Are you curious about e commerce tools? Wondering about best ecommerce website development tools for your online shop? This article will be about what is ecommerce and why you should use an ecommerce online shop and the best tools for your online store. Ecommerce means buying and selling products or services over the internet. Ecommerce has changed the face of the internet and created new opportunities for companies around the world to increase their revenue.
E commerce tools are the heart, blood and soul of any e commerce business. So how do you pick which ecommerce tools to use for your business? It’s a tough decision picking which ecommerce platform is going to take your business into the future; each one comes with it’s own selling points, features and quirks.
If you’re just getting started or have been in the ecommerce game for some time now then you know that it’s not just a matter of having a website up and running. You need to ensure that the website is engaging enough to convince the user to make a purchase. And this requires a lot of tools and resources. Being an ecommerce business owner, you definitely know that there are tons of ecommerce tools and software services available out there but how exactly are you supposed to choose the right one for your business.
It is no secret that ecommerce business is booming. But as an owner, you need to make sure that your ecommerce site is developed with the best web development tool for a better experience for you and your customers. This article will take you through this list of top ecommerce website development tools to choose from.
What Are the Best Ecommerce Tools for You?
Zyro
Best for Customer Analytics
Sporting an incredibly easy site builder, Zyro also includes a bevy of ecommerce tools and features on all of its plans. Get easy integration with Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, and Facebook Ads to get a clearer picture of your customers and improve based on that data. Plus, you get all this at one of the better prices on the market.>> Sign up Today!
Zyro’s best-known virtue is its simplicity as a website builder. That beginner-friendly simplicity holds true for its ecommerce plans as well. With 24 professionally designed templates to choose from and an intuitive drag-and-drop builder, it typically takes less than an hour for most users to get up and running.
Importing products and adding your inventory is likely to take longer than building your store.
While Zyro’s site builder emphasizes ease of use, you get deep marketing, tracking, and targeting capabilities on the back end. In fact, it’s the best price we’ve found for such in-depth analytics.
If you’re serious about getting ahead in ecommerce, you need a deep understanding of how your customers behave, where they’re coming from, and what they’re responding to or ignoring in your marketing.
Zyro’s ecommerce plans make it easy to use in tandem with Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, Facebook ads, and other re-targeting efforts. With Google and Facebook spilling over with information on who your audience is and what they do on your site, you can fine-tune your efforts based on tangible behavior and data.
With this in hand, you can optimize your store based on what you know about the people visiting your website.
For example, you can rearrange products on your Zyro site based on how things are selling, run a sale if one of your high-ticket items is leading to a lot of abandoned carts, or focus your marketing efforts on the channels that are bringing in real customers.
And just a reminder, this is on top of the incredibly intuitive Zyro builder plus full-fledged inventory and order management baked in.
Plus, Zyro makes it easy to accept payments of all types, from Stripe, PayPal, and traditional credit cards to dozens of other options. Not every ecommerce platform makes online payments this pain-free to implement and use.
Pricing for Zyro’s two ecommerce plans is quite competitive, especially if you have a small selection of products or services to sell.
Their lower-priced Online Store plan allows up to 100 products and comes with everything above. You can get it for a steal if you commit to four years upfront, or still get a good deal by opting for a one-year or two-year commitment.
Zyro’s Advanced Store plan costs a bit more, but you’re allowed up to 2,500 products. You also get product filters for your web store, translation into other languages, and integration with your stores on Amazon, Facebook, and Instagram, among many other helpful features.
Either way, you’re getting a lot of effective tools for building, improving, and marketing your web store for one of the better prices in the category.
Plus, if you ever feel overwhelmed or run into issues, Zyro’s 24/7 customer support is there to help.
Build your ecommerce site on Zyro, get better data on your visitors and customers, and then watch the growth opportunities blossom in front of you.
Weebly
Best ecommerce website builder for SMBs
TODAY’S BEST DEALS
Weebly StarterUS$5/mthWeebly ProUS$12/mthWeebly BusinessUS$25/mthVISIT SITEat Weebly
REASONS TO BUY
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Weebly promises that your shoppers will be able to shop with the convenience of a fully integrated shopping cart and a secure checkout experience directly from your ecommerce website. Its shopping cart software is set-up automatically when you create your online store so you can start selling online immediately, with no technical skills needed.
Weebly gives you the ability to manage anything from a handful to hundreds of products, alongside the ability to track inventory to manage supply, show customers the number of items remaining to create urgency and boost buying behavior (e.g. only 2 left!), and automatically update shoppers when items are sold out. Its small businesses and stores plan at $18 per month (when paid annually) includes a free domain valued at $20 and $100 Google ads credit.
With Weebly, you can also manage your store on the go with its iPhone and Android apps, which allow you to process and fulfil orders, provide personalized service and respond to customer inquiries, upload new products and photos, notify customers when a purchase has shipped, check sales figures in real-time and receive notifications whenever a new order is placed.
Squarespace: Best for influencer-type e-commerce websites
Squarespace is an all-in-one website builder that offers a nice suite of e-commerce sales tools along with 40 truly stunning plug-and-play website design templates.
Even a brand-new user can quickly and easily create a customized, visually appealing website using Squarespace. That explains why nearly 2 million websites, ranging from blogs and online galleries to all types of e-commerce stores, currently reside on Squarespace — and that number is growing.
Features and benefits of Squarespace
Squarespace combines great design and versatile e-commerce options with robust blogging capabilities that far exceed what you get on Shopify, Wix or Square Online. Its blogging tools aren’t the match of WordPress (none are), but they’re a much easier platform to learn.
For many, Squarespace perfectly balances sales and blogging capabilities with ease of use. Here are a few of the many things you can do with the Squarespace e-commerce website builder:
- Become a blogger influencer, sell products and services online, and make money in affiliate sales.
- Sell all types of physical products that ship and digital products via download.
- Sell online or in-store services and offer online bookings with prepayments or deposits.
- Create a website that accepts online donations alone or pairs them with sales.
- Create a membership content website with paid access to things like music and online lessons.
- Create a subscription box website or add subscription sales to your standard collection.
- Market your photography, art or graphic design services using designs with visual impact.
- Promote events, send invites, take reservations and RSVPs and sell tickets online.
- Sell products and services on Instagram using Squarespace’s direct integration.
- Easily build email lists and implement email marketing strategies using Squarespace’s built-in tools.
Drawbacks of Squarespace
In terms of multichannel sales, Squarespace’s e-commerce website builder doesn’t match Shopify. For one, you can’t directly integrate with Amazon, eBay and other sales channels, and you don’t get perks like built-in shipping label printing or a Facebook Shop integration.
Nor is Squarespace as expandable as WordPress, or free like the Square Online store. That said, Squarespace fits somewhere in the middle of them all. It’s easier to learn than WordPress, not as pricey as some all-in-one plans and offers more design potential than the Square Online store.
Simply put, you’ll know if it feels “right” once you use it. Luckily, Squarespace has a 14-day free trial, so you can test-drive the platform risk-free before you commit.
Squarespace pricing
The Squarespace website builder has four paid plans, but only two support e-commerce sales. If you want to sell any type of product or service on Squarespace, you need an e-commerce plan.
Squarespace’s two e-commerce plans cost $30 or $46 per month. You’ll save if you prepay annually, and that averages out to $26 and $40 per month. You’ll need the higher-priced plan for features like membership sales and abandoned cart recovery.
Wix: Easiest e-commerce website builder for new users
Wix is the most beginner-friendly e-commerce website builder on our list. The Square Online option is a close second, but for creating a truly gorgeous e-commerce website out-of-the-box, you can’t go wrong with Wix. In fact, at 110 million individual and small-business users, they’re officially the most popular website builder worldwide. Much of that is due to its stellar ease of use.
Wix also offers an e-commerce version of its popular website builder. It’s not as feature-packed as Shopify and WordPress-powered e-commerce websites but does deliver an extremely user-friendly e-commerce solution.
Features and benefits of Wix
Wix lets you easily and quickly build many types of beautiful websites. You can pick from over 500 website themes, then customize your website from there using intuitive drag-and-drop design tools. Wix also packs many online selling tools into its e-commerce website plans.
Here’s a sampling of the many ways you can put the Wix e-commerce website builder to work for your business:
- Create an online store that sells one, a few or entire collections of products online.
- Market and sell original music with Wix’s built-in customizable music player.
- Set up a website for local services and offer online bookings with prepayments or deposits.
- Market special events, create and manage guest lists and sell tickets right from your website.
- Create an instructional website with subscription access to video, audio or blog content.
- Market your restaurant, food truck or beverage business and accept to-go orders and reservations online.
- Sell your photography, original art or design services via digital downloads.
- Use simple blogging tools to create attention-getting content that attracts and engages your audience.
- Build your brand using Wix’s integrated email and social media marketing tools.
Drawbacks of Wix
Like many of our best e-commerce website builders, Wix checks a lot of boxes. But while they’re a very easy way to launch a website, they’re not what most e-commerce experts consider a power-seller platform.
First, they’re not multichannel-friendly. There’s no direct integration to sell Wix products on Amazon, eBay and other seller marketplaces, unlike Shopify and many WordPress e-commerce solutions. Its back-end order management tools aren’t as robust as these platforms, either. Also, your website’s storage space is limited by your plan, unlike most all-in-one platforms that provide unlimited storage.
Nor does Wix have a built-in POS system to combine in-store and online sales. Wix supports some integrations, like Square POS, but built-in solutions like Square Online typically are more complete and reliable. It does support subscriptions; however, recurring payments require using Wix Payments, Stripe or PayPal.
Design-wise, Wix has a notable hiccup. Once you publish your website, you can’t swap your entire design over to a new theme, like you can with most other e-commerce website builders. To completely change your online store’s look, you have to completely rebuild it in a new theme.
Wix pricing
Wix has three e-commerce website plans that range from $23 to $49 per month, plus an enterprise plan for power-sellers who want to stay on Wix rather than move to a platform like Shopify or WordPress.
The three Basic, Unlimited and VIP plans deliver all that most startups and small sellers need to launch and grow a business on Wix. Like most e-commerce website builders, when you’re ready for more features, you can easily upgrade your plan without interruption.
Advantages of using Website Templates
What you see is exactly what you get. With a readymade website template, you do not need to picture what the final product will look like, whether the web developer you’ve selected has actually comprehended your demands, whether your website will have to go with several changes and iterations prior to you’re satisfied with the end-product. The website template can be customized to your demands by altering the colors, images and text so that it ends up looking quite various from the initial.
Speed. Time is cash. Your website will be up-and-running within a fraction of the time it takes to develop a custom website– supplied, obviously, that you have the content and the pictures prepared to tailor your website template to fit you. A custom-designed website can take months to establish, depending on its complexity. Compare that time-frame to the few days or even hours for a website template to become a full-fledged website.
Expense. You can get an appealing, professionally-designed website template for as little as $30- $65 dollars. A custom-designed website might cost you anything up to $5,000. You likewise have access to multitudes of free templates although they are restricted in design and functionality, and you could not get the technical support you necessary.
Option Thanks to all the competition on the internet, you can pick from an abundance of designs and plans to match your demands. Consider it– a custom-designed website would offer you just 2 or three options to choose from. Online you are spoilt for selection when it concerns website design templates.
Appeal. The look of the site brings in prospects to your website. Readymade website templates are developed by the specialists who likewise create customized design templates. You have access to topnotch design quality without having to pay for custom design. You can search around and choose from thousands of appealing web template designs on the internet. However, you will find that some companies on the web offer website design templates of a higher quality than others. Don’t get carried away by the aggressive sales pitches on some sites. Use your discretion when choosing a web template that will say a lot about your company.
Note: You can choose any website template that you like the appearance and feel of, and customize it to your needs. Don’t get cramped for style by looking only for templates in your line of business. You can choose a music template, for instance, and tailor it to a food template.
Functionality. Expertly designed website templates will come pre-loaded with standard pages like ‘home’, ‘about’, ‘services’, and ‘contact’. Other website templates will give you add-on features to showcase a portfolio/photo gallery, or communication/community networking features like a blog, newsletter or bulletin board system. More complex website templates and e-commerce websites will offer dynamic features like online ordering, credit card processing and live chat. Remember that all these features will require backend support from your hosting company in order to function properly.
Navigation. How your website template looks is only half the story. What you need to know is how it works. How easy is it for your customer to find the content he’s looking for? How constant are the navigation links throughout the website? Does your visitor clearly know where he is, where to go, and how to return to where he started from? Website templates give you a feel for the navigation of your site.
Conclusion
The world is slowly moving into an online shopping economy. The way people used to buy things is slowly changing. Rather than going to the store and looking for what they want, more and more people are now starting to search online for products, and then get their desired items delivered at home (or at work). The reason why online shopping is very popular right now is because of the convenience it offers.
Creating an ecommerce website can be a challenging task, especially for people who are just starting out. In order to have a successful online store, it’s important to choose the right tools to help you develop, design and market your website. Today ecommerce business have become more popular and many of the small businesses have started their journey online.