Ecommerce website development is about choosing the right pipe for a smooth flow of goods, services, and information between the customers and the organizations without leaving you in debt.
Ecommerce website development is a major requirement of today's internet evolving retail industry. However, considering the industry's intense competition. The development of an efficient eCommerce website requires massive inputs to ensure the best customer experience and ease of management.
There are several hundred eCommerce platforms that facilitate businesses of different kinds. It makes choosing the right one for your business quite tricky. But to help you with that, this article features the four primary approaches to developing an eCommerce website in detail to help you decide the best one according to your needs and budget.
- SaaS approach
- Shop scripts
- Framework-based
- Headless CMS eCommerce
SaaS Approach
SaaS (software as a service) is also referred to as an on-demand software that saves you from the trouble of downloading and managing software applications on your device by offering you the ease of accessing them via the internet.
SaaS is a cloud-based, in our case - eCommerce platforms that can be accessed on any device. SaaS platforms provide large storage capacities, quick functionality, no development process, only a short setup that takes merely a few hours. It is super convenient if you don't want to create a custom website.
No developers required – Sign-up and set up!
SaaS limitations
Despite all the benefits, SaaS platforms also impose some limitations.
- Although it is relatively cheaper than other approaches, the monthly or yearly fees (and some of them charge fee per order) might still be an issue for some businesses.
- These platforms offer limited control of your website and hence are not as flexible as others.
- You cannot make any technical changes.
- The user does not have access to source code.
- Issues with data ownership
SaaS Platforms
The following are some of the most popular SaaS-based platforms you can consider for your business.
Shopify
Shopify has been facilitating millions of businesses of all sizes and types around the globe. This platform is best for small-sized business owners who do not plan to invest a large sum on digitalization nor have the experience to do it on their own.
The platform has all the required features to set up an eCommerce website. You can manage all the basic features from storefront to analytics. Also, it's relatively easy to upgrade.
Features
- Unlimited product listing
- Real-time analytics
- Inventory record
- Personalization
- A plethora of available themes
- Active support
- Dashboard access
- Product report
- Traffic report
Pricing
- Basic Shopify -$29 /month
- Shopify -$79/month
- Advanced Shopify -$299/month
Bonus: 14-day free trial
Wix.com
Wix.com is an easy drag and drop website builder. It offers an extensive template library to facilitate business in building a functional website. The platform is a considerable choice for companies who cannot afford a professional web designer and developer. Although it's not the most flexible, it fulfills the basic requirements; however, if you have complex product requirements better to skip in favor of a dedicated development team.
Features
- Attractive product galleries
- Limited product listing
- Offer discount codes
- Abandoned-cart recovery
- Inventory tracking and management
- Mobile responsiveness
- Payment options
- Active support
Pricing
- eCommerce -$17/month
- VIP plan -$25/month
- Business Basic -$23/month
- Business Unlimited -$27/month
- Business VIP -$35/month
- Enterprise -$500/month
The first two plans are the most basic eCommerce development options that do not offer payment options. The business plans are all with payment options, while the enterprise package has included customer support.
Shop Scripts
Shop Scripts are also among the most affordable eCommerce website approaches. It's in most cases PHP-based CMS with an open-source code that is free to install and use. However, license fees are applied for live commercial stores. It provides turnkey tools to build and manage eCommerce websites. It offers sales reports and metrics.
Shop Scripts Platforms
There are a large number of platforms under this category, though the following are the two best options for any business.
WooCommerce
A significant amount of all eCommerce websites are built on WooCommerce.
WooCommerce is an open-source WordPress plugin that allows you to convert a simple website into a shopping cart. Since it'sWordPress owns it. It can be installed free of cost with the platform, making it one of the most affordable approaches to building an eCommerce website.
Moreover, WordPress features thousands of themes and plugins that make it more flexible than most SaaS platforms.
Features
- Mobile responsive shopping cart
- Location-based support and data
- Catalog management
- Inventory tracking and management
- Shipment options
- Integrated calculator
- SEO-features
- Discounts and coupons
- Customer reviews
Pricing
WooCommrce can be downloaded for free.
OpenCart
OpenCart is an open-source, PHP-based eCommerce platform that is quite flexible with development and designing, enabling users to develop relatively personalized eCommerce websites at an affordable rate. It has a large template library that sufficiently serves a large variety of businesses.
Features
- Location support
- Sales analytics
- Sales reports
- SEO tools
- Active dashboard
- Shipment options
- Catalog management
- Discounts and coupons
- Customer reviews
Pricing
Setting up a functional website with OpenCart is free. However, subscription upgrades start with $69, whereas premium support is availed at $99 per month.
Framework-Based Approach
A web framework is a framework particularly designed for developing web applications. It provides a standard website structure to build web applications on the World Wide Web.
The framework offers you high flexibility and better control of your website. You can create highly customized websites with this type of eCommerce development approach. However, it is more expensive than the two website development approaches mentioned above.
Web Framework Application
Laravel Development
Laravel is among the highly recommended web development frameworks. It's an open-source PHP framework that enables the development of efficient web applications and CMS. It is used to build websites with MVC patterns. Building a website with Laravel requires hiring a professional developer, making it more expensive than other web development approaches. However, by hiring a developer with enough experience, you can build your website precisely tailored to your needs.
Features
- Backend caching
- High-security standards
- Template customization
- Fully functional login system
- Active user support
- Unit-level testing
- Database migration
Pricing
Laravel developer hourly rate - $35-45. According to salary.com
Headless Website Development
As a company grows, they suffer from manual processes. To automate different business processes, they develop custom Systems/Tools/Software - all this should be integrated and suggested to end-users to provide better value. That is where headless ecommerce technology comes to help.
The next big thing in ecommerce development is headless. It solves some of the essential issues of eCommerce development and delivers high-performance capabilities.
Allowing a better UX requires rigorous testing, but frequent deployments in a monolithic solution are a pain to perform. Headless ecommerce architecture eliminates the restrictions from front-end developers, sets them free, and allows them to formulate the UX. Adjusting databases is no longer an issue or coordinating with back-end teams, thereby reducing deployment times.
Also, it allows marketing managers to quickly deploy A/B split tests and see what's driving leads down the funnel and what isn't.
By putting your developers and digital marketers on the front seat and letting them drive user experiences, tremendous growth opportunities will arise.
Who should you use a headless ecommerce approach?
Although it might seem exciting, the architecture of headless is quite complicated. It creates 2 systems or codebases which must be managed individually, having independent deployment pipelines. Since the back-end functionality is connected to the presentation layer or front-end via API, any new functionality or 3rd party apps, should be integrated with both the front and back-end.
Safety
Developing the presentation layer from the ground up and taking control of UX is not the simplest thing to do. All the security layers have to be made from scratch to guard users against cross-site scripting, clickjacking, and cross-site request forgery attacks, to name only a few.
Make sure you have the right resources or partners before jumping onto headless ecommmerce. It sure is tempting.
Headless ecommerce platforms:
Pricing
Ecommerce Headless CMS development is a custom solution that requires hiring a team of developers. The cost depends on project complexity and requirements. Usually, the price is discussed with the implementation team. Get a quote for your project.
Conclusion
Considering the variety of eCommerce website approaches, we cannot label which one is "the best". It's up to you to decide. Instead, their efficiency entirely depends on your business needs. SaaS eCommerce solutions are the cheapest option as they are rented storefronts with subscription fees. However, they are the least flexible.
Shop-Script is another affordable option. Like platforms, you do not need a developer for this approach to develop an ecommerce website. However, it does not offer the customizability you can enjoy with framework-based web development. Laravel framework provides web structures that can be modified to meet the specific needs of your business.
Headless CMS, of all the options, serves to be the most flexible and beneficial for advanced ecommerce businesses providing cutting edge technology which is becoming the industry standard.
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