself.

P.S.: We did men­tion replat­form­ing was a major pain. But don’t wor­ry. If you pick a plat­form, and it doesn’t go well, we can help you migrate, with­out the migraine. No need to gnaw off your arm. Check out RevAmp, our vir­tu­al­ly pain­less, 90-day eCom­merce migra­tion service.