Managed E-commerce solutions have become the most effective way for small and medium-sized businesses to create thriving online stores for their products and services without investing into an in-house IT department. What are the advantages of managed e-commerce and the 3 pillars of managed e-commerce: platform, hosting and optimization?
Managed E-commerce: Platform
Choosing the right ecommerce platform is the first essential step in building a successful online store. There are many platforms out there today ranging in price, features, easy of use and customizability. The right ecommerce platform has to be secure, reliable, customizable and should be regularly updated with new features to evolve along with the rest of the internet. If your online store is too light on features and does not do anything to set itself apart from the competition, you will never be able to achieve the results you want and customers today have too much choice and variety with just a few clicks.
We focus on 3 ecommerce platforms: Magento, X-Cart and WooCommerce for WordPress. These 3 platforms stand out from the rest and are among the most popular in the world. Each of these platforms would be a great choice as the backbone of your online store depending on what you are looking for. X-Cart has been around for a long time and has an unbelievably large library of plugins and add-ons. WooCommerce is the most affordable and integrates with WordPress making it an easy choice for anyone who already has a wordpress site. Magento is the most flexible and moddable platform in the world but requires more work to set it up.
We will definitely cover the similarities and differences between the 3 platforms and managed E-commerce in the near future. But until then, know that choosing any of these platform is worthwhile.
Managed E-commerce: Hosting
Every website needs a web host but if you are going to run a successful online store, you may want to go beyond that $2 a month GoDaddy starter package. While there are plenty of cheap basic options out there , you definitely want to invest in a proper hosting for your ecommerce setup. The webhost will determine how much data you can store online, how much traffic you can support, how secure your data is and how fast your store can start loading.
The beauty about managed ecommerce services is that a good host will be part of the package. For example, we currently host all of our online stores using state of the art Rackspace or Google Cloud data center that serve over 60% of today’s Fortune 500 companies.
Managed E-commerce: Optimization & Maintenance
Optimization and maintenance are crucial in achieving long-term goals for an online store. We have written time and time again that speed matters. If your website is slow, people will buy less and leave quicker. Worse still, people will not come back.
To get the most out of your setup, it must be fast. As you add more features to your store and make it more complicated, proper optimization becomes the difference a sale and a bounce. Optimization is an ongoing commitment to your online store that is essential to keep your current customers happy and to prevent potential customers from going elsewhere.
A fully managed ecommerce service will provide you with long-term ongoing optimization and maintenance of your store (updates, cleanups, facelifts, upgrades). Think of it as keeping your actual store of office clean, tidy and organized. You would not want your clients to walk into a dirty office or store where the doors don’t really work and all the products are just hidden away on random shelves in boxes. In the same sense, you would not want customers getting frustrated trying to make a purchase but it taking too long to load or searching for something and not being able to find it because they don’t know the exact name of what they are looking for.
Why Managed E-commerce?
Managed ecommerce is a complete solution for business owners who also want to sell or already sell their goods online. By partnering with a 3rd party company that lives and breathes e-commerce, you as a business owner will make more time to focus on the other aspects of your business. All this while still having peace of mind in knowing your store is in good hands at all times.
There are plenty of advantages to having a professional manage your store and it is fairly affordable. By combining our 3 pillars of managed ecommerce, we have created flexible and affordable packages for businesses of all sizes that include but are not limited to:
- Designing the look of the store
- Building it using the platform best suited for you
- Using reliable and fast data servers
- Securing everything so that customer and business information is safe
- Optimizing the store to run quickly and efficiently for customer satisfaction and the best possible search engine results
- Perform regular checks and updates
- Notify you about all the latest and greatest tech that can improve conversion
- Provide 24/7/365 live support
Get in touch with us and see how we can help you build a successful online store without breaking the bank!
About FinestShops
Whether you are looking to upgrade your current online store or create your first, Finestshops has you covered! Visit www.finestshops.com to request a complimentary performance test of your current store or to sign up for a free trial and create your new online store completely free of charge with no commitment.
Avoid making these mistakes:
- Losing business to your competitors
- Having low ROI on advertising
- Using an outdated system
- Being downgraded by Google
- Suffering from low sales
- Ignoring eCommerce Store Optimization
Let's get something on the calendar.
- While we are very selective about which businesses we work with, we will respond in any case. Send a short description of your business to see if we can help.
