Which e-commerce platform to choose for an online store?

Online store  - a website based on an e-commerce platform where you can buy products. 

Compared to stationary sales, running costs are much lower, and products are available around the clock for any location. Customer service can be provided from home, and the entire sales process can be integrated with warehousing, payment and delivery.

Since an online presence is a necessity nowadays, and there are so many advantages to selling online, why are still many companies not running their own e-store?

Sometimes companies unnecessarily limit their sales by giving up on digitization, e.g. a B2B platform by a small number of business partners or an online store by high individuality of products. Some manufacturers sell through distributors/wholesalers and are not even aware that they need an online product catalogs to promote and strengthen their brand. An online store is not the only e-commerce solution, and it is worth thinking about how you can automate your sales.

There are many platforms on the market and each advertises itself as easy to use, fast and cheap. How do you choose the perfect solution that will fulfill your needs in the optimal budget?

Simple platforms - e.g. WooCommerce, Wix, Shopify. Cheap to implement due to reliance on website templates, most often requiring a subscription. The range of functionality is "sufficient", but as awareness increases, it turns out that many SEO elements cannot be edited. Good for small stores, for larger data volumes may have performance issues.

Functional and scalable platforms - Magento, Shopware, Pimcore. Open-source platforms, where the cost is the system configuration. They can take data from various sources, but this requires paid plug-ins or writing additional modules by the programmer. In return, you get a flexible store with many functionalities and customization options. A solution for medium and large companies with more complex products, requiring performance and scalability.

Dedicated platform - software written from scratch to meet the specific needs of the company. The most expensive solution offering endless possibilities for configuration and data integration between systems. Chosen by companies needing flexible configurators, product selection systems or offering customized products. 

Pimcore is an e-commerce platform for digitizing sales. It can be used to realize an online store, online product catalogs, B2B platforms, configurators and selection programs. It has modules to support sales processes including order management, customer profiling, complex pricing logics for categories, customer-specific price lists and assortments.

The Pimcore platform is the "golden mean" between platforms with built-in features and dedicated custom-written software. By configuring built-in functions and data types, even complex needs can be met at a reasonable cost. 

Pimcore is an open-source platform that differs strongly from other e-commerce platforms. It owes this to its origins as a PIM system for managing product data. As a result, it has a very flexible architecture, allowing you to give it any structure you want or use an already existing one within a standard such as the ETIM classification system. All code is changeable allowing modification and expansion of all functionality and writing custom modules.

Not only that, thanks to the storage of all product information and the Marketing Automation module, Pimcore has the ability to display personalized content (DXP). In a store, this is crucial, as it allows you to increase sales by implementing various marketing strategies, such as up-sell and cross-sell.

Such a comprehensive platform allows you to meet all your needs without writing everything from scratch. It's no surprise that customers are highly satisfied, as reflected in awards from the Gartner Research Institute for e-commerce and other categories. Learn more about the Pimcore platform.