Questions we would ask
Understanding the answer to these questions allows us to recommend a platform to you with confidence.
- How much revenue do you plan to take through your site in year three?
- How many products (SKU’s) will you be selling?
- What 3rd party systems will your eCommerce site have to integrate with (talk to) i.e. order management, warehouse management, accounting system etc.
- Will this site be B2C, B2B or both?
- Will you need a lot of content to sell your product i.e. videos, pdf’s, long product descriptions?
- Do you need a custom template design or are you happy with buying off the shelf?
- What is your approximate budget for this project? Consider ongoing hosting, support and continuous development costs as well.
- What skills do you have in-house to market, merchandise or even develop the site on an ongoing basis?
Why Magento
Trusted by more than 250,000 businesses worldwide, Magento is a leading global digital commerce platform with over $50 billion in gross merchandise volume transacted annually. Having both a free edtion and licensed edtion; Open Source and Commerce, it is no wonder it has been the platform or choice for so many. You are unlikely to get fired for choosing Magento, but…
You can sink a lot of cost, if you are not set up as a business to cope with the effort you have to put in to make it work for you.
Why Aero Commerce
A new contender in the eCommerce platform space, that have come out of the starting blocks strongly. Aero is a major contender for those considering the Magento Open Source Edition, if you want a platform that is licensed and supported by the vendor. It is fast and does not need the hosting resource Magento does. However…
Aero Commerce does have its limitations and this is around needing a global site and/or B2B. It is also not as mature as the others, so there are not as many existing modules. However, due to it being built on the Laravel PHP Framework, you will easily be able to extend it and there is a large pool of developers to hire.
Why BigCommerce
This is such a great plaform, easy to use and being a SaaS platform, it takes away any hosting and upgrade pain from you. You can build sites on this platform quicker than the other two and built well, you, as a merchant, would have more control of it. However…
With ease, also comes limitations. The platform is not as open as Magento or Aero Commerce, therefore customising it for your business, can be challenging and increase costs significantly.
