What is an E-Commerce Framework? Which Framework Should you Be Using for your Website?

E-Commerce websites and e-commerce frameworks were greatly in demand for b2c industries sonce 2023.

Retail e-commerce sales worldwide from 2014 to 2024 are projected to reach $6.5 trillion.

It means there is an increasing awareness about retail e-commerce shopping and people are accustomed to online shopping.

Therefore if you are a business owner and you want your sales to grow. There is no other option better than moving over to the world market.

By taking your business online you have the opportunity to take your business to the next level.

And building an e-commerce store is the best option for you to create opportunities for more sales through online selling.

But how do you get into the world of online selling?

To get the most out of online selling you need an e-commerce store and this is where the need for e-commerce websites comes in.

Today’s e-commerce websites are build using some of the widely used e-commerce frameworks.

And most of these frameworks are globally acclaimed e-commerce platforms for creating and building e-commerce stores.

So can get the most out of your e-commerce stores when you are using an e-commerce framework.

 

What exactly is an E-Commerce Framework?

An e-commerce framework refers to a type of inbuilt e-commerce software that is specifically designed to meet e-commerce functionalities.

The e-commerce software has an architecture that features all the advanced parts of e-commerce technology.

So this reduces the work of developing e-commerce websites features and functionalities from the scratch.

Because it provides an easy-to-use backend and front-end user interface that is easy to use and optimize and activate any features as required by e-commerce vendors and operators.

Therefore the main idea of using an e-commerce framework is the usability of its platform to rapidly set up an e-commerce store using all prerequisites store building features and functionalities such as adding a shopping cart, a payment method, or a shipping integration, etc. that are the essence of developing an e-commerce store.

Therefore e-commerce framework helps store owners to build their stores within a few hours with readily available inbuilt programs.

 

Types of E-Commerce Framework

Basically, we have three types of E-Commerce Framework for web design and development and they are:

a) SaaS-Based E-commerce Platforms

SaaS-Based E-commerce Platforms are existing prebuilt e-commerce solutions by Technology E-commerce companies where you can purchase a subscription and quickly set up your store and sell your products online. However SaaS-based platforms have limited customization and you don’t have to worry about security and maintenance. But innovations are being done on API integrations to customize the needs. Examples of SaaS-based platforms are Shopify and BigCommerce etc.

b) Open Source E-commerce Platforms

OpenSource E-Commerce Platforms on the other hand are easy to customize and scale and security and maintenance are controlled on your behalf. Therefore the cost of implementing an OpenSource E-Commerce platform may slightly become higher as compared to SaaS E-Commerce Platforms. But when it comes to long term planning Open Source E-commerce platform are much better because it provides a limitless amount of customization and readily available community developers.

c) Headless E-commerce Platforms

Headless E-Commerce Platforms allow retailers to customize their frontend and backend individually for the best user experience. But most customers are not aware of Headless E-Commerce Platforms. This platform when decoupled can be customized only by developers to support various frontend and backend and the total cost of ownership could be much higher.

By now you know what an e-commerce framework is?

But here we will talk mostly about OpenSource E-commerce Platforms because when it comes to ownership of software OpenSource E-Commerce Platform are the best as it allows total ownership of your control.

 

Which E-Commerce Framework Should you Choose?

There are many free open source software present online that helps non-technical guys to create their own e-commerce website within 10 min and start selling their product. We are going to talk about the pro and cons of the best e-commerce platform available in the market.

Pro and cons are based on the various use cases, ease of accessibility, default shipping and payments, multi-languages, and other things. This article will give insight information to decide which platform is good for your e-commerce project. Let’s start

 

1. OpenCart

It is one of the easiest open-source software that helps anyone to create an e-commerce website. It has some good features like inventory management, sales, and customer reports to multi-user roles. It also supports multi-store, multi-language, simple add processes. It uses vqmod(for older version 2.x) and OCMOD for newer version 3.x to install ad-on into the store. It is completely built using PHP language and uses MYSQL for the database.

OpenCart communities is growing since 2010 first launched. To make the website search engine friendly, third-party SEO modules/extensions are required to install. There are thousands of free and paid modules and themes available on the official site. It has nice documentation that guides the user to understand the working of a newly created e-commerce site.

Journey:

It is open-source software written in PHP language. It was first built by Christopher G. Mann for CDROM in 1998 using Perl language and MYSQL database. After one year Christopher made this software publically. Due to some other commitments, OpenCart software work stopped in 2005. Later Daniel Carr U.K. based programmer take this project and started working in PHP language. After 4 years of extensive work, Daniel Kerr made this software public to create an e-commerce website in a few steps. Now 2021, OpenCart covers a significant e-commerce market thanks to Daniel Kerr and his team.

Pros:

1. No special server requirement.
2. Easy installation.
3. Dedicated support forum.
4. 20+ payment gateways.
5. Multi-language support.
6. Grown customers and support user base.

Cons:

1. It is open-source Free But comes with less functionality.
2. To upgrade/improve the website you need to buy the components.
3. The conflict between modules.
4. Small and medium enterprises.
5. Few themes with awesome designs.

 

2. PrestaShop

It originates from Russia. It requires PHP version 5.6 to run the website built using PrestaShop.  It covers mainly the European market. The price of modules and themes is high compare with OpenCart. It is consists of basic SEO features that need to rank in the search engines. The default theme we get after the installation has awesome designs.

Journey:

French students started the project in school and were given the name phpOpenStore in 2005. They got a good response from the people in their country. In 2007, they register the company named PrestaShop. Within 5 years of launch, Prestashop is available in 17 other countries. in March 2014, PrestaShop SA secured $9.3M in Series B Funding to continue its global expansion efforts. PrestaShop got the Acteurs du Libre International Award for its international development strategy in 2019.

Pros:

1. Easy Customization.
2. Demographic assistance.
3. User-friendly.
4. Easy to install.
5. Growing support community around the globe.

Cons:

1. No official support team.
2. High modules and themes cost.
3. It is not good for enterprises.

 

3. Magento

It is one of the leading e-commerce software in the market. It has a lot of features that do not find in the other open-source e-commerce platforms. There is paid version of software created especially for top-class enterprises. Which use to have more than 1 lakh(1,00,000) products in their catalog.

With complete SEO features, any website can get a better rank in the search engine result list. On the other side, the complexity of usage of the admin section makes it difficult for normal users to operate. Also, it only runs smoothly on dedicated servers, if a shared server is used website will start lagging and customers will have a hard time buying the products. It is not easy to develop or make changes to Magento sites that’s why development is also very costly.

Journey:

Varien inc. rewrite the osCommerce in 2007 and given a new name Magento. Within the first year, Magento received the best free open source e-commerce software award. Moreover, it also won other awards subsequently. Due to its handling of heavy traffic and product management effectiveness, many top players adopted Magento as their first e-commerce website. in 2015, Magento registered as a stand-alone company 2015.

Pros:

1. For Top players in the industries.
2. Complete e-commerce website.
3. Perfectly work with more than 10,00,000 products.
4. High-end support service for Magento pro.
5. SEO friendly.

Cons:

1. Official support only for paid users.
2. Hard to understand the admin interface.
3. Heavy servers need to run seamlessly.
4. Expensive development.
5. Fewer numbers of free modules and themes compare with other platforms.

 

4. WooCommerce

WooCommerce is the easiest e-commerce platform in 2011 by woThemes team. Basically, it is a plugin of WordPress blogging software. It is not an independent e-commerce software that will install and create a website. It creates an e-commerce section in the already created website using WordPress. In simple language, We need to have a WordPress website then WooCommerce is ready to install in that WordPress site.

Journey:

To create the e-commerce section for WordPress, they use Jigoshop that becomes WooCommerce. Later it become the highest used open-source e-commerce platform in the world. This year 2021, WooCommerce has held more than 30% of the e-commerce market share with active top 1 million sites. The real reason for gaining so much popularity is, It is part of WordPress. Before its launch, WordPress had already shown its power in blogging sites.

Pros:

1. Single click setup of an e-commerce website.
2. Thousands of free plugins and themes.
3. Easier admin interface.
4. Upgradation is just like a piece of cake.
5. Official and dedicated people to support the forum.

Cons:

1. Part Of WordPress.
2. Only for small and medium-sized enterprises.
3. Website performance lagging when product numbers exceed 10,000.
4. Always need a new plugin to add some basic functionality.
5. It comes with only 10 payment gateways and shipping methods.

 

5. nopCommerce

It uses the ASP.Net framework to create the nopCommerce in 2008.  top 5 most downloaded applications provided by Microsoft Web Platform Installer. It has a much smaller community compared with other e-commerce platforms.

It is compatible with PCI DSS compliant which makes payment successfully. It won many awards like choosing the best finance app by Russian WebReady 2013, CMScritic’s “Best eCommerce for SMB” 2016, included in Emerce 100 ranking. 2020.

Journey:

Russian-based Andrei Mazulnitsyn developed the nopCommerce in 2008. It uses the ASP.Net framework and MS SQL for the database. Microsoft included it with Microsoft’s Web Platform Installer by knowing its significance in the e-commerce market in 2009.

Pros:

1. Easy to use.
2. SEO-friendly.
3. Supports more than payment 50 gateways.
4. Secure e-commerce platform.

Cons:

1. Require Microsoft server to run.
2. Quite hard to find ASP.Net developers.
3. Keep upgrading makes it irrelevant to have an older version of modules.
4. Fewer free modules and themes.
5. Works great with SEM business not good for world-class enterprises.

 

Conclusion:

Depending on the size of your enterprise and your needs you can select the e-commerce platform which suits your needs.

All open-source e-commerce is great for unlimited customization.