What is the difference between eCommerce-as-a-service and SaaS

According to Statista, the global revenue in the eCommerce market is expected to reach $3,567.00 bn in 2024. With an expected annual growth rate of almost 9%, this value will reach a staggering $5,026.00 bn in 2028 year. These numbers showcase an obvious trend - the eCommerce industry is growing rapidly. 

Everyone can see that eCommerce has been growing even faster since COVID-19, but if we have to be objective, the current growth episode began a long time before that. If you have previously kept a close eye on the online sales sector, this shouldn't be a surprise, and you should know that such growth phases are a common occurrence in the eCommerce universe. 

A more curious fact is that if such growth episodes last long enough, they often morph into a full-fledged eCommerce revolution. We believe that online commerce at the moment has already entered such a phase.

While on the topic, we can say that the old ways of selling online are slowly dying and are being swiftly replaced by new and more competitive strategies. For many years it was enough to just quickly build a simple online store, throw in your fancy products, and call it a day. Now the industry is becoming more saturated and complicated, requiring innovation and problem-solving.

In this article, we will highlight how we adopted a completely new way of conducting our business - the eCommerce-as-a-service approach. We will go in-depth in explaining our dedication to this strategy, but first, let’s answer the question - why do we even bother doing eCommerce differently? 

Most of the eCommerce industry SaaS solutions are providing just the online store creation platform and they seem to be doing fine. That is true, but for us, it is not enough. We’ve created an improved way for our merchants to grow, so we can reach new heights together.

The main challenge is that this surge in eCommerce growth has prompted increased investment in the e-commerce industry, with retailers investing billions in e-commerce initiatives, acquisitions, and partnerships. In addition, many new players are joining the scene. However, most of the brands are facing challenges when transitioning to or expanding their online presence due to the expensive and complex technology and infrastructure required. 

On top of that, while those companies are fighting to establish their online presence and sales channels they have to diverge some of their resources and find ways to craft a working eCommerce strategy and the working force to execute it. This multi-faceted battle requires a careful management of the resources available to the brand. 

While the above might sound a bit pessimistic, there is a solution emerging. This is where the "e-commerce-as-a-service"  approach comes into play—a term used to describe companies that provide both the software and services necessary to assist brands in operating and expanding their online presence.

Why eCommerce-as-a-service is the answer?

Understanding that e-commerce businesses have to wear multiple hats is crucial to understanding the idea and the rationale for companies opting for this approach. 

Some of the essential fields for every eCommerce store include customer support, marketing, payments, sales enablement, and delivery. Although multiple software systems, like Shopify and WooCommerce, might provide assistance in these domains, they frequently incorporate components developed by different organizations, posing integration issues, particularly when dealing with large volumes of data. 

In these situations, e-commerce enterprises might have to hire outside businesses to provide them with the required services which quickly can become a challenge limiting the growth of the company. 

We aim to eliminate the headache of finding—and generally looking for—the right professionals who will support the growth of the online store of our merchants.

That inspired us to make the step and adopt the eCommerce-as-a-service approach as our vision for the future of CloudCart.

Since we have extensive experience within the eCommerce industry, we know that globally nearly 90% of newly established e-commerce firms fail within 120 days, a grim statistic backed up by multiple surveys, showcasing how hard is to have success in this field. Failures can be attributed to inadequate customer service, inadequate online marketing, and bad online search engine ranking, but not only. 

Since our goal is to support our customers in every way possible, and of course save them from joining the statistics telling the story of yet another failure, we decided to develop and offer some of the crucial for the merchant’s success services internally. But we didn’t stop there, because we wanted our merchants to have everything required, so their businesses could blossom. That led us to build an entire Growth Ecosystem. 

In this services marketplace, our merchants can benefit from the help of carefully vetted service providers that will solve every need an online store can have. 

The best part? All of the services are also localized for our target markets.

Fundamentally, now CloudCart provides a comprehensive end-to-end service that unifies all e-commerce operations under one roof, simplifying and lowering the cost of brand launch or expansion while reducing the possibility of subpar performance or neglect of certain fields important for the growth of the online store.

eCommerce-as-a-service - the CloudCart Way

Generally, eCommerce-as-a-service is a type of SaaS, particularly designed to meet the needs of online merchants and enhanced with additional features, such as in-house services or even a services marketplace, as in our case. This approach offers a full range of solutions and the tools required to launch and manage an online business. Within its scope are included services or functionalities like payment processing, shopping cart management, and product catalog management. Of course, a well-developed eCommerce-as-a-service incorporates other services like inventory control and order fulfillment.

What makes our eCommerce-as-a-service approach unique and tailored to our markets is our team’s extensive experience. 

Our founders are serial entrepreneurs with almost 2 decades of experience, including multiple online stores and service-based initiatives. 

Thanks to their and our whole team's deep understanding of the industry, we were able to develop a holistic strategy that encompasses all of the important growth requirements for an eCommerce business. 

On top of that, to make sure that our merchants have the best chances for success, we have developed cutting-edge essential technologies powering our online stores and we’ve overlaid them with a tier of technological innovations such as leveraging AI. 

All of that, as mentioned already, is precisely localized for each of our target markets.

Way beyond a software solution

We provide the roadmap leading to a successful eCommerce business, focusing not only on developing technological solutions but also on the entire process, including data gathering and management, marketing, sales, finance, automation, logistics, merchandising, and many other process optimizations. 

This is our version of the eCommerce-as-a-service, now let’s identify some of the key areas that we have emphasized.

Comprehensive Marketing and Analytical solutions

Within our model is embedded the idea that you should be empowered by the right data, aggregated and showcasing crucial aspects of your business, helping you make data-informed decisions and overcome challenges and limitations. To masterfully manage your data, at your disposal, you have the Marketing Suite and CloudCart Analytics.

Curated Growth Ecosystem that will unlock new opportunities

We've built an ecosystem that gives you access to the best agencies and freelancers in digital marketing, SEO, and online store management. All of the experts are ready to collaborate with our clients and assist them in selling more.

A new meaning of “Time To Market”

The time-to-market for our merchants is shortened significantly, thanks to the services we offer - if you choose, our team can be the one that handles the design, settings, custom development, and everything else required to launch a fully functional online store. You won’t need any additional programmers, design studios, or expensive marketing specialists.

Security and Speed Optimization

CloudCart provides a reliable Google Cloud hosting infrastructure with SSL certificates for data security, high loading speed, and continuous online presence. In addition to speed, for us, your data and store security are a top priority, so we do everything required to counteract the increasing threat of cyber attacks.

Localization of everything we offer, for each market

Localization is unparalleled with us because we cover all of the essential applications, integrations, language versions, documentation, administrative issue solutions, GDPR compliance, and more. Our platform supports localized currencies for every market, giving CloudCart a significant advantage over major international platforms.

Checkout process - crafted for more sales

Our checkout process, tailored for the specific markets in which we operate, enhances turnover by working seamlessly with local integrations, including couriers and payment methods. With our simplified and optimized checkout process, the users can complete their orders with less friction and more conviction in their purchases. That’s part of our recipe for success and increased CRO and AOV.

Merchandising, Product, and Processes Management - now are made easy

We simplify merchandising and product management by offering know-how and integrations with the right ERPs, couriers, logistics, and fulfillment centers. Our merchants save a ton of time, thanks to our automated customer and order management processes, including order acceptance, processing, returns, invoicing, and shipping, save time and money for our clients. 

Thanks to numerous apps and integrations, every important process in your store can be optimized or completely automated, so your company’s precious time can be spent thinking about improving your store and its marketing strategy.

Innovative state-of-the-art Artificial Intelligence

Our CloudIO - the Artificial Intelligence (AI) assistant built into your stores, aids merchants in various tasks, for example writing product descriptions, translations, SEO, and more. With its capabilities, the growth of our clients is significantly sped up and easier. 

We were one of the first platforms that adopted the idea of integrating AI into our product, so we are already starting to reap the benefits of doing so. Of course, the real winners in this case are our merchants, who have their growth catalyzed by the enormous amount of possibilities that AI has to offer.

Our eCommerce-as-a-service is constantly improving

With our product-focused approach, we are the proactive party that is responsible for our platform development, seeking daily improvements and innovations to provide our clients with a marketing-ready solution. 

As mentioned. unlike other platforms, CloudCart offers powerful marketing tools integrated into the stores, along with the infrastructure that allows precise segmentation and targeting for better marketing and sales effectiveness. 

To maintain such a high level of complexity, we keep our structure as agile as possible without compromising on the powerful tech advancements, this allows us and our merchants's stores to be scaled as needed and to reach new levels of progress. To be fair, despite all of the mentioned features and technological breakthroughs, the real driving force behind our success is our constant hunger for improvement.

Let’s conclude, with us, clients have limitless growth potential without the constraints imposed by the “regular” SaaS platforms. We offer the necessary technological infrastructure, strategy, services, and know-how, complemented by an ecosystem of experts. All of this accounts for our unobstructed scalability and the results of our merchants. 

Finally, to make sure we create a synergistic environment for everyone who interacts with CloudCart-our pricing model is directly tied to our customer's success, and this is a major factor that aligns our interests and encourages collaboration. This is one of the main reasons we replaced building an online store with an eCommerce-as-a-service approach.

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