How to Choose the Best Platform for an eCommerce Portal
eCommerce portals are an exceptional opportunity to take advantage of when expanding your eCommerce business. By utilizing an eCommerce portal, you can aggregate information into one place. This will create an ease-of-use for your customers, which will only serve to increase your revenue. This article discusses the major advantages of three of the best platforms for an eCommerce portal.
HandShake
Handshake direct online is one of the industry leaders when it comes to B2B eCommerce portals. It can provide you with a comprehensive B2B eCommerce platform; this means that it can cover all of your sales channels. Handshake gives your customers and your reps absolute freedom to place orders through either web browsers or through mobile. Through Handshake, you’ll have access to a central hub that manages your orders and integrates all your systems.
Handshake’s primary goal is to help you expand your customer network, and in doing so, expand your sales. Advantages of Handshake’s new geographies and customer segments is that now you’ll have access to an even greater amount of customers than you did before, and you can market your product collection to a greater amount of retailers. Handshake also helps you keep in contact with your retailers; you can have a permanent showcase on your account, and easily keep your retailers up to date on product stock and new products.
NowCommerce
This B2B eCommerce platform uses QuickBooks to service its manufacturers, wholesalers, and distributors. Its built-in two-way integration with QuickBooks allows both customers and sales staff to see real-time and up-to-date information on all data, including inventory and order history. Through the portal, any order placed online will instantaneously be created in QuickBooks. NowCommerce can also work with any off-site warehousing or shipping needs; if your business does offsite work, NowCommerce can set it up with QuickBooks that warehousing and shipping information is automatically updated as well.
Another advantage of NowCommerce is that you receive the help of an account manager when setting up your business. This way you will be walked through everything that’s involved with selling online; NowCommerce wants to make sure that you understand everything before you launch. This also means they will make sure all of your relevant QuickBooks data is configured, your order forms are customized to your brand and your business how you want them, and that all your data is integrated across all fronts.
A great resource that NowCommerce can also provide you with is a further insight into your business and easy, remote management. NowCommerce set up management tools within the eCommerce portal so that managers and business owners and see all the orders remotely and also check on inventory levels. All of your staff, from you to your sales team, can have access to their accounts and can all be equally notified of customer activity.
B2B Wave
B2B Wave is a cloud-based eCommerce portal. It is particularly advantageous for individual who want their business to get your company up-and-running fast. They have an especially user-friendly interface, which walks you through each step you need to take to get your business ready to launch. According to B2B Wave, from start to finish you could have your business ready to go in a few hours.
Their features are similar to NowCommerce and Handshake, but an interesting advantage (or disadvantage, depending on your preferences) is that since they are a cloud-based eCommerce solution, your website is technically hosted on their cloud. This means slightly less control than if you had your own server (which you don’t need with B2B wave), but it does mean you don’t have to pay an outside hosting fees. They also guarantee that all future software updates are free; while you pay a price for an eCommerce software, sometimes they will charge you extra fees in order to update the software. This is a comforting advantage, because often don’t have a choice with updating your software because it’s essential to keeping your eCommerce business running smoothly. With guaranteed free updates, you never have to worry about that.
With any eCommerce platform or portal, it’s always about what is going to work best for your business. Handshake might work perfectly for one supplier, and not be compatible with your needs and preferences at all. The first step to take is to determine what is essential for your business, and what is non-negotiable in terms of what you need from the eCommerce platform you choose, and try to find the eCommerce platform that best matches your needs for your eCommerce portal. Do your research and talk to the teams for the various platforms if you have any questions or nuances that you need to figure out. Pick the eCommerce portal that is right for you and you’ll be on your way to success! Have you had any experiences with certain eCommerce portals before and found some to be better than others? Do you know of any other eCommerce portals that didn’t make the list? Let us know in the comments!