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Best eCommerce Platform 2023: Which One to Choose?

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Best eCommerce Platform 2023: Which One to Choose?

There is an insane outburst for online shopping worldwide, and the eCommerce industry is not showing any signs of slowing down in the near future. Yet there are a number of businesses that don’t have their websites causing them to lose out to competitors who have dedicated websites to deliver a seamless shopping experience.

If you are a budding entrepreneur who is aspiring to build an eCommerce website and is overwhelmed with the options to build one, we have crumbled the top eCommerce platforms to cherry-pick in 2023 when building an online store. But before going through the platforms, we have set a clear set of criteria on which the platforms are listed.

Let’s have a look at them before.

Our Selection Criteria

The below-listed platforms are chosen on the basis of:

Ease of Use

The eCommerce platforms should be easy to navigate and should have ease-to-use dashboards for the users. The platforms should come with a manual or setup guide assisting through the process of building the store. Most importantly, the platform should be able to create an advanced and responsive store without any coding and design knowledge.

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Customer Support

This is crucial for eCommerce store owners and can be needed at any point in time. The platform should offer all the best types of support which include live chat, phone, and email. 24*5 customer support is mandatory.

Integrations

The platform should be able to integrate third-party APIs to work together with any other app and service to conduct business.

Best eCommerce Platforms for 2023 to

Now let’s dive into the names of the platforms right here, without any ado.

Yo!Kart

Yo!Kart is one of the most popular, powerful, secure, and scalable multi vendor eCommerce platforms to build super eCommerce websites that are completely unique and customized. Built by an experienced team of designers, developers, and analysts, Yo!Kart packs cutting-edge features and capabilities widely sought by entrepreneurs while building and running eCommerce stores.

The B2B version of Yo!Kart unites brands, manufacturers, suppliers, and wholesalers to build B2B online marketplaces with a transparent, efficient, and trustworthy ecosystem. The multi vendor capability in Yo!Kart packs multi-seller features using which business owners can host multiple sellers and multiply profits. In addition, to operate in diverse geographical regions and cater to different audience groups, this platform has been integrated with multilingual and multicurrency capabilities.

Unlike SaaS solutions, Yo!Kart B2B eCommerce software does not come with any growth obstacles. One can add new features and even tweak the existing ones to suit the requirements.

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WooCommerce

WooCommerce is the world’s most popular eCommerce platform with more than 4 million websites and 28% of all eCommerce websites. Since it is the most popular, flexible, and affordable extension to build a full-featured eCommerce website, it is considered one of the best eCommerce platforms.

It is an open-source and customizable eCommerce platform that is easy to use if you want a basic online store. However, if you want advanced features and user interfaces for your customers, you may need web development or coding skills. This platform also makes it really easy to manage your orders and customers, as well as optimize your digital store.

And on top of that, you have access to an outstanding support team if any issues arise.

YoRent

YoRent is an agile ecommerce platform that gives business owners the flexibility to start both sales and rental businesses. It comes in three industry-specific designs and functionality, which can be used to launch an ecommerce business in diverse industries. Furthermore, with multi-vendor support, entrepreneurs can also use Yo!Rent to launch marketplaces and Peer-to-Peer businesses.

In terms of functionality, YoRent has both sales and rent-centric features. The solution comes with inventory management, order management, profile management, rental agreement management, rental security module, late cancellations/returns module and many more. All these features streamline business operations for entrepreneurs.

Being fully customizable and scalable, Yo!Rent rental software supports your vision and growth without levying any technical restraints. You can browse its live instant explorable demos to confirm if Yo!Rent is the right choice for your business requirements.

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Shopify

With 23% of the market share, Shopify is emerging as the second most used and popular platform after WooCommerce. It is an affordable, robust, and easy-to-use platform for both beginners and growing businesses. Setting up the platform is pretty much simple and the onboarding wizard guides you through every one of the means.

From product management to a seamless checkout process, Shopify comes with all the essential features you will need to build and grow your eCommerce business. The platform excels in giving users the ability to create a professionally-looking website and be user-friendly which makes it the ideal eCommerce platform.

BigCommerce

BigCommerce is a hosted SaaS eCommerce business platform that permits entrepreneurs to set up online stores involving different adaptable layouts for simple set-up. The platform is ideal for large brands or businesses with high-volume inventories. Since the platform provides access to its advanced built-in and custom tools along with powerful API integrations, the platform is highly scalable.

The features of this platform include high-quality SEO, the opportunity to launch a blog, an abandoned cart saver, email marketing features, and many more. BigCommerce also has stellar 24*7 customer support, so you can always be in touch with an expert if needed. In addition, the platform meets the PCI security standard and offers protection from fraud and chargebacks.

Magento

This is one of the most customizable eCommerce platforms and offers a vast amount of extensions and third-party integrations to give the consumer unique shopping experiences. The platform is well-known for helping B2B and B2C businesses build a flexible, extensible, and scalable eCommerce store that is optimized for easy checkouts.

One of the major selling points of Magento is its high level of customization. It comes with every feature that you can think of, from live searches to complex product recommendations. Although the free version of Magento is free, yet requires a substantial amount of development to create a working site.

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Wix

Wix is a modern and user-friendly eCommerce website builder that gives you the ability to create a complete website with all the essential eCommerce capabilities. Being affordable and flexible, the Wix platform is a great alternative to consider while building an online business and has the capability to place your products and services in front of your potential customers.

Wix comprises templates by the type of products you sell, such as fashion and clothing, jewelry, arts and crafts, and so on. The primary benefit of this platform is its simplified drag-and-drop editor and the abundance of adaptable design templates. Wix offers over 50 payment gateways worldwide including the in-house Wix Payments.

Final Thoughts

And with that, we wrap up our comparison of the best eCommerce platforms for Startups. Although each of them is among the industry leaders, the right platform depends on your business goals. There is no “one size fits all” solution, it comes down to you and your individual needs. Now that you know about these platforms, make your choice and start building your eCommerce website.

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How To Combine PR and Content Marketing Superpowers To Achieve Business Goals

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A figure pulls open a dress shirt to reveal the term PR on a Superman-like costume, reflecting the superpower resulting from combining content and PR.

A transformative shift is happening, and it’s not AI.

The aisle between public relations and content marketing is rapidly narrowing. If you’re smart about the convergence, you can forever enhance your brand’s storytelling.

The goals and roles of content marketing and PR overlap more and more. The job descriptions look awfully similar. Shrinking budgets and a shrewd eye for efficiency mean you and your PR pals could face the chopping block if you don’t streamline operations and deliver on the company’s goals (because marketing communications is always first to be axed, right?).

Yikes. Let’s take a big, deep breath. This is not a threat. It’s an opportunity.

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Reach across the aisle to PR and streamline content creation, improve distribution strategies, and get back to the heart of what you both are meant to do: Build strong relationships and tell impactful stories.

So, before you panic-post that open-to-work banner on LinkedIn, consider these tips from content marketing, PR, and journalism pros who’ve figured out how to thrive in an increasingly narrowing content ecosystem.

1. See journalists as your audience

Savvy pros know the ability to tell an impactful story — and support it with publish-ready collateral — grounds successful media relationships. And as a content marketer, your skills in storytelling and connecting with audiences, including journalists, naturally support your PR pals’ media outreach.

Strategic storytelling creates content focused on what the audience needs and wants. Sharing content on your blog or social media builds relationships with journalists who source those channels for story ideas, event updates, and subject matter experts.

“Embedding PR strategies in your content marketing pieces informs your audience and can easily be picked up by media,” says Alex Sanchez, chief experience officer at BeWell, New Mexico’s Health Insurance Marketplace. “We have seen reporters do this many times, pulling stories from our blogs and putting them in the nightly news — most of the time without even reaching out to us.”

Acacia James, weekend producer/morning associate producer at WTOP radio in Washington, D.C., says blogs and social media posts are helpful to her work. “If I see a story idea, and I see that they’re willing to share information, it’s easier to contact them — and we can also backlink their content. It’s huge for us to be able to use every avenue.” 

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Kirby Winn, manager of PR at ImpactLife, says reporters and assignment editors are key consumers of their content. “And I don’t mean a news release that just hit their inbox. They’re going to our blog and consuming our stories, just like any other audience member,” he says. “Our organization has put more focus into content marketing in the past few years — it supports a media pitch so well and highlights the stories we have to tell.”

Storytelling attracts earned media that might not pick up the generic news topic. “It’s one thing to pitch a general story about how we help consumers sign up for low-cost health insurance,” Alex says. “Now, imagine a single mom who just got a plan after years of thinking it was too expensive. She had a terrible car accident, and the $60,000 ER bill that would have ruined her financially was covered. Now that’s a story journalists will want to cover, and that will be relatable to their audience and ours.” 

2. Learn the media outlet’s audience

Seventy-three percent of reporters say one-fourth or less of the stories pitched are relevant to their audiences, according to Cision’s 2023 State of the Media Report (registration required).

PR pros are known for building relationships with journalists, while content marketers thrive in building communities around content. Merge these best practices to build desirable content that works for your target audience and the media’s audiences simultaneously.

WTOP’s Acacia James says sources who show they’re ready to share helpful, relevant content often win pitches for coverage. “In radio, we do a lot of research on who is listening to us, and we’re focused on a prototype called ‘Mike and Jen’ — normal, everyday people in Generation X … So when we get press releases and pitches, we ask, ‘How interested will Mike and Jen be in this story?’” 

3. Deliver the full content package (and make journalists’ jobs easier)

Cranking out content to their media outlet’s standards has never been tougher for journalists. Newsrooms are significantly understaffed, and anything you can do to make their lives easier will be appreciated and potentially rewarded with coverage. Content marketers are built to think about all the elements to tell the story through multiple mediums and channels.

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“Today’s content marketing pretty much provides a package to the media outlet,” says So Young Pak, director of media relations at MedStar Washington Hospital Center. “PR is doing a lot of storytelling work in advance of media publication. We (and content marketing) work together to provide the elements to go with each story — photos, subject matter experts, patients, videos, and data points, if needed.”   

At WTOP, the successful content package includes audio. “As a radio station, we are focused on high-quality sound,” Acacia James says. “Savvy sources know to record and send us voice memos, and then we pull cuts from the audio … You will naturally want to do someone a favor if they did you one — like providing helpful soundbites, audio, and newsworthy stories.”  

While production value matters to some media, you shouldn’t stress about it. “In the past decade, how we work with reporters has changed. Back in the day, if they couldn’t be there in person, they weren’t going to interview your expert,” says Jason Carlton, an accredited PR professional and manager of marketing and communications at Intermountain Health. “During COVID, we had to switch to virtual interviewing. Now, many journalists are OK with running a Teams or Zoom interview they’ve done with an expert on the news.”

BeWell’s Alex Sanchez agrees. “I’ve heard old school PR folks cringe at the idea of putting up a Zoom video instead of getting traditional video interviews. It doesn’t really matter to consumers. Focus on the story, on the timeliness, and the relevance. Consumers want authenticity, not super stylized, stiff content.”

4. Unite great minds to maximize efficiency

Everyone needs to set aside the debate about which team — PR or content marketing — gets credit for the resulting media coverage.

At MedStar Washington Hospital Center, So Young and colleagues adopt a collaborative mindset on multichannel stories. “We can get the interview and gather information for all the different pieces — blog, audio, video, press release, internal newsletter, or magazine. That way, we’re not trying to figure things out individually, and the subject matter experts only have to have that conversation once,” she says.

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Regular, cross-team meetings are essential to understand the best channels for reaching key audiences, including the media. A story that began life as a press release might reap SEO and earned media gold if it’s strategized as a blog, video, and media pitch.

“At Intermountain Health, we have individual teams for media relations, marketing, social media, and hospital communications. That setup works well because it allows us to bring in the people who are the given experts in those areas,” says Intermountain’s Jason Carlton. “Together, we decide if a story is best for the blog, a media pitch, or a mix of channels — that way, we avoid duplicating work and the risk of diluting the story’s impact.”

5. Measure what matters

Cutting through the noise to earn media mentions requires keen attention to metrics. Since content marketing and PR metrics overlap, synthesizing the data in your team meetings can save time while streamlining your storytelling efforts.

“For content marketers, using analytical tools such as GA4 can help measure the effectiveness of their content campaigns and landing pages to determine meaningful KPIs such as organic traffic, keyword rankings, lead generation, and conversion rates,” says John Martino, director of digital marketing for Visiting Angels. “PR teams can use media coverage and social interactions to assess user engagement and brand awareness. A unified and omnichannel approach can help both teams demonstrate their value in enhancing brand visibility, engagement, and overall business success.”

To track your shared goals, launch a shared dashboard that helps tell the combined “story of your stories” to internal and executive teams. Among the metrics to monitor:

  • Page views: Obviously, this queen of metrics continues to be important across PR and content marketing. Take your analysis to the next level by evaluating which niche audiences are contributing to these views to further hone your storytelling targets, including media outlets.
  • Earned media mentions: Through a media tracker service or good old Google Alerts, you can tally the echo of your content marketing and PR. Look at your site’s referral traffic report to identify media outlets that send traffic to your blog or other web pages.
  • Organic search queries: Dive into your analytics platform to surface organic search queries that lead to visitors. Build from those questions to develop stories that further resonate with your audience and your targeted media.
  • On-page actions: When visitors show up on your content, what are they doing? What do they click? Where do they go next? Building next-step pathways is your bread and butter in content marketing — and PR can use them as a natural pipeline for media to pick up more stories, angles, and quotes.

But perhaps the biggest metric to track is team satisfaction. Who on the collaborative team had the most fun writing blogs, producing videos, or calling the news stations? Lean into the natural skills and passions of your team members to distribute work properly, maximize the team output, and improve relationships with the media, your audience, and internal teams.

“It’s really trying to understand the problem to solve — the needle to move — and determining a plan that will help them achieve their goal,” Jason says. “If you don’t have those measurable objectives, you’re not going to know whether you made a difference.”

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Don’t fear the merger

Whether you deliberately work together or not, content marketing and public relations are tied together. ImpactLife’s Kirby Winn explains, “As soon as we begin to talk about (ourselves) to a reporter who doesn’t know us, they are certainly going to check out our stories.”

But consciously uniting PR and content marketing will ease the challenges you both face. Working together allows you to save time, eliminate duplicate work, and gain free time to tell more stories and drive them into impactful media placements.

Register to attend Content Marketing World in San Diego. Use the code BLOG100 to save $100. Can’t attend in person this year? Check out the Digital Pass for access to on-demand session recordings from the live event through the end of the year.

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Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

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Trends in Content Localization – Moz

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Trends in Content Localization - Moz

Multinational fast food chains are one of the best-known examples of recognizing that product menus may sometimes have to change significantly to serve distinct audiences. The above video is just a short run-through of the same business selling smokehouse burgers, kofta, paneer, and rice bowls in an effort to appeal to people in a variety of places. I can’t personally judge the validity of these representations, but what I can see is that, in such cases, you don’t merely localize your content but the products on which your content is founded.

Sometimes, even the branding of businesses is different around the world; what we call Burger King in America is Hungry Jack’s in Australia, Lays potato chips here are Sabritas in Mexico, and DiGiorno frozen pizza is familiar in the US, but Canada knows it as Delissio.

Tales of product tailoring failures often become famous, likely because some of them may seem humorous from a distance, but cultural sensitivity should always be taken seriously. If a brand you are marketing is on its way to becoming a large global seller, the best insurance against reputation damage and revenue loss as a result of cultural insensitivity is to employ regional and cultural experts whose first-hand and lived experiences can steward the organization in acting with awareness and respect.

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

AI and startups? It just makes sense.

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