The first month of 2013 is over but many predictions were made. Behind my social media monitoring platform (oh yes, we’re pretty high-tech at Exo!), I saw several blog posts on the boom of e-commerce or, in other words, electronic commerce.
One of the most recent articles on the topic was published by Mashable, which cites some (large) figures of e-commerce in 2012. Loosely, the article demonstrates that this sales channel represented 1 trillion dollars in 2012, mainly in the US, China and the UK.
In Canada, e-commerce is booming and is often accused (rightly or wrongly) of closing down more traditional stores. It might be Mike Pratt, President of Best Buy and quoted in an article from the francophone online news website La Presse, who says it best: “The retail landscape is in full transformation and our success depends on our ability to evolve with it” (free translation).
So I suggest to you three e-commerce solutions adapted to the needs of your company. Of course I’ll only discuss solutions that we’ve already tested, even though there are plenty of others out there.
Amazon:
Without necessarily reinventing the wheel, Amazon allows companies to sell directly on their own websites. For $29.99 a month (without counting the commissions on each sale), this solution might be of interest to small companies whose products align themselves with Amazon’s departments (books, electronics, tools and building supplies, etc.).
Magento Go:
With plans ranging from $15 to $125 a month, the “Go” version of Magento targets small and medium-sized companies. Whether it’s platform design, managing payments or orders, this platform has everything of the big leagues, yet is still simple to use!
Magento Enterprise Edition:
Here we enter the big leagues: Nike, Nespresso, Lindt, Olympus. With pricing ranging from $14,420 to $49,990 a year, it’s obvious that these solutions target large and very large companies. However, make sure that you’ll be able to transpose your entire web sales strategy through an easily customizable platform.
Write us if you have questions or wish to share your e-commerce stories with us!
