If you are thinking of selling off your old products on the internet, you will need an ecommerce platform. There are various platforms available online which can make it hard to decide on one. E-commerce software list can help you in this process as well.
An e-commerce business allows you to run a business online. It usually involves the selling of goods and services worldwide. The large marketing methods needed in this field, and large distribution systems involving many third party companies are what people identify with e commerce. The latter is also supported by various e-commerce software packages that help you gain customer satisfaction to drive sales and revenue to your company
Whether you’re starting your first store or taking your business to the next level with a professional, Best Ecommerce Software for Computers can help make your site more user-friendly and more appealing to customers.
Finding the best ecommerce platform to scale your store isn’t easy. There’s a lot to consider when choosing the right software. Get the wrong solution and you’ll be dealing with the consequences for years to come, that’s why we offer free demos – so you can see exactly how it works before making a decision.
What Are the Best Ecommerce Platforms?
Ecommerce platforms are robust, full-featured software tools to sell products online. When choosing from the best options, there are many considerations, and each ecommerce website builder provides different features.
For example, your needs will be different if you’re selling three products vs. 100. Or if you want to do dropshipping rather than your own shipping and fulfillment.
Ultimately, ecommerce software should let you add your products quickly, offer coupons and discounts, and automatically track inventory. They should also help manage shipping and fulfillment so that you can focus on running your business.
Shopify (Web, iOS, Android)
Shopify has been around for more than 15 years—with more than two million stores built using the platform—and it’s hard to find a better option for most small businesses looking to get an online store up and running quickly.
Sign up for a credit card-free 14-day trial, and within a few minutes, you can have a first build of your store ready to go. The onboarding wizard walks you through adding your products, customizing the look of your store, connecting your own domain, and getting set up to take those all-important payments.
Even if you’ve never built a website before, you’re unlikely to get lost in Shopify’s intuitive web app. Adding a product, for example, is as simple as clicking Products in the sidebar and then the Add Products button. Fill in the name, price, quantity you have on hand, and any other relevant details, change its status to Active, and it’s straight in your online store and ready to be sold.
While Shopify ticks most boxes right out of the gate, its extensibility and app store are what really make it such a powerful option. Take the theme situation: Shopify has 10 free themes and more than 50 paid themes starting from $140. To browse them, go to Themes, and then, under Theme Library, click Visit Theme Store. Not a bad selection, right?
But because Shopify is so popular, you can also find more than 1,300 themes available on ThemeForest or get a professional designer who is already experienced with the platform to make you a custom one.
It’s the same with almost any feature you could want. If it’s not built in to Shopify, you can find an extension, plug-in, or service that does it in the app store. Just go to apps.shopify.com, find the app you need, and click Add App. Head back to your Shopify dashboard and click Apps in the sidebar to manage all the ones you’ve installed.
It should be no surprise that Shopify integrates with Zapier, so if you want to automatically add new customers to your email marketing list, track orders with a project management tool, or connect Shopify to any of the other apps you use, you can do it easily.
Shopify Price: Free for 14 days; from $29/month and 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction for Basic Shopify plan with unlimited products
Square (Web, iOS, Android)
If you want the option to sell in-person, like at a farmer’s market or craft fair, as well as through your online store, Square is the best choice. Your online and offline orders are all organized under a single dashboard, so there’s no jumping between apps, trying to track down customer details using random spreadsheets, or having to enter things manually after the fact.
Square bought the website builder app Weebly in 2018, so when you set up your store, that’s what’s running under the hood. If you occasionally see a URL direct to weebly.com, it’s nothing to worry about. (Note: we noticed fewer Weebly URLs popping up in the most recent review.)
Square has some of the best onboarding around. When you sign up, you have to fill in a quick questionnaire about your business and its needs. You’ve got the option to set up a single booking page, a full online store, or simple checkout links, depending on what you’re looking for. The default theme will also be tweaked to match the business category you chose.
In terms of storefront customization, Square is a little more limited than some of the other options. Instead of picking a theme that does most of the work, with Square you have to make your own design using the (admittedly excellent) site builder—or you can hire a designer from $99 to do it for you.
From the Square Dashboard, click Online then click Website > Edit Site to get started. In the sidebar on the left, you can select the different page elements, or you can just click on them directly. For more options, click the three little dots. You can change the colors, fonts, and layout of everything individually and, of course, upload your own images. It works well, but it is a bit constrained.
You can create “items,” what Square calls products or services for sale, through both the regular Square Dashboard and the Square Online Dashboard, and they’ll be synced to a common Item Library. This means that you can sell the same products both online and off, or have some things you just list in one location. Just go to Items > Item Library, and click Create an Item.
When you want to make an in-person sale, open up the menu and select Virtual Terminal, which acts just like a digital cash register. If you have a Square credit card reader (available for free), you can swipe your customers’ cards for a 2.6% + $0.10 fee from Square, and their details will automatically upload to your account. Otherwise, you can type in your customers’ credit card information for a 3.5% + $0.15 fee per charge. Online, Square’s charges are similar. On the free plan, you’re charged 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction.
Square also integrates with Zapier, so you can connect it to thousands of other apps to do things like post your in-person transactions to a Slack channel for the rest of the team to see or record the details using Airtable.
Square Price: Free with 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction for unlimited products and a Square branded site; from $12/month billed annually with 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction to use a custom domain and remove ads.
Zyro – the Cheapest Base Plan
Zyro Pros
+ Cheapest starting plan ($8.01/mo)
+ No transaction fees
+ 70+ payment gateways
+ 11 free themes
+ Free domain for 1st year
+ Free Unsplash image library
+ 30-day money-back guarantee
Zyro Cons
– 100 product limit with the cheapest plan
– Weak support experience
– No free trial
Zyro was just founded last year, and they came out of the gate fresh and with new ideas for a simplistic eCommerce platform. Their plans are quite cheap, starting from $8.01/month (with a 3-year commitment) and having some state-of-the-art AI integrations to help you build an online store.
You can choose between 11 free mobile-optimized storefront themes, which you can modify in a handy grid setup with drag and drop functionality. You can add physical and digital products, but they don’t support subscription selling at this point. You’re also limited to 100 products with the cheapest plan, which upgrades to unlimited with the next tier.
The other main features are a live chat plugin that comes as a default, custom discount codes, and gift cards. The abandoned cart recovery feature and integrations with Facebook and Instagram are available with the higher-tier Plus plan. US customers can also benefit from a default integration with Amazon.
Payment Options
Building your online store with Zyro allows you to accept payments from the major credit card companies VISA, MasterCard, Discover, and AMEX. You can also add a variety of 3rd party payment applications such as PayPal, Stripe, and Square, to name a few. In total, you get access to over 70 supported payment gateways, which is quite impressive.
Online Store Management and Reports
Starting from the cheapest plan, you get access to a simplistic interface for all of your inventory, shipping, and tax management. You can set up your product pages with an intuitive drag and drop function, set shipping options, and create custom tax rules for your products.
Your online store with Zyro is easily integrated with Google Analytics to track basic website metrics and has a built-in remarketing application. You also have a complete overview of order tracking and invoicing. Yet, in all that simplicity, when your online store grows, you might want to have more data and analytics options.
Customer Support
Zyro’s customer support is available 24/7 over email and live chat. The live chat option becomes available after you sign up. Even though you can email them 24/7, don’t expect a quick response. Our inquiry received an answer about 16 hours later when we reached out. But, when we got in touch through live chat, we got a reply much faster.
Zyro also has an extensive help center.
Pricing
The cheapest online store compatible plan starts from $8.01/month with a 3-year commitment. You can also choose an annual or a monthly payment plan with higher prices. All plans come with a free domain for the first year. You also get free access to Unsplash’s image library, which is a great addition.
What’s even better is Zyro’s no-commission policy, which means they don’t charge you on transactions. However, credit card processor fees will still apply to every plan.
eCommerce plan: starts at $8.01/month (renews to $15.90/month)
- 11 free themes
- 100 product limit
- Live chat plugin
- Discount codes and gift cards
eCommerce “+” plan: starts at $14.31/month (renews to $25.90/month)
- Everything in the eCommerce plan
- Unlimited products
- Abandoned cart recovery
- Multi-language store option
- Integration with Facebook, Instagram, and Amazon
The most significant limitation of the cheapest plan is the 100 product cap. You are also missing out on some great features that come with the eCommerce “+” plan. We recommend going with the higher-tier plan straight from the beginning as there isn’t a huge price gap between the two.
Zyro doesn’t offer a free trial option, but you can cancel your subscription within 30 days for a full refund.
WooCommerce
WooCommerce is the best single platform to run ecommerce and affiliate site under one roof. But the true ecommerce platforms like BigCommerce and Shopify sell better, but not by much.
It works with WordPress to turn any website into a functional ecommerce store. Also, there are extensions available for integrating payment gateways, social media, email marketing, 1-click selling, and shipping.
The biggest problem though is not the setup; that can be solved with YouTube tutorials. The problem is scalability. Most users have reported it slowing down as they get more products and customers.
For cost, it is free. Few extensions have prices attached to them, and some WordPress themes are expensive. However, you might not need those extensions, and there are good free themes.
If you are familiar with the WordPress platform, then WooCommerce is a breeze for you. You only have to install it, add your own products and fix your settings.
People who aren’t familiar with WordPress will struggle with the technical details. That includes buying hosting, installing WordPress, setting up your theme and plugins.
Pros
- WordPress is the best platform for SEO
- 1 Click selling app available
- Lots of WordPress experts available
- Highly customizable
- Many marketing options and plenty of other integrations
Cons
- Good hosting can be pricey
- Have to deal with blame game for troubleshooting.
- Virtually zero support
- You need extensions for simple stuff
If you want to use WooCommerce, but need a bit of help on the hosting side, Nexcess StoreBuilder is an option. We cover it in more detail in our section on other builders to consider.
Why Your E-Commerce Site Needs to Be Scalable
If you’re not yet familiar with the term “scalability,” it’s one you’ll want to get to know. In business, you might refer to scalability as the capacity to respond to market demands. Alternatively, in the tech sphere, it often means the ability to adapt quickly to changes without disruptions.
When it comes to e-commerce, in particular, we can put these two definitions together to approach a more precise understanding. If your e-commerce site is highly scalable, it can respond to market demands with increased technical capacity, without disrupting the user experience.
In other words, you need an online store that can keep up, whether you make only a few sales per day or hundreds. There are several reasons why scalability is essential to e-commerce. A few to keep in mind include:
- Increased demands. You’ll need to be ready to adjust to holiday or seasonal spikes in sales, just to name a few examples.
- New trends. It’s important to have built-in flexibility so you can capitalize on new consumer trends.
- Recent innovations. A setup that can respond quickly to changes in technology is less likely to go out of date.
E-commerce sales are projected to reach 17.5% of all global retail sales by 2021. So no matter what your products or services might be, building a scalable e-commerce solution should pay off in both the short and long term.
Conclusion
Do you know about the best ecommerce software for computers? Computer equipment is needed for running any eCommerce shop, whether it’s an online based super store with numerous physical shops as well or a simple home-based business that runs through the internet only. The e-Commerce business is one of the most rapidly growing businesses out there, and if you want to be involved in this business, then you need to know what are the best e-commerce platforms available today.
If your business sells products or services via a website, then it needs an eCommerce platform. The best eCommerce platform is the software that enables you to sell online, it could be a shopping cart on your desktop website or a web app for online shops.