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E-Commerce Nov 02, 2021

Comparison of E-commerce Platforms for Medium and Big Businesses

Jane Vyshnova

Jane Vyshnova

CEO

Author

Julia Tsymbal

Julia Tsymbal

Business Analyst

Expert

Comparison of E-commerce Platforms for Medium and Big Businesses

Time to read: 15 minutes

Content

  1. 11 E-commerce Statistics to Know in 2021
  2. Best Enterprise E-commerce Platforms
  3. E-commerce Platforms Review
  4. How We Compare Best Medium-Sized Business E-Commerce Platforms
  5. Cloud-Based E-commerce Platform Comparison

The events of 2020 will be felt for years to come and shape the way we buy online. It is not a secret that the e-commerce industry flourished during the Covid-19 outbreak. Consumers worldwide have been turning to online stores to shop for a variety of products, from groceries to electronics. E-commerce now has a higher share of the retail market than ever before. Picking the right platform for your e-commerce venture is a tough decision. To facilitate the effort, we would like to offer you the top e-commerce platforms comparison for large retailers based on reliable statistics.

11 E-commerce Statistics to Know in 2021

Do you sell online and want to boost your business? Numbers never lie. It is vital to know the statistical facts about e-commerce to scrutinize your website and make any necessary changes.

The list below presents the most accurate e-commerce statistics to know about the year of 2021.

The year 2021 will have 2.14 billion people shopping online globally.

In fact, with the global population expected to reach 7.87 billion people, that makes about 27.2% of the world’s population. Considering all those potential customers, it makes sense to invest in an online store. Moreover, this number has been rapidly growing over the years and continues to grow.

In 2020, retail e-commerce sales worldwide reached $4.28 trillion.

Moreover, we expect e-retail revenues to increase to $5.4 trillion in 2022. Indeed, online shopping is one of the most popular things people do online. Now let’s take a look at what came out of this.

63% of shopping quests start online.

This means that, when it comes to shopping, most people start by surfing the net. Then, it depends on the online store whether it will attract and retain customers or if they will go to a brick-and-mortar store.

It is high time to capture your customers’ attention. At Dinarys, we build e-commerce solutions with the focus on giving your customers the perfect online experience from the very first step.

One of the top reasons people shop online is that they can shop at all hours of the day.

The Global Online Consumer Report The Truth About Online Consumers by KPMG revealed the main reason for buying online. Unsurprisingly, it is the flexibility of shopping hours. Consumers are motivated to shop online instead of going to a physical store because they can do it 24/7.

The pandemic has changed consumer behavior, and the preferences in delivery have also changed. That is why another top reason people shop online is free delivery.

51.1% of consumers mentioned free delivery as one of the main reasons they make purchases online. Moreover, the ease and convenience of online shopping came to be the priority. Customers prefer a free shipping option offered by online stores, and also want to receive their orders as quickly as possible.

49% of online customers do not proceed to checkout and abandon their carts when encountering extra costs.

Online shoppers consider hidden or additional fees and costs the most frustrating aspects of e-commerce that lead them to abandon their orders.

In March 2020, 88.05% of online shopping orders were abandoned.

In other words, visitors did not convert into buyers. The automotive industry had the highest cart abandonment rates out of all measured categories, a 96.88% abandonment rate.

Research by BrightLocal suggests 91% of consumers aged 18-34 trust online reviews as much as they trust personal recommendations.

Positive feedback helps grab buyers' attention and interest. Likewise, online reviews can effectively build trust and confidence when consumers are either looking specifically for your business or for a general product or service that your business offers.

“The quality of a company’s customer service can make (or break) the bank”, states Gladly.

According to them, 69% of customers would spend more with a company delivering good customer service, while 92% would refuse the services of a company after a negative customer experience.

Big and small businesses are coming to realize how crucial it is to meet their customers’ expectations. It is those expectations that influence a consumer’s decisions. As a result, it leverages their loyalty, which then reflects on long-term revenue.

Online shoppers find it important to take a look at product images (78%), customer reviews (69%), and side-by-side product comparisons (46%) before making a purchase (BigCommerce, 2021).

In the landmark study by Catalyst and Kanta, Rob Gonzalez, chief marketing officer & co-founder at Salsify, sums this up by saying: “the search bar and product detail page are the primary places where consumers will interact with your brand… the PDP (product detail page) is your brand marketing — most companies don’t understand this. Millions of dollars are spent on the brand’s website, but only a small fraction on the PDP, but it should be the opposite”.

So the devil is in the details. PDPs make the difference in driving conversion. So why is it vital and leads to purchase? This way you give consumers more information about the product they are interested in. Otherwise, how are they going to know the product details? This page tells you everything about a specific item, for example, measurements, materials, ingredients, or other necessary product information. PDPs also need attractive and vivid photos and videos, price, shipping details, guarantees, and return policies.

Besides the product information, online customers, unsurprisingly, want to see feedback and compare similar products.

Besides the product information, online customers, unsurprisingly, want to see feedback and compare similar products.

Online retailers with at least one active social media account make 32% more sales than those that don’t use social media platforms.

Today’s shopper journey is broader than ever. Not only do consumers shop at a range of retailer websites, but they also shop using traditional search engines and social media platforms. They additionally use these platforms for a variety of activities during their cross-channel shopping journey.

When it comes to social media platforms, shoppers surf them for inspiration and new experiences. On the other hand, they also visit online stores for research and product/price comparisons. This cross-platform shopping manifests the hallmark of today’s online purchasing experience. Cross-platform shopping bonds the importance of integrating retail, search, and social strategies. At Dinarys, we believe a solo channel is not enough for medium and big businesses.

Best Enterprise E-commerce Platforms

Best Enterprise E-commerce Platforms

The impact of the global pandemic on e-commerce cannot be denied. Where some industries suffered big losses as a result of Covid-19, e-commerce exploded.

The above statistics show the current state of large-scale e-commerce platforms. Moreover, the data can be used to forecast future developments. Looks like it is high time to start an online store, doesn’t it?

E-commerce Platforms Review

The internet offers a variety of e-commerce platforms, which makes it even more difficult to choose the best one. We can simplify the task for you by providing a review of specific examples of platforms.

On SimilarTech, you can get an insight into the way e-commerce platforms for medium and large businesses share the web. In the category of top100k sites, Shopify leads the pack, closely followed by Magento. Among the top 1m sites, WooCommerce forges ahead with 922,640 websites.

E-commerce Platforms Review

Let us take a look at those giants of e-commerce and review them. What are their benefits and drawbacks? What makes them so special? Why do medium and large businesses choose them?

WooCommerce

Pros

Cons

The platform doesn’t require deep knowledge of web development. It creates shop-related pages automatically, which is very convenient and saves time. It includes pages for viewing shopping carts and checkout.

As soon as you add one or more products, they will automatically appear on your shop home page.

WooCommerce does not come with support for any shipping solution out of the box. Each payment gateway has to be set up differently. Moreover, every plugin needs configuration and setup. You are constantly playing a game of plug-and-play.

WooCommerce provides good integration and offers a wide range of plugins and themes.

The game of plug-and-play can be tiring. What is more, some plugins are costly yet necessary.

Low cost, You can start an online shop with barely any investments.

 

Shopify Plus

Did you know that Tobias Lütke, who founded Shopify in 2006, started with selling snowboards and later expanded the venture to complete e-commerce solutions?

Pros

Cons

The platform offers vast possibilities for theme customization and settings.

The included reporting is limited. At times, you need to invest in outside help to get in-depth analytics and accounting reports.

24/7 seller support.

Shopify Plus has skyrocketed over the past 5 years. Such expansion turned out to be a disservice because the support they provide doesn't seem as dedicated and helpful as it once was.

Shopify can sell across multiple channels and has partnerships with some great systems (Shipstation, Uber, CreateSend/MailChimp).

 

Squarespace Commerce

Did you know that Anthony Casalena worked out of his dorm room to develop a drag and drop website builder for the public?

Pros

Cons

Stunning templates optimized for desktops, tablets, and mobile devices can help you design an exquisite website via simple drag and drop.

A drag and drop system of website builders can be frustrating when items do not move as precisely as you need them to. Resizing columns and laying out the whole page takes a lot of time and can sometimes be a headache.

Squarespace performs fast deployment.

Standard analytics keep track of basic traffic and sales without needing a secondary tracker but may not satisfy someone looking for extra detailed information.

 

The platform is quite unfriendly for any ad network integrations, so you won’t be able to load up your site with ad placements.

Magento

Did you know that Magento developers Roy Rubin and Yoav Kutner sold it to eBay only 3 years after the release? Magento is definitely one of the top e-commerce platforms for large retailers.

Pros

Cons

Magento is fully customizable. It builds a unique online store on well-structured architecture.

Beginners may find it hard to customize and manage the website. It will take them some time to figure out the platform and all its possibilities.

The platform allows you to customize its open-source code to create additional features and functionality.

Creating a website for your needs may require accessing skillsets from outside the company.

Magento has a large add-on marketplace.

The platform requires a considerably large server for smooth functioning.

Tons of integration options.

The Community Edition has no 24/7 support.

WixShop

Did you know that Wix joined Facebook in 2011 and became one of the first e-commerce platforms in the social commerce trend?

Pros

Cons

Wix is a user-friendly platform because the drag and drop builder makes it a lot easier to navigate than other web-building sites. Besides, you can easily use additional functions (photo galleries, booking forms, and members’ areas).

Wix is not the best choice for very large businesses, as its functions and features may fail to back up a huge online business.

Easy to make fast updates from the Wix App Market.

Sometimes, loading speed leaves much to be desired.

 

Medium businesses may be dissatisfied with the lack of SEO analytics.

Prestashop

Did you know that Igor Schlumberger and Bruno Lévêque launched the platform in 2007 as a student project at an IT school in Paris?

Pros

Cons

PrestaShop is a flexible, scalable, and customizable open-source platform.

The platform does not give a lot of free templates. Additional features are expensive.

The PrestaShop marketplace has a large library of plugins and extensions for any specific feature.

Customer support is expensive. The quality of customer support is poor.

Clear and well-structured workflow with customer management and emails

Prestashop is suitable for small to medium stores.

Lots of payment option plugins that you can use to sell globally.

 

X-Cart

Did you know that X-Cart was the first downloadable PHP/MySQL shopping cart platform in the world? Another interesting fact is that Ruslan Fazlyev got expelled from college because he was focused on its development.

Pros

Cons

Open, customizable source code.

X-cart works in a PHP environment. It means you will probably need a developer who could add new features to your store.

Built-in apps & themes marketplace

The license does not include hosting.

24/7 customer support.

Support and premium features are expensive. There's nothing support can do for you, especially when it comes to issues with the marketplace updates or settings.

 

After a year of being a client of X-Cart, new upgrades will cost you more.

What about other e-commerce platforms not on the list?

There are other strong platforms that did not get into our list of top 8 e-commerce platforms for large retailers. Still, they are definitely buzzworthy. One of them is Shopware. We cannot ignore a platform with such stats.

What about other e-commerce platforms not on the list?

Shopware

Did you know that the German open-source platform Shopware, established in 2000, focuses on the incentive of emotional shopping and customer experience? It’s important to include this platform in our e-commerce solutions comparison.

Pros

Cons

Shopware has an intuitive user interface with flexible configurations. Moreover, it offers a rich extension base to boost functionality.

The platform has high server requirements and you may need to hire a developer for the technical specifications.

24/7 live support.

Expensive pricing plans and licensed plugins may not fit small-budget businesses.

Multiple sales channels.

 

SEO optimization and marketing tools.

 

Shopware: pros and cons for medium and big businesses

BigCommerce

Did you know that Eddie Machaalani and Mitchell Harper started working together after meeting in an online chatroom?

Pros

Cons

Besides the attractive design, BigCommerce has a helpful feature to separate your regular website and your online store. In case one goes down, you won’t have to tinker with the other.

Small businesses can’t afford unique designs because of high costs. Beginners may find it difficult to edit the interface.

Multiple payment options.

It may be inconvenient to add tracking information every time you get a custom order.

24/7 customer support.

 

How We Compare Best Medium-Sized Business E-Commerce Platforms

The Dinarys team has worked with many platforms and knows them from the inside. As a store owner, it’s up to you to decide what criteria you will follow to evaluate possible options chosen by our developers and project managers and identify the best one.

If you still haven’t made up your mind about which e-commerce platform meets your needs best, Dinarys’ detailed e-commerce solution comparison for large retailers will help you decide between the alternatives.

 

Magento

Shopware

Shopify

Category and editions

  • Self-hosted

  • Magento Open Source (previously Magento Community Edition)

  • Magento Commerce (Magento Enterprise Edition)

  • Magento Commerce Cloud (Cloud-based)

  • Community Edition, self-hosted

  • Professional Edition, cloud/on-premise

  • Professional Plus, cloud/on-premise

  • Shopware Enterprise, self-hosted

  • Cloud-based platform

  • Basic Shopify

  • Advanced Shopify

  • Shopify

  • Shopify Plus

  • Shopify Lite

Ease of use

Difficult to use and set up. Though it requires development skills, the platform provides unique customization.

Appealing and tailor-made template system makes it much easier to maintain templates and update the store.

Easy to set up for beginners who have no technical knowledge in setting up or running a site. The whole tool is very affordable.

User experience

Feature-packed, yet limited free themes.

A solid plugin system enables developers to modify many parts of the store.

The simple and user-friendly interface even for beginners, fast loading.

Seo optimization

Strong SEO.

Strong SEO optimization and marketing tools.

Weak at SEO/content marketing.

Integrations

Accounting software integrations, other e-commerce, and social media, email marketing platforms.

The platform offers extensions for store management, marketing, payments, shipping, subscriptions, etc.

Blogging tools.

Customer Support

An active user community that can help you out on forums,

paid assistance.

24/7 live support, chat.

24\7 customer support, live chat, email, phone.

Checkout and Shipping

Flexible payment gateways and shipping tools.

Multiple sales channels.

Checkout not customizable, transaction fees for certain payment gateways.

Mobile App

Magento Mobile App.

Shopware 6 Mobile Apps.

Shopify Apps.

Free trial

Magento Open Source is free to download.

30-day free trial (includes all Premium Plugins).

14-day free trial.

Prices

  • Magento Open Source - free (payment for web development, web hosting, and additional necessary integration costs to launch and maintain your site)

  • Magento Commerce - starts at $22,000/year

  • Magento Commerce Cloud - starts at $40,000/year

  • Starter Edition - from €0/month

  • Professional Edition - from €199/month

  • Enterprise Edition - from €2,495/month

  • Basic Shopify - from
    $29/month

  • Shopify - from $79/month

  • Advanced Shopify - from $299/month

  • Shopify Plus - from $2000/month

Read more about 7 Stages of Online Shop Development.

Cloud-Based E-commerce Platform Comparison

If you have orders of hundreds or thousands of items every week, you will need a platform that ensures enough flexibility to connect to the software, helps you reduce errors, and seamlessly integrates your warehouse management and other inventory systems. The decision many new companies are facing today is whether to select an on-premise or cloud-based e-commerce platform. Established companies that already have on-premise platforms need to decide whether to move to the cloud at all.

What makes cloud-based platforms so popular?

One of the main advantages of cloud-based platforms is that hosting your e-commerce platform on a cloud implies no physical existence, so you work remotely through a third-party company. There is no need to worry about storage expansion, security, updates, or anything else. Using a cloud-based online business is quite easy and fast. It is also generally cheaper than hiring and training additional IT staff. Another good reason is that cloud-based platforms offer ready-to-go e-commerce solutions.

Moreover, cloud platforms can be scaled easily. Thus they give you the flexibility to handle more customers as your business grows. In case of seasonal demand or unexpected viral success, cloud e-commerce software automatically adjusts. You will not need to purchase additional licenses and hardware.

When it comes to security issues, e-commerce platforms are doing their best to protect your online store because a failure can ruin their reputation and damage the provider company financially. The provider is responsible for updating their system and fixing bugs. Moreover, companies maintain security relations between themselves and the customer company and between the customer company and their clients.

For a more accurate decision, an infographic of the benefits of cloud-based e-commerce platforms from Dinarys will simplify the task.

What makes cloud-based platforms so popular?

Read more in our blog Magento Open Source, Commerce and Commerce Cloud: Different Stages of Success.

Finding the best e-commerce platform for large businesses can become a challenge. How not to get lost in the maelstrom of opportunities? How to learn to clearly understand what is good and what is not? Take your time to research the available options and assess their features, performance, prices, and more. Experienced e-commerce consultants and developers will help make your journey as efficient as possible. Just contact us to get your project estimate.

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