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Top 5 eCommerce Platforms in 2019

AjayKapoor15 — Tue, 09 Jul 2019 06:41:26 +0000

Looking for the best & most suitable eCommerce platform for your store?
Are you confused about which eCommerce platform to use for your online store?

Here in this blog, you will find answers to all such questions. Let’s give it a start!

Finding the best eCommerce platform is a really crucial decision and one that’s going to put a long term impact on your business venture going ahead.

Before moving forward to delve deep into the best eCommerce platform, let’s have a look at some stats and facts about eCommerce.

Stats and Facts about eCommerce:
More than 80% of the online population has used the internet to buy goods and services.
Around 50% of the online population has shopped at internet retailers more than one time.
54% of shoppers say that Facebook has the greatest impact on what they buy.
Around 50% of the online population has shopped at internet retailers more than once.

Small eCommerce businesses require a certain kind of eCommerce platform for their online store. Let’s have a look at the 5 best eCommerce CMS for the year 2019.

Rank 1 - WooCommerce

WooCommerce is a free of cost Wordpress plugin that permits online merchants to turn their Wordpress websites into online stores.

Being among the most popular eCommerce platforms across the world, WooCommerce has its own secure payment processor as well as the shopping cart. This open-source platform can be a good option for smaller brands with Wordpress development resources.

Despite it being free, it costs a little money when you want the entire integration of the shopping cart. If you are planning to scale up your business, you can choose a somewhat different eCommerce platform- WooCommerce.

Pricing:

$0 for the software
$100 per year for hosting

Features:

Standalone software (it needs to be installed on a web server)
Product management features
Multiple payment gateways
Bandwidth depends on the host
Good reports on sales and store activity
Thousands of extensions available
Order management features
Mobile friendly to a certain extent

Rank 2 - Shopify

Shopify is one of the most famous eCommerce platforms in the world. It is quite easy to run an entirely new store with Shopify. Just because of this property, Shopify has become popular among smaller eCommerce brands that plan to do a lower order volume.

Despite limited customization available, Shopify seems to be a good option for small as well as medium-sized eCommerce businesses. Moreover, this trustworthy CMS provides outstanding services to around 3 lac clients across the world.

Shopify is quite user-friendly and has a simple drag and drop interface and tools. Moreover, it gives you a simple theme editing that makes sure an amazing user experience for a technical or non-technical person both.

Pricing:

$9 per month
$29 per month
$79 per month
$299 per month

Features:

Subscription-based service
Product management features
Multiple payment gateways
Basic customer management
Unlimited bandwidth
Thousands of Shopify apps are available
Mobile friendly + you can edit HTML and CSS directly
100+ professional themes

Rank 3 - Magento

Magento is a highly secured, customizable and engaging eCommerce platform. It provides you a flexible shopping cart system. Moreover, it gives you complete control on look, content, and functionality of your online store.

It provides powerful marketing, search engine optimization, and catalog-management tools to its users. It does not require you to be a software developer to use this eCommerce platform.

It is quite simple to use and you don't require any specific technical knowledge to use this platform for your future online store. Just hire a magento developer, get the website made & zoom ahead.

Pricing:

$0 for the community edition of the software itself
$100 per year for the hosting
Up to $15000 or even $50,000 per year for the enterprise edition

Features
Subscription-based service
Multiple payment gateways
100+ professional themes
Mobile friendly
Comes with Unlimited Bandwidth
Basic customer management
Product Management features
Order management features

Rank 4 - BigCommerce

BigCommerce is an online eCommerce platform that helps online merchants to sell and enhance their business with the help of a website builder, customizable checkout processes and SEO support.

This platform provides inventory tracking and Amazon integration to make selling easier. Also, it offers other integrations such as Instagram shopping, MailChimp and Google shopping. It will ultimately result in helping you to reach the sites where your target audiences are present.

BigCommerce have ready-made templates that you can modify according to your business needs. Since it is quite popular for its fast processing speed, this platform is most suitable for new companies looking to demonstrate their brand as reliable and fast.

Pricing:

Standard is $29.95 per month, Plus Version is $79.95 per month and Pro is $249.95 per month.

Features:

Standalone software + subscription service
Multiple payment gateways
Mobile optimized structure
Bandwidth is host-dependent
Advanced and in-depth reports on sales and store activity
More than 5000 extensions available
Built-in Multilingual support and API available

Order management features + shipping charges

Rank 5 - PrestaShop

PrestaShop has been awarded as the eCommerce platform with the cutest logo. The most interesting thing about this platform is that it can be easily downloaded and can be used free of cost.

Using this eCommerce platform, online merchants can easily create an entirely customizable, ready to use store and that too in a few minutes. Moreover, it does not put any license fees or any kind of revenue percentage.

Pricing:

It requires a paid web hosting. Hosting fees can range from $799 to $1499 per month. For a good template, you will require buying paid modules.

Features:

Enhanced product configuration
Improved back office navigation
Novel themes
Better Module integration
Password security
Clean URLs
Better product configuration
Simple maintenance system

Conclusion

I hope now you are quite clear about which eCommerce platform is best for your online business.

In case you want to have your own eCommerce website based on any of the above-mentioned frameworks, you can contact several eCommerce development companies to make your dreams come true.

Differ from my opinions regarding the Top 5 eCommerce platforms?

Let's discuss in the comments section.

Types of Chatbots & How They Are Helping Users & Businesses

AjayKapoor15 — Mon, 17 Jun 2019 06:11:45 +0000

You might have seen how with the arrival of the latest technologies like AI, Machine Learning, IOT( AI-based) have almost replaced the role of a human being and this could be seen in terms of ROBOTS.

Yes! Here we are going to talk about the revolution that is being brought by CHATBOT. Let’s see how chatbots are making human life entertaining while doing a human task and how much potential it has even for a software development company which is making the software of businesses.

What are chatbots & How do chatbots work? Any idea?

Chatbots are basically software applications that perform like conversational assistants that play the role of human beings or it could be said that they mimic the written and conversational style of human beings but according to the saved data in them.

Well, here we will know what kinds of chatbots are there and in how many sectors they are serving.

                                            HEALTH

Woebot

Woebot is one of the best healthcare chatbots which is a therapy chatbot that helps in tracking the patient’s mind, determines his behavior patterns that are all based on their responses.

After determining all these activities of the patients, this chatbot instructs with various techniques that might help in cognitive behavioral therapy of the patient.

Meditatebot

Another Healthcare chatbot is Meditate that is AI-powered. It is very difficult to continue with your mediation on a regular basis and a lot of people are seen losing their dedication towards it.

With the help of this Meditatebot you can create and manage a daily meditation practice.

HealthTap

Till now, we were talking about the writing chatbots, now here is one of the interesting chatbots that is chatbot on call.

Healthtap is an on-call online doctor that helps to answer queries related to medical health and all. This chatbot is basically connected with labs and pharmacies and is known as HIPAA-compliant medical service.

Melody by Baidu

This is one of the best conversational bots by Baidu which is specially designed to provide accurate information to the doctors in order to prescript with recommendations and various treatment options.

ELIZA

ELIZA is one of the natural conversational programs which was created by Joseph Weizenbaum in 1966. Its design gives the representation of the Rogerian psychotherapist. You can find various sites on the internet that are related to the ELIZA application.

                                       PERSONALITY CHATBOTS

Mitsuku

Mitsuku, a four-time winner of the Loebner prize turning test claims that this is the main reason why it is considered to be the best AI conversational chatbot.

Erwin

This is another AI-powered chatbot that provides you with riddles/clues without the involvement of ads, emails, or other messy marketing.

George

This chatbot is always ready to chat with you & will stop talking in case you misbehave or insult him. Whenever it answers, looks to be “typing” out answers.

AIBliss

Virtual girlfriend with AI. Build the character for yourself, chat with it, and it will develop different characteristics as it goes.

One of the most interesting and entertaining chatbots which are known as AIBliss, an AI-powered virtual girlfriend who talks with you according to your interest and mostly about the things which give you joy.

The one interesting thing about this virtual girlfriend is that you can treat her in your own way and with the passage of time she will start knowing your interest and will talk accordingly. This is a text-based chatbot.

One of the major benefits of the virtual girlfriend chatbots is that they are beneficial for your personal growth and especially for lonely people who can understand that what actually their life is all about. It is considered that these virtual girlfriends, basically a chatbot are better than psychotherapist!

                                          FUN AND SOCIAL

Jokebot

The jokebot is text-based chatbot which helps in entertaining you with different jokes. Just go for submitting your own joke and this jokebot will provide you with its own jokes.

Quotebot

Quotebot helps in sharing quotes as you just have you submit with your own quotes and it will respond to you with its own quote.

Dinnerbot

This is such a helpful chatbot as it basically helps you in providing a recipe every day or week. But what actually you have to do?

Basically, you are required to give it a list of ingredients in return it will provide you with recipe suggestions.

                                       NEWS AND WEATHER

Poncho

This chatbot provides you with personalized weather information on the basis of your zip code while entertaining you with a humorous or witty comment about random things.

CNN

This is also one of the weather information chatbots. It helps in providing you with the latest news stories by just clicking on the messenger icon that is available on the CNN Facebook page.

Final words

Now, you must be well acquainted with the various types of chatbots that are making your life entertaining.

It is clear that how these chatbots have almost replaced human beings, so it could be understood that they are reducing the labor costs and various websites owners could be seen making use of these chatbots in place of customer support and all.

It is a win-win situation for both the users & the businesses as the life of the user becomes less-complicated & entertaining & on the other hand, if the user is happy, the businesses can get new users as well as retain old ones which in turn can lead to higher profitability.