Ecommerce software is the foundation on which to build any ecommerce business. An ecommerce platform that is reliable, has a solid foundation and suits your needs will do wonders for your business and leave less room for error. On the other hand, using a non-recommended platform for your ecommerce store can cost you both time and money.
There are several great ecommerce software platforms out there and sometimes it can be a challenge selecting the right one. You should make sure your new platform will run on the web hosting provider you have chosen. Let us help you choose the best ecommerce platform for your needs by providing an overview of popular available options.
As ecommerce grows at unprecedented rates, more and more software and services are popping up to accommodate businesses that sell online. There are now thousands of options when it comes to ecommerce platform solutions. This guide will help you sort through the list and determine which option is best for your store.
Ecommerce is a growing niche! With all of the available software and platforms out there it can be hard to know what’s best. This article will break down the top ecommerce software so that you can make an informed decision.
Choosing an E-commerce site builder
Before you dive in, make sure to think about the kind of website you’d like for your business. Do you have a particular model in mind? Must-have features? A designer theme or template? What can you do without? Our reviews and analyses pick through all of the most important aspects of e-commerce website builders to make your choice as simple and stress-free as possible.
1. A Suitable E-Commerce Platform
An e-commerce platform is the most important tool your online store needs to succeed. Before you start an e-commerce business, choose somewhere suitable to host your products.
An e-commerce platform makes your store available to potential customers or visitors who might search for your business online.
With WooCommerce, you can create a streamlined online store using powerful e-commerce tools, security, and expert guidance.
WooCommerce is an all-in-one tool that comes with several features that makes it a reliable platform to host your e-commerce store online:
- Payment gateways
- Accounting features
- Market vendors
- Shipping and delivery services
- Currency converters
2. Payment Gateway Integrations
As an e-commerce store owner who wants to earn maximum revenue and satisfy customers, providing a simple payment system is a great way to increase sales.
Your customers should be able to enter their payment details while guaranteeing a risk-free payment process that is protected against fraud and network glitches. You can use several payment gateways for this, such as:
According to Invesp, many customers abandon their carts due to payment issues. Providing an easy and direct payment process on your e-commerce website will ensure you avoid this problem and sell more products.
Integrate a suitable payment gateway depending on:
- Your preferred payment currencies
- The fees that the payment gateway charges, including transaction, cross-border, and chargeback fees
- How quick payment processing is
- The payment methods the gateway supports
3. Shipping and Carrier Integrations
After setting up payment gateways for your online store, consider shipping and carrier integrations. Note: This is only necessary if you’re an e-commerce store owner who sells physical products.
Shipping and carrier companies are essential to help you coordinate your orders and their delivery quickly and efficiently.
Integrating these shipping and carrier software solutions, such as FedEx, ShippingEasy, and Ordoro, to your e-commerce website will ensure your orders are taken care of — labeled, packed, shipped, and delivered.
4. Email Marketing Channels
Your e-commerce store needs an email marketing service, such as Constant Contact, to:
- Collect information from new leads
- Grow your email list
- Send order processing updates, such as payment info and shipping status
- Promote your new and existing products to your subscribers
- Build a relationship with your audience
You can also reduce shopping cart abandonment by sending follow-up emails to customers who didn’t complete their purchase.
Email marketing channels are vital in growing your online store through:
- Automated emails
- Form and landing page builders
- Built-in email analytics reports
- Coordinated marketing campaigns
5. Analytics Tools
It’s crucial to track and analyze your metrics to identify problems and find improvements based on your customers’ behavioral patterns and purchase habits.
You can use a tool like Google Analytics or Kissmetrics to evaluate your online store’s performance. Analyze valuable metrics, including:
- Website traffic
- Bounce rates
- Conversion events
- Traffic sources
- Sessions
- Pageviews
6. CRM Software
As you invest in tools that will directly increase your e-commerce store’s conversions and revenue, focus on customer relationship management (CRM) software too.
Customer satisfaction is paramount. How happy your consumers are with your support, service, and products will directly affect sales. Aim to provide an excellent customer experience by acquiring live chat and help desk software.
With chat tools like LiveChat, you’ll be able to provide proactive customer support and guide website visitors to products they’re looking for. Live chat software empowers you to communicate with your audience 24/7 — even when you’re not present.
Help desk software, such as Zendesk, also encourages a self-service system where your customers can find answers to what they’re looking for by going through the resources you’ve set in place.
7. Referral Marketing Software
You can use a tool such as ReferralCandy to set up referral marketing for your online store. Referral marketing is a game-changer for e-commerce stores — when people are referred to your business by a loyal customer, you have a 37% rate of retaining them.
With referral marketing, when a customer refers someone to your e-commerce store, they get a reward (similar to affiliate marketing). The more word-of-mouth recommendations your e-commerce website gets, the greater your conversions and the more rewards for referrals.
8. Paid Marketing and Retargeting Tools
As an e-commerce store owner who wants an influx of quality traffic, running paid ads targeted at your ideal customers is a way to skyrocket your online store’s sales and profit.
With paid marketing tools like Facebook Ads and Google Ads available to e-commerce brands, you can run ads to:
- Increase your brand awareness
- Market your hot product
- Get your target customers into your sales funnel by signing them up to your email list
These tools track the results of marketing campaigns across multiple advertising channels and devices. You can run ads using certain keywords related to your e-commerce store to target specific:
- Locations
- Genders
- Ages
- Income levels
You can even retarget people who reached your online store but didn’t complete their purchase.
AdEspresso is a simple ad testing and optimization tool that you can use to create A/B split tests for your Facebook ads to find out which one resonates more with your target audience.
AdEspresso analyzes your ads and shows you how they’re performing with suggestions for optimization.
9. Social Proof Apps
Social proof apps are powerful for every business, but especially e-commerce stores. Social proof relies on the psychology of consumer behavior. According to Robert Cialdini, only 5% of people are initiators — the remaining 95% are imitators.
Since consumers tend to be persuaded by the words and actions of other people, using a social proof app like TrustPulse, SocialProve, and OptinMonster on your online store can be a huge advantage for your e-commerce business.
These social proof apps show customer reviews and ratings, real-time customer activity, and sales notifications on your e-commerce website in the form of banners, floating bars, and unobtrusive popups.
Social proof apps increase not just your credibility but also your conversions by creating a sense of urgency.
10. Legal and Financial Management Tools
Besides the marketing and setup aspects of your online store, you need tools that guarantee your legal and financial standing. As your online store expands, accounting might get out of hand, and legal issues that require critical solutions might begin to surface.
With a tool like UpCounsel, you’ll be able to contact and hire qualified legal practitioners on-demand to help you with the legal protection of your e-commerce documents, such as trademarks, agreement forms, and intellectual property.
Tax filing can be a complex process. TaxJar makes the process easier through tax filing automation. Once you integrate it with your online store, it automatically files the correct sales taxes.
As your e-commerce business expands, there comes the need to balance sheets, keep records, and calculate cash flow.
Whether math is your strong suit or not, this is the point where you’ll need accounting software like QuickBooks, which provides a complete view of your e-commerce business’s financials.
Is It Worth Upgrading to a Paid Plan?
Unlocking extra features is key for a successful online store. And, with the website builders around today, it’s cheaper than ever to do so. Remember – Constant Contact’s plans start from just $10 per month, while Big Cartel’s start from a mere $9.99 per month. So if you’re wondering whether it’s worth upgrading to a paid plan, the answer is almost definitely: yes!
In short, upgrading to a paid plan will upgrade your business. How is that so? Well, like any subscription, if you pay more, you get more. Below, we’ve listed five of the best features you can get on a paid plan…
1. No ads
You may be a really small or totally new business, but nobody will actually know that – unless, of course, you’re using a free plan on an ecommerce builder, and your site is plastered with ads as a result. There’s an element of ‘fake it till you make it’ as a new business, and an unprofessional website isn’t going to give off the right signals.
It can feel daunting to pay for an ecommerce platform before you’ve got any guarantee of customers and income, but think of this as a small but necessary investment. And remember, all these platforms will allow you to pay month by month, so there’s no pressure to commit to something long term if you’re not sure it’s going to work out.
2. Better sales tools
A paid plan won’t just make you a website that looks more professional – it will make you a website that acts more professional, too. Ecommerce platforms withhold premium features, like the ability to send abandoned cart recovery emails, for paying members – and with good reason. In fact, 69% of online carts are abandoned (i.e. the customer leaves the site without paying for the items they have collected in their cart). Emails sent to these customers can have an impressive open rate of 45%, and are hugely effective in re-engaging these customers.
Even upgrading to the cheapest ecommerce plan will get you a ton of better features. For example, Wix’s Business Basic plan piles on features like five hours’ worth of video and a free domain name for the first year.
3. Sell more products
Most free ecommerce plans put a cap on the number of items you can sell. By opting for a paid plan, you’re giving yourself more freedom, and your customers more choice.
4. Get better support
Paying customers tend to be able to access support in more ways, such as over the phone. Even if you get the same help and support options as premium customers, you better believe you’re not going to be top of the priority queue when you need help. Don’t wait until your site is down, or until you can’t get an answer to something that’s driving you nuts, before you upgrade – do it now, and your future self (and site) will thank you!
5. Increase payment methods
Paid plans typically allow you to connect more payment methods. This in turn makes for an easier shopping experience for your customers, increasing the likelihood that they’ll come back.
6. Don’t forget your hosting
If you choose to build your ecommerce store using one of the open-source software we have listed here, you’ll know that you need to arrange hosting separately. We recommend Bluehost across the board for this, although SiteGround also has brilliant Magento-specific plans.
CONCLUSION
If you’re running an online business, chances are you need ecommerce software. No matter if you’re a small team or an international company, the right software makes it easier to manage your business. Whether you want inventory control, powerful ecommerce features, or even accounting and point-of-sale (POS) integration, there’s a tool on this list that can help you out. Given the countless options available today, let me take a minute to explain my criteria when building this list.
Ecommerce software is a core element of any business in the ecommerce field. Having multiple functionalities such as user registration, payment gateway integration and inventory management; it decides how smoothly an online store can function. Ecommerce software is generally built with various functionalities and integrated with various plugins to provide that functionality to the end users. It is also an essential element of companies that do not plan to set up their own ecommerce store but want to sell products via eBay or Amazon.