As highlighted by several surveys, a very large percentage of modern customers prefer web stores to brick and mortar stores. You can always launch an eCommerce website to sell your products or services to customers regardless of their geographic locations. Also, the eCommerce website will help you to engage customers, promote your products/services, and increase conversion rate. But you must choose the right eCommerce platform to build, manage, and run the web store efficiently and smoothly. The right eCommerce solution will accelerate custom web store development and simplify common eCommerce activities.
7 Best eCommerce Platforms For Small Business
1) Shopify
The leading eCommerce platform enables you to build, set up, and run custom web stores without putting extra time and effort. You can use the interface provided by Shopify to design custom storefronts, organize products, monitor inventory, access payment and manage orders. You can even launch a web store rapidly by making changes to the online store design and ready-made online shops provided by Shopify. At the same time, Shopify allows you to sell your products through multiple channels, in addition to supporting multiple languages, currencies, payment gateways, and shipping methods. Several studies show that Shopify helps online store owners to prevent customer abandonment by developing fast and secure eCommerce websites.
2) SquareSpace
Despite being a lightweight eCommerce platform, SquareSpace enables you to create visually appealing web stores. You can avail the features and tools provided by SquareSpace to create beautiful eCommerce websites for selling digital/physical products and services. The eCommerce platform allows you to choose from a number of modern website designs, and optimizes the web store more mobile devices. It further provides robust features like unlimited products, flexible product variants, rich product description, inventory management, order management, flexible shipping options, and built-in security. However, SquareSpace currently does not support widely used payment options like PayPal.
3) BigCommerce
The customization options provided by BigCommerce make it easier for you to build custom eCommerce websites according to your precise needs. At the same time, you can avail the store management features provided by the cloud-based eCommerce solution to manage various aspects of the web store efficiently. BigCommerce further helps you to sell products through multiple channels – Amazon, eBay, Facebook, Google Shopping and Buy button. It simplifies eCommerce website development by providing useful features like responsive templates, reliable website hosting service, and tool to migrate existing stores. You can take advantage of the eCommerce content management system (CMS) provided by BigCommerce to manage products, add new pages, and publish blogs without using any additional tool. Likewise, the control panel provided by the eCommerce platform makes it easier for you to process and fulfil orders from a centralized location.
4) Big Cartel
Like other eCommerce platforms, Big Cartel helps you to set up and run a custom web store without putting extra time and effort. But it lacks some of the robust features provided by other widely used eCommerce solutions. Big Cartel even helps artists, musicians, and similar creative professionals to sell their products/wears directly. Small business owners can always consider using Big Cartel for creating small and simple web stores that look visually appealing and deals in artistic products. You can use the pre-made themes provided by the platform to design mobile-friendly storefronts rapidly. You even have option to customize a theme by changing its colour, fonts, and images. Big Cartel further helps you to run the web store efficiently by providing tools for product promotion, search engine optimization (SEO), and order management. Many creative people rely on Big Cartel to create small web stores for selling unique products or personal brands.
5) Magento
At present, Magento is used widely by large, medium, and small retailers. You can use Magento in two distinct ways – as a free download or as a hosted service. You can even use Magento as an all-in-one eCommerce solution to build and manage custom eCommerce websites rapidly. Magento also provides features for small businesses, business-to-business (B2B) eCommerce, omni-channel sales, and international expansion. It further provides robust features to simplify common eCommerce activities like customer grouping, product bundling, order processing, customer service, and gift and coupon management. Magento even comes with features to accelerate development of large eCommerce websites with large number of products and handle heavy user load. The small business owners should take care to test the Magento website thoroughly and regularly upgrade the Magento version to get the best results.
6) Wix
The online website builder enables you to create beautiful web stores despite lacking technical skills. You can use Wix Editor to pick the website elements, place the elements in the website’s structure, and align the elements according to your preference. The editor even allows you to add graphics and create website content. While using the editor, you can add eCommerce components to the website. You can always consider using Wix to build and manage web stores without deploying skilled web developers. In addition to providing website development tools, Wix also helps you to build mobile-friendly eCommerce websites using designer-made templates. The all-in-one management tool provided by Wix enables you to accept payment, track orders, manage shipment, and promote sales without using additional tools.
7) WooCommerce
WooCommerce is actually designed as a WordPress plug-in. You can use WordPress to add eCommerce functionalities to a website developed with WordPress. Hence, WooCommerce will enable you to manage and update the eCommerce website through a robust but easy-to-use content management system like WordPress. You can even use the WordPress plug-in to create a web store for selling both physical and digital products. Also, you can avail a number of features provided by WooCommerce like add multiple products and categories, stock level control, multiple payment gateways support, flexible shipping setting, secure code and geolocation support. You can even use specific WooCommerce extensions to customize the web store according to your precise business needs.
On the whole, for custom eCommerce application development, you have option to choose from a wide range of eCommerce platforms. You also have option to choose from multiple editions – community, enterprise or open source, commercial – the same eCommerce platform. Hence, it becomes essential to evaluate the pros and cons of each eCommerce platforms according to business needs and eCommerce strategy. This research will help you to choose the right eCommerce platform that enables you to run the eCommerce website smoothly over a longer period of time.
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