Many companies have decided to use the help of agencies when creating online stores , smaller companies have chosen ready-made solutions, and beginners have tried their hand at open-source platforms. But which solution is the best? Is there an easy answer? You will find out later in the article.
the growing popularity of e-commerce in Poland
the growing popularity of e-commerce in Poland
Choosing an e-commerce platform and positioning
Most SEO Agencies offer a wide range of marketing services aimed at online store owners. Promotion in Social Media, Google Ads ads or positioning are among the most frequently chosen and most profitable forms of online advertising in the case of e-commerce. While paid ads give quick results and work almost immediately, the positioning process is tedious, long and often does not bring the expected results at the very beginning. However, in the long run, it is the most profitable choice.
However, did you know that the success of the SEO process depends on the e-commerce platform you choose? Not every online store platform allows for all the modifications that affect your site's position in the Google search engine. The Google algorithm takes into account hundreds of factors of varying importance, matching results to specific search engine user queries.
E-commerce positioning
Website positioning is a series of activities that we divide into On-Site and Off-site. In the case of the former, these are content optimization, website code and the introduction of UX activities. It is in this part of the positioning process that the ability to modify the website plays the biggest role. Not all e-commerce platforms have the same possibilities.
Some of them have extensive functions as standard, facilitating positioning, others require purchasing additional modules or plugins, and on some of them, implementing some functionalities may be impossible. In the further part of the article, I will present the biggest problems that individual CMSs cause when implementing changes and sales scalability. I will also touch on the issue of elements that affect the increase in sales.
Positioning of online stores
Positioning of online stores
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Types of sales platforms
Open Source - Free e-commerce platform
Open Source is software whose code is distributed publicly without any fees. Developed by the community, it encourages cooperation in its development. This is a great solution for people who want the store they open to be their own. Is it completely free? In principle, the owner only bears the costs of hosting, and apart from them can use a lot of free templates and extensions. However, most Open Source systems require the user to have at least minimal knowledge to properly configure it. Unfortunately, most individual solutions, dedicated templates, specialist integrations that you would like to find in your store will require either the use of paid plugins/modules or the help of an experienced developer who will implement such functionalities for us.
Open Source Platforms
Open Source Platforms
The great advantages of open source systems are their office 365 database security thanks to frequent updates created by the community gathered around a given e-commerce platform. Additionally, most systems allow you to easily scale your business, increasing the number of products offered in the store, or allowing you to ensure proper operation even with a constantly growing number of users. Open source systems are created by users who attach great importance to the system enabling editing of a huge number of elements. This allows us to say that such systems are very convenient in the positioning process. In Poland, open source platforms are chosen by people who are just starting to sell on the Internet as well as medium and large companies. The most popular open source platforms in Poland are PrestaShop, Woocommerce and Magento. Each of them will be discussed later in the article.
The most popular platforms include: WooCommerce, PrestaShop, Magento and Shopware .
SaaS
What if we don't have IT knowledge, but we want a quick and relatively cheap solution that will allow us to open an online store? SaaS (software as a service) e-commerce platforms come to the rescue. These are subscription solutions that allow you to use a ready-made program (usually in the cloud). This is a very popular solution that allows you to open a store very quickly based on a ready-made system with several templates and a range of functionalities available in it. We don't have to be programming experts to open our first online store quickly, easily and cheaply!
Software as a Service
Software as a Service
So let's talk about costs. These usually include a monthly subscription fee, which gives us access to software, hosting, the ability to use a selected domain, and sometimes developer support for a specified number of hours. The most popular e-commerce platforms in the SaaS system cost from several dozen to even several hundred złoty per month, depending on the selected package. They provide cyclical updates to their products, but they also have their drawbacks.
The biggest disadvantage of SaaS systems is the fact that we are often not the owner of the website code, which is of course understandable. Companies only allow their product to be modified to a small extent, because it would be difficult from a technical perspective, and would also reduce the security of their product. Another problem related to this is the fact that we often have the option of using modules available to everyone or purchasing additional modules or plugins with integrations to improve the functionality of our store. In the case when we need integration with a less popular API, it may turn out to be impossible to implement or require large financial outlays. Many owners also complain about the fact that SaaS works with a large increase in the number of users on the website.
In terms of positioning, SaaSs are relatively well-adapted and allow you to change basic elements on the page (meta tags, headings, canonical links, etc.), but in each of them we will find elements that we will sooner or later have a problem with. Before choosing a system, it is worth checking what elements we will be able to edit and contacting several users about their feelings.
