Summary: With the advance of eCommerce technology, anyone can now set up their own eCommerce store without the need to know about the technical aspects of it. More importantly, setting up an eCommerce business is more affordable than ever when you are using the SaaS eCommerce hosting platforms instead of building your own platform from scratch. With an affordable pricing, you can build your own online store and start accepting payments from your customers. Whether it is for startups, small businesses, enterprises, or non-profits, CoreCommerce can set up your online store quickly without the hassles. And the number of online stores hosted in this platform is growing faster than ever,
Nowadays, creating an online store for your business is an important thing to do if you want to succeed with it. With the popularity of online shopping and the convenience that it offers to the customers, more and more people will purchase their products online in the coming years. Thus, if you want to ensure that your business will get an upper hand, it is important for you to start building your eCommerce store from now on. Thankfully, it is not difficult to do that, even if you’re just starting out.
Whether you are an individual, small business, startup, or enterprise that simply wants to start selling your products online, using a hosted eCommerce service is the easiest way to set up your online store without all the hassles of building it from scratch. With a hosted eCommerce SaaS service, you will get all the tools necessary for you to get your online store up and running in no time. There is a wizard that will guide you through the process from the start to completion.
Not only that, you will also get all the tools necessary that can help you market and promote your eCommerce business. Best of all, you don’t need to worry about all the technical aspects of it, such as server maintenance, coding and programming, payment processing, and so on. You can do all that in a plug-and-play system that makes it easier for you to add various features to your eCommerce business. This is what CoreCommerce is offering to their clients. This service helps various types of businesses build their own online stores using their eCommerce hosting platform, making it easier for them to run and manage their business. We have interviewed Kris Graffagnino from CoreCommerce to explain to us more about this platform.
The Background History of CoreCommerce
CoreCommerce started from a proprietary shopping cart technology released in 2001, which allowed the users to install a shopping cart system on their website and start processing transactions online. At first, the product was offered as a standalone software that users can integrate on their website. In 2008, CoreCommerce has changed the way they deliver their products, including by transforming their proprietary shopping cart technology into a whole SaaS eCommerce platform for the users.
With these changes, the platform can now host thousands of eCommerce stores worldwide, providing their services on the subscription basis. There are also lots more additional features being added to the platform to ensure that the users can run and manage their online stores easily from within the dashboard. Lots of tools are available to enhance their eCommerce business, including marketing tools, integrations, store builder, and so on. Kris Graffagnino explained about the history of CoreCommerce,
“Established in 2001 and built on a proprietary and exceptionally robust shopping cart technology, CoreCommerce pivoted in 2008 to a SaaS business model and now hosts thousands of online websites worldwide, providing a suite of eCommerce products.
At CoreCommerce, the entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well. We understand both the creative passion that drives you to do more – and the pride you put into your business. As a CoreCommerce client, you can count on our reliable, customizable SaaS platform, personalized service and support, and continual product enhancements that keep pace with evolving technology. At CoreCommerce, our commitment is to be the best eCommerce partner for creating and managing your online business. We also have unique solutions for service companies to get paid online.”
The Future of eCommerce Market and How It Has Evolved Over Time
In the past, when people didn’t shop online as massively as today, it is important for any online store platform to design their website to look the best on desktop browsers. However, nowadays, when people are using their mobile devices to do various banking and shopping activities, it becomes even more important for any eCommerce platform to make sure that their online store can be accessed via mobile devices. This is what CoreCommerce has been focusing on in today’s eCommerce landscape.
Additionally, on the B2B online commerce market, it also has evolved considerably over the years. Nowadays, you no longer need to meet the CEO of any business in order to make sales for your products. In order for you to persuade businesses nowadays to use your products, you just need to find some influential people around the company, which can influence the buying decision for your products. Kris Graffagnino explained about how online commerce, as well as B2B eCommerce market, has evolved over the years,
“It’s definitely gone the way of Mobile Friendly. Your system HAS to work on a phone or tablet, and nowadays its almost more important to make sure your product is suited for mobile than non-mobile. For B2B, it’s really a matter of the old guard and the new guard. The old methods of trying to get to the CEO and sell him are over. It’s about finding the RIGHT person that can influence the decision, but not necessarily the person at the top of the company’s hierarchy. This market is going to continue to expand and will need to be more and more creative with the tactics to grasp the attention of the current generation of which you are now dealing with.”
How CoreCommerce Security Features Differ from Other Website Security Solutions
Whereas other security solutions might offer enhanced security features for websites and eCommerce platforms, CoreCommerce already has such a security system built-in to ensure that both the data of the users and customers are safely protected. There are plenty of security features offered by CoreCommerce as a part of their packages, such as credit card tokenization, PCI compliance, SSL certificates, and so on. So, using this platform will ensure that everybody doing the transactions on your online store will be kept secure and private since no sensitive information is stored. Kris Graffagnino explained about the security features of the platform,
“Since CoreCommerce is an e-commerce platform, it has security measures built into it. Things like maintained PCI compliance, SSL certificates, credit card tokenization, GDPR support, etc. Our system we redesigned years ago to make sure the data people store on our servers is properly maintained, and secure to outsiders. We also do not store sensitive card info or anything like that.”
Some Common Challenges People Face in Building Their First eCommerce Store
With CoreCommerce, it is possible for anyone to build their own online stores. This platform is designed to be easy to use, allowing people to get their eCommerce store ready by just following a simple store builder wizard. You don’t need to take the time to learn about how to build all the infrastructures, how to invest on the hardware, how to apply all the security features, and so on. Everything is already there, ready for you to use within the CoreCommerce platform.
Despite all the easy features that are provided on this platform, many people still have difficulties in setting up their online stores for the first time. If you are building an online commerce business for the first time, it might indeed be tough to get it right at first. Some common difficulties include how the shipment will go, designing the store, custom rates that they would like to apply, and so on. So, it is better to think about these things beforehand to avoid any problems with your online business later. Kris Graffagnino shared about the difficulties many people experience in building their first online stores,
“They are not sure what they want it to look like, so designing the store can be tough unless you know what you want. On top of that, most people when starting a store have no idea how they want to ship products out the door, or who/what to configure for that. Do they want to use UPS? FedEx? Their own custom rates? Most of our smaller customers don’t even think about that until the end, especially if they are starting a business for the first time.”
CoreCommerce Customer Growth Rate
As a company, they have been around since 2001, whereas as a SaaS eCommerce platform, CoreCommerce has been in business since 2008. Throughout the years, this platform has continued to attract more and more clients to use their services. Various types of online businesses have been using CoreCommerce as their primary platform to build their online store. The growth rate has been very good ever since online shopping become a more popular way to purchase products for customers.
As a business, The company has achieved a significant increase in their customer growth rate. To conclude our interview, Kris Graffagnino shared with us about the growth rate of the CoreCommerce platform,
“CoreCommerce has increased its total number of stores hosted by 40% over the last 2 years. We also offer a Host Payments Page product and that is very popular with our partners we work with today.”
CoreCommerce offers various features that can help the users to build their online stores from scratch, no matter the size of their business. Some great features offered by this platform include responsive mobile-friendly design, an easy store builder, advanced security system, flexible customization, integrations, and various payment options.
There is a free trial plan for those who would like to try out the features offered by this platform before they decide to subscribe to the plan of their choice. Moreover, this platform can be used to process global transactions, as well as to be used as both B2C and B2B eCommerce system.