E-commerce website – technologies web agencies use

Why do we create an e-commerce website? To be the platform that creates bond between the buyer and the seller of goods or services via the internet and makes possible to transfer money or data to execute these transactions.

We tried to sum up what the most popular e-commerce platforms can offer to you in order to be able to choose the one that fits the best for you.

Shopify

Shopify has been designed specially for smaller enterprises with an extremely easy setup process. You can use this solution without any developer skills. The simplest of all, providing a full service subscription + hosting services and built-in features to improve SEO.

Advantages:

• Easy to set up
• Cost effective, low starting costs
• Subscription based 
• Good solution for small E-commerce websites

Disadvantages:

• Performance issues at larger number of SKU eg: 500-1.000+ items
• Not as customizable as the dedicated professional webshops like Magento
• Better Performance and SEO can be achieved with fully customized Magento webshop

Prestashop

PrestaShop is an open-source ecommerce solution, existing since 2007. With this platform, you can set up stores in the cloud or through self-hosting. This e-commerce platform is easy to use and offers a powerful responsive online store interface for its shoppers. Though it is free, it is rich with a broad set of add-on features and a very reliable, UX focused solution.

Advantages:

• Can be installed and set up without developer help
• Free, no license required to set up
• Simple design and user-friendly back-end interface
• Available in 65 languages, supports multiple currencies
• Easy to add or delete features, easy to personalize specific areas of the store during website development

Disadvantages:

• Suitable for small and medium stores but not really possible to extend the site once it’s set up
• Quite simple design, good for low budget webshops, but not fitting for large-scale stores
• Lack of support team or experts

WordPress with WooCommerce plugin

WordPress is probably the most popular and commonly used webstore platform. This platform is very easy to set up and to adjust it to our requirements. It has an excellent CMS (Content Management System) which enables you to create new posts or pages very easily without any development. The WooCommerce plugin grants all necessary webshop services. WordPress is a perfect choice in case of smaller webshops where the introductory part of the website is also important.

Advantages:

• Easy to set up
• Cost effective
• Good solution for a small / medium size e-commerce website
• Open source – Is improved continuously by large number of developers

Disadvantages:

• Not scalable
• Performance issues at larger number of SKU eg: 500-1.000+ items

Magento

Magento is the leading standalone platform for webshop development. This platform has been developed for the management of large webshops. It can handle large numbers of products (500+). And also has a very user-friendly CMS once it’s set up properly. It is a little bit more complex to set up in the beginning, which needs extra development. This solution is suggested if the webshop function is the key function of the site and the site has to handle a large number of products.

Advantages:

• One of the best e-commerce website creating systems
• Stable performance even in case of larger e-commerce websites, 1.000+ SKUs
• Can be customized to the smallest details

Disadvantages:

• More complicated to set up, need more development
• Not a cost-effective solution in case of smaller webshops
• It is a standalone platform

Drupal Commerce

With Drupal Commerce, we can build ecommerce websites and applications of all sizes. Due to Drupal’s expertise, the greatest features of Drupal and major modules like Views and Rules are also available for maximum flexibility.

Advantages:

• Fully integrated in Drupal, and benefits from all the advantages for an outstanding UX 
• Less individual development needed (in comparison with a solution where you have two separate systems) 
• Open source, so continuously improved by large number of developers
• Weekly security updates for better safety, closely monitored by the permanent Drupal Security Team 
• SEO, CRO (conversion rate optimisation) and Google Analytics simply to manage within the same system for user’s path optimisation
• Easy connection to third party systems
• Drupal Commerce is completely free, including its existing available modules

Disadvantages:

• More complicated to set up, need more development
• Not a cost-effective solution in case of smaller webshops

Should you have any questions? Swiss Tomato team is at your disposal to answer all your requests! Ask our experts and manage the webshop you like the most!