You have just started your own ecommerce business, which means the need for choosing accounting software, the best platform and more. Therefore, we’ve created a comprehensive guide for setting up a UK ecommerce business.
Best Ecommerce Software-Ecommerce store software has changed the way we shop and sell. Check out the best eCommerce choices for your brand in 2021, plus advice on choosing the best ecommerce software for small business, and the ‘all in one’ solution.
Scalable, reliable and robust, Xero is the best for e-commerce businesses. It provides a real-time view of business operations. The software comes with accounting, payment processing and inventory management. This tool is extremely useful for keeping track of company’s transactions during trading hours via mobile devices.
As an online entrepreneur, your business must keep financial records. Ecommerce businesses make their sales on the online platform, thus, their business is mostly done online. To have control over all the transactions made through different payment systems and to manage finances as well, it is necessary that they should have a good software application.
Our methodology: How do we choose the best ecommerce website builder for small business?
As we said in the introduction, each platform has been put through rigorous user testing and ranked on the six key factors that matter to you most.
By gaining an understanding of the factors we used to determine our list, you can decide to what extent each matters for your online store.
Customer score
Our customer score is based on three areas of investigation: user experience (UX), “likely to recommend”, and brand awareness (an assessment of popularity based on keyword research)
Design functionalities
This factor is based on several areas of investigation including Templates/themes, flexibility of design, Mobile editor and more.
Help and support
Help and support is based on testing of things such as restore options (whether a website builder offers the option to restore your website), customer support, and knowledge centre availability.
Sales features
An assessment of a plethora of sales features including security, multi channel integration, payment options, and shipping options among many more.
Value for money
Based on three areas of investigation: features vs price (a combination of the average pricing plan score and quality of feature score), free trial availability, and average pricing plan.
Website features
Covering everything from the quality of website features to internationalisation, marketing power, SEO features, blogging competence, and beyond.
WooCommerce (Web, iOS, Android)
Most eCommerce solutions work best if you use them to build your full online store, rather than to add payment processing to your existing site. It’s just simpler if everything runs seamlessly from a single dashboard and is built using the same tools. What, then, do you do if you already have a website set up?
Well, presuming you use a service like Squarespace or Weebly, then their built-in tools should be your first option. But if, like huge swaths of the internet, you use WordPress, then WooCommerce is your best bet. Instead of starting over on a different platform, this WordPress plugin seamlessly integrates into your WordPress site for easy selling.
Installing WooCommerce on your site is ridiculously easy. Sign up on WooCommerce’s website. Then, when you reach the final step of the onboarding process, select Auto-install WooCommerce on an existing WordPress site. You’ll be prompted to log in and then set up the plugin. If you’re already rocking WordPress, it couldn’t be handier.
Similarly, WooCommerce slots perfectly into your existing backend. You can manage your orders, create coupons, and view sales reports from your WordPress dashboard. Adding new products is as simple as creating a typical post—since WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin, it has the same interface as WordPress, which means that you won’t have to take the time to learn a new platform. The only difference between adding a new product and creating a new post is that you’ll have to add specific information about your product, such as a description, image, categories, and tags.
If WooCommerce doesn’t have some features you need, there’s a serious extensions marketplace. WooCommerce offers a variety of free and paid options that can enhance your store: get real-time shipping rates with the USPS extension, integrate various payment gateways, or add WooCommerce Subscriptions to let your customers subscribe to your product, services, or even your paid newsletter. You can also combine these extensions with any plugins from WordPress to customize your store even more.
You can connect WooCommerce to thousands of other apps with Zapier, to do things like saving orders to a spreadsheet or adding new customers to your email marketing tool.
WooCommerce Price: Free for standard features on a self-hosted WordPress site; from $29 for additional extensions; transaction fees depend on payment gateway. WooCommerce is included in the $45/month billed annually eCommerce plan from WordPress.com.
Squarespace – Best Online Store Builder
Squarespace Pros
+ Cheap starting plan ($18/mo)
+ Free themes
+ Unlimited accounts
+ Unlimited products
+ Free domain for 1st year
+ 14-day free trial
Squarespace Cons
– 3% commission with the cheapest plan
– Weak support experience
Squarespace is a great all-in-one platform for building a successful online store to sell goods. They take care of all the server management and give you easy-to-use tools for building and running your shop. Their pricing is quite cheap, starting from $18/month with annual payments and basic features.
You get access to tons of mobile-optimized and customizable templates, which you can further tweak by using CSS and Javascript. You can upload as many physical products as you need, but the subscription selling option comes only with the Advanced Commerce plan.
Other main features are the customizable promotional pop-ups and banners, abandoned cart recovery, automatic shipping rate calculations (ZIP code level in the US), customizable discount rules, custom integration with APIs, and limited availability labels for promotional use. However, some of these features are only available with higher-tier plans, so take a look at the pricing section for Squarespace below.
Payment Options
Squarespace allows you to accept major credit card payments directly to your bank account. You can also set up a Stripe account to accept more payment methods such as Apple Pay, PayPal, etc. All of this allows your online store to accept major currencies from around the world.
You can also set custom tax rates with support to VAT, HST, and GST. The taxes also reflect automatically on customizable invoices.
Online Store Management and Reports
Squarespace’s interface makes it easy to use. Set up your product pages, manage your inventory, track any outstanding orders, and manage your customer base from one central location. Use a simple drag-and-drop tool, update your customers on email, and print packing slips from one central location.
You get access to website analytics and additional sales and conversion metrics to track your online store’s success. You also get an overview of your customer base with further data on total spending, average basket value, and other benchmarks. Among the reports, you can find the best-selling goods, current sales trends, conversion monitoring from a visit to sales, and many more.
Customer Support
Squarespace has 24/7 email-based customer support. Their live chat support is available only from Monday to Thursday. Outside of the live chat hours, you’re greeted by a chatbot, which responds to specific keywords from your written question. It can handle simple requests, but for more specific questions, you might want to get in touch with a support person.
They do claim that all inquiries get answered within an hour.
Pricing
Squarespace is available with both monthly and annual payments, but the latter comes cheaper with every plan. Also, the yearly plans come with a free domain for one year.
The transaction fees only apply to the Business plan (3%). Yet, credit card processor fees still apply to all plans.
Business plan: $18/month annually or $26/month monthly
- Free templates
- Unlimited contributors and products
- Website analytics
- 3% transaction fees
Basic Commerce: $26/month annually or $35/month monthly
- Everything in the Business plan
- No transaction fees
- Customer accounts
- On-domain checkout process
- Additional eCommerce analytics
Advanced Commerce: $40/month annually or $54/month monthly
- Everything in Basic Commerce plan
- Abandoned cart recovery
- Subscription selling
- Automatic shipping rate calculation
The downside of the cheapest plan is that it comes with 3% transaction fees, no customer accounts, checkout is redirected from your domain, and no abandoned shopping cart recovery.
However, you can get started with Squarespace for free without adding a credit card to try them out.
Shift4Shop
Since its release to the public in 2001, 3dcart (now Shift4Shop) has served over 22,000 online businesses with clientele including PCMag. They have some practical features like unlimited storage and no transaction fees. You can also use their POS, and they support multi-channel selling. In 2021, the company rebranded as Shift4Shop.
Shift4Shop doesn’t do as well as BigCommerce and Shopify despite being older than they are and the reason is clear. It’s not for beginners. Although there is a nice onboarding video when you log into your dashboard, the whole operation is hard to figure out; the builder is not very visually appealing.
The templates they have are more industrial, but they feel outdated. Also, customizing the store takes a lot of time to understand and get used to except for experienced users because there’s no drag-and-drop functionality. Fortunately, there’s a community of developers willing to assist with theme development and other modifications.
I think one of their strongest points is in shipping; they provide advanced shipping solutions with no API required.
Similar to BigCommerce, Shift4Shop restricts the volume of sales you bring in on each plan. The lowest which costs $19 per month allows up to 50k.
The value overall is great. I still think it’s missing out by not offering abandoned cart saver as a core feature. Shopify made a move to make it included – really undercutting the competition. Nevertheless, it still has more features out of the box than Shopify.
Pros
- Better blog feature than other SaaS ecommerce
- Supports all the integrations you would need
- Great business user management tools (email, QuickBooks, inventory, etc.)
Cons
- Templates are inline with trends, but never at the cutting edge
- Negative feedback on customer support
- Potential issues upgrading
- Not for beginners
Wix (Web, iOS, Android)
Most eCommerce platforms make it possible for you to add an about page, contact page, or even a basic blog to your site, but it’s normally more of an add-on than an out-and-out feature. If you’re looking to build a full website where an online store is a part of things, but not the whole package, then Wix is your best option. It’s a powerful site builder—but it doesn’t skimp on the eCommerce features like order tracking, automated sales tax, and abandoned cart recovery.
When you first sign up, you tell Wix what kind of site you’re looking to build, and it makes a few suggestions. Then you get the option to choose from one of more than 500 templates and make your own site, or answer a few more questions and let Wix’s “Artificial Design Intelligence” or ADI do it for you.
The ADI option is surprisingly quick and effective. Click Start Now, and, after answering a few questions about what you plan to sell and what sort of look you like, selecting the features and pages you want to add to your site, and adding your details, you’ll have a site ready to go in a few short moments. You can even import content from an existing site or Google My Business listing. And, of course, you can dive in and customize things further once Wix’s robo-designers are done.
With so much going on, Wix’s onboarding to-do list is long but comprehensive. In addition to adding things like shipping rates and your shop’s opening hours (if you have physical premises), you’re guided through setting up a professional email address, building an email list, advertising on Google and Facebook, setting up a payment gateway, and a lot more. At times, it might veer a little close to hand-holding, but too much guidance is better than too little.
Wix is one of the most popular site builders around, so there’s also a healthy third-party app and extension marketplace. If you want to integrate your store with accounting services like QuickBooks or shipping coordinators like Shippo, there’s a simple one-click install app. Or you can use Zapier and connect Wix to thousands of other apps like Trello and Google Tasks.
One last note: While Wix is our favorite site-builder for eCommerce websites, it’s not so much better than Squarespace, Weebly, or any other option that you should switch platforms. If you already have a website through another site-builder, try its eCommerce features first.
Wix Price: Free for 14 days; from $30/month Business Basic Plan; transaction fees depend on payment gateway with Wix Payments charging 2.9% + $0.30.
Is eBay right for your business?
Opening its doors in 1999, eBay UK now has over 14 million users, with over 10,000 people using the site for a business that is their primary means of income. It’s not just about people selling unwanted goods – businesses have used the simplicity that eBay offers to set up lucrative operations. Even the larger brands such as Argos, Debenhams and House of Fraser are using eBay to sell online.
With sophisticated tools now available you can be up and running with your store in just a few hours. The eBay Seller Centre has all the information you need. Each store is managed via eBay’s familiar user interface, and there are a number of eBay-provided tools to help manage, track and promote your shop once it’s established.
Using eBay as the platform for your business could be ideal if your business wants to sell goods on a fixed price basis. The complete integration of the PayPal e-payments system into eBay takes care of this essential component of your store.
The key with eBay is to look closely at the costs involved and also the transaction fees that PayPal charge before moving forward and setting up your own store.
Conclusion
A lot of small business owners plan to build their website, build their business and grow by leaps and bounds. However these same small business owners do not have the right technology required for their social media marketing. This eventually makes it difficult for them to reach a wider audience as they are not able to utilize the best tools and software for their businesses. One of the main reasons for this is that entrepreneurs do not fully understand how online marketing works, and what the best tools available are for reaching the larger audience of consumers who could be potentially interested in your products or services.
The sheer number of e-commerce platforms makes it difficult to select the most suitable one for your business. Our experts have taken the pain out of making this choice by analyzing the important factors and reducing them to a list of ten best e-commerce platform options.