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The ongoing pandemic has seen a gradual shift from retail purchases to online shopping. In the first quarter of 2021, E-Commerce sales were 13.6% of the total sales, with a revenue of $431.6 Billion. E-Commerce is poised to be the world’s biggest retail channel by 2021. To take the advantage of the shift in sales, many retail stores are moving to the online market with a wide variety of E-Commerce development platforms such as Magento, WooCommerce, Shopify and others.

However, there are a few things to consider while setting-up an online store and having a competitive presence in the market. The choice of a wrong selling platform takes away the benefits of easy design, maintenance, integration and also impacts the revenue of the store. Let us look at a few essential features that would help you start your E-Commerce selling model and get better ROI.

Choosing a Cloud Model: The choice of a cloud-based E-Commerce model does away with costs incurred for hardware and software licensing charges. Its relatively cheaper when compared to other models and gives you the flexibility to scale-up as per your future requirements. Choosing a cloud model is highly recommended for emerging businesses. You would have complete support from the vendor, without having to depend on a third-party service provider.

Adobe Commerce Cloud, which is a hosted Magento platform is the best platform for starting an online store, as its easy to design, set-up, and maintain. It gives you enhanced security, support, better SEO, and easy integrations from a choice of other ERP platforms that your business uses.

Flexibility in Design: Plug and Play E-Commerce development models are easy to set-up and start selling online, but they have their own disadvantages. You would not get the flexibility in design, as the site is based on a template, making it difficult for you to customize the website as per your requirements. Such E-Commerce models make flexibility and scalability a major challenge, and could restrict your online store.

Targeting Multiple Countries: Your E-Commerce platform should give you the flexibility to cater to multiple channels, countries, and languages. If you are looking to expand the scope of your online store, you must not be restricted in dealing with multiple platforms and vendors. Choose an E-Commerce platform that offers easy ways to extend your online store, and reach to global customers across different languages in a single solution.

Integration Capabilities: Businesses use different platforms for ERP and CRM. The choice of an E-Commerce platform should make integration with them easier, with easy availability of API’s. Else, you would have to manage multiple platforms with added time and cost constraints, which is not feasible for an emerging E-Commerce website.

Having Support Services: Your E-Commerce platform should offer easy support services so that you would not have to deal with multiple support vendors, which would significantly impact your budget and resources. Choose an E-Commerce platform that has a large number of solution partners and community resources.

Multiple Business Models: Managing different business models such as wholesale and retail can be a daunting task if you need different websites for them. There would be a difference in costs, shipping, and payment gateway integrations for B2B and B2C selling. If you are looking to scale in the future to a B2B and B2C hybrid selling model, choose a platform that supports both of them.

We strongly recommend the Adobe Commerce Cloud as a single solution for all the above essential requirements, as it offers easy features to design, maintain, integrate, and scale-up as per your store requirements. Adobe Commerce cloud is a hosted version of Magento, which is one of the most robust and flexible E-Commerce platform in the market.

How can Exinent help?

If you are interested to start selling online, we at Exinent are here to help. We have been into E-Commerce development and support services for the past decade and have hundreds of delightful clients who have taken advantage of our custom E-Commerce website development services. We focus on creating online success stories with a robust, secure, scalable, and customized online shopping platform that would help you get customers across various online channels to your store. Feel free to Contact Us; now is the time for your business to get online and noticed!