Are you a bit of a tech-head? Ecommerce is slowly making its way in as the next big thing. You must heard about ecommerce websites, certainly. But so far not every startup has the time and resources for building websites for ecommerce. It’s just not that easy to integrate 3rd-party shopping carts like Shopify to your website.
You have been driving by your neighbor’s gift shop for months now. It opened recently, and you feel like it’s time to make your own website. Maybe you’ve worked as a freelancer for some companies as a graphic designer and this is now your time to start something on your own. So you take the decision.
The Best Ecommerce Platform (also known as the BEP) is a platform that provides, ecommerce sComing up with a great ecommerce website design can be tough. To help companies build their online stores, businesses come out with new, state-of-the-art platforms all the time. Since choosing the best platform is very critical in ensuring that your business succeeds online, being informed of these different options is important.
An ecommerce platform is a website service that allows you to sell your products online. Here, we’ve created a list of ecommerce platforms that are easy to use and deliver huge results. Our best ecommerce website builder will take care of all the hard work of building your online store, managing payments, processing orders and even shipping them out! In fact, you’ll be creating your first website in just minutes.
Selection and Review Process for the Best Ecommerce Platforms
Selecting the top ecommerce platforms
In order to make our top list, each platform had to include all the fundamentals of a modern online shopping experience:
- Visual website builder: Create your online store with clicks (not code)
- Inventory management tools: Stock, tag, and categorize an unlimited number of items
- Shopping carts: Allow customers to browse and order products
- Payment gateways: Offer secure ways for customers to pay online
- Shipping tools: Arrange for pickup, delivery, or price in a third party shipper
- SEO & marketing tools: Get the word out and more traffic to your store
Our researchers focused on platforms that individuals could start using right away, without deep experience in computer languages, supply chain management, or online marketing.
On day one, someone should be able to set up their store, stock their products, market their brand, and ship orders. None of these fundamentals should require a developer or a degree.
BigCommerce — The Best for Rapid Scaling
BigCommerce
Best for Rapid Scaling
Rapid growth can make or break an online store (without the right tools running behind the scenes). But with BigCommerce, you get everything you need and the peace of mind you deserve in an ecommerce builder that scales alongside you, regardless of how fast you grow. Paid plans start at $29.95 per month.>> Get 15 Days Free!
Many ecommerce builders focus specifically on businesses that are small and brand new or already massive. However, BigCommerce focuses on online stores that are somewhere in the middle but looking to grow as fast as possible.
While the entry-level plan is more expensive than something like Wix, you get a lot more functionality and more advanced features to help you prepare your online shop for growth.
For rapid growth, the keys are automation, personalizing the customer experience, and delivering enhanced strategies to attract new customers. BigCommerce combines the powers of all three to help you scale your business as fast as possible.
These three areas are at the core of what this website builder does.
Plus, you can sell across multiple channels—like Facebook and Pinterest—pick your own payment gateway, and avoid transaction fees so you get to keep more of what you sell.
Unlike most other ecommerce website builders, BigCommerce places revenue limits on its plans. The cheapest plan caps out at $50,000 in annual revenue. So, it’s a good place to start but you’ll quickly outgrow it as your shop takes off.
The good news is that you’ll be able to afford a bigger investment once you pass the $50k mark, so it shouldn’t be a major financial burden to upgrade. The second tier caps out at $180k in annual revenue, so you’ll be able to stay on this plan until you’re making enough to justify upgrading again.
Every plan includes unlimited products and unlimited staff accounts, so you can onboard your entire team and every product in your catalog without ever needing to pay extra. You can also connect your store to powerhouse marketplaces, like Amazon and eBay.
One of BigCommerce’s standout features is a single-page checkout process that helps boost conversions.
Most of the builders on our list use a two-page checkout process, meaning potential customers have to go through more steps before completing their purchase. Reducing the number of clicks with a one-page design makes the process easier and can result in more sales.
Customers can pay also using a variety of payment methods, including Apple, Google, and Amazon Pay, making it easy to use their preferred method.
Regardless of the plan you choose, you get essential ecommerce features like discounts and coupons, enterprise-grade reporting tools, product ratings and reviews, a built-in blog, and real-time shipping quotes through various carriers.
When you’re ready for more advanced features, the software scales with you.
On higher tiers, you can take advantage of things like conversion audits, abandoned cart emails, advanced segmentation, and in-depth SEO optimization capabilities to bolster your growth even more.
You also get top-notch customer support with 85% of issues resolved on the first contact.
You can contact them any time, 24/7/365 with questions or for personalized site audits and tailored advice. There’s also a robust community-driven forum and thorough product documentation to help you along the way.
BigCommerce offers four pricing plans, including:
- Standard – $29.95 per month with a $50k annual revenue cap
- Plus – $79.95 per month with a $180k annual revenue cap
- Pro – $299.95 per month with a $400k annual revenue cap
- Enterprise – Custom pricing for those making more than $400k
There are no transaction fees on any plan, which is a boon. And you’re given a lot of room to add users and products to your growing web store.
Zyro
Best ecommerce website builder for beginners
TODAY’S BEST DEALSVISIT SITE
REASONS TO BUY
+Can sell up to 2,500 products+Doesn’t take commission from your sales+SSL certificate offered
Zyro offers users the ability to launch an ecommerce store, sell online, and benefit from omnichannel marketing tools, all via a single dashboard.
Zyro’s ecommerce plan allows you to sell up to 100 products for just $9.90 per month. The ecommerce website builder doesn’t take any commission from what you sell, making you entirely independent.
The platform offers a range of ecommerce features, including discount coupons, gift cards, and order tracking functionalities. Zyro also offers dozens of payment options, and allows you to connect with a domain that you may already own.
Zyro also offers an SSL certificate to help protect visitor user data, meaning all main internet browsers will label your website as ‘secure’. Having an SSL certificate also boosts your website’s rankings on Google.
Alongside the basic plan, Zyro also offers an ecommerce plus option for $14.90 per month that gives you access to everything the regular plan does, plus the ability to sell up to 2,500 products, giving your customers more options for an extended shopping experience.
Square Online: Best free e-commerce website builder for Square users
Square Online is an extremely user-friendly e-commerce website builder. Its Square integration is an ideal way for Square users to expand into online sales. Plus, it’s the only option on our list that offers a free subscription plan, making it one of the best free e-commerce website builders for small businesses.
If you want to launch a free Square Online store, head to your Square dashboard. From there, you can set up your store in just minutes, populate it with your existing products and conveniently manage all of your sales — in person, in store and online — in Square.
Features and benefits of Square Online
Square Online’s seamless integration with the company’s POS and in-person sales is its biggest selling point. The fact that any Square user gets a free e-commerce website with a tidy package of online selling tools is another feather in Square’s small-business services cap.
The real strength of the Square Online website builder is its seamless integration with all of Square’s selling tools. Other e-commerce website builders outperform Square Online in things like store design options, but for integrating with Square, they’re tough to beat.
Here are a few of the many things you can do with the Square Online website builder:
- Set up a complete, full-featured e-commerce website for free.
- Cleanly sync product information and inventory counts between your Square POS and Square Online store.
- Expand the features of the free Square Online store with paid plans.
- Integrate Instagram on the free and paid plans; integrate Facebook Ads on higher paid plans.
- Accept online donations alone or alongside product and service sales.
- Sell products that ship or make orders available for local delivery or customer pickup.
- Sell online and in-store services and take online bookings with prepayments or deposits.
- Offer coupon codes and sell Square gift cards.
- Accept online pickup orders for coffee shops, food trucks and other food and beverage outlets.
- Build customer lists and market to customers via built-in Square Marketing tools like targeted email, feedback and loyalty programs.
Drawbacks of Square Online
Square Online doesn’t match Shopify, Wix or Squarespace in terms of overall e-commerce features, and it will never match the expandability of WordPress. So, if you’re looking for the most robust e-commerce website builder, it falls short.
However, it’s a super-easy way for any Square user to reach their customers online. That’s its purpose, and in that role, it excels. Square Online grows, you’ll likely see more sales features and design options added to the mix.
Square Online pricing
Looking for a way to launch a full-featured e-commerce website for free? The free Square Online store is your best bet. It delivers all of the basics that you need to start selling a wide variety of products and services online.
As you grow, you can upgrade to paid plans to expand your sales and marketing features. The three paid plan options cost $16, $29 or $79 per month. You’ll save if you prepay annually, and those costs average out to $12, $26 or $72 per month.
Of course, you do have to use Square to process your payments when you choose this solution. Online payment processing fees are 2.9% plus 30 cents per transaction for the free and lower-paid plans. That drops to 2.6% plus 30 cents per transaction on the highest-paid plan.
You also get Square’s full suite of sales and business management tools, including its in-store POS system, mobile card reader, online invoicing, appointments, business reporting and employee-management tools, all at no added cost, making it one of the best free e-commerce website builders, as well as one of the top options for any Square POS user.
What We Learned Reviewing the Best Ecommerce Platforms
One thing that surprised us about the people who switched was that we didn’t hear “x is so much better than y”–it was more “x worked well for certain things, but when I started doing other things, y was definitely the way to go.” This is basically what we heard from the web developers who had experience in multiple platforms as well.
So what are the major factors to consider? How should you frame your search?
In the guidance that follows, I’ve distilled everything we learned about ecommerce platforms. Three weeks of interviews, hundreds of collective years of ecommerce experience, and thousands of lessons learned are boiled down into four key considerations.
Conclusion
When it was the shoppers themselves who had the final decision on what they wanted to buy, e-commerce website platforms did not exist. Shoppers generally were the ones in charge of where they got their products from. However, with the advent of e-commerce website platforms and retailers, this has completely changed. Nowadays, both buyers and sellers are at the mercy of these platforms, who hold many aspects of e-commerce stores in their grasp.
Don’t ignore the Curious about best ecommerce website platform? Ecommerce is growing rapidly, and so are the needs of your business, and to fulfill those needs you will need to keep up with an ecommerce advancement, while keeping up with ecommerce growth.