Running an ecommerce website without a hosted platform is challenging. Without a hosted platform, a website owner who wants to sell goods and services online must go through a tedious process to acquire a domain name, buy web hosting, find a programmer to install shopping cart software, and get a merchant account to process transactions. With a hosted platform, these challenges are either reduced or eliminated entirely.
As technology continues to make life easier for everyone, hosted platforms like Shopify, BigCommerce, and PrestaShop will become the future of online shopping.
1. Hosted platforms make ecommerce available to everyone
With a hosted platform, there is no barrier to entry in the ecommerce world. Anyone can sign up for an account, provide the required information, and set up shop within minutes. No technical knowledge is required.
2. Developers are available for customization
An ecommerce store will do better when it’s fully customized to match your brand. Most ecommerce software is customizable to some degree. However, many business owners opt for the cheapest software they can get and it’s difficult to find a developer to provide customization.
With a hosted platform, you don’t have to worry about getting stuck with a plain, boring theme that doesn’t match your brand. As various hosted platforms become popular, more developers learn how to customize those platforms to expand their ability to get more clients.
For example, developers are eager to learn Shopify’s scripting language to customize the front-end of Shopify storefronts. Shopify uses HTML, CSS, and Javascript, but also has their own scripting language called Liquid. Blue Switch explains that Liquid bridges the gap between the front-end HTML and Shopify’s backend and data. A developer must learn Liquid to customize a Shopify storefront.
3. Hosted platforms take the stress out of payment processing
Processing payments for ecommerce can be frustrating. There are fees for every aspect of a transaction and when you’re not using a hosted platform, you have to manage everything individually.
While not all hosted platforms manage every aspect of payment processing, many will handle it for an additional fee. In most cases people are happy to pay the extra fee just so they don’t have to deal with the tedium. The future of technology is convenience, and the more services hosted ecommerce solutions can provide the more popular they will become.
4. Hosted platforms streamline the payment of fees
When a hosted platform manages most of your payment processing, they’re also streamlining your fees. You may have to pay an additional fee to have your hosted solution manage your payment processing and fees, but if you’re looking for convenience, it’s a worthwhile cost.
5. Hosted solutions provide better security
Managing the security of your ecommerce store is no easy task. When you run into a security problem on a self-hosted ecommerce site, it’s up to you to hire someone to fix it. For instance, if your site gets hacked, your host won’t clean it up unless you specifically pay them for that service. It could take days or weeks to get back online.
Hosted solutions generally come with full up-to-date server security and backups as part of your plan. Everything is done to eliminate downtime and they take care of everything for you.
6. Hosted platforms are scalable, reliable, and affordable
There is a reason Shopify and BigCommerce have generated billions of dollars in sales from tens of thousands of retailers online. Their hosted platforms are scalable and reliable.
With a traditional self-hosting account, you only have access to the physical resources on your server. Those resources are shared with others, which means if too many resources are used at once, the server slows down and your site can go offline.
A good hosted solution will sense when you need additional resources and allocate those extra resources to your site as needed. You’ll need to pay for only the extra resources you use. To get access to more resources with a self-hosted account, you would need to pay for a more expensive server that has more resources and it would cost far more money.
The future of ecommerce is stress-free management
The future of ecommerce technology is moving toward ease of use and effortless management. While running an ecommerce store requires hard work, hosted platforms take care of a large portion of the workload so that business owners can focus on growing their business.
