E-commerce facilitates easy buying or shopping through the means of a website. The payment and shipping features are generally integrated along with e-commerce services which allow a customer to buy a product at the comfort of their home.

According to AmericaCommerce, E-commerce is a $220 billion dollar market in the U.S. alone – and growing by nearly 17% every year. By 2017, online retail sales are predicted to reach $370 billion.

Essentials of a great E-commerce website

User-Friendly - UI/UX and mobile-friendly design are more important when it comes to e-commerce. An ease in surfing the website is synonymous to user engagement

Online Catalog - The availability and ease of sorting the products from hundreds or even thousands of products online help a customer to decide better.

Check Out & Payment Getaway - Safe payment getaways is the payment system integrated into the website to help a customer buy with ease.

Privacy & Security - The provision of SSL protocol, data encryption, privacy policy, security compliance and any legal tender with the third party must be presented to the customer before-hand to commit for their security.

Customer Support - Prompt response, frequently asked questions, online chat system and variable options for contact are few important factors of an efficient customer support.

Types of E-commerce Software

Shopify

Shopify offers online retailers a complete suite of services that includes payment facility, marketing, shipping, and customer engagement tools to simplify the process of running an online store mainly for small merchants.

Some of the advantages of using Shopify is that it's affordable, it presents a visually appealing design, accessible marketing tools, web hosting, and security.

WooCommerce

WooCommerce is an open-source e-commerce plugin designed by WordPress theme developers for the Wordpress based websites. It is designed for small to large-sized online merchants using WordPress. E-commerce is a rapidly growing trend and WooCommerce has over 39 million downloads as a plugin and is currently active on more than 3 million Wordpress as of 2018.

Few of the advantages of using WooCommerce are that it can easily be installed in your Wordpress site, it's a free open source software, it is professional, visually appealing, and customizable, it offers reporting and analytics and security

Magento

Magento is an open-source e-commerce platform coded in PHP that provides online merchants with a flexible shopping cart system, as well as total control over the look, content, and workflow of their online store.

Some of its features are, versatile content management, mobile-friendly configuration, advanced SEO tools, security and backup, easy third-party integrations, and customization.

OpenCart

OpenCart is an online store management system designed for e-commerce platform. The tool is based on PHP, using a MySQL database and HTML components. It is an open source platform highly usable by online merchants. OpenCart provides a professional and reliable foundation from which to build a successful online store.

Few of the benefits of using OpenCart are simple to store setup, high performance and usability, multi-store functionality, free installation, great features, and third-party extensions.