Starting eCommerce business

Is he a merchant, developer or both? For merchants, a hosted platform like Shopify is best. If he/she is a developer, you can get started with a self-hosted Wordpress and Woocommerce.

I don't think the platforms specialize in customer engagement. That's pretty much up to the shop owner to create customer engagement. That can be done with things like customer reward points for purchases to bring customers back to the site, coupons, sales, etc. He should choose a CMS that is easy to manage.

The platform won't effect the customer engagement. I would recommend going with Shopify since it's super beginner friendly.

Magento is a powerful and feature rich open source eCommerce platform. Even though Magento is a CMS, it has various extensions and templates design to develop a rich and search engine friendly eCommerce store.
If you want to succeed in eCommerce business, then all you need a focused and well-experienced the best solution provider for eCommerce web development.

Now a days, most of the E-commerce website using Magento but you can also try prestashop as its also having very good features, you can try demo at PrestaShop Demo

For hosting, try to search E-commerce ready shared hosting or Cloud/VPS

What is your aim?

If it is to spend time, effort and money in building, maintaining and repeatedly fixing a site when it breaks then there are a large number of candidates eg wordpress based commerce systems.

If it is to create a serious ecommerce business so that you focus as much attention as possible on customers, sales and profit then Shopify is your beast.

Not only that, Shopify has a large number of apps whose aim is to increase customer engagement when they land on your site eg live chat.

I own and run a highly successful ecommerce business based on two platforms, amazon and Shopify. Both platforms outperform any other by a very long way.

Good luck with your venture.

Starting a e-commerce business is a good thing because now a days e-commerce platform is going on increasing day by day some of the platforms in which we can start our e-commerce business are: wordpress, joomla, drupal, mangeto....................

I made a YouTube video about the common Shopify or general eCom mistakes:


It might be helpful for you to start out with.

@Platforms: Shopify is easier to use and looks better in vanilla, but WooCommerce has more individualization options. So it depends on your overall strategy and what you want to do with your store.

HI

Try starting from amazon or ebay which are the best for now for startups to step into ecommerce industry.

i hope this helps

Faisal

Management of Internet shop can be not only pleasant pastime, but also a good extra income with proper and serious approach to business. The conduct of such business it is easy to combine with your daily work, and sometimes even able to replace it at a high yield.
There are many commercially available platforms, so it is difficult to decide which one to choose.
In this article I present 10 of the biggest platforms for creating and managing your online store. They all allow you to get ready shop and start work in a couple of hours without excessive costs.+

Before we begin, remember that this is only a summary. You still want to try a few options before to stop using one of them. Although switching from one platform to another is not such a tempting prospect if you intend to create a successful online store.

1. Shopify

Shopify is one of the most famous tools for online sales. It is popular among small shops, who are its target audience.

Advantages
One of the reasons for the success of Shopify - adaptation of the app store to expand your Internet store. Shopify offers hundreds of apps, more than any other competitor. The proposal also covers a good choice of professional themes.+

Shopify also provides a feature to send reminders to the buyer if he filled the basket but never bought. Unfortunately, this feature is available only in the paid mode from 79$ per month.
The number of exhibited products is not restricted.

2. BigCommerce

BigCommerce one of the most popular online services from the category top million sites, which means popularity among small and medium online stores. He started as a software product, developed in Interspire, but its popularity increased after the addition of hosting services.

Advantages
At that time, as the price seems pretty comparable to Shopify, functional features slightly higher. For example, in the package for 29.95$ include: setting quotas, deliver real-time, gift cards and round-the-clock telephone support line, chat, e-mail.+

The best price that you don't need to pay more than 79.95$ for the Gold Plan. And in it you get unlimited products, storage and bandwidth.

3. Yahoo Store

All of the online services and hosting for small business Yahoo has the largest market niche in the tops of 10 000 and 100 000 sites. These figures are quite impressive, and meant that Yahoo was one of the first to offer e-Commerce services. The brand is well known and enjoys the confidence and provided a lot of cross-selling. Despite this, the frequency of use of this service falls.

Advantages
Yahoo does not look appealing, but offers an impressive set of installations with a range of integration options for payment providers, shipping options, office system.

4. Volusion

Volusion is the second most used online service after Yahoo Store. Its popularity covers all the scales: from 00 top 10 sites to larger indicators.

Advantages
This is the cheap online resource, because its service starts from$ 15 per month. It has everything you need for a first experience in online Commerce: the maximum allowable units of 100 products and 1 GB of memory. Simply put, you get the required set of services in order to start a business. In Pro plan you can try some professional services for $75 per month.

5. 1ShoppingCart

1ShoppingCart is a universal solution to many problems. The service not only allows you to create your own online store, but also easy to integrate payments functionality into your website.

Advantages
Basket is only one of the functions. For example, clients are encouraged to use the answering machine for possible research and potential customers. There are also extended functionality for the expensive goods in which the buyer can choose a cheaper product if the previously offered product was too expensive. The service is worthy of attention.
You want to take advantage of the affiliate program, and she helped me to learn more about 1ShoppingCart. For my page I worked with the training provider GoCabinCrew. Their course is offered with 1ShoppingCart, which monitors the payments and my affiliate Commission. As for me, very comfortable.+

The data service is quite expensive and requires a lot of time to learn how to use all of its features. If all a thorough study, you will be able to literally squeeze every dollar invested from the pocket of your visitors.

6. Wix

Wix is a free Builder of web sites, quickly gaining popularity. A lot of people don't know, but Wix offers a premium package of e-Commerce services.

Advantages
Characteristics of e-Commerce Wix nothing special not surprise you, however, these services are enough to create your store and start his work. What really distinguishes the Wix compared to other services, so it's an incredible design - you can use it to change the color of each element of your website. Especially if your product has been released in limited quantities, you'll want to decorate the page, making them more attractive.

7. X-Cart Cloud

Advantages
X-Cart appears to us as an open platform team which is actively cooperating with the developers. They are a little conservative about updates hosted version, which in principle is clear, if you pay attention to the scale of the project.+

Team X-Cart is committed to maintaining the leading position in the market, as in the case of recently introduced functionality, Cloud Search, which speeds up the search process of the product. Very sorry that layered navigation is available only with a monthly fee of $99.95.

8. 3dcart

3dcart less well-known among e-business solutions, but is quite versatile, even has some features specifically for web designers.

Advantages
At 3dcart there is no fee for the transaction, which is always a big plus. They also offer graphic or text mobile interface. Particularly interesting is the presence of a full set of accompanying services, like SEO or Facebook marketing. This is not typical for this kind of resources, but can be a very useful service.
The initial plan provides for entry of a limited number of visitors, not more than 4000. The same restrictions apply to products, the number of which cannot exceed 100 units, which is 20 visits in one product. For a good turnover this is clearly not enough. Even when you pay $129.95 per month, you get only 90,000 visits, not so much. Full access is much more impressive, so let's hope for a fix price policy.

9. PinnacleCart

At first glance PinnacleCart is very similar to 3dcart, especially since the price is almost the same. Basically, these two platforms differ in the possibilities of cooperation with partners.

Advantages
PinnacleCart offers enhanced affiliate program in two ways. One in brendingovoe version of their product under your own name, in this case you only do marketing. You can also get a downloadable version of PinnacleCart that you can place on your server. The license will cost money, but you will have whole control over the website.
PinnacleCart has partnered with Doba (delivery company) or ShipWire (outsourcing). There are also tools for remarketing, integrated login to Facebook for your customers and a way to generate QR code. Payment of traffic or $29.95 for 2GB.

10. Etsy

I would like to finish this list something totally different from all the 9 previous platforms. If you need to sell vintage items, handmade stationery or a million people, then get acquainted with Etsy.

Advantages
Etsy allows you to present specific products in such a way that they riveted the attention of your target audience.
You get a lot of ways to present themselves and their products. Customers can distinguish your product among the rest or ask you questions. Despite a tinge of the market in a small town, here to earn serious money. Note the number of views of this product.

I hope this article will be helpful

Magento or Shopify would be vest choice. Scopehosts.com is providing best magento SSD VPS plans with updated versions of plugins. Contact them for more details on your needs. They will help you out to select the Best Platform as well as suitable hosting services.

woo commerce are really good making perfect store.

Start your eCommerce business and website by Opencart. I will suggest to you Opencart. Because OpenCart is one of the most popular shopping carts nowadays. More and more people choose the platform for their business.
OpenCart is a module based shopping cart, so it allows users to extend the functionality of their online business. Nowadays, this shopping cart works with 11 modules, that are easy to install and configure.
This shopping cart is SEO-optimized which makes it possible to have your pages indexed by all major search engines.

I also suggest that you launch your eCommerce using OpenCart. It is an open source platform that is ultimately designed to facilitate eCommerce activity. It offers easily customizable templates, so it can be maintained by non-programmers. If you want to compare OpenCart with other ecommerce platforms, then read this

Thanks for posting this question and for all the replies. I especially found malikshahid3232's reply helpful. I'm new here and have more questions, but I don't want to hijack your thread so I'll start a new one.

Yes, you can do this, Also if you want to build Own Multivendor store like amazon with magento platform. See more ..

Clothing E-commerce is a good idea to start up, but before start you need market research so be careful about your business.

I guess You want to start e-commerce business online. for the creating online business, I suggest Magento CMS is best for your business.
why Magento?
today's web users expect a site to load in under 2 seconds, easy and quick performance.
Magento gives you above facility, also Magento helps for SEO.
Brainvire provides the best web developer. Magento developers for hire with lower cost.

While planning to build an online store we often get confused in comparing alternatives available in the market with various specifications.

There are mainly two platforms SaaS and open source.

Open source is best for people who are looking to develop their online store and even for those who are planning to extend their marketplace as multi-vendor in near future as it offers you open source code where you can make changes to improve it with robust features or transform it into multi vendor marketplace.


Magento offers coupon code feature and SEO functionality which helps your store to entice and captivate customers. You can also add many other features through "CedCommerce" like service providers to improve the sales of your store.

If you are planning to develop small online store "Shopify" is best CMS, it has numerous features inbuilt like SEO capability, large collection of themes and 70 payment gateway. Which make it more attractive and user friendly. For further extensions you can visit "CedCommerce".

In case your friend still struggle with the solution I would advice to take a look on Idosell Shop- fashion seller professional solution.

While planning to build an online store we often get confused in comparing alternatives available in the market with various specifications.

There are mainly two platforms SaaS and open source.

Open source is best for people who are looking to develop their online store and even for those who are planning to extend their marketplace as multi vendor in near future as it offers you open source code where you can make changes to improve it with robust features or transform it into multi vendor marketplace.


Magento offers coupon code feature and SEO functionality which helps your store to entice and captivate customers. You can also add many other features through "CedCommerce" like service providers to improve the sales of your store.

If you are planning to develop small online store "Shopify" is best CMS, it has numerous features inbuilt like SEO capability, large collection of themes and 70 payment gateway. Which make it more attractive and user friendly. For further extensions you can visit "CedCommerce".

shopify just got a price cut from $29 to $13 on their basic plan

IF you want cheaper, get domain from Z.com buy 2 year and get 1 year free plus hosting from Buyshared.net 5G or higher plan, install wordpress woocommerce...

Setting up the site is easy once you got the hang of it...sales it what troubles me...I'm on my 2nd week of my online store without any sale...

Customer engagement is a business communication connection between an external stakeholder (consumer) and an organization (company or brand) through various channels of correspondence. This connection can be a reaction, interaction, effect or overall customer.
1. Utilize Customer Accounts
2. Implement a Customer Loyalty Program
3. Send Regular Customer Newsletter Emails
4. Surprise & Delight Your Customers
5. Reach out and Connect on Social Media and Post Often
6. Offer a Discount or Credit to Return
7. Implement Right Place, Right Product, Right Time Emails
The right customer engagement platform can help enterprises:

Reduce complexity of content life cycle and marketing efforts.
Achieve faster time to market for campaigns.
Drive effective and targeted marketing campaigns that are flexible and scalable.
Get better ROI by delivering personalized solutions based on customer intelligence.

PrestaShop, OpenCart, Magento and osCommerce is a powerful and feature rich open source eCommerce platform. And you know Magento is a CMS, it has a different extensions and templates design to develop a rich and search engine friendly eCommerce store.

I suggest you try Storevila, Free Store, AccessPress Themes. search on google and visit the templates and get the best template.
I also used accesspress theme for one of my ecommmerce client. You can see accesspree theme layout in my website Tribal Mantr tribalmantra.com
If you like this go to accesspress download or check for other templates.

Yeah its a nice startup.
Now a days clone software are trending now.If you want to start a business i just suggest fantacy clone script.Its is the best E-commerce clone script.
For more details just google it "appkodes fancy".

I switched over to WP using Woocommerce and never looked back. Shopify didn't like one of my products I was selling and decided to cancel their payment gateway. When I started using my own Stripe account they still charged for orders, so in effect I was charged twice. Plus they like to stick their nose in your business. I get much more control without anyone looking over my shoulder hosting my own stores.

Also, Google seems to rank my sales pages better now. None of my shopify stores got ranked, not even for the name of the store. IMO stay away from shopify!

This is a very popular question as more and more entrepreneurs are tapping into e-commerce. These kind of businesses are usually very profitable, and if you manage yours wisely, you can turn out pretty well. Still, in order to do that, you have to follow some rules, and take care of some important things. Here are my suggestions:

Make your website SEO friendly: When a customer searches for a certain product, he/she will probably do so through a search engine. That's why, you should focus on the SEO and make sure that your website comes up in the top of the search list. It's free advertising after all, and a proper made SEO will boost your business and increase your sales levels. There are plenty of professional services, which can help you with this.
Provide a wide variety of payment options: It's frustrating to have an awesome business but to be avoided by customers because they cannot make the payment through your standard method. That's why, you should diversify your payment options, and be able to offer even the "strangest" ways of payment for your customers.
Consider hiring an attorney: Running an e-commerce business involves some legal stuff, such as the need to incorporate, register trademarks for your name & logo, draft web agreements, and other contracts you'll need as a business person. an attorney to help you with setting up the website and your future company. Hiring an attorney is not free, but you should think of it as to an investment.
Choose a simple, catchy name for your shop: Your new business should carry a name which is easy to remember and will stick to people's minds. A catchy name can be easily marketable and can be shared between current and future customers. However, the name should be concise, and able to explain what your business is about. Make sure your name isn't taken before using it though.

It comes down to simplicity Vs customisation. Shopify etc is very simple but you don't have access to the source. Magento more complex but you can change literally all of it as you have the source.

it doesn't matter that which platform you select for your clothing store. but its all depend on strong marketing of website and products quality as well.

I know about EasyERP
They are open for customization requests.

Features:
- CRM with companies, contacts, sales pipeline
- PM, Project, portfolio and resource management with kanban
- HRM, human resource management with vacation management, skills & recruiting
- Configurable workflows allow controlling the life-cycle of all important objects