BUSINESS (SMALL) SPECIAL ..Top e-commerce platforms for small business

Top e-commerce platforms for small business

Flipkart started by selling books, but over a short span of time, has grown into the go-to destination for everything from mobile phones, games, household items to even PC components. The e-commerce business has picked up great pace in India and with more and more people addicted to online shopping, it’s equally important for small businesses and start-ups to have an e-commerce model as part of their site in order to reach out to a wider audience. There are two primary types of e-commerce models -- hosted and open source that you can integrate with your business website and give users an added value. Choosing one entirely depends up on your product, size of your company, ease of upgradability and flexibility in future as your company grows. If you have an IT team with expertise on how to go about implementing and managing an e-commerce module, then open source would be the way to go. Else, you could just opt for a paid package that would include everything from domain name registration, shopping cart and maintenance so that you don’t have to deal with the technical stuff. Big commerce This is a good place to start for a small business, especially if you have an existing eBay or Facebook business. They offer services like design, SSL certificates, marketing, SEO, mobile commerce, etc. Once set up, you have the option to link your eBay listing within the platform itself. Once that’s done, you simply choose the products you want to push on eBay so that you can have a consolidated database, no matter from where the product is bought. Prices start at $24.95 per month for 100 product listings. Vendio Vendio provides you tools to quickly and easily put up products on eBay, Amazon, Facebook and of course, your own online web store. Like Shopify, Vendio also provides tools like Google Analytics integration, shopping cart with drag-and-drop features, e-mail marketing and the like. The web store provided by Vendio is also optimised for mobiles so that one can easily browse through your store on the phone as they would on the site. Shopify Shopify is a hosted e-commerce solution that allows you to set up and run your own online store. Here you simply pick your template, tweak the design, organise your products, add a product catalogue and even create blog posts – all from a centralised administration dashboard. You can even add a mobile e-commerce component as well which includes an iPhone app. They also specialise in SEO and coupon codes to help sell your products. Shopify also features a Google Analytics component that lets you track customer behaviour so that you can tweak certain aspects of the store that aren’t drawing in customers. Open source shopping carts Open source shopping carts are an attractive option as they are free and require no initial investment, which makes it a perfect choice for start-ups where money is tight. You also have a strong community support as other developers and storeowners offer free support as well as new features and add-ons that you can try without having to pay any fee. Some popular open source shopping carts include Agora, Broadleaf Commerce, Commerce.CGI, Magento and Loaded Commerce. Ability commerce This is a good choice if you want to manage your products on Amazon. The feature set involves integrating Order Management Systems and Accounting Systems along with web design, SEO, mobile, social networking, enhancing images and videos, e-mail marketing, conversion and retention tools, etc. The core feature remains the Amazon integration and once you provide the inventory to sell on Amazon, the professionals at Ability Commerce Amazon will monitor your products and help you position it better in order to increase sales. —Team DNA120612