E-Commerce companies have taken to their communities to leverage their customers in the form of online reviews. All the big names like Shopify, BigCommerce, WooCommerce and more have hundreds of E-Commerce reviews. These companies have learned that users trust other people similar to themselves and that 92% of people read online reviews before making a buy decision.
This embrace of brand advocacy and naked marketing has an awesome side effect for professionals who use and buy e-commerce systems. It has made the ecommerce buying process more transparent than ever before.
Prospects looking to buy their first e-commerce tool or switch to a new platform can now read reviews of those tools from professionals just like them. They can see what platforms are best at certain features and which are falling behind. From this buys get great insights into the e-commerce software ecosystem.
From that review ecosystem, here are the 7 most heard things the e-commerce community is saying about the tools they’re using:
1. Learning Curve
Users talked about the implementation of e-commerce tools as one of the most important things to consider when looking at new tools. While the average e-commerce user reviewed the overall ease of use of their tool at an 82 percent, reviewers did stress the importance of investing time early on to use tutorials and documentation to learn how to use these tools.
“It took me a bit of time to understand the signing up process. Even though the software helps in how to progress further, the signing up feature takes time. Of course, you can skip it as well but I would not recommend that. Only a few extra minutes of learning will surely help you in improving your business online.” Yusra K in the Accounting Industry
“Take the time to watch videos and read tutorials on setup. It’s not difficult but it’s a learning curve if you’ve never done something like this. Also invest in a third party theme. The free ones are decent to start, but you might as well start out building something great with a quality theme.” Daniel M in the Marketing Industry
2. Business Requirements
An obvious one here, but users still mentioned that buyers should outline what their business requirements are before researching a tool. Thinking about a business size and budget are two important factors to consider that will help buyers narrow down their search for a new e-commerce tool from the very beginning.
“They make e-commerce very easy and pleasant to do, so you can care about other aspects of your business while the virtual shop runs smoothly” – Reviewer in the Real Estate Industry
3. Tech Support
Most users praises their e-commerce tool’s support team. Many users talked about the need to customize their store but lacked the technical abilities to customize it themselves. Reviewers overall highly rated most all e-commerce tools with extremely positive support teams.
“Customer support is absolutely amazing. They are dedicated and knowledgeable about the best options for me, not the most expensive. And speaking of cost, BigCommerce is insanely scalable. The platform can handle a huge number of orders.” – Paul C in the IT Industry
4. Small Business
A 58% majority of e-commerce users worked at a small business. Therefor users talked about the importance of finding and using an e-commerce company that has dedicated individual support and care system for customers. Overall they tended to dislike the enterprise e-commerce companies such as Oracle for their basic needs.
“BigCommerce was the most reasonably priced that I came across, and they offer so much more than other places that I researched. I recommend them to everyone I know who is a small business owner, and I am completely satisfied with my experience using BigCommerce!” – Megan in the Writing Industry
5. Poor Abandoned Cart Features
The worst feature overall of the e-commerce space seems to come from the platforms’ inability to have good features on targeting customers who have left an item in their cart. The overall satisfaction rating came in at a 72 percent, with only one company have a 90 percent or higher score (Shopify Plus).
“However; in order to really have a functioning sales funnel, you’ve got to add on a bunch of additional apps, which can end up costing a significant amount of extra money, especially if you’re just getting started. Upsells/downsells, emails for abandoned carts, recurring orders/payments are all apps that gave to be purchased separately.” Mark in the Advertising Industry
6. Payment Processing is Nailed Down
On the flip side, users seem to have very little issues with any e-commerce tools’ payment processing features. Payment processing is e-commerce users’ highest rated feature in the entire space.
“Now orders are taken automatically and routed to the proper departments – shipping, accounting, etc. Time previously spent taking and processing orders can now be allocated to other tasks.” – Kevin in the Advertising Industry
7. Shopify Reins King
There is a clear #1 in the user reviewed e-commerce space and that is Shopify. It has the most reviews by far in the category at 639, the highest market share in the category and the highest user satisfaction score at a perfect 99.
“Shopify helps to easily add products in collections using the smart collections which makes it easy for us to focus more on existing products and new products. While adding a product, we add a tag to it so the product automatically goes inside a collection which has a particular tag associated with it. We are able to focus more on business rather than focusing on customer payment issues and other related issues. We are able to sell more goods to our customers by different mediums such as social media, online and on app.” Sahil in the IT Industry
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