5 Best Ecommerce platforms for different Business sizes in UK [2024]

The Role of Ecommerce Platforms in Your Business.

Ecommerce platforms play a significant role in shaping a business’s success, serving as the primary interface between merchants and consumers. 

The right ecommerce platform helps companies take advantage of the latest trends, optimise their digital stores, and deliver unparalleled shopping experiences to customers globally. 

While Having an Ecommerce store offers advantages, there are many other benefits. Let’s have a look at the other benefits ecommerce platforms provide: 

Availability Around-the-Clock:

Ecommerce stores are available 24/7, allowing customers to shop whenever and wherever they choose. This makes them more accessible than physical stores, which have set business hours.

Lower Overhead Expenses:

Since there are no physical stores, large staff, or vast inventory storage requirements, operating an online store often involves lower overhead costs when compared to traditional retail outlets. 

Effective Order Fulfillment:

By automating tasks and incorporating them with logistics partners, ecommerce platforms optimise the order fulfillment process. This leads to quicker order processing, precise shipment tracking, and higher customer satisfaction.

How to choose the right Ecommerce website platform?

That is all about the benefits of having an ecommerce store; now let’s discuss some key things to focus in while choosing between the various ecommerce platforms. 

The best ecommerce website builder offers a perfect blend of functionality, flexibility, and scalability,user experience providing the unique requirements of businesses of all sizes.

Functionality:

The best Ecommerce website builder provides a wide range of features and tools for running an online store, such as product listings, inventory management, payment processing (credit cards, debit cards,Paypal and Google pay etc),No additional transaction fees and order fulfilment.

Flexibility:

action, allowing businesses to create unique and visually appealing storefronts that align with their brand identity. Also the store design should offers is very clean design and follows user experience best practices. 

Scalability:

An outstanding ecommerce platform can scale flawlessly with the growth of the business, adapting increased traffic, transactions, and product offerings without compromising performance.

Easy-to-use Interface:

It offers an easy-to-use interface, making it simple for business owners and managers to manage their online stores efficiently without requiring technical expertise.

Customisation Options:

The platform provides powerful customisation options, allowing businesses to tailor their online stores to suit their specific needs and preferences. For example, someone wants to create an additional feature to provide virtual try-ons for a cosmetic brand. 

Read In detail Check list for Selecting right ecommerce platform.

Third-Party Integration:

It seamlessly integrates with third-party tools and services, such as payment gateways, shipping carriers, marketing automation platforms, and analytics tools, enhancing the online store’s overall functionality and performance.

Excellent Customer Support:

The best ecommerce website builder offers great customer service, providing timely assistance and troubleshooting to resolve any issues or queries that may arise during the setup and operation of the online store.

The 5 Best eCommerce Website Builders

Top Ecommerce Software to Build an Online Store (Single Vendor):

If you’re a single vendor looking to launch an online store, Popular platforms such as Shopify, WooCommerce, and BigCommerce provide comprehensive solutions tailored to your needs. With features like customisable storefronts, secure payment processing, and inventory management tools, these platforms empower solo entrepreneurs and small businesses to establish a solid online presence and drive sales.

Shopify:

Shopify offers a user-friendly interface, a wide range of customisable templates, and advanced ecommerce features, including inventory management, payment processing, and marketing tools, which make it an Ideal option for small to medium-sized businesses. 

With Shopify, you can upload an unlimited number of products with easy control, it also comes with a discount code engine and you won’t have to pay a transaction fee. Their app store, which offers over a thousand of the best Shopify apps for free or paid, is what makes it so scalable for all kinds of businesses, but especially for small and medium-sized ones. 

Read our full blog on – Why you should choose Shopify for your ecommerce business.

BigCommerce:

BigCommerce provides a complete ecommerce solution with Wide Range of advanced features such as multi-channel selling, SEO tools ,enterprise-grade security, and seamless integration with leading third-party applications for growing businesses and enterprise-level retailers. 

Price lists and customer groups are two examples of the B2B Native features offered by BigCommerce. Using customer groups, you can classify your various customer types and grant access to particular products or exclusive discounts to particular groups.  

Additionally useful feature is use of Multi-Storefront to manage multiple stores from the same back end. Items can be priced differently for each shop if the inventory across all of your stores is the same.This provide very great user experience at the same time. 

Also BigCommerce charge zero additional transaction fees or payment surcharges, that enable  customers to choose any payment provider with freedom.

WooCommerce:

WordPress (WooCommerce) is a versatile ecommerce plugin suitable for businesses of all sizes. With its extensive plugin ecosystem, flexibility, and scalability, WooCommerce, an extension of WordPress, enables businesses to create fully customisable online stores tailored to their specific requirements. WooCommerce Have no limitations to product categories, WordPress blogs are is also included which make it easy to add content for the products you offer and you get availability to thousands of plugins and extensions.

Wix:

It has more than 70 different ecommerce templates to choose from. you can create a unique and easy drag-drop online shore that are tailored to your brand needs in Minutes that too without coding expertise. However, the template need to be chosen carefully because it cannot be changed once your website is live.  

It also offers a unique feature to recommends items that you should put into your website based on its type, industry, and name Making the overall user experience great. For instance, if you’re building an ecommerce site for Fashion brand, it will automatically recommend you add in a chatbot. This makes the website building process very quick.

Best eCommerce Platforms to Build Online Marketplace (Multivendor)

For businesses looking to create online marketplaces with multiple vendors, platforms like Shopify Plus, Magento (Adobe Commerce), Multivendor offer powerful features for managing multiple sellers, commission structures, Inbuild SEO tools and product listings in a centralised marketplace environment.

Magento (Adobe Commerce): 

Magento is an All-in-one Solution platform, that fit for Medium and Large scale businesses. The reason the platform popular platform list is that it’s open-source Ecommerce platform, which makes it easy to add features like Marketplace and google shopping, and seamlessly supports headless ecommerce. 

Thousands of Extensions and the ability to add your own Extensions make Adobe commerce a advance ecommerce platform that also is more SEO-friendly than other eCommerce platforms, which is important for medium sized to Large scale businesses as they want to build a good brand reputation and rank well on search engines. 

The another reason of Magento to be in the top five for medium to Large scale businesses is scale-ability. As this open source platform is built to manage online stores of any size therefore as your businesses grows Magento (Adobe commerce) is capable of handling the increase in size of your growing Business and Online sales. 

Read more here – Why you should Choose Adobe commerce or Magento ?

Shopify Plus:

Shopify Plus is an ecommerce platform specifically designed for businesses of all sizes, from small startups to Large scale Businesses. It offers a wide range of features and customisation options that perfectly fits to the unique needs of businesses of different sizes. 

Fraud analysis is another helpful feature of Shopify plus that helps reduce the risk of chargebacks by identifying potentially fraudulent orders paid with credit cards. And the good pat is  Shopify is compatible with more than 100 payment solutions.

How much does an Ecommerce website cost?

Determining the cost of an eCommerce website involves considering various factors, including the eCommerce platform fees. Here’s a breakdown of the typical Pricing plans are as follow

Platform Subscription Fees:

Most eCommerce platforms operate on a subscription-based model, where merchants pay a monthly or yearly fee to use the platform’s services. The cost varies depending on the features and services included in each subscription tier. 

For example, Big Commerce’s plans range from $29 to $299 monthly cost, and For Wix, its monthly cost starts from £16 

For Shopify, its monthly cost ranges from £19 to £259, while WooCommerce, a WordPress plugin, is free to download but may require costs for Domain, hosting themes, and extensions. 

Transaction Fees:

Some eCommerce platforms charge transaction fees on each sale processed through their platform. These fees are typically a percentage of the transaction value or a flat fee per transaction. For instance, Shopify charges transaction fees ranging from 2.9% +30£ to 2.4% +30£ per transaction, depending on the subscription plan. However, merchants can often reduce transaction fees by using the platform’s native payment gateway or upgrading to a higher-tier subscription plan.

Payment Gateway Fees:

Payment gateway providers, such as PayPal, Stripe, or Square, debit cards and Credit cards  payment facility charge fees for processing online payments. These fees may include a percentage of the transaction value, a flat fee per transaction, or a combination of both. Additionally, some payment gateways require setup fees or monthly cost subscription fees. Merchants should compare the fee structures of different payment gateway options and choose the one that best fits their business needs and budget. 

Other important thing that you must know that How Does Payment Processing Work on these platforms? 

When a consumer go to checks out, the payment gateway send the debit or credit card information to the payment processor. The processor forwards this result to the payment gateway so that the eCommerce website can display the bank’s approval for the transaction once has occurred.

Hosting Costs:

Hosting is essential for running an eCommerce website, and the cost varies depending on website traffic, storage space, bandwidth, and server resources. Shared hosting plans are generally more affordable, while dedicated hosting plans offer higher performance and scalability at a higher cost. Some eCommerce platforms include hosting like Shopify in their subscription plans, while others require merchants to purchase hosting separately.

Domain Name Registration:

A domain name is your website’s unique online address (e.g., www.rvsmedia.co.uk). Domain registration fees vary depending on the domain registrar and the chosen domain extension (e.g., .com, .net, .org). Merchants can register a domain directly through their eCommerce platform or use third-party domain registrars like (Godaddy and Hostinger).

Design and Development Costs:

Creating the design and functionality of your ecommerce website adds some additional costs, especially if you hire web designers or developers to create a unique storefront or integrate custom features. 

While some eCommerce platforms offer built-in design templates and tools for DIY customisation, others may require hiring professionals or Ecommerce Development agency for more complex customisation projects.

Add-on Services:

Some eCommerce platforms offer add-on services such as SEO optimisation, email marketing, inventory management, and analytics tools at an additional cost. Merchants can subscribe to these services based on their business needs and budget. 

Overall, the monthly cost of an eCommerce website varies depending on factors such as the chosen eCommerce platform, subscription plan, transaction volume, hosting requirements, domain name, design customisation, and additional services. 

It’s essential for merchants to carefully evaluate these factors and calculate the total cost of ownership to make informed decisions and ensure the profitability of their eCommerce venture. 

Wrapping Up, 

In conclusion, selecting the right ecommerce platform is pivotal for your online business success. At RVS Media, we offer a complete solution for all your ecommerce needs, like selecting an ecommerce platform based on your business size, third-party integration, and bespoke software development for your unique business needs. Get in touch with us for any help or advice today! 

FAQ:

Q: Which ecommerce platform is best for beginner entrepreneurs?

A: Shopify and Wix are excellent for beginners due to their user-friendly interfaces and extensive support resources. 

Q: Can I switch ecommerce platforms later if needed? 

A: Yes, most ecommerce platforms offer migration tools and support services to help you transition to a new platform if necessary. 

Q: What is the difference between hosted and self-hosted ecommerce platforms? 

A: Hosted ecommerce platforms like Shopify and BigCommerce provide all-in-one solutions with built-in hosting, while self-hosted platforms like WooCommerce and Magento require you to manage hosting separately. 

Q: How much does it cost to build an ecommerce website? 

A: The cost of building an ecommerce website varies depending on factors such as platform choice, customisation requirements, and additional features. It can range from a few hundred dollars for basic setups to thousands for complex, custom-built solutions. 

Q: Do I need coding skills to use an ecommerce platform? 

A: While basic coding skills can be beneficial for customising certain aspects of your online store, most ecommerce platforms offer intuitive website builders and drag-and-drop interfaces that do not require coding knowledge.