Importance of an Ideal Platform in the Beginning

I recently came across a video of Jack Ma saying, “Don’t be the best, be the first.” Ma, a multi-billionaire, forged by the rejections he faced. Surely, this authentic quote infused tons of ideas into my mind. Create a new product, be the first one to launch it — a piece of cake. Here is the importance of an ideal platform at the beginning of your eCommerce startup.

Most startups fail, eCommerce is not any different — have an ideal platform in the beginning.

Thousands of storefronts launch every year and only a small percentage survives. If spotting gaps in the market were easy, everyone would be making quick bucks.

The world is full of well-informed entrepreneurs.

If you have thought of some fresh new ideas, chances are that some of the smartest minds are already all over your ‘future vision’ in some form. Unless you do comprehensive research and survey the newly found opportunity thoroughly before rolling it out, things may go sideways.

Embarking upon a ship destined to the world of e-commerce presents you with a set of challenges beforehand. Challenges that are overcome by cutting through the crushing competition online.

The difficulties become evident only when it’s time to make sales and start posting significant revenues to stay in business. It happens once ‘beginner’s luck’ diminishes, and customers get to spread reviews about your product among a wider audience.

That’s why you research in advance on multiple aspects of a business. You will want to formulate the correct technical infrastructure during the initial phase of your eCommerce.

Choosing the right eCommerce platform: Why is it so crucial for your startup?

Besides a multitude of executive and operational considerations, the technical substructure (the foundation of an e-commerce store) experiences the payload in the phase of achieving the mid-term goals, not during the take-off.

A crucial aspect for any e-commerce venture is to choose an intelligent e-commerce development platform and then personalize it to fit your business model in order to stay productive, remunerative, and relevant.

From three months to three years you’ll have little to no opportunity to reconstruct the bedrock of your online storefront — the technology you pick initially.

The window to achieve medium-term goals, i.e., (three months to three years), is excruciating and would surely test the waters.

The short-term goal of three months.

During the initial short-term three months there is nothing but an overseeing activity after a successful launch for transitioning into the determining phase of customer acquisition. Once you get there, you’ll want to avoid any major overhaul with your IT infrastructure when customers start to notice you. That’s why it’s called mid-term – the time that defines a startup’s outlook for the future.

For example, if you run your e-commerce store for two months and find out that there is no AI-based recommendation engine available for your platform at all.

Another instance could be the transaction fee for every sale made on your storefront, that you would end up paying to the SaaS provider/payment gateway. There are e-commerce platforms that charge you this fee apart from monthly rental for using their easy-to-use tools that make the launch process extremely simple and quick.

Recurring charges and transaction fees.

Consider, what if those recurring charges and transaction fees (or license fees) turn out to be too much for your breakeven strategy after going live for six months? Even an “easy-launch” can end up costing you too much.

Moreover, one platform could be overly dependant on third-party extensions and not meet your data security benchmarks, while another platform could add overhead expenses to employ a team of experts.

Consider the factors.

Be sure to check all factors that matter the most for when picking the tools that precisely match your goals, instead of doing what others are doing.

Availability of extensions, SEO compatibility, mobile-friendliness, scalability, data, and application security are just a few factors. Integration with automation tools and the cost of operations are some additional elements to compare for various platforms available in the market.

Which platforms are other stores using?

Mostly Magento, Shopify, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, Spree Commerce, Wix Stores, and a handful of others will be used for most eCommerce.

Unfortunately, there have been occasions when businesses start with a platform. Many begin with BigCommerce for example — then migrate to Shopify Plus. The business then changes its mind and rolled back to BigCommerce, losing thousands of dollars in the process.

Do a platform analysis.

To avoid the issues that many online startups face in the first year after picking an unsuitable platform, do a quick analysis. Here are a few tools to check out so that you can get an idea about the best platform tools for your new startup.

Below are three popular e-commerce platforms that work quite differently from each other:

1. Magento.

• Magento is a PHP based e-commerce platform.
• You will need to hire a team of Magento experts to create and maintain your storefront.
• It can handle hundreds of thousands of customers simultaneously. It powers roughly over 250,000 websites worldwide.
• It’s available as both open-source (free-to-use) and premium (scalable-enterprise) versions that require self-hosting. They also have an all-in-one cloud-hosted solution – eliminating self-hosting needs.
• There’s no transaction fee on the sales made. Just the license fee exists for the paid version, but that can be $20,000 to nearly $190,000 per year depending on a store’s revenues.
• Over 3000 extensions and add-ons are available, making it easy to integrate almost every feature you could observe on a large-scale online store.

If you want to take full control of your application for security and privacy concerns along with an aim to reach millions of customers at the same time, options like Magento is something you should explore.

2. Shopify.

• Shopify is a plug-and-play e-commerce website builder that comes with a suite of installable add-ons.
• With no need for a professional application development team, Shopify provides plenty of pre-built e-commerce themes. Some themes are free and some paid options. To create an online store and every integration is essentially a plug-n-play tool that anyone can install and operate without any technical knowledge.
• Small scale e-commerce businesses and startups seem to love Shopify. Around 800,000 sites are using it globally.
• This SaaS platform has monthly plans in the range of $29-$299 as well as transaction charges (ranging 0.5-2.0% or more). You’ll use third-party payment providers (Braintree, Authorize, PayPal, etc.) according to its official website.
• There is no need for self-hosting a website with Shopify.

Without the need for developers and comparatively affordable recurring fee, the investment is fairly low to launch a store.

Shopify is suitable if your business can bear the transaction-fee model and you are okay with someone else hosting your application.

3. Spree Commerce

Spree is in the class of no-frills open-source platforms.

• Fully functional e-commerce solutions like Spree Commerce are completely open-source, scalable, and free to use.
• Despite being publicly available at no cost, Spree is also a robust alternative that can build scalable storefronts very quickly.
• You need to host your application yourself. The ownership and control stays with you.
• A team of Spree Commerce (Ruby on Rails) specialists are needed.
• Choices of themes are limited though, and sometimes technical proficiency is required if readymade integrations are not available for customized needs.

A free yet effective option like Spree Commerce can also comfortably meet an e-commerce firm’s objectives.

These options are the bare necessities solutions.

You must check well in advance if the platform of your choice can be integrated.

  These are game-changing technologies:

• Smart AI chatbots for customer handling
• Personalization driven by Big Data and Machine Learning analytics
• Blockchain for the seller and consumer activities
• Automation

Once the machine starts to learn and understand your customers’ preferences, would you be able to migrate your entire business to another platform, should the need arrive?

Asking about migrating your entire business to another platform is a question you don’t want to hear after six months in business. This is the sole purpose of this information — choose the right eCommerce platform in the beginning.

Every option and platform comes with pros and cons to consider.

Every platform option has some pros and cons pertaining to several factors like licensing fees, limitations with third-party extensions. You will encounter the cost of operation, integration possibilities, and the option to use artificial intelligence on your site. Will you use artificial intelligence recommendation systems?

The platform you start with must be able to meet your forecasts for the next two to three years — not just serve you through your company launch.

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