One of the features that e-commerce software needs is the ability to search the store so customers can find products. Any e-commerce site should also have a shopping cart where their purchaser, or interested party, can store and view their intended purchases before moving into the checkout process. Because the purpose of an e-commerce platform is to facilitate purchasing, the platform needs to have a payment gateway so that customers can pay for their products. These three features — search, cart, and payment — can be wired together in any way you want to form a basic e-commerce platform.

In addition to those three basic features, an e-commerce platform has features like a database to store transaction details, inventory management to track the available merchandise, customer support, and order management to improve the customer journey.