Revealing 10 best e-commerce frameworks to watch in 2024

The E-commerce market is mushrooming with no signs of slowdown, and the market share is expected to reach over 8.1 trillion, with 24% of retail purchases are expected to take place digitally by 2026. And as we navigate to 2024, the global e-commerce dynamics are evolving rapidly with deeper penetration of next-gen technological innovations like Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI), Voice Commerce, Mobile Commerce, Predictive Analytics, Cross-border Commerce, and Augmented Reality. 

Here’s the proof

Gone are those days when shoppers would trek to traditional brick-and-mortar shopping outlets. Today, buyers are very engrossed in borderless online business engagement to get personalized experiences that are unique, consistent, and frictionless. To thrive, it is a pre-requisite to step up the digital commerce game with more personalized, always-on, and omnichannel experience.

In this journey of putting a digitally-driven commerce approach at the center of their retail operations, businesses have to gear up their e-commerce capabilities through a successful transition to digital e-commerce development at the intersection of the latest e-commerce frameworks, is a crucial step towards keeping pace with rapidly shifting customer behaviors, massive new technological advancements, and competitive pressures. 

Getting the technology stack right is not a choice but an imperative for businesses to emerge stronger. Let’s explore in the below section how embracing the right e-commerce framework within e-commerce development lifecycle elevates the user experience and makes it more immersive.

From code to cart: Navigating the role of effective e-commerce development for user-centric experiences

Over the past few years, e-commerce development has been at the forefront of a digital revolution, online payment encryption, and mobile disruption, with global retail e-commerce sales expected to exceed $7 trillion by 2025. When integrated with the right e-commerce framework, it plays a pivotal role in reshaping business operations in the new normal where there are approximately over 26 million e-commerce websites globally. With right framework, businesses are able to optimize the purchasing experience, make digital stores more accessible, and capitalize on a series of highly disruptive mobility paradigm shifts as well as mobile commerce trends faster.

Deeper integration of e-commerce framework capabilities and third-party apps with the entire e-commerce development lifecycle, helps businesses unlock many transformative changes like 

• E-commerce CRM for valuable customer insights:

The successful integration of E-commerce with Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a key to optimize customer journeys with immersive and personalized experiences in online stores. Compared to traditional physical stores, online e-commerce set-ups are much more data-driven and demand relevant customer insights to deliver more enhanced shopping experiences. Integrating the right e-commerce frameworks with CRM is crucial in connecting the dots based on customer segmentation.

With digitally-enabled online stores and changing customer trends, the strong e-commerce CRM capabilities enable businesses to gain a competitive advantage by gathering and analyzing critical customer data faster. Depending on the relevant customer segments, these companies use CRM capabilities to monitor different touchpoints including website interactions, customer behavior, preferences, recent purchase history, order status, preferred contact channels, and customer service interactions.

Also, this unified customer data comes in very handy to trigger specific actions like creating personalized recommendations and delivering targeted customer engagements while navigating complexities like over-selling and poor customer experience. Quick decision-making, elimination of supply chain bottlenecks, well-managed customer experience, and improved just-in-time inventory management are key benefits of e-commerce CRM capabilities.

• Analytics for data-driven decision-making:

The future of e-commerce belongs to real-time analytics and digital retail businesses relying on e-commerce analytics are differentiating with business agility, improved decision-making, and a fast time-to-market. Digital analytics in e-commerce retail is the stepping stone to deliver memorable customer experiences. Companies leverage e-commerce analytics to identify  patterns from digital sessions, and perform deep analysis on in-depth insights collected through website traffic, user behavior, store’s checkout experience, key performance indicators (KPIs), and Point-of-sale (POS) data.

Integration of analytics tools in e-commerce frameworks guided by a single data repository enables businesses to make data-driven decisions, facilitate the tracking of marketing ROI, and optimize marketing strategies. Also, this help companies to enhance the overall user experience by discovering what customers want. 

What's more? Analytical tools help digital retail businesses identify areas for improvement in the sales funnel and optimize their website layout, product pages, and checkout process to increase conversion rates. 

• AI chatbots in e-commerce foster personalized interactions:

Generative AI bots in e-commerce development landscape, have emerged as the game-changers in fostering seamless collaboration between the company and its customers. 

When AI capabilities are integrated into e-commerce platforms, companies are able to deliver  highly personalized, more human-like interaction and frictionless assistance to their end-users. 

Infusing conversation AI capabilities in e-commerce optimizes the level of personalization by analyzing user behavior, browsing history, and individual preferences in real-time. As a result of AI-driven customer support, buyers get a smoother and more convenient experience via 24/7 availability to common queries. Interestingly, the use of technologies like chatbots and AI assistants, also transform the e-commerce experience by guiding customers through the purchasing process without downtime in different time zones, and solving shopping cart abandonment problems caused by unanswered questions.

Exploring the most trending e-commerce development types - A deep dive

In today’s age when buyers are so well-informed about their needs and demanding personalized experiences throughout their shopping journey, a robust e-commerce website offers instant engagement touchpoints and makes their purchasing journeys more seamless. With the help of right e-commerce development approach, which is driven by various factors, plays a crucial role in providing relevant content and creating a personalized consumer journey.

There are many e-commerce development types that businesses leverage to transform their e-commerce operations based on their specific needs and consumer preferences). Here is the list of the most trending e-commerce development types that drive many transformative benefits when embraced by online retail companies into the heart of e-commerce operations. Let’s explore:

• Headless Commerce: Headless commerce decouples the front-end and back-end of an e-commerce platform, providing greater flexibility and speed. With this, businesses can deliver relevant content and frictionless shopping experiences across various devices and platforms in accordance to the changing consumer behaviors and advanced technologies evolution with minimal disruptions. It helps to scale your business dynamically with the latest integrations without impacting the core system.
• Omnichannel E-commerce: As the name suggests, omnichannel e-commerce is a next-gen e-commerce development approach focused on providing a seamless shopping experience across various channels, including online stores, mobile apps, physical retail locations, social media, and more. Omnichannel-driven online stores allow customers to shop, interact, and transact through their preferred touchpoints. What’s more? Omnichannel keeps potential buyers within the business boundaries and creates a connected experience without compromising customer retention and loyalty.
• Social commerce:  The amalgamation of e-commerce operations with social media platforms, is referred to social commerce development approach. In social commerce, platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, get integrated into the legacy e-commerce ecosystem, enabling buyers to leverage features like in-app transactions, shoppable posts, and user reviews. Also, social commerce-driven portals bring to the table the convenience of discovering, browsing, and purchasing products without leaving the social network.
• AI in commerce: Shopping portals powered by AI (Artificial Intelligence) capabilities are intelligent enough to provide personalized outputs by quickly analyzing customer data, behavior, and preferences. AI in commerce acts as a linchpin to enhanced engagement and frictionless interaction across digital touchpoints, which results in a streamlined buying experience, improved decision-making, personalized customer experiences, and greater scalability.
• Open-source e-commerce: This is the most common e-commerce development framework type used by businesses who want full access to the source code. With open-source frameworks, the user has the flexibility to modify and customize the changes in the e-commerce platform to meet specific requirements. Nowadays, we have multiple open-source frameworks available to be selected as needed. Also, it allows you to customize the system as per your needs, which gives you independence. It opened the e-commerce platform for uncommon businesses wanting to go online.
• SaaS e-commerce development: Software as a Service (SaaS) e-commerce development is a popular approach used in the e-commerce landscape. In this model, e-commerce software hosted and maintained by a third-party provider, making it easier for businesses to create and run their online stores without the complexities of managing infrastructure, servers, or software updates.
• Hybrid e-commerce development: Hybrid e-commerce can be explained as the fusion of e-commerce and retail set-ups wherein customers have the convenience to ‘buy online, pickup in-store’ (BOPIS), or ‘Click & Collect’ seamlessly. This is indeed a more tech-oriented approach to a typical brick-and-mortar retail setting, which demands precise coordination of both inventory and shipping. Hybrid is ideal for B2B & B2C set-ups, enabling businesses to use a single dashboard to manage the entire digital infrastructure with shared data, product information, content, and design layout. Cross-platform compatibility, native container, advanced web technologies, a single codebase for multiple platforms, faster development time, and consistent user experiences.

At present, the e-commerce domain is at its boom and witnessing dramatic shifts marked by new e-commerce frameworks, best practices, and e-commerce development trends - further shaped by tech progress, shifting consumer habits, and a quest for frictionless user experiences. Businesses face the imperative of rapidly embracing the latest e-commerce development frameworks to outpace the competition. In this blog, we'll delve into the top 10 frameworks, unraveling their crucial roles in optimizing the entire e-commerce development journey.

10 best e-commerce frameworks dominating e-commerce development landscape 

1. WooCommerce: WooCommerce emerges as one of the most powerful open-source e-commerce frameworks ideal for creating beautiful, enticing and dynamic WordPress-driven storefronts. The highest level of simplicity to install and flexibility to no-code customization makes Woocommerce an ideal choice. Storefronts designed using WooCommerce deliver an optimized shopping cart experience and integrate seamlessly into existing Wordpress sites, turning them into fully functional e-commerce setups. 
   
   This Wordpress-based e-commerce framework comes with many significant benefits like modular product blocks, WordPress’ SEO advantage, custom configurations, instant downloads, 100+ payment gateways, a user-friendly interface and setup Wizard. It is an all-in-one eCommerce builder that offers a rich plugin ecosystem for additional features, wide community support, advanced analytics, enhanced security through SSL certificates, and scalability.
2. Shopify: Shopify is one of the best e-commerce frameworks with many in-built features like multi-channel integration, multiple payment gateway support,  simplified inventory management, seamless payment processing, and a highly secured, user-friendly shopping cart system. 
   
   Shopify enables businesses to power their online storefronts with the awesomeness of different in-built features, apps, and tools. By leveraging its easy-to-use website builder, which is powered by a drag-and-drop interface, businesses can create powerful and interactive online stores faster as per their requirements with no coding knowledge. 
   
   Benefits like mobile responsiveness, quick and easy setup, 24/7 support, scalability, ease of extensive customization, and built-in tools for basic SEO optimization make Shopify an all-in-one e-commerce development framework.
3. BigCommerce: One of the best e-commerce frameworks dominating the e-commerce development landscape is Bigcommerce. It is a Software as a Service (SaaS) platform that comes with a comprehensive set of tools to help businesses build, manage, and scale their online stores faster and seamlessly. 
   
   For setting up an e-commerce store using Bigcommerce's user-friendly interface, there is no need for extensive technical expertise. Multi-channel selling, ease of use, security and compliance, payment and shipping integration, marketing features, analytics and reporting, built-in mobile-responsive functionality, and app marketplace are potential benefits of using Bigcommerce when embraced for setting up digital commerce.
4. Adobe Commerce: Adobe Commerce is the ‘digital commerce platform of choice’ enabling companies worldwide to create uniquely personalized B2B and B2C experiences faster.  What sets this e-commerce framework apart from its competitors - world-class scalability, AI-merchandising tools, its compatibility to serverless PCI-compliant environment, omnichannel personalization through commerce data, and cloud-based headless architecture.  
   
   Adoption of Adobe Commerce for building interactive storefronts gives instant access to the most powerful tools, such as Native AI and an ever-expanding ecosystem of apps and extensions. Commerce teams can strategically use all these resources to build on their business capabilities to deliver relevant content and promotions in real-time and expand into new markets. If you are seeking to build your commerce business on a modern and secure platform equipped with robust AI capabilities, Adobe Commerce can be considered. 
5. Squarespace: It’s easy to set up an online shop or website on Squarespace. It offers tons of industry-leading templates that can be easily customized per a commerce team's requirements. You might need third-party support to set up your store using this framework; however, your team will be required to thoroughly understand this platform's core offerings and limitations before it decides to use Squarespace. 
6. Kellton4Commerce: Kellton4Commerce draws its strength from a collective force of technologies including AI, RPA, and advanced analytics. As a collective force, these new-age technologies enable our customers to accelerate their GTM strategies and gain a competitive edge. As a one-of-a-kind platform engineered to drive greater efficiencies, it helps companies create hyper-relevant customer experiences with significant ease and extensibility. Get more insights on our proprietary platform here. 
7. Drupal Commerce: Drupal Commerce is tied to the Drupal content management system as an open-source e-commerce solution. The real deal about Drupal e-commerce framework is its extensive customization capabilities. The platform lets you configure and add custom code on the go - a factor that maximizes growth 2X. 
   
   What’s more? Drupal Commerce is backed by robust product management and SEO capabilities that turn e-commerce into a potent revenue generator for businesses. Integration with Drupal's content management features, multilingual and multicurrency support, active developer community, dynamic product displays, order management, and payment method API are some prominent benefits of Drupal Commerce.
8. PrestaShop: PrestaShop belongs to the category of best open-source e-commerce frameworks powered by PHP programming language. It has an easy-to-use interface, a lot of customizable templates, and in-built SEO features. If yours is a small business, Prestashop can be a useful tool to create storefronts that are robust and high-performing. It will continue to shine as an exemplar of innovation because of features like lightweight and fast user interface, multilingual and multicurrency support, wide range of free and paid modules, online payment accounting, active user community and order management.
9. OpenCart: OpenCart is a popular choice to create and manage own e-commerce websites because it has an intuitive and user-friendly administrative interface, enabling developers to make extensive customizations with varying levels of technical expertise. This powerful PHP-based online shopping cart system allows the management of multiple stores from a single admin interface, ensuring multiple online stores are optimized for various devices.  The reason for its popularity - lightweight and fast-loading, multiple languages and currencies, responsive designs, easy to set up and maintain, affordable solution for small businesses, built-in SEO features and active user community.
10. osCommerce: Known for its extensibility, speed, security, and scalability, osCommerce is one of the oldest ERP-level e-commerce frameworks. This platform is widely trusted in the e-commerce landscape to create new-age storefronts faster regardless of whether they exist on any web server with PHP and MySQL installed. 
    
    Many global multi-million and multi-billion businesses trust enterprise osCommerce because of its comprehensive functionality - GDPR compliance, product display, billing, search options, multiple currencies, multi-language, API and powerful import/export facility, and support for pre-integrates, customizable templates, product management, and a wide range of add-ons.

Conclusion

Selecting the right e-commerce development framework in the digital realm, is a make-or-break decision for a formidable online presence. A strong and responsive e-commerce storefront is the way forward to a captivating and seamless digital experience. No matter whether your focus is on scalability, user-friendliness, hyper-personalized user experience, or bespoke customization, the above-mentioned top 10 e-commerce development frameworks will make your businesses stand as the ultimate arsenal, providing the indispensable tools and features to sculpt dynamic and triumphant online stores.