The social ecommerce is trending these days as users are actively buying things and connecting with their friends online. There are a lot of platforms which currently offer ecommerce and social networking as separate platforms. Both platforms are effective ways to keep your users engaged on the website. Some of the popular ecommerce platforms are Magento, WooCommerce, Opencart etc. On the other hand we have some hugely successful social networking platforms such as Socialengine, Phpfox, Oxwall etc.
Presently, there is no single platform for the social ecommerce. Developing both a social network and an ecommerce site is very costly and time consuming. It usually takes two developers and one tester for around 2.5-3 months. Once you opt to work on any of these platforms and lately feel the need of adding the other platform to existing infrastructure, you usually end-up spending a fortune. The cost would be double of what it could have been if a conscious decision of bringing them together into a joint platform was taken at the start. The budget will be around $30k-$45k for a joint platform.
The best solution for the development of the social ecommerce is to use a plugin which can integrate the two platforms at a considerably low cost. Both platforms are trending and evolving. Moreover, there are always some new features and updates coming in. The integration through plugins is cost-effective and you could enjoy the benefits of both the platforms at one place.
Key benefits of using social ecommerce:
- Reduced development cost by 35-45%.
- Benefits of regular updates from both platforms.
- Third party plugins support from both platforms.
- New features in the existing platform.
- Automatic user migration on new platform.
We have been a development firm for a considerably long time and our area of specialization is social ecommerce. We would definitely love to share our experience with people exploring these platforms. We have found SocialEngine is the best for social networking and has a lot of third party plugins which offer many social networking features. For eCommerce, wooCommerce (wordpress eCommerce plugin) is what most developers use and the same is what we recommend. Recently, we launched SocialPress. This is a plugin which helps to integrate the two best independent platforms (Socialengine & wooCommerce) as a single platform.
We are happy to help eCommerce website owners and provide them with the Social networking features. Feel free to contact us,if you are looking for similar solutions.
