E-commerce platforms help businesses in handling the online store processes, right from their inventory, to adding or eliminating products, to calculating taxes and fulfilling orders in the best possible way. The e-commerce platform market has an estimated value of around 5.6 billion U.S. dollars in 2020 and is estimated to grow to approximately 6.7 billion U.S. dollars by 2023. With the fast growth of e-commerce sales, international retail e-commerce sales are predicted to reach 6.6 trillion U.S. dollars by 2023.
High spending capacity combined with an increase in spending on apparel is expected to upsurge the growth of the global eCommerce platform market over the next few years. Furthermore, the eCommerce industry has grown unusually well in the earlier years and is expected to witness exponential growth in the upcoming years.
Market SegmentationThe market is categorized in five major regions that include North America, Asia Pacific, Europe, Middle East & Africa and Latin America regions. Amongst these regions, Asia Pacific is likely to lead the overall ecommerce platform market over the next few years. Increasing number of business formations is providing the best opportunities for the e-commerce platform service providers.
Based on type of platform, the market is classified into, commerce, order management, business intelligence, shipping and others, amongst which, commerce is accounted for the biggest market share in complete worldwide ecommerce platform market.
Technology Overviewbest e-Commerce platforms also be termed as a shopping cart solution, shopping cart software, ecommerce website builder, online store builder or ecommerce platform and it caters a sole purpose that is to help businesses in selling their products online. Ecommerce platform comprises customizable site templates, a unified shopping cart, SEO, email marketing, inventory management and analytics.
e-Commerce Platform: Drivers and LimitationsThe international e-Commerce platform market is driven by the software that is user-friendly and also inexpensive for small scale businesses. The price of adding an ecommerce constituent to present business and enter in a newer market falls anywhere between US$ 100 to US$ 150 per month and it allows expansion through online business.
e-commerce is quickly accounting for a larger quantity of the total retail sales in the U.S. According to the U.S. Department of Commerce, customers spent about US$ 194 billion online in 2011. With this kind of consumption and trend, a growing number of small and mid-size companies are taking the online platform for all or some of its operations.
However, higher prices of hybrid and cloud based software and low internet penetration rate in emergent countries are some of the important factors which are likely to restrict the growth of global ecommerce market in the near future.
Top 10 e-Commerce Products in 2020eCommerce platforms help businesses in managing their core processes like the front-end vending of products and services, and the back-end operations of managing inventory and customer order history. 360Quadrants has analysed the e-Commerce market and has identified top 10 products in the market based on various critical parameters. These top products have been highlighted below:
- Shopify
- WooCommerce
- BigCommerce
- Miva
- 2Checkout
- nopCommerce
- Magento Commerce
- SuiteCommerce
- Ecwid
- FastSpring
Due to the fact that businesses today are adopting online channel as on their medium to sell products or services, the day isn’t very far where majority of their businesses will be generated online. With this as an opportunity, a last few years has seen a lot of start-ups and also a few companies coming up due to their technology adoption and their pricing structures. 360Quadrants has identified a few of these upcoming companies which offer latest e-commerce solutions:
- Volusion
- Sellfy
- Slatwall
- 3dcart
- Handshake
- Digital River
- Square E-commerce
- Storbie
- TrueCommerce
- Expedite Commerce
- An Absence of Online Identity Verification
- Customer sign-ups with incorrect information or COD purchases with fake contact details may lead to huge revenue damages.
- Checking for any signs of suspicious activity and identifying fake phone numbers and email addresses
- Sending a verification link when a customer signs up
- With COD purchases, an automated call could even dial out to the customer, asking them to validate the delivery address.
- Delivering Omnichannel customer experience
- Customers today tend to use multiple channels to interact with brands. In this case, any business that isn’t adopting an omnichannel retailing strategy will possible lag behind its online savvy competitors.
- Latest visual engagement tools allow businesses to help customers across all channels
- Recognizing key channels
- Maintaining the context.
- Shopping cart abandonment
- Shopping cart rejection is a big problem. Even e-commerce companies find it really hard to deal with this.
- Reshaping the shopping cart, ensuring that there are no bugs or needlessly long and annoying form filling process.
- Implementing best live chat solutions
- Leveraging best visual tools
- Maintaining customer loyalty
- Acquiring new customers and then preserving them needs an enormous effort. One of the reasons e-commerce businesses in particular face a trial in building customer loyalty is that the seller and buyer are unknown each other.
- Identify competitive advantage and nurturing customer service accordingly
- Display address, and other important contact details
- Loyalty Programs
- The scuffle of contending on price and shipping
- Online merchants often contest on price. Many sellers list the same products on their sites, but the prices may vary. They are competing to upsurge their market share by selling the product. This can particularly impact small e-commerce firms.
- Inventory Distribution to Fulfilment Warehouses
- Resourceful Shipping
- Challenging against retailers and manufacturers
- Many online stores purchase products wholesale from producers or distributors, selling them with retail online. This is the straight forward business model for online stores. It happens often, that the product manufacturers and retailers start selling straight to consumers.
- Prioritise the manufacturers who are less likely to sell directly to customers
- Lower the price or offer additional benefits
- Set a contract that prohibits manufacturer to sell to the customers directly