Choosing the right E-commerce platform is essential for the growth of your business. When researching various options, you might have come across big E-commerce platforms like Shopify, Magento, and BigCommerce. So what makes one e-commerce platform better than the other and more importantly, which one would be a better choice for you?
In this article, we aim to simplify your decision-making process by comparing these E-commerce platforms with regards to their features, user-friendliness, payment gateway options, and digital marketing.
Let’s dive right in!
1. Features:
While all of these e-commerce platforms perform the same basic function, each of them does have its somewhat unique bells and whistles, which could have a major bearing on your decision.
Shopify has some native features and it is suitable for most micro-merchants. This is because such merchants have low expectations and low demands for their platform. Moreover, it offers additional functionality through third-party apps available on its app store. Moreover, Shopify has a small depository of add-ons and its installation process is simple thus you can improve the functionality of your store. Although Shopify has been trying to close the feature gap through launching BOPIS (Buy Online Pickup In-Store), gift cards, discount offers however many small E-commerce businesses are infuriated by constant referral to Shopify’s app store for extra features in SEM, product merchandising, SEO, content marketing and discounting.
Comparatively, Magento is feature-rich since it has support for native product bundles, huge product catalogs with various variants, cross-selling and upselling features. Further, its users have access to add-ons and extensions. Although Magento allows you to fully customize your E-commerce website, you might need expert website developers to maintain them. It has a comprehensive repository of extensions that can be integrated smoothly.
BigCommerce also offers a vast amount of native features, saving you the effort and cost of relying on third-party apps. It has a channel manager that makes omnichannel selling easier, an abandoned cart saver, and has a wide range of payment getaways. Furthermore, it has OOTB (Out-Of-The-Box) integrations with other marketplaces, built-in marketing tools, and robust discount options. BigCommerce’s small business merchants can access shopping feeds for Facebook, Google Shopping, eBay, Amazon, and much more.
2. Ease of Use:
Shopify is intuitive since it was created while keeping in mind users with no background in web development. Further, it has a drag-and-drop feature that simplifies the development process and you can get your E-commerce site up and running in just a few steps. It also facilitates easy modification of basic attributes of your store with its easy-to-use tools. However, you will need to employ custom coding or additional third-party apps for advanced features.
Conversely, implementing Magento can be a challenge for the less technical users out there and you will need expert web developers to build your website. You will also need a hosting partner to host your E-commerce site and someone to integrate the tech stack. Even after the set-up process, Magento has a steep learning curve. Further, its flexibility may be a liability for newcomers who are unable to navigate its complexity.
BigCommerce is intuitive just like Shopify since it is easy to use. It makes it simple for new users to build sites even if they have never done it before. They can launch their E-commerce website within minutes, Also, it is straightforward enough to run through a simple shop page for managing orders and adding products. BigCommerce also facilitates headless commerce so you or your development firm can make changes without needing the full development updates for a platform. Further, it has various pre-built plug-ins for DXP systems such as Bloomreach, Drupal, WordPress, and many more. However, it doesn’t allow much customization so you can’t add a CTA, pop-in, or a custom plug-in and need to find alternative ways to solve your customization issues.
3. Payment Gateway Options:
Offering various payment gateway options on an e-commerce platform is one of the essential elements of facilitating the end-user. Shopify has integrations for more than 100 worldwide payment providers. It allows you to pay according to your country and the payment provider, greatly simplifying the payment process.
Like Shopify, Magento also offers several payment options through some modules to expand the potential of your E-commerce store. You can find many adds-on and different modules for setting up and configuring the payment options.
BigCommerce also offers multiple payment gateways such as PayPal, Authorize.net, Stripe, Sage Pay, Adyen, and much more.
4. Digital Marketing:
As a merchant, you want to strategically employ SEO and digital marketing techniques in order to reach the right audience. From a marketing and SEO perspective, Magento, Shopify, and BigCommerce offer multiple integrations of marketing tools so you can maximize your ROI by reaching your target audience. Such platforms facilitate basic functionalities to optimize your store content for a high SERP rating, resulting in high revenue generation of your E-commerce store.
Shopify offers basic SEO features like editing meta tags, optimizing product and inventory pages. Moreover, it allows in-depth modification such as optimization of file structure and search crawlers. However, its limitation is that since Shopify stores are self-hosted so you are unable to make server-level configurations.
On the other hand, Magento helps in integrating and implementing custom SEO and digital marketing strategies without a major hassle. Additionally, it allows you to tweak and customize your store design for maximum output. Magento’s open-source nature makes it an SEO-friendly platform. Further, it allows you to fine-tune your permalinks for inventory products along with meta content. Also, it allows you to take full advantage of no-follow links, canonical tags, and redirects. Such features make it easy for search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo to index and crawl E-commerce websites and understand their structure. BigCommerce brings basic SEO features like MT, MD keyword optimization to the table, allowing you to easily optimize your E-commerce store.
If you aren’t an SEO expert then you should consider outsourcing an expert digital marketing firm that not only offers web development along with Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Social Media Marketing, Email Marketing, Content Marketing, and Performance Marketing. If you need help in designing a digital marketing strategy for your E-commerce store then schedule a FREE Consultation with AdRush today. We can also help you configure and set up your E-commerce website, regardless of your preferred platform.
Final Thoughts:
There is no one-size-fits-all E-commerce platform since every business has different needs and requirements. The key to choose a platform is to find the one that fits your business goals. You don’t want to attach your brand to a platform that limits its growth due to limited functionality and complexity.
Magento might be the right choice for you if you own a well-established business with a high budget and even have developer resources for E-commerce site set-up and maintenance.
Conversely, Shopify is recommended for new merchants with small businesses since it has easy-to-use features. Additionally, if you are new to E-commerce then you probably don’t have experience in website development, Shopify should be your choice.
BigCommerce is a great fit for firms of all sizes and those that want growth. It offers exceptional E-commerce features such as robust security, unbeatable customer service, and much more.