E-commerce platform. Introduction. Part 1
It's no secret for anyone that global sales on the Internet are growing inexorably year after year. At the moment, online trading is already a little more than 5% of world trade. Just imagine, every twentieth dollar spent on purchases is spent online. This situation simply forces owners of not only large, but also medium and small businesses to go with their products to the World Wide Web. And here comes the question: how to get to the e-commerce market correctly? One of the main components of this issue is the choice of platform for the future online store. After all, there are quite a lot of such platforms, so how to correctly determine which of them is more suitable for specific needs? Let's try to figure it out on the example of several systems.
Let's start with WordPress . This PHP platform is now the most popular CMS. WordPress is perfect for newbies in site building because of its good documentation and quick installation. It is worth noting that WordPress is already very widespread, ranging from blogs and ending with e-commerce sites. The market share of this CMS is 60.3%, which is an impressive figure. Such popularity is due to a wide range of plug-ins, widgets for galleries, multilingual, easy administration. But at the same time, WordPress functionality is simple, so it is often used for news sites and blogs, but not for online stores.
Joomla is the next most popular CMS (with a share of 3% of all sites on the Internet). The main advantage of Joomla is the user interface. But there is one “but” ... Despite the fact that the clean version of this system is one of the most secure, additional plug-ins and extensions make a huge security problem in the CMS. Since Joomla is an open-source project, any programmer can make changes to the general depository. Therefore, the use of Joomla for e-commerce poses additional problems for the developer to ensure the security of the site.
The next most popular system is Drupal (with a 2% market share). Despite the large number of advantages, which include a huge number of modules that can extend the functionality to infinity, the presence of "hooks" to avoid failures in the system. However, Drupal is very difficult to use.
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Now, let's talk about some of the platforms that are used in mainly for large e-commerce projects. Let's start with Magento , since according to W3Techs.com analysts, in April 2014, this platform is used by 1% of all websites in the world. And of the 20 most popular e-commerce platforms, Magento holds a 34% share. Moreover, according to the official website, Magento serves 34 companies from the TOP-500 list. If we consider the general statistics of this platform, the number of online stores on Magento is more than 150,000, and the extensions are more than 6400.
There are a lot of reasons for such popularity of this CMS. The first is that Magento is fairly stable, updates are coming out quite often, which covers the bugs that appear in the system. Magento also supports multilanguage. Another huge advantage of Magento is the presence of a free community version, and this is an opportunity to try the system in action without spending a single penny. Another reason to choose Magento is that this system is very flexible. This allows you to integrate it with social networks, and with accounting programs. Do not forget that in the "box" Magento is immediately a huge number of widgets, such necessary for the normal operation of the online store. But, as they say, there are no perfect things, therefore Magento has its drawbacks. The first, and probably the most important, of them is the fact that this system is “from the people to the people” and, therefore, bugs cannot be avoided. The second problem is the qualification of the site administrator, because this work is not so simple. For acquaintance with the sites working on Magento, it is worth visiting sites of clothing store Rebel8 and Comfy online market.
The next platform we’ll pay attention to is Demandware . According to the official site, approximately 800 sites operate on this platform in the world, including the online stores Adidas, Puma, and HugoBoss.
Demandware is a very complex system that focuses exclusively on servicing large-scale e-commerce. The platform is very flexible, easily integrates into various systems and at the same time maintains its reliability. Demandware solutions for e-commerce include the most modern tools for online commerce, cross platform and advanced analytics. But a huge disadvantage when choosing Demandware for your online store, is the high threshold of business entry into the market. So customers are charged a license fee in the amount of 0.75% to 1.25% of the monthly sales volume through the website. So, Demandware is suitable exclusively for large businesses.
The latest platform in our overview is IBM WebSphere Commerce . This is a very large and powerful platform that allows you to work directly as with consumers, with enterprises, as well as indirectly through partners.
IBM WebSphere Commerce includes all the middleware infrastructure that allows you to create, run and maintain a 24x7 website. In order to accelerate the integration of WebSphere, you can use accelerators like SaaS with ready-made solutions. Most of the products included in the IBM WebSphere platform can be called exemplary in their classes, especially the message to the broker WSMB or WAS application server. For example, on the WebSphere Commerce platform, there are online markets for companies such as Speedo, Champion, Jack & Jones, and many others.
So the choice of the optimal platform lies entirely on your shoulders. The main thing to remember is that it is important not only to choose the platform that suits you the most, but also the artists who will make your online store with high quality and will be able to support it 24x7, 365 days a year.
For a more detailed review of e-commerce platforms, see our blog later.
Let's start with WordPress . This PHP platform is now the most popular CMS. WordPress is perfect for newbies in site building because of its good documentation and quick installation. It is worth noting that WordPress is already very widespread, ranging from blogs and ending with e-commerce sites. The market share of this CMS is 60.3%, which is an impressive figure. Such popularity is due to a wide range of plug-ins, widgets for galleries, multilingual, easy administration. But at the same time, WordPress functionality is simple, so it is often used for news sites and blogs, but not for online stores.
Joomla is the next most popular CMS (with a share of 3% of all sites on the Internet). The main advantage of Joomla is the user interface. But there is one “but” ... Despite the fact that the clean version of this system is one of the most secure, additional plug-ins and extensions make a huge security problem in the CMS. Since Joomla is an open-source project, any programmer can make changes to the general depository. Therefore, the use of Joomla for e-commerce poses additional problems for the developer to ensure the security of the site.
The next most popular system is Drupal (with a 2% market share). Despite the large number of advantages, which include a huge number of modules that can extend the functionality to infinity, the presence of "hooks" to avoid failures in the system. However, Drupal is very difficult to use.
')
Now, let's talk about some of the platforms that are used in mainly for large e-commerce projects. Let's start with Magento , since according to W3Techs.com analysts, in April 2014, this platform is used by 1% of all websites in the world. And of the 20 most popular e-commerce platforms, Magento holds a 34% share. Moreover, according to the official website, Magento serves 34 companies from the TOP-500 list. If we consider the general statistics of this platform, the number of online stores on Magento is more than 150,000, and the extensions are more than 6400.
There are a lot of reasons for such popularity of this CMS. The first is that Magento is fairly stable, updates are coming out quite often, which covers the bugs that appear in the system. Magento also supports multilanguage. Another huge advantage of Magento is the presence of a free community version, and this is an opportunity to try the system in action without spending a single penny. Another reason to choose Magento is that this system is very flexible. This allows you to integrate it with social networks, and with accounting programs. Do not forget that in the "box" Magento is immediately a huge number of widgets, such necessary for the normal operation of the online store. But, as they say, there are no perfect things, therefore Magento has its drawbacks. The first, and probably the most important, of them is the fact that this system is “from the people to the people” and, therefore, bugs cannot be avoided. The second problem is the qualification of the site administrator, because this work is not so simple. For acquaintance with the sites working on Magento, it is worth visiting sites of clothing store Rebel8 and Comfy online market.
The next platform we’ll pay attention to is Demandware . According to the official site, approximately 800 sites operate on this platform in the world, including the online stores Adidas, Puma, and HugoBoss.
Demandware is a very complex system that focuses exclusively on servicing large-scale e-commerce. The platform is very flexible, easily integrates into various systems and at the same time maintains its reliability. Demandware solutions for e-commerce include the most modern tools for online commerce, cross platform and advanced analytics. But a huge disadvantage when choosing Demandware for your online store, is the high threshold of business entry into the market. So customers are charged a license fee in the amount of 0.75% to 1.25% of the monthly sales volume through the website. So, Demandware is suitable exclusively for large businesses.
The latest platform in our overview is IBM WebSphere Commerce . This is a very large and powerful platform that allows you to work directly as with consumers, with enterprises, as well as indirectly through partners.
IBM WebSphere Commerce includes all the middleware infrastructure that allows you to create, run and maintain a 24x7 website. In order to accelerate the integration of WebSphere, you can use accelerators like SaaS with ready-made solutions. Most of the products included in the IBM WebSphere platform can be called exemplary in their classes, especially the message to the broker WSMB or WAS application server. For example, on the WebSphere Commerce platform, there are online markets for companies such as Speedo, Champion, Jack & Jones, and many others.
So the choice of the optimal platform lies entirely on your shoulders. The main thing to remember is that it is important not only to choose the platform that suits you the most, but also the artists who will make your online store with high quality and will be able to support it 24x7, 365 days a year.
For a more detailed review of e-commerce platforms, see our blog later.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/231645/
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