How to find the best e-commerce platform

When you’re about to start an e-commerce business, choosing a platform can feel overwhelming. Some even compare it to the feeling of buying a house, but there’s no need to feel that kind of stress over this decision. Contrary to what you might think, you shouldn’t look for the perfect e-commerce platform. Just like with many other things in life, you should live in the present and instead focus on finding a platform that meets your current needs.

I have personally been an e-retailer across various stores from 1998 until today. This means I have seen many different platforms, and even now I haven’t come across an e-commerce platform that is the best at everything. The result is that you have to make a choice regarding which area you want the best platform for. Since we at Brath specialize, among other things, in search engine optimization, it’s natural that this article is written from an SEO perspective.

Easy to use or powerful?

One choice many miss is whether the platform should be easy to use or powerful. Of course, there are many levels in between, but in my view, you can’t have both. A clear example is drag-and-drop style designers. This model is easy to use since you can assemble the look yourself, but you have no control over how the code looks. To have proper control, you need to build your own design. Some platforms offer one, some the other, and a few offer both—but not at the same time.

A common question is whether to choose an open-source solution or sign a contract with one of the “software as a service” platforms. To answer this, you first need to answer the above question: should the platform be easy to use or powerful? Secondly, you also need to understand that the line between these two options is somewhat blurry. Furthermore, there are services where you can rent space in a fixed installation of some open-source platforms.

Things to consider when getting started

My general advice is, first and foremost, to get started. In my opinion, it’s not crucial that it’s perfect from the beginning—choose a platform that supports a good payment solution and go for it. To avoid hindering your SEO, however, there are some things to keep in mind when making your choice:

1. Real HTML pages
   Today, it’s quite common for platforms to use different types of JavaScript to load pages. An example of a popular framework from Google is Angular. This example can cause big problems with indexing your site and often requires some fallback solution. From an SEO perspective, this is not optimal but rather an emergency solution that should be avoided. You should therefore choose a platform that serves traditional HTML pages, which most platforms do.
2. Export and import
   Make sure there is a good export option for all the information you store on your site, as you will at some point want to change platforms. When that time comes, you will want to bring along all the work you’ve put in. One of the biggest problems when switching platforms is getting all the URLs so you can do redirects and thus preserve the trust you’ve built with Google.
3. URLs and redirects
   The third point to consider is ensuring that URLs can be managed and that 301 redirects can be set up. The reason is that you want to avoid lots of broken URLs on your site, which is especially important if you plan to switch to another platform. A broken URL is when the link leads to a page that no longer exists, which results in a 404 error page. This is not only frustrating for your visitors but also harms your site’s SEO. It’s worth remembering that switching platforms is a hassle and always involves some risk. If you’re not 100% confident in areas like SEO, you should get help to minimize the negative consequences of poor work.
4. Meta-data
   When choosing a platform, you must also ensure you can edit meta-data such as titles, meta descriptions, canonical tags, and so on. You need to be able to set rules for them and edit individual pages. If you pick a platform that doesn’t allow this, you’re creating unnecessary problems for yourself. In most cases, this is easily managed in the back-end, but it’s not a given, so definitely check beforehand.
5. Get moving
   In my view, the priority is to get your shop up and running. From an SEO standpoint, you gain a lot by being available as quickly as possible. By doing so, you can start building your credibility with Google (and other search engines) while also gathering data on where the money can be made.