Ecommerce is exploding and many businesses have gone online to increase their customer base and churn up more sales revenues. You too can benefit from the growing popularity of online shopping provided you have the right platform that acts as the much needed springboard to successfully launch your online business.
However, making the right choice from so many available eCommerce platforms can be a time consuming and laborious process. I’ve tried to make this job a little easier. Here is a list of 10 excellent eCommerce platforms that will empower you to create the perfect online store for your business, regardless of your web programming or design experience.
If you are looking to build a great looking, hassle-free online store from a range of high-quality free and premium design templates, Volusion should be your favorite online store builder. The innovative inventory management tools it offers provide you with a quick glance of your inventory stock, anytime. With an automated alert system in place, you never run the risk of running low on stock.
The in-built SEO tools give your business higher search rankings and drive more traffic to your website. The platform also provides social media tools that allow you to share content, marketing collaterals, knowledge based blog posts and related content and take the benefit of word-of-mouth phenomena.
Volusion’s secure online security architecture ensures that all transactions are protected. Your customers can safely use credit cards or use convenient payment channels like PayPal to carry out transactions seamlessly. The shopping cart software quickly processes orders, payments, shipping and inventory control to give your customer a delightful shopping experience on your online store.
Volusion is a great choice for online retailers who have a large product range to offer to their customers. So, why not try Volusion? It comes with 14 day free trial offer!
If your business belongs to a very competitive domain, Bigcommerce online store builder will help create a highly optimized web store for search engines. It is interlaced with SEO features like customizable URLS, Meta tags and robots.txt files that auto-generate sitemaps. Bigcommerce empowers your business to stay on top of search engine rankings and attract traffic.
Reach out to more customers with in-built marketing tools like newsletters, social media buttons, discounts, coupon codes and automatic generated customer lists. Use these features to share your content and influence a positive outcome.
This builder helps you customize your store as much as you want, in a few, easy steps with the use of point-and-click tools and customizable CSS/HTML. This allows your store to stand out from the crowd.
Protected by hardware firewalls and hacker deterrent security provisions your web store is completely safe for online shopping. Features like product reviews and comparisons help shoppers take informed decisions that usually lead to a positive outcome.
To put it simply, your Bigcommerce based web store offers you plenty of business growth opportunities by helping you explore newer avenues of sales generation.
With Shopify, you can choose your favorite storefront theme from a collection of over 100 free eCommerce website templates, including those created by world renowned designers like Pixel Union, Happy Cog and Clearleft. Completely customizable, your Shopify based e-store looks the way you want it to, thanks to the Theme Settings editor. Use this tool to preview your store before you make changes in it.
With no design constraints and hosting hassles you can create a full-fledged eCommerce website and customize its design to each and every pixel. The user-friendly administration makes it really very easy to add functionality to some parts of your store.
The easy to use design features in PinnacleCart and other features like SEO compliant header tags, sitemap, breadcrumbs, etc., allow you to create the perfect eCommerce website for your business and target the right audience. This way you save a lot of money, which you otherwise would have to spent on hiring an SEO expert for onsite optimization. Also, features like recurring billing and instant sales with QR codes automate and speed up the sales cycle.
You can even recapture lost sales (in the form of cart abandonment) with the help of special features and create campaigns to attract those visitors who abandoned your shopping cart.
Another feature that improves shopping experience for customers is the payment tokenization feature that makes it easy to speed up the checkout process for returning customers; they can access their payment details from previous orders and complete the sales cycle quickly.
Wix eCommerce is an effective and user-friendly online store builder perfect for small to medium businesses looking to sell online. It delivers customizable templates, drag-and-drop functionality, and effective and powerful tools for product management. Wix has everything you will need to effectively manage inventory, sell a wide range of products (including digital or service products), collect payments, ship items, and market your business through a direct integration with email and social media services. Also, Wix includes abandoned cart recovery, SEO tools, and optimized mobile experience. Wix even supports multichannel selling options across platforms, including Instagram and Facebook. Lastly, setting up your store with Wix is designed to be simple and intuitive. Entrepreneurs with no codig skills can use a simple to comprehend dashboard and comprehensive app marketplace (with different functions) to formulate a platform that aligns with their vision for an eCommerce Store on the Internet.
Squarespace Commerce is a minimalist and aesthetically pleasing eCommerce platform that is designed for creatives and small businesses. Squarespace has award-winning templates, built-in payment processing, inventory management, and flexible shipping options. Squarespace has built-in email campaigns, embedded marketing, and SEO settings to help promote your store. Users can sell physical products, digital products, and services, as well as subscriptions and gift cards. Their reporting and analytics provide insights into what customers are shopping for, and their transactions. With a mobile responsive design and secured checkout, they have made it easy for a small business to create an attractive e-commerce store with limited technical hurdles.
Weebly by Square is an intuitive eCommerce website creating site designed with the small business owner in mind. The site includes simple drag-and-drop tools, customizable templates, and connection to Square’s payment and point-of-sale systems. Weebly allows for selling of both physical and digital products, providing built-in inventory management, shipping calculators, and tax automations. The site has SEO Tools, marketing automation, and email campaigns available. It is also mobile optimized to allow business owners to track and manage their online store from anywhere. If you are a local retailer already using Square in a physical retail store, Weebly can offer business owners an affordable and easy way to begin establishing an online presence.
Hostinger’s Website Builder provides a speed-driven, AI-based solution for building online stores with little effort. Designed for ease of use, the platform comes with drag-and-drop tools, is mobile-optimized and includes eCommerce features like product listings, secure checkout, payment gateways and inventory managers. Hostinger also allows users to easily sell unlimited products, track orders and apply discounts. Page builders with marketing features include SEO tools, email integrations, and analytics. Hostinger also has high-speed hosting plus around-the-clock customer service – making it one of the most affordable solutions for a startup or small business wanting something reliable that combines website and store features with professional-grade performance.
Ecwid by Lightspeed is an affordable eCommerce platform that gives users the ability to add an online store to their existing websites, or create a website with an online store from scratch. Multichannel selling is built into Ecwid from social media to marketplaces like Amazon and eBay. Ecwid has a mobile responsive user experience, secure checkout, automatic tax calculations, and real-time shipping rate calculations. Ecwid’s powerful dashboard makes order management/e-commerce easy, while its app store allows for even more functionality. Ecwid works great for businesses that are currently online, and opposes least work with websites like WordPress, Wix, etc. Ecwid scales with your business be it a small shop or larger, in order to provide seamless, omnichannel retail.
WooCommerce is a completely free, open-source plugin for WordPress that seamlessly turns any site into an online store. Highly customizable, WooCommerce offers the ability to sell physical or digital products, subscriptions, time-based bookings, downloadable products, or even memberships (that include downloadable products). WooCommerce provides a lot of control over product listings, payments, shipping, and tax settings. WooCommerce benefits from a very large ecosystem of plugins and themes to allow the store to be customized for any business needs. WooCommerce can integrate with many of the best services available for our industry, such as PayPal, Stripe, and Mailchimp. This makes it a no-brainer for anyone already familiar with WordPress. WooCommerce can scale and is developer-friendly, making it effective for small-to-medium businesses and large enterprises who want full ownership and flexibility of their store.
Sellfy is an all-in-one e-commerce platform for creators who want to sell digital goods (like eBooks, music, videos, PSDs), physical goods, print-on-demand items and subscriptions quickly and easily. No web-developer skills are required to create a mobile-optimized and branded storefront in just a few minutes, complete with a shopping cart, custom domain, and multilingual support. Sellfy includes built-in marketing tools like discount codes, email campaigns, cart abandonment messages, upselling, affiliate management and ad-pixel, while payments are supported by PayPal and Stripe, secure hosting, PDF-stamping, download limits and instant payouts. Sellfy is perfect for creators looking for a straight-forward online store filled with features.
All eCommerce platforms mentioned in this article have their own set of advantages that you need to align with your business’s demand before your zero in on the best one suited for your needs.
