As an entrepreneur, journey to picking an eCommerce platform can be quite daunting as the global eCommerce market is growing at a rapid pace bringing in a lot of new trends. There are a lot of elements that need to be figured out when starting out a new eCommerce venture. Right from the eCommerce platform, payment gateway, shipping method , design navigation , product photography, social media strategy, customer acquisition, customer retention, search engine optimisation & a whole lot more, every aspect needs due attention as it’s all about starting your business from scratch. You are most likely counting your pennies as you read this, being a start-up. Your start-up website needs to be near the top of the list when you’re prioritizing how to use available resources with judicious use of funds. It is the platform that establishes your brand and serves as a main access point for reaching customers, even though most local start-ups don’t need a large website.
It is very rare for those with a physical product or high street presence and to not take advantage of the many channels there are to sell online in this increasingly digital-age. With rising number of world’s global internet users purchasing products online, for any small to medium scale businesses selling a product online allows you to reach a wider audience and new customer pockets. To cater to the growing needs of these businessmen, self-hosted eCommerce services offered by some of the leading players like Magento eCommerce solutions, show what a success they have had in the online world.
A highlight of the features which make Magento platform worth using:
SEO FRIENDLINESS:
This can be attained with countless options for search engine optimization including custom URLs and extensive analytics and integrations. To catapult you to the top of Google’s coveted search results, and win friends on Yahoo! and Bing etc., the best SEO practices of the platform can be bliss for your business. Saving you cash on leads, you’ll generate more organic traffic. There are plenty of ranking criteria to consider for your eCommerce enterprise with SEO being a crucial part of site design and performance and for PPC marketing having perfect title meta is the vital part.A good first step forward is making it easy for humans and robots to navigate, that takes using the right URL structures
Efficient Mobile Performance:
eCommerce retailers’ dreams for a mobile tech more than a passing fad. To have mobile-friendly sites is a must have for all e-retailers, with good reason that:
==> Through mobile devices, 66% of time spent on online eCommerce is done
==> For making product decision, 82% of smartphone users turn to their devices
==> Market statistics shows mobile commerce is growing 300% faster than eCommerce as customers want mobile friendly designs
Easy integration ecosystem:
With a long list of applications and services, including eBay, MailChimp, and Twitter, along with many others, self-hosted platforms becomes handy for integration.
Powerful & Spacious:
Additional server resources such as more space, CPU, or memory can cost $25 per month on average. That said, you get around 50 GB of storage space which reduces the need to purchase additional space for some time with a basic shared hosting plan.
Conclusion: Thereby we can finally say that choosing self-hosted platform provide you with absolute management and may be came upon and run on a shoestring budget. In this such case, we strongly recommend Magneto as it is undoubtedly the leading platform for self-hosted eCommerce services and was acquired by eBay in 2011, which goes to show its successful reign since then.