Our guide: Best online store solution for your company

Andrea V • 23 Nov, 2022 • 7 Min. read

Selecting a platform is one of the most important decisions you make as a business owner. The best platform for you depends on your business model and the market. At Journey Agency, we strongly encourage you to take an active part in this decision-making process. Make every effort to ensure that the decision you ultimately make is well-considered.

Popular solution vs. best solution

There are many solutions out there, and you can learn more about the features a decent online store solution should include in this article. In this guide, we look at the most popular e-commerce platforms available right now.

Lets begin with a well-known player who has earned a lot of recognition over the past decade.

1. Shopify

How it’s used: Shopify is an online store solution for businesses that want to get started quickly. The platform offers continuous upgrades, which enable you to expand the store at the same pace as the company grows.

This is Shopify

Shopify is one of the world’s most popular e-commerce platforms, and in recent years it has invested heavily in establishing itself in the Nordics. Their current platform is suited for both beginners and experts, and are well adapted to the Norwegian market. Shopify generally requires little maintenance, which cuts the costs that would normally be spent on this. For example, Shopify is a good choice for start-up companies looking for a platform with predictable expenses.

The platform is easy to use and offers superb solutions for upscaling. Scalability is an important factor in your e-commerce solution, as one of the biggest mistakes you can make is spending money on a solution that doesn’t give you the freedom to grow. Shopify is also a suitable platform for business owners that want to run the online store themselves after development and launch. Read more about why Journey often prefers Shopify’s e-commerce solution.

2. WooCommerce

How it’s used: WooCommerce allows you to turn a WordPress website into an online store. WooCommerce is fully compatible with the features of your WordPress site, which means you can have a WordPress eCommerce site with products, a shopping cart, and payment options.

This is WooCommerce

In the vast landscape of WordPress plugins, it’s the WooCommerce solution that stands out the most. This is the world’s most popular open-source e-commerce solution. It’s also the most popular online store solution in WordPress, with many options for extensions and integration with third-party providers. They offer a large collections of templates to be able to tailor the websites to meet almost any need.

The key functions of WooCommerce include the integration of both Norwegian and international payment solutions, reporting functions, shipping options, a discount system, and own inventory management.

Many WordPress developers use the design template that is specially developed for integration with WooCommerce as an argument to choose their template. A potential negative aspect with the otherwise brilliant platform is the amount of maintenance that goes into WooCommerce. In addition to updates in WooCommerce itself, there’s ongoing updates both on the WordPress website and its integrations.

3. Magento

How it’s used: Magento, now Adobe Commerce, is a customizable e-commerce platform and content management system designed for online stores. This solution is owned by Adobe Inc. and offers a complex set of ready-made functions for e-commerce solutions for businesses.

This is Magento

Magento is a completely independent online store solution, independent of WordPress. Magento provides a flexible solution, often a crucial factor in order to run a global online store.

Magento lets you manage multiple shops from one location and provides features like product comparisons, discount codes, sophisticated filters, and more. If you’re looking for a solution to manage and implement yourself and invest time in, Magento might be the right choice for you. Bigger online stores are better suitable for Magento’s solution. Although Magento is regarded as a decent option for an online store, its setup and management are known to be complex.

4. BigCommerce

How it’s used: BigCommerce is one of the more popular platformss, offering a scalable solution for online stores. More than 95,000 websites are powered by BigCommerce.

This is BigCommerce

BigCommerce is a platform for BIG business. As a well-known premium e-commerce solution, it offers great flexibility and a variety of built-in tools that can deliver great results. BigCommerce allows you to set up an online store, customize it, and then sell an unlimited number of digital, physical, or even service-based products.

BigCommerce has made some updates to make the platform even more user-friendly for beginners. Still, BigCommerce is not a platform that beginners will master in a matter of minutes.

The platform offers a lot of functionality and includes all the key ingredients you need to run a successful online store, but it’s worth noting that BigCommerce is a platform suitable for larger businesses.

5. 24Nettbutikk/24OnlineStore

How it is used: 24Nettbutikk/24OnlineStore is integrated with 24SevenOffice, giving you the oppurtunity to automatically transfer online orders as sales orders to 24SevenOffice, ready for book-keeping in the accounting program.

This is 24Nettbutikk/24OnlineStore

24Nettbutikk is a Norwegian e-commerce platform that supplies ready-made shop solutions with most of the modules you need to sell products. This is a platform designed for smaller online stores, and the company behind it continues to adapt and facilitate this segment.

This online store solution took shape because the creators behind it wanted to offer good solutions to help Norwegian online stores get started. Today, they have specialist expertise in Norwegian entrepreneurial ventures. They also have a toolbox that allows you to use market-leading suppliers in payment, logistics, and marketing channels.

The many difficulties associated with switching to another platform can slow down 24Nettbutikk. Other platforms allow you to use third-party plugins and applications, which is not possible with 24Nettbutikk’s solution.

6. Mystore

How it is used: Mystore is Norway’s largest platform provider in the e-commerce industry. They offer a complete store system with everything you need to run an online and a physical store, with access to the necessary functions and integrations..

This is Mystore

Mystore delivers modern, user-friendly online stores with important functions. This is a solution that can build most of your needs – unique appearance, special functions, integrations, or anything else that is essential for the user experience of your customers.

More and more people use mobile phones and tablets to complete purchases and to look up information about products before making a purchase. Mystore’s solutions are responsive and suitable for use on all devices.

Mystore works with Klarna Checkout, which is a stable and intuitive payment solution for invoices, partial payments, and credit cards. This solution creates no additional costs or establishment fees for those who use this online store platform.

Like 24Nettbutikk, Mystore may lead to difficulties if you want to migrate to another platform.

Build a new online store with Journey Agency

Let us assist you with your online store. We offer everything from guidance to developing an online store from scratch, tailored to meet the needs of your company.