If you're planning to launch a startup business, you're probably experiencing an adrenaline rush of excitement, stress and expectation. After all, the initial step that you should take before and after launch of your startup business is critical to your long-term success. Starting a business always involves lots of decision and to make the best decision you need to be very informative.
One of the most important decisions that you should make is also one of the hardest which is how to build your website. Literally, in the market, there are plenty of ecommerce website builders, so choosing the best among them is a tough task. If your startup is going to sell products online, you can use a readymade ecommerce platform.
Most of the readymade ecommerce platform has features which will help you to run your business successfully. It is incredibly time consuming to research and compare each platform by yourself – primarily when you’re trying to launch a startup. The best ecommerce platform for startup can be chosen based on the below-mentioned criteria.
The Major Difference Between The Single Vendor and Multi-Vendor Ecommerce Business
Both Single vendor and Multi-Vendor ecommerce platform have their unique features as discussed below.
- I've heard about this ecommerce platform before.
- This is one of the most popular platforms.
- This shopping cart platform is easy to setup
- Online stores on this platform look very nice.
You got the ideas. But unfortunately, none of these are the reason to choose the ecommerce platform. They don’t judge the platform and its benefits.
The best ecommerce platform is defined by its features. At the initial stage, most entrepreneurs are simply looking for a basic ecommerce platform, which includes an easy setup and an attractive theme as it's possible to change the ecommerce platform later.
Now, let's have a look at the necessary features that makes the ecommerce platform highly beneficial for startups.
Ecommerce Shopping Cart Theme and Templates
As a small business owner, you don't prefer to spend money on web design, so you need an easy way to create a fully functional, well-designed website without developing it from scratch.
Ecommerce shopping cart theme & templates are readymade store design that can be applied to your website. Most of the ecommerce platform has a theme store that includes both free and paid themes.
You need to choose ecommerce themes based on how they look, how well they work and how easy it is to customize as per your business requirement. Basically, look for these elements when choosing the ecommerce theme:
- Responsive Design
- Simplified User Experience
- Easy Customizable
- SEO Friendly
- A variety of attractive theme
- Conversion Focused
List of Must Have Ecommerce Platform Features
Now it's time to discuss the ideal ecommerce toolbox. These are all the features that you should look before evaluating any ecommerce platform to run your startup business. Some of the features that will help you get a customer with a better online shopping experience. Other features are the tools for running and maintaining the various aspect of your ecommerce website.
Marketing Features:
Marketing doesn't mean Paid Advertising. It is a complex field that uses a wide variety of techniques to attract the target audience to your online store. The right marketing tool will encourage the shoppers to keep coming back to your ecommerce website.
Easy SEO Tools
SEO is a set of technique for improving your ecommerce website’s rank on Google, Bing, Yahoo and other search engines.
Optimize your ecommerce website by adding the following tags:
- Page Title Tag
- Meta Description Tag
- Heading Tag
- Schema.org
- ALT Tag
- Page URLs
- 301 Redirect
- Canonical URL
- XML Sitemap
- Robots.txt
Inbuilt Blog
Content marketing is one of the most powerful marketing tools and also it is great for SEO. The best way to regularly add content to your ecommerce website is through a blog.
Cart Abandonment Prevention
Cart abandonment is defined as when a customer adds their products to their cart and then leaves the website without completing the final transaction.
Email Marketing Campaigns
Email marketing is one of the best marketing tools to increase customer engagement, particularly when your email is relevant and interesting rather than promotional. Your ecommerce platform should have inbuilt email functionality for setting up campaigns which are used to send across a different section of your customer database.
Upselling and Cross-Selling Features
Upselling is to convince a customer to buy a highly priced product than the one they've selected. Cross Selling is to convince a customer to add related item and accessories to their cart. Both of these techniques are the most effective ways to increase your AOV (Average Order Value).
Shipping Features
After all, with the ecommerce platform you only sell products online, shipping is the only way customers will receive their orders at their doorstep. This means, if the shipping process is poor, it leads to a huge weakness of your online store. A great shipment gateway consists of the following features.
- Integration with Multiple Shipping Carriers
- Real-Time Shipping Rate Calculations
- Shipping Label Printing
- Support for Free, Flat-Rate, and Custom Shipping Methods
- Easy Markups for Extra Handling Costs
Inventory and Product Management Features
The way your ecommerce platform handles inventory has a huge effect on every part of your business. Ideally, your ecommerce platform should have all the tools need to manage your products and display the same on the storefront.
- Product Pages
- Product Options and/or Variants
- Unlimited Categories
- Inventory Control
- Stock Alerts
- Product Identifiers
- Bulk Order Support and Pricing Levels
- Release Dates and Preorders
Does Purchase Commerce Really Have All These Features I Need as a Startup?
Every ecommerce platform is unique in its own way. If you choose Purchase Commerce as your ecommerce platform, you'll have access to the complete set of tools and features. You'll be running your online store easily from initial setup onwards so that you can focus on the core value of your business.
Purchase Commerce also maintain a 24/7/365 technical support so that startup business owners can get help at any time. A free demo also available to try the software without any commitments.