Business Flexibility

You can buy or license eCommerce software and deploy it to a server you rent.  But you then have to deal with security updates and server management.  What would it cost you if your customer list was stolen by someone accessed your server?

Buy vs Build Your eCommerce / Custom Marketplace

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Build Disadvantages

  • Very difficult to hire a competent technical team
  • Very expensive to keep a competent technical team due to high demand and poaching from other companies
  • Continual development required for ongoing security compliance
  • Unsophisticated solution based on your team’s limited internal knowledge
  • High dependence on your tech team who will change jobs
  • Building an In-House Online Marketplace is very risky and expensive
  • Building In-House is more complex and will take much more time than expected
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Buy Advantages

  • Get to market sooner – competitive advantage
  • Lower financial risk due to a known quoted cost
  • No management of technical teams required
  • Start sooner with a proven, full featured, advanced solution that has received awards
  • Start sooner with a solution that is already PCI Security Compliant
  • Proven scalable solution will sell more
  • 7/24 Support team available immediately to keep your business online
  • Frequent feature and security updates included
  • Multiple integrations included
  • Buying is cheaper than building an In-House Online Marketplace

You can use simple eCommerce solutions with plugins.  But you can only turn plugins on or off.  You can’t customize.  Some plugins don’t work with others, or you may find you can’t upgrade to a newer version of that eCommerce solution as the plugins don’t work.  Support responsibility is also divided between the plugin provider and whoever configured your platform, and most plugin providers do not offer support.

If you need to customize, a programmer could modify the software of your eCommerce solution but they are very limited to what extent they can modify the site since they can easily add bugs or break features which you might not discover long after they are gone.

SaaS eCommerce solutions are another option.  These range from SME-level solutions to Enterprise solutions.

Shopify is a leading provider and is ideal for small retailers that have a physical store and need a cash register solution that is unified with the eCommerce site.  This is Shopify’s core customer approach.  But to make the solution easy to use there are severe limitations with payment providers, multi-currency, and promotions. Some Shopify plugins can add promotions but then require Shopify Plus which starts at $2,000 a month.

Shopify could be a good choice If your eCommerce needs are simple. However, if you want more control to customize then it is probably not the best choice.  This is even the case with Shopify Plus.  A customer of ours recently stated plugins are dumb as you can only turn them on or off.

There are other SaaS eCommerce solutions but most have the limitation of customization.  Our Composable Commerce SaaS solutions solve this and give you Business Flexibility to mesh together best-of-breed solutions and can easily be changed later. You have 100% front-end source code access for total control if you need it.  And we integrate to popular Content Management Systems that you can easily use to update your site or find a system locally.  You can also integrate other solutions your team creates or others you find on the internet.

The Admin pages are also composable and white-labelled so that your technical team can integrate dashboards your team creates or admin pages from other solutions.  If you don’t need that level of customization at this time, then it’s good to know that you can have it in the future.

Another key problem: is the platform extensible?  Avetti Commerce gives you a full plugin ecosystem with the CMS you choose to use.  For example, WordPress has thousands of free and inexpensive plugins and other CMS’s or Digital Experience Platforms have their own ecosystems. The eCommerce portion of your site that Avetti Commerce serves is built on React/NextJS (Jamstack) which is the leading platform for modern site design providing high speed.  Google ranks your site based on its speed, and Amazon has found that every 100ms of slowness costs you 1% of sales so a fast site is important.  And most marketing firms know how to modify React/NextJS pages. 

  • Modern browsers support more advanced Javascript capability
  • Classic HTML Site – Every Page requires parsing the Javascript on that page which makes it Slow
  • Modern Approach using React/NextJS loads all the common Javascript at once

Increase Site Speed = More Sales

This is the Modern Way to Build Websites that Delivers Better Performance

You can also integrate any SaaS service that has an API.  ProgrammableWeb.com lists 24,000 APIs for example.  You would need technical staff to modify these pages or Avetti can provide these services if you need them.  If you only need to add products to sell, then there would be no changes needed.

Every eCommerce Site is becoming a Marketplace

Did you know every eCommerce site is becoming a marketplace?  This is a major trend as businesses are starting to add complementary products from suppliers to increase sales.  The supplier would ship direct to customers and manage inventory, product sourcing,  product descriptions, pricing, and even customer support using Avetti Chat with your buyers.

Solving Supplier Integration

A big issue with adding suppliers is having them send you product information and updated prices and inventory daily.  Avetti integrates with common SME eCommerce solutions such as Shopify and Magento such that the suppliers only need to configure their solution to send you a product feed of all products or a subset from a collection or category.  You then only need to ask them to spend 15 minutes configuring this data feed to supply your marketplace.

And when an order appears, Avetti Commerce will create the order in their system so they don’t have to log in daily to their Supplier portal or watch for an email.  It’s a very simple way to integrate suppliers.  Note that this integration is available on the higher plans we offer.

Avetti Integration Diagram

Selling on Public Marketplaces

If you have a B2C store, you can also via third-party integration offer your products on Amazon or other marketplaces.  This is not available on all our plans. Contact us for details.

Avetti Third Party Integration Diagram

Learn More

We compete against both SME and Enterprise-level eCommerce solutions.

If you have Enterprise needs, visit our Solutions | Custom eCommerce page and upload your RFP or requirements document and we’ll review and do a gap analysis for you.  If you are an SME, click on the Free Trial option to learn more about our solution.