Which Is The Best Ecommerce Solution For Vars?

By Author: Shane Emerson
Total Articles: 36
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Being a value-added reseller of IT products, your primary aim is to increase your business revenue. Right? To achieve this, it is imperative to ditch manual methods of handling business operations.

It is time to bring your business online by choosing an appropriate eCommerce platform. An eCommerce solution for VARs is designed to handle and process orders online.

An eCommerce platform will save your time from repetitive tasks and enable you to manage your business more efficiently.

Convenience is the biggest perk of online shopping. Hence, starting an eCommerce store will surely help you to attract more number of consumers.

If you are planning to buy the best eCommerce platform, make sure it has the following features:

1. Setup Time and Cost

To reduce your deployment, choose a cloud-based eCommerce system. This will eliminate the need to set up your own server or buy other expensive IT infrastructure. A third party company handles all the technical aspects of running your online business including maintenance.

2. ...
... Ability to Sell More and Increase Customer Reach

The purpose to build an eCommerce platform is to increase sales. Now, this won't be possible if you depend only on your online store for business.

Apart from your eCommerce store, there are other sales channels online that you need to consider to improve your business revenue. For instance, marketplaces like Amazon and eBay are a huge draw among online shoppers. You can expand your business reach to millions of consumers to use these marketplaces.

The ability to create product listings on various marketplaces from your eCommerce store will help to improve your business. The best platform should allow you to manage your marketplace inventory and orders from within your store.

3. Seamless Integration

VARs are connected to different distributors for procurement. As a reseller of IT products, most likely you will be doing business with distributors like Ingram Micro, Tech Data, Synnex, etc.

Check whether the best eCommerce platform you pick integrates with these distributors. This will allow you to receive product feeds directly from your distributors. No dealing with the hassles of manual uploads. Moreover, data feeds are automatically updated whenever there are changes in inventory levels and product prices.

To resolve the issue of rich product content, the eCommerce store should connect with rich content providers such as Etilize and IceCat. These rich content providers offer data feeds to many online retailers. With data feed integration, you can easily access rich product content to meet your eCommerce needs.

Many VARs use QuickBooks for accounting and Salesforce for managing customer interactions. So ensure your eCommerce system integrates well with your existing software applications to avoid the nightmare of using disparate systems.

4. Exceptional User Experience

VARs have both B2B and B2C customers that nowadays use mobile devices to make online purchases.

So your VAR eCommerce store should provide optimal user experience irrespective of the device customers are using. Website information should be easily accessible from laptops, desktops, and smartphones.

The eCommerce platform you choose should have professionally designed responsive templates, which will allow you to develop mobile compatible stores.

5. Supports Dropshipping

Most VARs prefer the dropshipping business model to minimize capital risk and lower operational costs. No handling inventory or shipment; just provide the order details to the distributor who will handle the entire order fulfillment process. Hence, make sure the platform you choose is suitable for a dropshipping business.

Your business will not handle shipping, yet ensure that the eCommerce solution you pick can provide shipment tracking details. This will allow your customers to view their order status in real-time.

6. Accept Payments Online

The eCommerce solution for VARs should have built-in payment processing systems, which will allow your consumers to easily make payments online. They can use their credit/debit card to transfer money electronically to the bank owner's account.

Shane is an American writer for various digital news publications. After being in the ecommerce industry for more than 15 years, Shane has a good understanding of what it takes to make an ecommerce business successful. His articles give insights on the latest trends in the B2C and B2B ecommerce industry. His ecommerce coverage is robust and provides everything from best ecommerce platform to improving your website site. He also likes to cover newsworthy events related to business management software, customer relationship management (CRM) and Quoting software.