No one wants to spend hours in traffic or take the wrong turn and drive to a dead end. Likewise, you’d like to avoid your automotive business getting stuck on its way to growth and profitability. But what if the capabilities of your existing Shopify online store are not enough to let you expand your product line or add new functionality to take your business to the next level? 

For online businesses grappling with these challenges, there are two paths: continue adjusting their eCommerce platform despite the escalating costs or search for a Shopify alternative that promises greater flexibility with reduced time, effort, and maintenance expenses.  

In this article, we’ll explore the most common challenges auto parts retailers may encounter when using Shopify so you can determine red flags for improving or even changing your solution.

We’ll also compare the advanced features and capabilities of the five most popular eCommerce platforms for automotive business owners to help you weigh the pros and cons and make an informed decision.

Shopify for Auto Parts eCommerce Store: Strengths and Weak Points

First and foremost, why do auto parts retailers choose Shopify when launching their online eCommerce businesses? One primary reason is this platform’s recognizable brand name, which has almost become synonymous with eCommerce and usually comes first in Google searches. 

Shopify undoubtedly has several advantages for online sales and can be a good choice for start-ups and small businesses.

Fast website launch

Shopify is a fully hosted solution. Its SaaS-based architecture, low learning curve, and all the necessary eCommerce features are available out of the box, which allows it to offer faster time to market compared to API-driven software.

Automotive website design

With a wide range of free themes and paid design skins that can be adjusted to the specific brand’s requirements via no-code, drag-and-drop functionality, you can change the look and feel of your website when and how you see fit. No coding knowledge is required.

Quite a number of third-party add-ons

Shopify offers various third-party add-ons to expand your eCommerce website’s functionality and connect to crucial partners and service providers.

Automotive-focused apps commonly used with Shopify

Shopify can be the right eCommerce platform for online auto parts stores when connected to multiple third-party automotive integrations. Initially built to accommodate various business types and niches, it doesn’t offer automotive-specific tools and advanced features as part of the platform’s core functionality.      

Instead, it offers third-party add-ons to connect your website to catalog data providers, integrate with auto parts warehouse distributors, or add fitment search tools to your online store, such as Year, Make, Model search, or VIN lookup.  

Some Shopify partners, such as Spark Shipping, provide connections to auto parts suppliers and let you route your orders to the supplier’s warehouse of your choice. Others offer packages with integrations that can include catalog data providers, fitment search tools, multi-channel selling, advanced marketing tools, and warehouse distributors, such as Data Here To There (DH2T), SureDone, and Channel Spyder. 

The hitch, however, is that, in most cases, having your automotive tools and features developed by different software providers causes some annoying issues.

Potential issues auto parts sellers can run into with Shopify

1. Tedious maintenance

While there’s nothing wrong with connecting your online store to add-ons built by different developer agencies, too many third-party apps integrated into your website open up such issues as time-consuming maintenance every time your eCommerce platform needs an update.

2. Lack of built-in automation tools

Shopify provides tools such as bulk product uploads and doesn’t limit the number of SKUs in your automotive catalog. However, performance, management efficiency, and overall cost may vary based on your Shopify plan and choice of third-party integrations. 

In the automotive aftermarket sector, specific requirements for fitment data management pose additional challenges with catalog structuring and keeping your inventory and pricing up to date.  

For example, one of the challenges is aligning the category structure between your online store’s and the provider’s catalogs. Shopify’s default setup lacks a direct subcategory feature and instead uses collections as categories, which do not support a hierarchical structure.

An automotive catalog has a multi-level data structure, so you’ll need advanced eCommerce features and tools to carefully map the categories in your catalog with your auto parts data provider to ensure smooth data import and make your product information understandable and easy for your customers to search for.

FS Parts Optimizes Product Catalog Management with X-Cart

Efficient product data management compliant with the ACES and PIES standards is vital for the automotive aftermarket retail sector. Accurate and regularly updated fitment data reduces returns, enhances brand reputation, and fosters customer trust.

For successful auto parts sales, FS Parts needed well-structured catalog categories that could be updated in bulk, convenient website navigation, and easily accessible and accurate product fitment data to ensure consumers would find the exact fit for their vehicles quickly and hassle-free. Read how the company resolved its main eCommerce store challenges associated with digital catalog management with X-Cart in its corner.

3. Online store slowdown

Another potential problem with third-party add-ons is slow-moving plugins and overall website slowdown. A smoothly running eCommerce store is crucial for customer experience, especially regarding auto parts search and navigation.

For example, it can be disappointing to integrate the Year, Make, Model add-on to find out it is slow to respond, hard to configure or incompatible with your design template.

4. High total cost of ownership

In addition to Shopify’s transaction fees, you have to consider additional expenses associated with third-party integrations. Moreover, implementing advanced functionality on your auto parts website may require technical expertise in Liquid, Shopify’s proprietary language. Engaging a developer to integrate the necessary tool seamlessly with the Shopify-based online store can be difficult and expensive.

5. Inconsistent customer service

As previously stated, Shopify provides integrations to a wide range of tools and apps built outside of your online store, so there is no single point of contact for customer support. If you have any issues with your third-party integrations, you will have to contact multiple companies for assistance. This may prolong the customer service response time and, consequently, the time required to fix the problem, putting your online store’s operation at risk.

Automotive-Focused Shopify Alternatives to Consider

We’ve analyzed the tools and features of the four eCommerce platforms—X-Cart, BigCommerce, WebShop Manager, and Adobe Commerce—and compared them with Shopify’s capabilities to help you make an informed decision.

Features Overview

X-Cart eCommerce Platform

X-Cart Automotive is a turnkey eCommerce solution developed explicitly for online auto parts businesses. We’ve been continually improving our tools and features to meet the ever-evolving needs of automotive eCommerce and resolve its main challenges.

X-Cart provides automated massive data and inventory updates, adjustable customization options, and 24/7 top-notch customer support. These features and services are something that distinguish X-Cart from general-purpose eCommerce platforms, as Brandon Checketts mentioned in his interview with Website Planet.

X-Cart offers a number of features specifically designed to support high-volume e-commerce operations. These features provide scalability, reliability, and efficiency, which is critical for managing large transaction volumes and extensive product catalogs.

Automotive product data management

X-Cart’s user-friendly interface makes it easy for online business owners to add new products and categories, manage and update catalog data. You can connect your online store to the most trusted auto parts data suppliers to select and automatically import the preferred brands.

• direct API integrations with SEMA Data, ASAP Network, and AutoSync;   
• scheduled data imports; 
• smart category mapping;
• native fitment search tools, such as YMM search and VIN lookup; 
• ease of navigation in the ever changing complex ACES/PIES data standards;

With the smart import settings, you may schedule data imports and select the time for regular catalog updates. And the category mapping feature will ease your headaches while structuring your complex data.

Order management and fulfillment

With X-Cart, you can become an auto parts dealer or a drop shipper with Turn 14 Distribution, Keystone Automotive Operations, American Tire Distributors, and more coming soon. You can sync your inventory across the warehouses to manage it from your X-Cart admin panel. You can also set up hourly stock and daily price updates for the integrations with the warehouse distributors mentioned above.

Automotive website design and navigation

With smart, intuitive website navigation and product search filtering, you can minimize inaccurate orders and increase customers’ trust. The prebuilt Year Make Model and VIN lookup fitment search tools easily integrate into the X-Cart automotive design skins, ensuring your customers will quickly and easily find the part they were looking for. The ‘My Garage’ feature will also enable customers to save their vehicle’s filters for future parts searches.

Assisted onboarding and proactive customer support 

Each X-Cart Automotive seller gets four one-hour onboarding calls with a dedicated manager and technical support engineer to help launch and manage their online store hassle-free. We also offer SEO audits of their existing websites and SEO assistance during data transfer as part of their website migration to X-Cart to prevent wasting their previous SEO efforts.  

BigCommerce

This shopping cart solution offers the essential eCommerce functionality out of the box and has pricing plans for businesses of all sizes. Although it was not initially built as automotive eCommerce software, it provides a range of third-party plugins for automotive retailers, such as the Year, Make, Model search tool and integrations with SEMA Data and Torqued distribution, to name a few. 

BigCommerce also allows business owners to control and track their inventory from one central location, synchronizing it across the sales channels.

This platform also claims to be flexible enough to customize your website to your needs and preferences. Although it doesn’t have an in-house development team, it offers several partnerships with developer agencies.  Outsourcing customizations to third-party agencies, however, has a drawback. You risk complicating your website’s maintenance, as you’ll have to shift to different teams for support if any issue arises. This may be why this platform recently got more negative feedback on customer support services on review websites.

Read more: X-Cart vs. Shopify vs. BigCommerce for Automotive Aftermarket eCommerce Businesses

Adobe Commerce

Adobe Commerce (ex Magento) is an eCommerce application that supports massive product catalogs and can be extended with customizations. 

This eCommerce solution also allows for creating configurable, bundled, and grouped products, letting customers select from different variations or kits. This feature offers greater control over the product offerings and enhances the personalized shopping experience for car parts buyers. 

It is worth mentioning that car parts fitment is not a native concept in Adobe Commerce. To get this feature, you will need to build a custom solution with a Magento-certified developer or agency to integrate your eCommerce store with ACES (Aftermarket Catalog Exchange Standard) fitment data or other data sources and power a Year Make Model lookup.

Although Adobe Commerce was not designed as a solution specifically built for auto parts eCommerce, it offers several third-party integrations. You can leverage Adobe Commerce’s extension marketplace or third-party apps to get the required automotive tools and features, such as shop-by-vehicle functionality.

WebShop Manager

WebShop Manager (WSM) is a SaaS eCommerce solution developed to help sellers in the automotive aftermarket sector. It offers essential functionality for online auto-parts merchants, including extensive eCommerce catalogs, the PartsLogic search tool, native Year Make Model filtering and product data management tools. 

It also features several integrations with automotive databases, such as SEMA Data and ASAP Network. The only downside is that WebShop Manager has only a few ready-made integrations. As we mentioned above, the SaaS type of eCommerce platform keeps the users within the bounds of prebuilt tools, which means custom features or integrations can be rather complicated and expensive. 

It is worth mentioning, however, that WSM has its own web development team to handle its customers’ custom integration needs. Still, it seems less versatile than API-driven eCommerce solutions.

It’s Up to You

When choosing your first website builder for your online auto parts start-up, you mostly rely on word of mouth and a well-known brand name. Over time, you will have a more detailed picture of the necessary tools and features to make your life easier and your business more profitable.   

This is when you may understand that platforms developed with a cookie-cutter approach may not suit auto parts eCommerce because they do not provide ready-made, native solutions for the automotive industry’s requirements, forcing you to compromise budgets and company goals.

In contrast, eCommerce platforms laser-focused on the dynamic needs of automotive aftermarket retail can help you optimize your critical business processes, such as:

• complex catalog data management;
• fitment search and parts compatibility;
• inventory management;  
• order fulfillment and shipping. 

With streamlined operations, you can finally focus on scaling your sales, not on the minutiae of maintenance tasks, which opens more opportunities for growing your business and revenue.