E-Commerce is booming every day. The fact that 3% of internet users worldwide have made an online purchase counting to 1 billion approx. in 2016 proves the increasing popularity of e-commerce industry. As such, an increasing number of businesses are moving into the online retail space to reach a wider audience. This also help them unkey the potential to maximize their profits.

To ensure your e-commerce business grows efficiently, it is mandatory to have a website that attracts buyers in large numbers. And to develop such a website, you might find the right platform for it.

While there are several good E-commerce development platforms available out there, each with its own pros and cons, today we have discussed top four e-commerce platform that online businesses can choose from.

Check out how these differ from each other, their specialties, advantages and disadvantages.

PrestaShop

A free solution that allows you to build your E-store either on the PrestaShop Cloud or through download to set-up on your own hosting. Those who are fond of playing around with the source code, they will have to use the self-hosted version.
All it takes is to sign up for a free PrestaShop store, which is quite easy, particularly if you use their Cloud. It gives you a greater control over your store, which include ensuring your own backups, much more.

Admin Panel Prestashop

The moment you fill up the simple sign-up form, the Prestashop is all yours. Within minutes, you’ll have an amazing looking e-store setup. It is always easier to alter an existing store rather than design and make a store yourself. The best part of Prestashop ecosystem is the admin area, which is equally good and extremely simple to use. Moreover, the dashboard looks great that comes readily displayed intuitive information.

Key Features

• Layered navigation
• Cross Selling
• Product Comparison
• Easy Checkout
• Multiple Payment Gateway Support

Magento

Those who aren’t clear about using websites, e-commerce or hosting and find these daunting, they may feel a little lost on visiting the Magento website. Magento is available in two editions, the Community Edition, and the Enterprise Edition.

The basic install is extremely basic, and you’d need to put in some extra efforts or even get a designer to make this into something special that would actually attract customers to buy. On the contrary, the admin is simple and basic.

Magento excels in handling significant amounts of traffic, and scores of products as well. It is believed that firms that are more capable of affording a development team would make something stunning out of Magento. And hence, they would probably use the Enterprise edition in any event.
However, when it comes to the admin area,Magento can be used only for technical reasons in comparison to Prestashop. This is because some find Magento slow, others say that it requires a higher-end infrastructure.

The Magento Ecosystem https://www.cminds.com/magento-updated-statistics/

Key Features

• Open Source Platform
• Cross-browser support
• Multi-Lingual and Multi-Currency Support
• Integrated with mobile app development
• Quick Checkout Options

WooCommerce

WooCommerce is comparatively a newcomer in the E-commerce world that appeared in 2011. It is actually a plugin, which turns your WordPress website into a fully functioning e-store. WooCommerce in very short time has become WordPress’s most popular plugin. It is renowned for its flexibility, customisation, intuitive interface, bespoke features, and virtually non-existent transaction fees.

It is a well-developed plugin that’s the most suitable for small and medium-sized enterprises. WooCommerce is intuitive to use and easy to set up. For those who already have a WordPress site, adding E – commerce functionality to their site is as simple as launching the plugin. In addition, the framework will create basic pages you require. And those who aren’t working with WordPress currently, learning to use WooCommerce is simple enough.

WooCommerce plugin in its basic version offers limited features, hence you will need additional plugins and even custom development to unkey its full potential.

Image courtesy: Woocommerce

OpenCart

OpenCart has been around for a quite while now. It is an open source platform that offers responsive design, simple usability, and countless other benefits. It has been considered as a free starting point for the novice businesses to make their breakthrough in the exciting e-commerce world.
OpenCart is a pre-developed shopping cart solution that can be used to produce a fully featured e-commerce solution, allowing you to trade on-line simply and effectively.

The admin area of OpenCart looks pretty good with a modern interface, which gives giving a detailed summary of all the latest orders and various other sales analytics. The admin also allows easy management of all the products. Just like Prestashop, there are many extensions to choose from.

Image Courtesy: OpenCart

Key Features

• Easy to use
• Easily Customizable
• Thousands of modules and extensions
• Ready-to-use templates
• Seo-friendly

This is not it…stay tuned for more……….we’ll soon come up with an amazing infographic!!