There are so many online eCommerce websites on the internet. Online free Ecommerce website helps a lot in developing business. But still most of the people tend to think why free online eCommerce is suitable for them. Some of them think it may be costly while some others are hesitating to create an online store due to security factor.
Free ecommerce websites have become extremely popular over the last few years. Some competitors have already seen their sales grow enormously due to free ecommerce platforms. No matter if you´re a startup or a traditional business, offering your product in combination with a free website can be a real advantage for online growth.
If you are a small business owner you may want to start your own little online store. Such business is really good. Nowadays it’s easy to have your own ecommerce store even if you’re not a webmaster. Just organize your products, upload them and finally choose the best website for your business – it could be a platform that provides its service for free, or you can use some paid web stores. Anyway, there are numerous websites where you can upload your files and launch the online store immediately.
Becoming successful in ecommerce takes a lot of hard work. You need to find or create the perfect product, set the optimal price and promote your product on all of the relevant platforms. There are so many things to think about that it can be overwhelming. This is why there are plenty of companies out there which offer ecommerce hosting solutions, as well as ecommerce website templates. Why should you pay for a website when you could host your e-shop for free? But how do you know if a free website really is good for your business? Let’s have a look at some of the most popular free ecommerce websites and analyse their positive and negative sides.
Themes and Other Design Elements
Design is an important element of any online store. The right (or wrong) site design can be the difference between drawing in new customers or repelling them forever. Thus, it’s important to pick a platform that makes it easy to have a beautiful site.
Usually, this is done via themes. In WordPress, you can use one of 10,000 different themes to find the exact match for you. You can then customize that theme’s colors, fonts, spacing, and other elements to match your brand and maximize store revenue.
Carrollwood Florist
This beautifully designed online florist website is an excellent example of a simple yet remarkable eCommerce store.
Design-wise, the website looks minimalist but colorful. Its white background contrasts with vibrant product shots, and the green call-to-action buttons are easily noticeable.
The home page features a full-width banner with a giant headline and a hero shot of the product, creating a solid first impression. Upon scrolling down, the page reveals a testimonial slider and a persuasive Why Shop With Us section.
Instead of categorizing products by flower type, the product categories are based on occasions. This helps customers who have no floral design knowledge select the right product.
Protest
Online clothing stores can definitely benefit from the implementation of certain ideas from Protest’s website. Not only does the design look sleek and modern, but it’s also effortless to navigate.
Protest’s eCommerce website employs a white background and vibrant product shots and clicking on them allows visitors to shop by the look portrayed in a picture. This contributes to an immersive shopping experience.
The product filtering options are quite comprehensive as well. Visitors can view clothing items based on their features, such as breathability, water resistance, warmth, and so on. This can save customers a lot of time if they’re looking for something with a specific quality.
Smokehaus
Smokehaus’s website demonstrates how you can emulate the feel of a physical store to create a memorable user experience.
Instead of using a grid to present the products, the website opts for a draggable slider to imitate the look of a butcher’s shop. The welcome message gives pointers to visitors on how to navigate the store as well.
Every time you add an item to the shopping cart, a notification appears with a short message like “Good choice!” or “Yum! We love that one.” Such details add a personalized element to the shopping experience.
Woocommerce
If you’re serious about taking complete control of your web hosting, eCommerce design, and content marketing, then WooCommerce is the best option for you. It is an eCommerce plugin that is completely free and lets you turn your WordPress site into a fully functioning WordPress eCommerce store.
So what’s the big deal with a completely customizable site?
You can update and organize the product listings and pages in the most SEO-friendly way, use an unlimited number of plugins to improve the user experience on your site, and upload an unlimited amount of high-quality photos to your heart’s desire…
..not that you necessarily need to do that. But, you know, at least you have the freedom to with a WooCommerce online store. Even if you don’t want to build your own design, you can opt for a modern WooCommerce theme upon installing.
Volusion
Volusion isn’t often talked about as the best place to run your e-commerce site from, but it should be. The entire experience of working within the responsive design of the Volusion dashboard is much more intuitive than its competitors. Add to that its impressive list of features built right into the dashboard, business owners really have no need to use any other applications to run their successful eCommerce store.
The one downside is that business owners have to manually send emails to their potential customers who have abandoned their carts, unlike the other platforms that automatically send follow-up emails.
But that’s no problem.
Volusion has thoroughly tested their own web design on the checkout page, coming to a version that has lower cart abandonment than the checkout pages of their competitors. Just by using their store builder, your conversion rates will be higher than if you were left to design the shop on your own.
The platform is also designed with search engine optimization in mind, making it easy for you to customize your content for the search engines.
And if you’re on the run?
The Volusion app works with mobile devices, making your eCommerce store accessible from all over the world
Zyro
Zyro is a website builder that is aimed at brands and businesses looking for speed and simplicity. Zyro boasts a stylish user interface and an impressive array of AI tools to help the users get their online stores up and running fast. The AI creates the content for the website, suggests business names, and even generates heatmaps of visitor interactions to help optimize websites.
The dashboard allows you to manage and automate many aspects of day to day eCommerce, from inventory management to shipping. Users are also able to sell their products seamlessly on social media and marketplaces via various integrations.
Zyro is offering some of the most competitive pricing plans in the industry, and so is ideal for start-ups looking to keep the costs down, without sacrificing functionality or style.
CS-Cart Multi-Vendor
Well, if you haven’t read our CS-Cart review yet, here’s the gist of it- CS-Cart is a renowned Russian software company that has served ecommerce merchants since 2005.
Now, I’ve purposely left out the “Multi-Vendor” part because the company happens to distribute two different CS-Cart ecommerce applications.
For starters, there’s the “CS-Cart” platform, which is basically a shopping cart software with the essential features for getting a typical online store up and running.
Then secondly, we have the CS-Cart Multi-Vendor platform, which is also an ecommerce software, but a little bit different compared to its CS-Cart sibling.
You see, CS-Cart Multi-Vendor is not for online merchants seeking to set up ecommerce stores. Rather, it targets the big players (mostly enterprises) that would like to build marketplaces. I’m talking about creating websites like eBay or Etsy, which usually host numerous merchants under one roof.
So, in short, CS-Cart Multi-Vendor can help you build your own marketplace, complete with the corresponding features that small merchants might need to create their storefronts on your website.
The solution itself is self-hosted and comes with an open-source framework, which features over 500 ecommerce functionalities, as well as themes, and extra integrations.
The problem is, however, that CS-Cart Multi-Vendor is not entirely free. In fact, there’s nothing much you’ll be getting for free. The far CS-Cart Multi-Vendor goes is offering you a 15-day free trial, followed by a 30-day risk-free purchase period. That means they’ll refund all your money if you don’t like their software product.
Now, on the bright side, you won’t be paying for the service on a monthly basis. CS-Cart Mult-Vendor is provided at a one-off cost of either $1,450, $3,500, or $7,500. What you pay, in the end, depends on the features you’re looking for.
But, if you ask me, it’s totally worth the price since it offers everything you can think of. It even comes with its own layout editor, along with great SEO and marketing tools, an in-built content management system, a user-friendly admin panel, a responsive mobile-friendly structure, plus integrations for more than 80 payment and shipping services.
Then considering it’s an open-source application, you can, of course, build your own custom functionalities and integrations. The possibilities here are limitless.
Ultimately, you, as the purchaser, become the head of the marketplace. CS-Cart Multi-Vendor allows you to host vendors, all of whom you’ll coordinate from the primary admin panel.
In other words, the admin panel gives you the power to control everything about the marketplace – from its vendors and their accompanying payouts, to the overall marketplace architecture and design. It’s just like building an online mall from the ground up, and subsequently managing its merchants.
Well, the vendors, on the other hand, are required to register like they would on any other marketplace platform. Then once you approve their details, they can proceed to set up their own marketplace storefronts.
The storefronts themselves can sell different types of products and services. Both physical and digital products are allowed here. So, in the end, it all depends on what you choose to have your vendors dealing in.
That said, CS-Cart Multi-Vendors will give your vendors their own admin panels for managing their stores, as well as configuring features such as product categories, filters, search, shipping options, etc. Then in the meantime, you can have them pay via a monthly subscription schedule, sales commissions, or possibly both. The choice is yours, so be wise about it.
Benefits of CS-Cart Multi-Vendor
- CS-Cart Multi-Vendor is as comprehensive as marketplace ecommerce platforms come. It offers you all the features you might need to set up and manage a virtual online mall. Plus, your vendors get the essential storefront functionalities and integrations. They even have the privilege of choosing customizable themes for their online stores.
- CS-Cart Multi-Vendor is a self-hosted ecommerce platform that you acquire and install into your server of choice. Then from that, you get to run and manage all the resultant tools. This translates to unlimited flexibility, especially considering it’s also an open-source system.
- Although CS-Cart Multi-Vendor is not a completely free open-source ecommerce platform, it’s sold for a one-off price. So, there are no monthly subscription headaches.
- The CS-Cart Multi-Vendor application is accompanied by comprehensive documentation and video tutorials. You should be able to troubleshoot any issues that develop along the way, as well as understand how the whole system works.
- CS-Cart Multi-Vendor has seemingly prioritized online marketing. It features a wide range of SEO and digital promotion tools that vendors can capitalize on to grow their businesses.
- Another thing that the platform prioritizes is security. It continues to release multiple updates every year, which come as feature upgrades or patches for resolving vulnerabilities. So, you’re guaranteed up-to-date security capabilities.
- The primary admin panel is elegantly designed to give you seamless user experience. The navigation is straightforward and the menu options are neatly organized for convenient access. Therefore, it doesn’t take much to learn the ropes here.
Downsides of CS-Cart Multi-Vendor
- CS-Cart Multi-Vendor is not an entirely free open-source ecommerce platform. After a 15-day free trial period, you’re required to purchase the software for at least $1,450. The other two packages cost $3,500 and $7,500.
- Since it’s self-hosted, you need to invest in a third-party hosting solution, as well as a developer for setup and subsequent maintenance.
- While we appreciate the gesture, the money-back guarantee period only lasts for 30 days. Such a period might not be enough for a deep analysis of the CS-Cart Multi-Vendor features and capabilities.
- Although the principal admin panel is intuitive and easy-to-use, it’s a different story altogether when we shift to the vendors’ side. Their interface might not be as simple, as say eBay’s or Amazon’s. Hence, they may need some time to get used to the tools and functions.
What makes a good Ecommerce website builder?
What are the features that you should look out for?
- an intuitive interface
- a variety of themes and designs to choose from
- free or affordable domain registration and hosting (usually included)
- easy setup, especially for beginners: no need to know programming skills like HTML/CSS.
Conclusion
Building an Ecommerce website is a very important part of any business strategy if you want to sell your products online. It can take hours, days and even months to have an awesome looking and easy to use ecommerce platform ready for business. Free Ecommerce website is the only solution that provides you with everything you need to create your own Online Business in less than one hour.
Ecommerce is a lucrative way for business owners to turn their products into profits. A website for selling your business’s goods online can do wonders for your company. These days, however, there are many options to choose from when it comes to choosing a platform to create WordPress ecommerce sites on. Many of these platforms require users to pay in order to sell products on their stores, but fortunately there are free options available.