Best Apps of Ecommerce

The best apps of e commerce If you are already into ecommerce and running a popular online business, it wouldn’t be surprising if you have ever thought of building an app of your own to increase the scope of your operation. Creating an app is no easy feat, which is probably why many sites and storefronts neglect exploiting the potential in this field. But you don’t want to overlook this opportunity! That’s why I want to give you some food for thought about building an app for your e commerce site or any other type of store.

The Best apps of Ecommerce have been designed to give you the best experience when shopping. The e-commerce apps are designed for the best ways commerce which is the exchange of goods and services between the seller and buyer.

One of the most important aspects of an e-commerce business is having an app that supplements and enhances the shopping experience. The e commerce mobile app is a cost-effective investment that delivers returns in terms of consumer loyalty and customer satisfaction.

Software as a Service (SaaS) applications are a hot commodity, especially in an era that emphasizes remote work and having software readily available in the cloud. Ecommerce sites are built from the ground up to serve merchants and customers. Thus, there is no shortage of excellent applications to choose from for your e-commerce site.

What makes a great eCommerce platform for small businesses?

How we evaluate and test apps

All of our best apps roundups are written by humans who’ve spent much of their careers using, testing, and writing about software. We spend dozens of hours researching and testing apps, using each app as it’s intended to be used and evaluating it against the criteria we set for the category. We’re never paid for placement in our articles from any app or for links to any site—we value the trust readers put in us to offer authentic evaluations of the categories and apps we review. For more details on our process, read the full rundown of how we select apps to feature on the Zapier blog.

For small businesses looking to sell online, we identified five key features that every platform had to offer. There are other good platforms out there, but if they don’t offer a feature on the list, they didn’t make the cut.

• A hypothetical average person had to be able to build a good-looking, responsive, modern online store with the tools and themes offered—without needing a computer science or graphic design degree. They also had to be able to make it fit with their existing brand reasonably well by being able to use their own brand assets and color schemes. This one criteria actually eliminated quite a few platforms from consideration for being either too limited with boring, super similar, or outdated themes, or requiring too much technical know-how to make the most of.
• The platform had to enable you to sell whatever you want, wherever you want, however you want. This meant it had to be able to handle both digital and physical products and offer some way to manage sales taxes and international shipping. This last point is particularly important for small businesses: if you have physical premises or plan to sell internationally, you may be liable for collecting and filing various kinds of taxes.
• We only considered full-service eCommerce platforms. You need to be able to sell your product through a consumer-facing website, but also manage orders, ship goods, track inventory, and otherwise deal with the back-end running and admin of your store without using some other service or (please no) a giant spreadsheet.
• Whatever platform you choose, it has to play nice with any other apps and services you rely on for your business. For this reason, we required the apps on this list to have a range of integrations, either through a plug-in and extension marketplace or built-in features.
• All of this had to be available for a clear and affordable monthly price. Opaque fees were a big no, and while done-for-you solutions are wonderful, they cost thousands of dollars per month—far more than any SMB needs (or has) to spend on setting up an online store.

Weebly

Weebly isn’t quite so well known as some other eCommerce platforms, like Shopify and WooCommerce, but they offer a free trial where you can test out the platform.

Pros

• You can add any kind of physical or digital products to your store
• The drag and drop interface is easy to use to build your site and manage items in your store.
• There are around 100 different themes (designs) you can choose from, so you should be able to find something that’s just right for your site.
• Built-in inventory, shipping, taxes management features.
• As well as the community forum, the free plan gives you access to live chat, email, and even phone support.
• If you do want to upgrade to a paid plan, these are affordable even for very small businesses. Ecommerce starter plan starts at $12 per month paid annually.

Cons

• Weebly charges a 3% transaction fee. That’s in addition to the transaction fee that your payment gateway charges.
• If you’re on the free or Personal ($9/month) plans, Weebly will show ads and branding from Square, Weebly’s parent company.
• Even with the paid starter plan you are limited to sell only 25 products at a time.

 Big Cartel

Big Cartel is a hosted eCommerce platform that’s designed especially for artists and creatives. If you want to have a store selling handmade products or similar, it could be a great option for you.

Pros

• The free plan doesn’t have any transaction fees. You will need to pay Stripe or PayPal fees, though (these are the only options Big Cartel offers for payment processing).
• Your free shop URL can be customized. It has to be in the format name.bigcartel.com, but you can choose whatever you want for the name. Many other platforms assign you a specific URL based on your username or store name and you can’t change it.
• You can have up to 5 products on your free plan, which makes it more generous than other hosted free plans.
• It’s quick to get your store set up and it’s easy to add your products. Big Cartel walks you step by step through the process.

Cons

• If you want to customize your website theme, you’ll need to edit the theme’s HTML. This definitely isn’t as beginner-friendly as most other eCommerce platforms.
• The free plan only has limited features. You need to upgrade to a paid plan if you want to use things like inventory tracking or discount codes.

 Wix Ecommerce

I bet you’ve heard about it already. Wix is undoubtedly one of the most renowned cloud-based online store builders. You can check out our detailed Wix review.

Although the bulk its packages are premium, it turns out Wix also offers an extra option that you can take advantage of to set up an attractive free website.

The best thing about this specific platform is this- even free users can take advantage of its intuitive drag-and-drop website builder to design an entire site without coding. As a matter of fact, you should be able to complete a basic free website within a couple of minutes.

The free plan is particularly ideal for beginners who need powerful tools for building and hosting a standard business website. It grants access to a wide array of customizable predesigned templates plus supplementary icons, clip arts, and images.

Then you know what? You also get to promote your free business site, thanks to the simple SEO and email marketing capabilities that Wix offers at no charge. You can combine that with many other free applications from the Wix App Market to form a dynamic marketing framework.

And in case you’re worried about space, you should rest easy because it’ll probably take you quite some time to exhaust 500MBs of free site storage. The corresponding bandwidth, on the other hand, extends to 1GB on a domain that rides on the Wix platform. In other words, your free domain name will be something like username.wixsite.com/site address.

But, here’s the thing. You still get secure web hosting, 24/7 unlimited support, plus automatic mobile optimization. So, of course, your visitors will be able to surf conveniently from any device.

Unfortunately, Wix will bombard your free website with ads. The only way you can avoid that is upgrading to one of the premium plans, which start at $4.50 a month. And that comes with a host of advanced features like form builder, custom favicons, email campaigns, etc.

That said, real ecommerce website tools are not accessible until you subscribe to the Wix eCommerce plan for $16.50 a month. And if you need superior online selling functionalities, you can scale further and settle for the VIP plan at $24.50 a month. This specific one is essentially optimized for growing ecommerce sites.

Benefits of Wix Ecommerce

• It provides an extremely simple plus straightforward drag-and-drop website builder. You can design then customize a full free site without any coding skills.
• Although online store features come at a price, let’s be honest and admit that the packages provide great value. You only get to pay at least $16.50 for powerful ecommerce site functionalities.
• Wix comes with an extensive collection of elegant site themes and templates. They are all designed by professionals for extra responsiveness and mobile optimization.
• You can leverage numerous apps from the extensive Wix App Market if you intend to add functionalities to your premium site. Some of the supplementary ecommerce website capabilities available at this level include abandoned cart recovery, payment processors, global shipping providers, and much more.
• Wix does not take a cut from your payments when you sell online from your ecommerce website. Only payment processors will deduct their fair share of transaction fees.

Downsides of Wix Ecommerce

• It’s impossible to set up a fully-provisioned free ecommerce website. You only start selling after you’ve upgraded to, at least, the eCommerce package at $16.50.
• The free plan comes with ads that may tamper with your site’s overall layout. The web pages will subsequently look busy and cluttered.
• Wix doesn’t provide access to its underlying code. So, of course, you cannot customize your website extensively. You’re basically limited to what the themes and templates allow.
• Once you start working on a specific website theme, you cannot shift to a different one halfway through the editing process. You have start over again.

PrestaShop – Best Open Source Ecommerce Platform for Startups

PrestaShop is somewhat new in the ecommerce platform game, but it’s made a name for itself with its ease of use and the beautiful interface it provides. Another thing to consider is that it doesn’t take much experience to install the plugin and get started on building your store.

Therefore, small start-up businesses will find it pretty easy to get started.

Benefits of PrestaShop:

• PrestaShop has a user-friendly interface with effortless inventory management and a process for store maintenance that anyone could understand. Additionally, you can use PrestaShop’s live demo before you register so you can have a little try

• PrestaShop provides a beautiful interface for establishing different websites for multiple languages and currencies. You can also translate the back-office admin area of your website as well. PrestaShop currently offers 75 different languages.

• This is a fairly lightweight ecommerce platform so you don’t have to worry about it slowing down your site or running slowly when you design the site on your computer. as opposed to Magento.
• It has multi-vendor support similar to Open Cart if you want to run multiple stores.
• PrestaShop arguably has the best collection of themes in this entire list. On their site, they currently offer over 4,500 templates which ensure the majority of websites on the platform look different

The themes can be divided up based on a number of categories including:

• Compatibility – you can search for themes based on what version of PrestaShop you are using
• Category – find a theme based on your industry
• Style – what is your brand? Do you need a clean, minimal or baroque style website?
• Functionality – is a particular functionality important to you? Do you have lots of products? Then a mega menu might be important to you
• Developer – only want to look at themes developed by premium developers? Then you can sort based on how prestigious the development company is

Downsides of PrestaShop:

• PrestaShop isn’t as robust as other options like Magento, so the scalability isn’t quite there. You could expand into a large, international store using the software, if necessary. However, it’s really suited for small to mid-sized businesses.
• It’s not required to install any extra modules for a regular online store, but more often than not it seems like you’ll need to pay for some sort of extension and they aren’t cheap.

• The default theme provided isn’t nearly as nice looking as you would find on other open source software, such as the Storefront option supplied by WooCommerce
• PrestaShop is a little lightweight in terms of marketing tools. For instance, you can’t cross-sell products which is a criticism that is widely put to them

Gumroad

Gumroad is a suitable platform to sell digital, physical, and creative goods, though the emphasis is more on digital products and creative stuff, like photographs, writing, podcasts, and designs.

It lets you create a free eCommerce website upfront, but they charge a commission on everything that you sell, unlike the other open-source eCommerce platforms on this list.

Free plan

• Create and customize your storefront
• Sell as many products as you want
• Send out four updates each month
• Setup one automated workflow

Free plan limitations

Besides missing out on some key premium features, you’ll also pay a higher transaction fee in a free account.

Other key features

• Import email lists and rely on powerful analytics
• Sell physical product variants, track inventory, manage shipping, and restrict to countries
• Digital products sellers have a lot going – multiple versions, generate license keys, and offer discount codes
• With a simple ‘+’ sign, ask customers to pay what they wish
• Built-in abuse prevention with PDF stamping or turning off downloads
• Sell goods before they are ready and schedule future payment receipt
• Support for recurring subscriptions and membership plans that offer access to content libraries and license keys for software
• Multiple payment options and easy checkout
• Customers can create an account and keep all content in one place

Moreover, Gumroad promotes product branding with custom URLs and markets your products with customized previews for social channels like Facebook and Twitter. Thank you notes and updates in automatic workflows help you stay engaged with your customers.

Price & transaction fees

Professional features will cost you just $10 per month.

Transaction fees:

The fee on each sale for free accounts is 8.5% + $0.30 (USD) per sale.

It’s lower on premium plans at 3.5% + $0.30 (USD) per sale. There’s an additional 10% charge on first-time purchasers for sales that come through browsing Gumroad.

eCommerce platform fees

While we’re talking about pricing, it can get a little complicated with eCommerce platforms as they charge a little differently from other services. There are three kinds of fees you may have to pay for an eCommerce website builder:

• Monthly fee. This is anything from free to a few hundred dollars and goes straight to the platform. For most of the options on this list, expect to pay around $30 for a basic plan.
• Payment gateway fees. These are the fees you pay when you process a credit card charge. The normal fee is around 2.9% plus an additional $0.30, although this goes down with volume and higher upfront payments. Some platforms, like Wix and Shopify, operate their own payment gateways that you can choose to use, while others rely on Stripe, PayPal, and similar services.
• Transaction fees. These are another percentage-based fee that’s on top of any gateway fees. A lot of services bill themselves as having 0% transaction fees, but this merely means there’s no extra charge. Other services charge a 1% or 2% transaction fee if you don’t use their gateway.

Let’s give this a quick example using Shopify’s current pricing. A Basic plan costs $29/month. On top of that, you pay 2.9% + $0.30 for each transaction. There’s also a 2% transaction fee if you want to use a different payment gateway.

This means that if you were to sell 10 T-shirts at $50, you would pay Shopify $29 for your monthly plan, and $1.75 for each T-shirt sold. That’s a total of $46.50. Of course, if you had a month where you didn’t sell any T-shirts, you’d only pay $29, or if you had a great month where you sold 50, you’d pay $116.50.

Also, if you sold 10 T-shirts but decided to use Stripe’s payment gateway instead, you’d pay Shopify $39 ($29 plus $1 for each T-shirt sold) and Stripe $17.50 (2.9% + $0.30 for each T-shirt), for a total of $56.50.

As you can see, your monthly costs will vary based on what options you choose and how you run your business. We’d recommend doing a few back-of-the-envelope calculations when you’re selecting your plan and payment gateway, just to see what will work out best for you. We’ve avoided services with unreasonably high fees and transaction charges, or ridiculous volume expectations, but run some numbers to be sure.

Conclusion

Time is money, and these amazing apps will save you both. eCommerce apps let you run your store from your mobile device, and give you the opportunity to market to consumers when they’re on the go. We’ve gathered a list of great apps — for both iOS and Android — that can help boost sales, increase customer loyalty, manage inventory, track orders, and more from anywhere.

There are numerous benefits of a mobile commerce app. In today’s fast-paced world, there is no denying that people like convenient ways to shop and pay. A mobile commerce app can bring convenience to your business, as it provides a way for your customers to pay from their mobile devices. Not only that, but it also gives you an opportunity to monitor sales in real time.