In today’s world, it’s never been more important to establish your small business online. More and more consumers are buying online, so finding the right eCommerce platform for your product is crucial. With that said, there’s a wide range of platforms to choose from, and it can be a tall task to research all of your options. So, we did the research for you.
After analyzing more than 50 platforms, we narrowed it down to the best eCommerce website builders, each of which hold unique value. Before delving into our list, though, here are the attributes we considered when creating our Top 6 eCommerce platforms:
eCommerce Considerations:
- Makes it easy to create an aesthetically pleasing website that looks great on mobile devices, desktops, etc. It also provides a variety of easy-to-use customization tools to help design a page that matches your brand.
- Makes it easy to market any product, however you intend to sell it. This means it offers the versatility to sell both digital and physical goods, it’s designed to work with various payment processors, and it offers an efficient way to deal with various national and international sales taxes.
- Offers capability to manage orders, shipments, inventory, and other back-end responsibilities. Platforms must offer a complete eCommerce experience instead of merely offering a way to collect payments.
- The platform must offer capability to integrate with other services, marketplaces or apps through a plug-in and extension marketplace, or built-in features. Since modern business rarely use just one software suite, we feel it’s important to find an eCommerce platform offers integration options so business owners can, for instance, add new customers to their mailing list or sell through social media platforms.
- Must come at a reasonable price. While an all-in-one eCommerce solution is a great tool, it can come at tall price, including monthly fees, payment gateway fees and transaction fees. We avoided platforms with over-the-top costs.
Using these 5 measuring points, we were able to create a short list of top choices.
Gold Standard eCommerce Platforms
Shopify — More than 1 million stores have been built using Shopify over the last 15 years, showing that it’s one the best platforms for getting your online experience up and running quickly. Not only is it easy to use because of its intuitive functionality, it makes it easy to customize your new website. It offers 10 free themes and over 50 paid themes, and because it’s so popular within the small business community, you can find more than 1,200 addition themes on ThemeForest.
WooCommerce — A great option for those with an existing website, WooCommerce works as a plugin for popular website builder WordPress. Most eCommerce platforms offer an entire online experience, which just isn’t necessary if you already own an established website. WooCommerce easily integrates, allowing small business owners to easily upgrade their website with payment processing ability.
Honorable Mention eCommerce Platforms
Square — For small business owners hoping to sell in-person and online, Square is an excellent choice. All of your orders, whether they’re placed offline or online, are organized on the same dashboard. It offers exceptional onboarding capability as well. After filling out some information about your business, you’ll have the option to build booking pages, checkout links or an entire store.
If some of the experience seems a bit familiar, that could be because Square acquired another popular website building platform in 2018 — Weebly. You may even see a weebly.com URL from time to time.
Ecwid — a great web builder for beginners, Ecwid makes the list for being one of the most expansive yet lease expensive platforms available. Not only is its free package extremely inclusive, allowing business owners to market their first 10 physical items free of cost, its upgrade packages are generally affordable as well. In fact, it doesn’t even charge transaction fees.
Ecwid separates itself from other free website builders with its fantastic customization ability, and if you upgrade to one of its paid packages, it offers as many cool features as other industry leaders. These options were enough to land it on our list.
BigCommerce Essentials — BigCommerce Essentials may be the best options for those with, well, a big catalog. Whether you’re selling a lot by way of inventory or dollars, it offers companies with a booming sales output an easy way to get established online. As far as integration, it’s compatible with many top payment platforms, such as PayPal and Amazon, and it makes it easy to list products through other marketplaces such as Facebook or eBay.
It you’re searching for a go-big or go-home solution, then give BigCommerce Essentials a shot. It’s a great way to turn your inventory into big online profits.
Wix — While sales is typically central to a business, you might not wany it to take center stage on your website. Wix offers exceptional versatility as a complete website builder. It offers more than 500 templates to build your online experience, or you can take advantage of an innovative “Artificial Design Intelligence” feature, which after answering a series of questions, builds your site for you.
Since Wix is such a popular platform, there are a number of integration options with various third-party apps. Accounting platforms such as QuickBooks, shipping options like Shippo — they’re all compatible to help optimize your eCommerce operation.
Start eSelling Today
If you’re in the market for a versatile eCommerce platform, these are some of the best options on the market. Take inventory of your small business and decide which website builder offers features that would most benefit your needs. With the plethora of platforms available, you’re sure to find a great fit. Contact us for help implementing any of these options.
