The State of Enterprise Ecommerce

Every company is setting more and more ambitious goals. They are looking for fresh concepts and innovations to make it so. Enterprise ecommerce can enhance the efficiency of companies and provide a better customer experience.

In a general sense, almost every organization can be listed as an enterprise, but not every company needs an ‘enterprise-grade’ ecommerce platform.

From rendering product catalogs to handling orders to communicating with third-party systems, an enterprise ecommerce platform needs to manage a multitude of tasks.

When you add massive order volume, multiple currencies, and numerous languages, the difficulty of these tasks is exacerbated.

Although some enterprise ecommerce systems are delivered as software packages, the major platforms of today are cloud-based, simplifying, or even replacing the requirements for software installation and update.

Enterprise eCommerce software’s higher price tag comes with significant features. Let’s look at those now.

Top Enterprise Ecommerce Platform Features

1) Flexible, scalable ecommerce platform

For any enterprise ecommerce platform, scalability is the key prerequisite. Your enterprise ecommerce platform should be scalable and flexible to cater to large-scale businesses.

Components of the platform should be coupled loosely so that they can function individually.

Loose coupling allows for the elastic scalability of the platform. As the components can be flexibly combined, it adapts both the ‘workload increase’ and ‘workload decrease’ as well.

2) A personalized experience for users

One thing the customer wants is engaging their interest and prioritizing their requirements. Nearly 59% of online shoppers believe that it’s easier to find an interesting product on a personalized online store.

You can make interactions faster and easier with personalization, which helps increase customer satisfaction and repeat visitors.

3) Product and catalog management

Your products are why consumers enjoy your brand, and you won’t have much success selling it if you don’t show your merchandise in an organized manner.

You will seamlessly handle your products and your catalog to sell as many units as possible when you use an enterprise ecommerce platform.

When it comes to product management, you’ll be able to organize data like:

• Product descriptions

• Product costs

• SKU numbers

As far as catalog management, you can organize:

• Products into categories

• Custom catalogs for customer segmentation

4) Cloud-friendly ecommerce platform hosting

Cloud-based hosting refers to using the clustered server’s virtual services to support all of your eCommerce site’s inputs.

With cloud hosting, all services are practically available to you, such as load balancing, security, hardware resources, and network maintenance.

Here are a few reasons why you should use cloud hosting for your ecommerce platform:

• You pay for resources only when you use them.

• Cloud hosting allows you to deliver content more efficiently with a dynamic response to customer demands if your ecommerce company focuses on the global market.

• It also offers flexible and reliable network connectivity.

• It offers an end-to-end ecommerce platform solution.

5) Support for smooth integration for third-party tools

All the functionality you have with your current platform must be integrated with your new enterprise eCommerce platform and it should be compatible with your new business features.

Your platform must be integrated with ERP, allowing your organization to function effectively. ERP helps manage inventory, including order management, logistics.

Secondly, the most significant integration tools that help to promote your website are automated marketing tools. Integration of the payment gateway enables the client to pay in several options and in the currency of their convenience.

Integration of third-party platforms also allows you to incorporate unique features that help to more efficiently navigate the ecommerce business process.

6) Annual maintenance & support solution

Maintaining your ecommerce website is a critical process rather than simply launching it. It needs to handle customer requests and concerns, maintain the information on your site, analyze data, and monitor any ongoing service on your website.

When upgrading inventory, retrieving user credentials, optimizing the performance of your web page, and more, ecommerce platforms must be robust and easily manageable.

The ecommerce platform provider’s effective support & maintenance service would help boost the website’s loading speed and security. To ensure that the ecommerce website is functioning efficiently, there must be a periodic check.

How to Choose an Enterprise Ecommerce Solution

Modern ecommerce business solutions come with many great features, but they typically take considerable effort to efficiently install, integrate, and learn to use.

It all takes time to deploy, integrate with third-party systems, and configure products.

And that’s not even bringing in the monetary risks that are upfront and continuing.

That’s why it is important for business enterprises to choose the right enterprise ecommerce platform. You have to make sure that you first speak to the right people.

1) Outline Your Specific Needs

The decision to choose an ecommerce platform for your company requires insight from several aspects, such as growth, requirements, or business partners, when you run an enterprise business.

If you want to provide a thorough overview of needs, then every corner of the company must be evaluated. Review these things before you fulfill the requirements.

You need to work out your vision and the key goal of your business in order to find your needs and specific requirements. It makes you better understand your business.

Ask yourself:

• Do you want more profits and far less expenditures?

• Looking for an interface that is more user-friendly to improve conversion rates?

• Is it important for your platform to scale with your growing company?

• Would you like to see your platform better integrated with third-party solutions?

• Are you looking to prevent being locked using specific suppliers or a provider of services?

Find out the obstacle to achieving your goal.

• Are Information systems difficult to integrate with your platform in your organizations like ERP, OMS, WMS, etc.?

• Unable to comply with your system’s PCI compliance or security?

• For server performance, do you want to rely heavily on your hosting company?

Flexibility, scalability, and extensibility should be supported by your platform to expand with you as you reach new markets.

2) Analysis Your Business Models

Many ecommerce platforms cater to a certain client base, so you’ll want to look at solutions that are either B2B or B2C-oriented.

Alternatively, you would want a solution that fits equally well for all three business models, and by asking the provider to show you how their software worked with different ecommerce models, you will figure that out.

For example, transactions take longer in the B2B space and also require more structured company accounts and correspondence between the seller and the buyer prior to placing orders.

On the other hand, when it comes to B2C ecommerce, the ordering process is always quicker and less communication heavy.

Mostly, along with their revenue-generating business models, multi-vendor ecommerce acquires either of the B2B or B2C business models.

3) Decide Between SaaS, IaaS, PaaS

When integrating with core business tools, enterprise ecommerce software handles both the front-end and your backend activities.

Let’s consider the general categories that all of these ideas fall under before we get to all the individual alternatives to consider.

First, somewhere, the website has to be hosted. Usually, your choice of an ecommerce site defines your hosting environment, which is either:

• On-premise ecommerce platform, or

• Cloud-hosted ecommerce platform

One of these categories will be your hosted eCommerce platform:

• Open Source eCommerce platform

• SaaS – Software as a Service

• PaaS – Platform as a Service

• IaaS – Infrastructure as a Service

The company usually owns an open-source ecommerce platform and can modify the entire code on it. Server and software control are the perks of these platforms.

However, the initial costs of these platforms are generally higher.

These platforms, however, typically have a higher initial cost.

They also require a lot of tasks to be handled by the company, including security, hardware, management of IT personnel, hosting, and manual integration.

4) Ecommerce Pricing

In all business decision-making, the important question must be business expenditure or pay. But it’s the most critical element in deciding on the best ecommerce platform for companies.

It can be extremely costly to get the best enterprise ecommerce platform. Even if it is good for your company, the price will always outweigh the cost.

Cost depends primarily on the features and the design differs from each other in the same way that the cost of the eCommerce platform often varies depending on the features and design. You need to pay attention to how they change the ecommerce cost.

If you have it on board to set up an enterprise ecommerce business, you need to find out how to launch your ecommerce platform without any mistakes. To launch your site with less complexity, look at these guidelines.

Enterprise ecommerce platform comparison

It’s no simple task when it comes to choosing between the various enterprise ecommerce platforms out there. Each has its own unique selling points, and it can be difficult to decide which is right for you.

Keep reading to get more insight into the comparisons of the top enterprise ecommerce platforms!

1) SHOPIFY

Shopify is probably one of the most common ecommerce platforms at the enterprise level available, and for good reason.

The platform enables users to design and manage their blogs, social media platforms, and even brick-and-mortar locations from their stores.

Their suite of built-in tools enables you to create and execute digital marketing campaigns through various channels and also facilitates you to evaluate the success.

As well as campaign automation, analytics, and more, Shopify provides content marketing and SEO tools.

Moreover, with more than 4,100 applications that connect directly with their site, they provide 24/7 contact support and have their own app store. Video promo creators, email reward apps, and more are some of their apps.

Some of our favourite assets:

• It is affordable for any business enterprise.

• It provides solutions for anything from marketing to payments to shipping.

• It’s completely customizable without any necessary developer experience.

2) MAGENTO

Magento also has a significant market presence and is a brand that is well established.

You will likely have a strong reliance on designers and developers to use Magento Commerce, as well as costly maintenance and support, which can make it difficult to measure your overall ownership expense.

Your company is responsible for PCI enforcement and updates as well. Such updates can be critical and can interrupt the customizations and integrations with other systems.

Our favorite assets:

• With a new Instant Buy checkout option, raise conversion rates for returning shoppers.

• Optimize pages in product categories to achieve greater sales.

• 24/7 technical support is available.

3) BigCommerce

BigCommerce provides tailored Enterprise Customer Onboarding, catalog transfer services, and robust education tools to promote re-platform processes.

Additional resources and customized assistance are often offered by Enterprise Account Managers and Technical Account Managers to meet the needs of enterprise clients.

BigCommerce also has a large group of partners and agencies who are experts in the platform and can assist with design, development, and SEO needs.

The learning curve might be more challenging than with some simpler platforms available since the platform has more native features.

Some of our favorite assets:

• Enables the development of a stellar user experience by integrating third-party apps

• Uses the Google Cloud Platform for best-in-class uptime

• Provides design tools that allow you to develop an ecommerce site that fits your brand.

4) Salesforce Commerce Cloud

Salesforce is a well-known cloud-based software company that offers CRM services, but we also really like Salesforce Commerce Cloud, its enterprise ecommerce platform.

A central cloud platform is operated by Salesforce B2B Commerce, and you can optimize your conversion funnel and handle your most important customers’ order lifecycle.

Not only that, but by helping consumers find just what they’re looking for on your website, you can create and execute marketing strategies that allow you to improve organic traffic.

Some of our favorite assets:

• Storefront blueprints assist you in developing an ecommerce platform with best practices, merchandising, and technological architecture.

• Ability to provide various languages, a central view of products and pricing across multiple sites and currencies

• Ability to integrate social media with your ecommerce efforts

Final Thoughts

Choosing an ecommerce platform is a daunting job you need to tackle in the enterprise market. Your chosen ecommerce solution must be able to balance your growing business needs and provide an outstanding experience for your customers.

With many risks and unknowns, the start of an enterprise-level company may feel like a huge challenge of implementing and integrating advanced technology.

If you have a strategy and detailed specifications from the beginning, you can select a robust, expandable, and scalable platform.

With versatility and greater efficiencies, Docmation offers you both web and mobile enterprise solutions to inspire, develop, and transform your business.

Source: Enterprise Ecommerce