Top 5 eCommerce Platforms in UAE
With an increase of 23% every year, eCommerce is one of the most popular online businesses in the world. When it comes to UAE, 99% of the population has access to the internet, and thus, eCommerce has a bright future here.
Online shopping is on a rise around the globe and UAE is no different. According to a study, around 58% of online purchases are from websites based outside the UAE. It means that there is a huge potential for eCommerce websites based within the region.
Why eCommerce?
Setting up an eCommerce store is way easier as compared to setting up a physical store. Not only the process is hectic, but you need a little bit too good investment as well. On the other hand, you can easily create an online store.
The process starts with selecting the niche, choosing the products, creating a store, and VOILA. However, one of the most important decisions to make during the whole process of creating and launching an eCommerce store is choosing the right platform according to your requirements and business goals.
Selecting an eCommerce platform can make or break your online success. There are a number of good eCommerce platforms available. Every platform has its own pros and cons. You need to consider all points before you step forward.
5 Best eCommerce Platforms to Create an Online Store in UAE
Here is a list of the 5 best eCommerce platforms that beginners can use as well. Although it is always better to let someone with experience manage your online store, to use these platforms, you do not need much technical knowledge.
Shopify - The Most Popular eCommerce Platform in the World
Shopify is one of the most popular eCommerce platforms across the world with more than 2 million active stores at the moment. Till today, products worth more than $155B have been sold through this platform.
The payment plan of Shopify starts from $29/month. This Canadian-based company has an in-house payment processing platform.
This platform offers more than 73 free and paid themes - all are mobile optimized. You can also hire a developer to help you with the theme development.
Shopify offers a number of features that help its clients to run their eCommerce stores smoothly. Some of the prominent features include abandoned carts, custom discount codes, gift cards, and various integrated marketing tools such as email marketing.
Payment Options:
Shopify gives you the option to use their in-house payment platform which is integrated with almost all of the major payment gateways like Google Pay, credit cards, Apple Pay, and etc.
One of the best security options offered by Shopify is the default fraud analysis. They have level 1 PCI compliance as well which is useful for you as a store owner. You can manage the payments from an integrated back office.
Managing Online Stores
Setting up product pages, and managing orders and inventory is very easy. Its interface allows you to add products to your pages by drag and drop. It also offers automatic image optimization. You can always buy additional plugins from Shopify’s App Store as well.
Benefits of Shopify
Drag-and-drop options to add products
Easy interface
Multiple categories
Creating blogs and webpages
Customer order tracking
Accept different currencies
Manage multiple staff login
Discount code engine
Woo Commerce - Powered by WordPress
WooCommerce is an open-source platform to create eCommerce websites. It is itself free of cost, but you need to buy a hosting. You can easily amplify and enhance the functionality of your store and its storefront by using paid themes, extensions, and integrations.
There are many free and paid themes that you can use for your store according to your requirements. Again, you can also hire professionals to develop a theme unique to your store.
Payment Options
Like any other major eCommerce platform, WooCommerce allows you to set up various payment options in your online store. It includes all major credit cards, PayPal, Stripe, etc.
You also have an option to sign up for WooCommerce Payment. You don’t need to pay any setup or monthly fee. You can accept payments from all debit and credit cards with a fee of 2.9% plus a flat fee of 30 cents. However, if the credit or debit is issued from outside the US, a 1% additional fee is applied on all transactions.
Managing the Store
It is very easy to manage your online store built on WooCommerce. You can manage the inventory, calculate taxes and shipping charges using the WordPress interface.
To keep a track of your traffic, you can easily integrate your store with Google Analytics.
Benefits of Using WooCommerce
Allows to sell more than one product
Multiple payment gateways
Multiple product categories
Control over the stock level
Flexible shipping setting
Free and paid extensions
Automatic tax calculation
Magento - an Open Source eCommerce Platform
It is one of the oldest eCommerce platforms in the digital world. It is specifically designed for small businesses and developers. Magento is a good platform to build an online store, especially for those who need more freedom to develop and run their online business.
However, it is not as simple to build an eCommerce store on this platform as it is on Shopify or any other. Therefore, if you are not much into technicalities, you might need to hire a professional developer to build a store for you.
This platform is fully optimized to build mobile-friendly eCommerce websites. You can add as many features to your store as you want. You can get additional extensions for yoru store through Magento Marketplace.
Magento is an open-source platform. Its paid version is also available but it may cost thousands of dollars.
Payment Options
With PCI Complaint Payment Solutions, you can add many payment options for your UAE audience. You can also give an option of paying through PayPal to your customers.
Managing the Store
Unlike the above-mentioned platforms, an online store built on Magento needs extensive expertise for managing it. You’ll find integrated options of checkout, payment, and shipping on this platform. However, you need to set them up all yourself.
In simpler words, it does not include fancy drag-and-drop and simple input options available on this platform.
Benefits of Using Magento
Open-source
Customizable
900+ extensions
Huge community
SEO-friendly
Advanced reporting
BigCommerce - An Advanced eCommerce Platform
BigCommerce is one of the leading eCommerce platforms. It provides all the best features and options to small and established companies that are required to start and grow their online shops.
This platform has an easy-to-use interface and offers various advanced built-in features to its customers.
With more than 90,000 active stores, BigCommerce is used by online stores in more than 65 countries.
There are a number of third-party plugins available that you can use to enhance the store face and functionality of your eCommerce website. More than 200 add-ons are available on the app section of BigCommerce.
Its pricing starts from $29.95/month.
Payment Options
When you build your eCommerce website using BigCommerce, you can use various payment gateways. You can integrate your store with more than 38 payment gateways.
You can use Stripe, PayPal Express Checkout, 2Checkout, etc.
Managing in Store
BigCommerce provides you easy options to manage your online store. This platform offers various inventory management apps that help you streamline your operations and give you control over your inventory.
Benefits of Using BigCommerce
Customizable
Built-in SEO
99.99% uptime
Provides conversion tools
Pre-built site templates
B2B eCommerce solutions
Wix - A Fast Growing eCommerce Platform
The vision of Wix is to provide its customers a straightforward way to build eCommerce stores and create a digital asset for themselves. At the moment, more than 500,000 online stores are powered by Wix around the globe.
This platform also provides hosting for your eCommerce website. It is a cost-effective solution and starts with as low as $23/month.
Wix offers you more than 500 mobile-optimized themes that you can use to create stores in 90+ languages to reach a global audience.
Some of the important features of Wix include abandoned cart recovery, instant purchase buttons, customizable checkout page, wishlist, discount codes, add to cart from the gallery, customer accounts, and loyalty programs.
This is not it. Wix also offers $300 worth of ad credit to promote your store with some other useful marketing tools. It also supports multi-channel sales through Instagram, eBay, Facebook, etc.
However, some of the Wix features can only be used with a higher-level plan. Therefore, it is important to double-check that your required features are included in a plan before subscribing to it.
Payment Options
When you build an eCommerce website using Wix, you can integrate payments from more than 40 providers. This includes payments from credit cards along with PayPal, Square, and Stripe.
The high-end Wix plans also offer you a feature of multi-currency converter that allows you to accept payments in foreign currencies and sell your products on different regions of the world.
Managing the Store
Wix has an easy-to-use interface that you can use to build and manage your online store. All store management, tracking, and refunding can be managed through the Wix dashboard.
The best part is that Wix has an app for store owners that you can use to fulfill orders, get notifications, track your inventory, and much more.
You can set up the shipping rules for your Wix store. It allows you to add custom shipping charges and print shipping labels.
Benefits of Using Wix
Upgraded designed themes
Intuitive drag and drop interface
Secured
All-in-one eCommerce solution
Good site speed
Additional marketing features
How to Choose the Right eCommerce Platform for your Store
We discussed the top five eCommerce platforms you can use to build an online store in UAE. There are many others as well.
Now, the question is, how would you know which platform is a good choice for your store. Well, to know the best option for your online store, the best option is to consult an eCommerce expert who can guide you according to your business requirements and goals.
However, keeping the below points in mind, you can also choose a good option for your business.
Start with your budget - today, you can start an online store with as low as a few hundred dollars to as high as millions of dollars. This is because online stores come in all sizes. While selecting a plan, consider your budget, the number of products you want to add, and your anticipated sales.
Prefer mobile-friendly platforms - more than 60% of online purchase in UAE is through mobile phones. Therefore, while selecting a platform, make sure that your store will be mobile-friendly.
Easiness of setting up the store - if you want to build and manage your store on your own, then choose a platform that offers an easy setup process - preferably drag and drop.
Secure and easy to navigate - like any other website, your store should be easily navigable by your customers. Choose a platform that provides security and easily navigable sites.
Payment options - for an eCommerce store, it is important for you to provide easy payment options to your client. Some popular payments methods for eCommerce stores in UAE are credit cards, Stripe, PayPal, Apple Pay, etc. Therefore, before finalizing a platform, check with it whether it supports your preferred payment method or not.
Last Words
The eCommerce industry in UAE has a lot of potential and if you are not utilizing it at its maximum, you are losing a lot of money on the table.
However, it is important to use the right platform to build your eCommerce store. While choosing the right platform for your store for the UAE audience, you have multiple free and paid options. Choose the one that fits all your requirements and helps you achieve your business goals.
If you are not a technical person or you are feeling hesitant in building your own store, you can consult us. We are an experienced eCommerce consultant company in UAE for years and have helped many people like you to start their online stores and build digital assets.
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