Storefront Software & E-Commerce Solutions - Essay Example

Storefront Software & Ecommerce Solutions INTRODUCTION E-commerce is quickly gaining basis for conventional and modern business paradigms. Thus, more and more organizations are implementing websites and delivering functionality for conducting commercial transactions through online platform. It is reasonable to affirm that the process of shopping in the online media is becoming commonplace for people. Selling products through websites can assist an organization to reach new markets and enhance sales along with revenue. The first phase of developing e-commerce solution for an organization is to develop a website. There are several websites which allow organizations to develop line stores. Based on this aspect, the document intends to describe three such websites. The key objective is to analyze the packages and features offered by the websites and to make conclusion accordingly. ANALYSIS OF SHOPIFY Shopify is an e-commerce platform which provides the opportunity to sell products or services through websites. It delivers professional e-commerce storefront, along with payment solution, and ‘point-of-sale’ (POS) software in order to accelerate the sales of product. FEATURES OF SHOPIFY Attractive Storefronts. Shopify hosts a range of finest as well as free e-commerce website designs. The themes developed by Shopify are developed by famous website designers and are quite attractive. The website designs provided by Shopify arrive with individual settings and allow the users to rapidly customize the design. The users possess complete control on the theme and the used e-commerce applications are quite interactive and simple to learn. Operation of Storefront. Shofipy facilitates in proper operations of storefront. The storefront application of Shofipy is quite simple to add different products, to accept orders from customers and to sell online. It also generates reports on sales and therefore allows easy monitoring along with evaluation of the product sales, orders and payments among others. Furthermore, it will also help to evaluate as to which particular products have high sales and therefore can enable to obtain better understanding of demand. Shopify also provides advanced features by rendering the opportunity to select the type of information for reporting (Shopify Inc, “Shopify Ecommerce Feature List”). Shopping Cart. Shopify provides secured shopping cart facilities. The shopping cart accepts Visa, American Express and Master Card and there are no additional charges for shopping. Shopify websites also allow for direct payment of products purchased. It permits the organizations to incorporate the business with several payment systems so that customers can purchase from any part of the world (Shopify Inc, “Shopify Ecommerce Feature List”). Unlimited Hosting. Shopify uses Content Delivery Network (CDN) which is recognized to materialize through huge servers positioned in the world to make sure that customers can open the website rapidly from any place. The CDN of Shopify is operated by trustworthy organizations, making it quite fast to load in the computer system. Besides, Shopify also allows creating and registering preferred domain name along with unlimited e-mail facilities (Shopify Inc, “Shopify Ecommerce Feature List”). Marketing. The other key feature of Shopify is ‘Search Engine Optimization’ which can help the customers to find the online store on the internet. Shopify also produces sitemaps so that any new products and changes in websites are indexed and demonstrated in search engines. In order to market the product, Shopify also provides tools such as coupons, discount programs and custom gift cards facilities. Apart from this, Shopify storefronts also comprise social network integration and targeted e-mail marketing which assist in promoting the products to large customers (Shopify Inc, “Shopify Ecommerce Feature List”). Support. Shopify also provides support to the customers by its knowledge base that covers key frequently asked questions (FAQs) and responses. It also has manual and online support in order to make users learn regarding different features of Shopify storefront. Mobile Commerce. Shopify storefront also comprises a free inbuilt mobile commerce facility. Thus, customers can purchase the products from the store from any place. Mobile commerce also provides information on sales figures, the number of visitors and customer information. Besides, Shopify also renders attractive mobile themes in order to enhance mobile commerce shopping experience (Shopify Inc, “Shopify Ecommerce Feature List”). PACKAGES OF SHOPIFY Shopify offers three packagers for customers such as basic, professional and unlimited. Among the three packages, the most popular are professional with unlimited products and 5GB storage capacity. The following figure demonstrates the packages of Shopify. Source: (Shopify Inc, “Pricing”) ANALYSIS OF VOLUSION Volusion provides e-commerce solution to several organizations irrespective of their size. It provides unique programs and software for online storefront. FEATURES OF VOLUSION Storefront Creator. Volusion provides various high quality design storefronts. The users can customize these designs according to their unique requirements. The storefront creator also creates comprehensive product catalogue with graphics and videos. Besides, the ground-breaking tools of Volusion accurately monitor the stock level and also give signals when the level is quite low. The storefront also has inbuilt marketing, social media and SEO facilities which help to promote the products and to attract more customers towards the store. The storefront accepts every popular credit card along with other useful payment options such as PayPal (Volusion, Inc, “What We Offer”). Website Design. Volusion provides fabulous design where users can obtain facilities of clean webpages to one-page checkout, thereby providing great shopping experience. It also renders mobile commerce facilities in order to assist customers to shop from anywhere. The websites are compatible with any smartphones and tablets. Operation and Management. Volusion has strong stock management tool which allow adding complete product catalogue with infinite photos and videos. The strong application-programming interface (API) of Volusion and the inbuilt ability help to link favorite services for shipping and marketing (Volusion, Inc, “What We Offer”). Marketing. Volusion has advanced SEO which assists in getting higher ranking in search engines. In order to attract the customers, Volusion also provides inbuilt marketing tools such as regular deals and product comparisons. The other unique feature of Volusion is Facebook store which lists products directly in Facebook and provides promotion (Volusion, Inc, “What We Offer”). Order Management. Volusion also offers advanced order processing features, allowing users to rapidly observe and approve the orders given by customers. The order management tool also minimizes the hassle of complex procedure such as recurring payments and returns (Volusion, Inc, “What We Offer”). Secure Hosting. Volusion has secure data center which optimistically maintains the security of information. Furthermore, the hosting facilities are designed to grow according to the requirements of business. The architecture of Volusion assists in dealing with increasing traffic requirements of websites (Volusion, Inc, “What We Offer”). PACKAGE OF VOLUSION Volusion provides five packages for customers namely mini, plus, pro and premium and among them, the most popular package is pro. It costs about US$75 per month and allows selling of about 10,000 products with 10GB bandwidth (Volusion, Inc, “Pricing”). The following figure demonstrates the packages provided by Volusion. Source: (Volusion, Inc, “Pricing”) ANALYSIS OF BIGCOMMERCE Bigcommerce is a popular e-commerce platform which assists various organizations to sell products’ online. It possesses exclusive and all-in-one marketing platform along with rendering strong SEO and easy-to-use tools for developing an attractive storefront. FEATURES OF BIGCOMMERCE Creation of Storefront. Bigcommerce provides elegant themes and therefore helps to create unique website which can attract the customers. It also provides features of adding products with high-resolution graphics, videos and texts. It also allows customers to arrange the products for easy exploration (Bigcommerce Pty. Ltd, “Fully Loaded with Killer Features”). Designing of Storefronts. Bigcommerce provides extensive opportunities for creativity in order to impress the customers. Bigcommerce tenders features of creating logo and displaying the products with fabulous images (Bigcommerce Pty. Ltd, “Fully Loaded with Killer Features”). Configuration of Products. The configurable feature of Bigcommerce provides considerable degree of flexibility in product offerings. Using Bigcommerce feature, the users can also be able to create unlimited product options such as size and color (Bigcommerce Pty. Ltd, “Fully Loaded with Killer Features”). Management of Storefront. The strong control panel instrument of Bigcommerce makes the regular business activities simpler and quicker. Through this instrument, the users are able to monitor the shipping and pending orders of customers. Besides, customers can also obtain complete control on stock management with features such as viewing inventory at a glance and low stock level among others (Bigcommerce Pty. Ltd, “Fully Loaded with Killer Features”). SEO. Bigcommerce comprises innovative SEO tools in order to rank the search engines for better results. The automatically generated sitemaps also provide complete control on the webpages. Additionally, the CDN of Bigcommerce intensely minimize the loading time of the website by distributing files to the servers situated all over the world (Bigcommerce Pty. Ltd, “Fully Loaded with Killer Features”). Marketing. Bigcommerce has several integral marketing tools such as promotional tools, e-mail marketing, social media marketing along with multi-channel marketing. The promotional tools of Bigcommerce comprise promotional campaigns, gifts, discounts and minimum quantity purchasing among others. Concerning social media marketing, Bigcommerce provides the features of selling products on Facebook and establishing follower base. Then again, Bigcommerce also helps businesses to integrate with eBay in order to increase the number of customers (Bigcommerce Pty. Ltd, “Fully Loaded with Killer Features”). Secure Hosting. Bigcommerce provides organizational level hosting facilities. Moreover, it has strong security tools which help to protect vital information of business and customers. The data center employs hacker detection security provisioning and firewalls. The security system of Bigcommerce is reviewed against industrial standards within three months interval. Bigcommerce automatically updates new features so that the organizations concentrate completely on selling. Bigcommerce can also facilitate to manage massive and consistent traffic which is also helpful in business growth (Bigcommerce Pty. Ltd, “Fully Loaded with Killer Features”). Analytics. Bigcommerce has inbuilt analytics tools which provides an insight regarding the business. For instance, the key features of analytical tools comprise viewing of unique visitors, top customers, bestselling products conversion rate and revenue among others. Additionally, Bigcommerce is also integrated with Google analytics which also helps to optimize the website (Bigcommerce Pty. Ltd, “Fully Loaded with Killer Features”). Application. Bigcommerce provides considerable business applications for users. Besides, Bigcommerce does not levy any additional fee for features such as SEO, marketing and promotional tools (Bigcommerce Pty. Ltd, “Fully Loaded with Killer Features”). Professional Support. Bigcommerce offers every kind of support required in order to achieve success of storefront. Bigcommerce has a dedicated team of specialists who assist in launching the storefront, promoting the website and increasing the sales. The support is available through phone, e-mail and chat. Furthermore, the community forum of Bigcommerce assists in sharing ideas and pursuing advice (Bigcommerce Pty. Ltd, “Fully Loaded with Killer Features”). PACKAGE OF BIGCOMMERCE Bigcommerce provides five packages for the customers namely bronze, silver, gold, platinum and diamond. Among the five packages, the most popular package is gold. This package costs about US$69.95 per month and allows for selling up to 1000 unique products with 5GB storage space (Bigcommerce Pty. Ltd, “Pricing”). The following figure demonstrates the features of different packages provided by Bigcommerce. Source: (Bigcommerce Pty. Ltd, “Pricing”) COMPARISON AND CONTRAST Shopify, Volusion and Bigcommerce are regarded as among the popular e-commerce platforms which support in establishing online business. However, every e-commerce platform has certain advantages and disadvantages, hence in order to select the proper e-commerce storefront, these aspects must be considered. ADVANTAGES & DISADVANTAGES OF SHOPIFY Advantages. As an e-commerce solution, setting up online storefront through Shopify is quite simple. Every technological specific of self-managed solutions such as creation of host, installation of applications and management of scaling are handled by Shopify so that users can completely concentrate on business. Developing website by using Shopify does not necessitate expert knowledge about computer and any beginner can launch website as well as customize it individually. Shopify also provides all time support in order to deal with the queries of customers. Besides, Shopify provides a variety of inbuilt marketing tools. Disadvantages. The packages of Shopify are quite expensive. The packages of Shopify start with US$29 per month which is quite higher than other two e-commerce websites. It also takes additional fees for basic and professional packages and thus for low margin organizations, it can minimize the profits easily. On the other hand, irrespective of great customization, developing individual plugins and extensions are quite complicated. Furthermore, the movement of online store in Shopify is quite challenging due to the reason that stopping Shopify services can result in permanent deletion of important information. ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF VOLUSION Advantages. The key advantage of Volusion is that it comprises extensive collection of storefront themes which represent latest website design trends and industrial standards. Volusion provides multiple marketing features such as SEO, regular shopping deals and selling products through social network among others. Similar to Shopify, Volusion also takes care of every technical detail for website creation so that users can concentrate completely on sales. Furthermore, the package of Volusion starts with US$15 per month which is quite inexpensive for any business to start online storefront. Disadvantages. The servers of Volusion are quite disreputable for going down occasionally which can have a negative impact on the business. With respect to customer support, at times Volusion is unable to deal with highly technical queries of customers. ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF BIGCOMMERCE Advantages. The major advantage of Bigcommerce is that the organization has strong SEO. Furthermore, Bigcommerce also has profound integration with several marketing services. The other strong advantage of Bigcommerce is its simplicity where users can start the website with low experience in website designing. Disadvantages. Bigcommerce lacks in terms of offering receptive layouts and flat designs in its website templates. Moreover, in comparison with Shopify and Volusion, Bigcommerce’s inbuilt applications are quite limited, thus the business might be required to depend on third party software. Bigcommerce is designed for simple setup and due to this reason, complicated features are quite difficult to found. As a result, it becomes challenging for users to obtain extreme customization of e-commerce website. CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS When selecting the best online shopping storefront, it is quite vital to observe as to which e-commerce platform suits the requirements. Every e-commerce platform has its benefits and drawbacks and thus there is a requirement to select according to business characteristics. For example, small organizations which desire simple and easy solution for e-commerce must use Shopify. On the other hand, medium organizations which desire to leverage third party applications in e-commerce must go for Volusion. Then again, small organizations whose major priority is simplicity should use Bigcommerce in order to develop website. However, since the concerned business intends to sell one product online, it is recommended that Volusion should be selected as it provides inexpensive package with simple tools for development of the website. In this context, it can be stated that the other two e-commerce websites are less suitable as the packages are comparatively expensive which can cut off the profit. Works Cited “Fully Loaded with Killer Features.” Bigcommerce Pty. Ltd. 2014. Web. 18 Jan. 2014. “Pricing.” Bigcommerce Pty. Ltd. 2014. Web. 18 Jan. 2014. “What We Offer.” Volusion, Inc. 2014. Web. 18 Jan. 2014. “Pricing.” Volusion, Inc. 2014. Web. 18 Jan. 2014. “Shopify Ecommerce Feature List.” Shopify Inc. 2014. Web. 18 Jan. 2014. “Pricing.” Shopify Inc. 2014. 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