Are you curious about web design software and what it could do for your business? There’s a lot of good information out there. Some of it is confusing, some gets a little technical, and some doesn’t really feel like it’s talking to the people using the software. I used to work at an ecommerce software company, so here’s my no-BS hints on what to look for when beginning to evaluate your own needs. Here’s what you need to know about best professional web design software.
While the internet continues to grow, so does the competition. It’s very difficult to stand out in this day and age and make an impression in your customers mind. A few years ago you could just create a website, put it on a hosting platform and generate traffic. However, with all of the opinions, ads and other noise that people subscribe to on a daily basis, it’s making it harder for business owners to find their target markets. And now we’re seeing more and more businesses that have been operating for years close up shop due to their inability to maintain profit levels.
Ecommerce is among the fastest growing industries in the world. If you’re an entrepreneur looking to build and launch your own ecommerce platform, then it becomes necessary for you to have a complete understanding of best web design software for ecommerce.
Online store design software is a vital tool for every online retailer that lets you design an attractive and user-friendly website. Choosing the right ecommerce web design software can be quite challenging.
Why You Need The Best Web Design Software?
Due to common misconceptions about web design, many beginners feel that it would take them years to make decent and professional website designs.
While it’s true that you get better overtime, the right web design software can help you easily create beautiful designs with minimal skills.
That’s because some web design software automate the entire process which allows even absolute beginners to create beautiful websites.
Let’s take a look at some of the best web design software that will help you design like an expert web designer.
Squarespace
- Pricing starts at $18 per month (when paid annually) if you want to build an ecommerce store on Squarespace; the cheaper plans are for normal websites only
- What is it: Hosted ecommerce solution
- Sell: Physical and digital products, services, and dropshipping
- Features: 9/10
- Ease of use: 10/10
- Designs: 10/10
Squarespace has made a name for itself being arguably the easiest to use website building platform of them all. It’s also an all-in-one kind of platform. This means that it will serve all your website needs, no matter what they might be.
You can use Squarespace to build a blog, a business website, a podcast website, and, yes, an ecommerce website as well. And not just any ecommerce website, but a highly optimized one that lets you sell products effectively while taking advantage of helper tools like advanced analytics, merchandising tools, and integrations with Instagram for selling products.
The Squarespace experience starts during the signup, when you’ll be asked a couple of questions about your site’s purpose, plus what you want to sell and how.
For instance, Squarespace lets you sell standard products, digital downloads, offer services, book appointments, sell memberships, and more.
Design-wise, Squarespace is THE king when it comes to template quality and versatility. You’ll find optimized design templates for any website purpose or type of ecommerce store. Then, you’ll be able to customize that template to your liking using Squarespace’s visual drag-and-drop builder.
Pricing
Squarespace prices start from $12 per month. However, that plan doesn’t allow you to sell anything through the website directly – read: no ecommerce. To be able to set up an online store, you’ll have to pick the $18 per month plan or higher.
On that $18 plan, you get unlimited bandwidth and storage, a free domain name for the first year, unlimited contributor (staff) accounts, advanced website and ecommerce analytics, and you can sell unlimited products and get unlimited orders.
There are only two apparent shortcomings in Squarespace’s offer. The first one is the customer support situation. You can only get customer support via email and live chat between Monday-Friday, 4AM-8PM EST. The second is that on the $18 plan, Squarespace charges a 3% transaction fee on top of the standard credit card fees. If you want 0% fees, you’ll need to get the $26 per month plan.
Note; the Squarespace prices we’re referring to apply if you pay annually. If you want to pay month-to-month, the price goes up by roughly 30%.
Here are some highlights from Squarespace’s feature list:
- Sell anything imaginable (products, services, events, subscriptions, appointments, donations, etc.)
- All websites optimized for mobile
- Point of sale
- Free custom domain name included
- Powerful stats and analytics for your entire site and ecommerce
- Gift cards
- Customer accounts
- Unlimited contributor accounts
- One Google Workspace account included free for the first year
- Advanced customizations with CSS and JavaScript
- Instagram integration
- Abandoned cart recovery
- SEO features
Why use Squarespace?
Squarespace is your choice for best ecommerce software if you value ease of use, want to start right away and be able to do everything by yourself.
The website templates offered by Squarespace are beautiful and follow modern design trends, which means that you also don’t have to worry about picking something outdated and making your site obsolete from the get-go.
If you want to, Squarespace also offers POS tools to sell from your storefront, which gives you opportunities for growth without changing your ecommerce software.
Shopify
Shopify is the best platform at selling. If you plan to dropship, rely on Facebook Ads or Instagram marketing – this is the best choice. I wouldn’t use Shopify if I was going to rely on SEO. I also wouldn’t use Shopify if I were creating a large store with many products. I’d use BigCommerce instead.
Shopify is slightly better in several areas over BigCommerce such as post-purchase 1-click upsells – but far behind in terms of performance. I’ve used Shopify on my site before and have worked with many Shopify sites in the past, but I like WordPress better because I have an affiliate revenue model in addition to products.
It’s easy to set up the online store with Shopify’s drag and drop interface. Most beginners to website development can get the hang of it in a few minutes.
They also have the Shopify POS for simple brick and mortar stores looking to take payments via the mobile app. Complex stores can use it as well.
Like everything else, they have downsides. The not-too-bad one is that they have just 10 free themes right now. The paid themes hover around $100 to $180.
The big disadvantage they have is SEO. Weak ranking performance highlights one of my concerns with their SEO.
Also, they have a rigid URL structure; you cannot change sections of it. I’ve seen many strange unstructured URLs in Shopify sites well beyond the /products/, /pages/, and /collections/ slug restrictions. I also noticed during our research that websites using Shopify have weak ranking. In terms of SEO, Shopify is very middle of the pack at best.
Finally, they charge transaction fees if you are not using Shopify Payments. And no one likes those. Then again, Shopify Payments is a solid option.
Pros
- Lighting fast load time
- Super easy to set up
- Lots of certified partners to help you
- 1-Click selling
- Allows multiple channel and social selling
- Great themes with varied designs
Cons
- Rated poorly in SEO in consecutive studies.
- Unable to customize the checkout process
- Apps can add up and become costly
- Need a developer for advanced features
Wix
Wix ecommerce has come a long way in a few years. When I first started writing ecommerce platform reviews in 2017, Wix wasn’t even on my list. Once they got added to my list, I gave them a really poor rating and would not recommend them.
Now, Wix is a major force in the ecommerce space and they deliver amazing value for solorprenuers and small ecommerce businesses. Wix’s ecommerce features have evolved drastically in a few years, they now offer multi channel integration, abandoned cart recovery, dropship and print on demand capabilities.
In previous years, they’ve had significant issues with SEO. Few were resolved; some, like the short extra string to the URLs of blog posts and product pages still remain. That’s not ideal for SEO, especially for large ecommerce businesses.
As you grow, you might need to switch because aside from the limited features, the storage space is 20GB and if you are dealing with lots of heavy digital products or other materials, that space might not do.
It’s beginner friendly. Of all the top website builders that I’ve dealt with, Wix topped most for on-page customer support while creating the store.
You can drag and drop elements to add cool videos, functionality, and create the website you want. They have over 500 themes of which 72 are free. Unfortunately, you’re stuck with whatever theme you chose at the time of publishing your site except if you used their ADI.
Pros
- Tons of free amazing themes.
- Really simple to use and set up
- On-page support for numerous needs
- 72 free themes
Cons
- Trying hard to fight a bad SEO reputation. Made improvements, but tested very poorly.
- Many sites were not secured
- Lacks upselling features and advanced automation
- Difficult to fully customize template
BigCommerce
When you want off-site hosting and enjoy the flexibility of a drag-and-drop editor, options like BigCommerce or a similar SaaS ecommerce platform are ideal. Hosted ecommerce stores are faster at resolving technical issues (like a rush in ecommerce sales or server problem) that could cause your page to crash and costing sales. Easy to set up without tech expertise, feature-loaded, and readily scalable. The only drawback is that the monthly fees can be steep for this type of ecommerce tool.
Shift4Shop
Since its release to the public in 2001, 3dcart (now Shift4Shop) has served over 22,000 online businesses with clientele including PCMag. They have some practical features like unlimited storage and no transaction fees. You can also use their POS, and they support multi-channel selling. In 2021, the company rebranded as Shift4Shop.
Shift4Shop doesn’t do as well as BigCommerce and Shopify despite being older than they are and the reason is clear. It’s not for beginners. Although there is a nice onboarding video when you log into your dashboard, the whole operation is hard to figure out; the builder is not very visually appealing.
The templates they have are more industrial, but they feel outdated. Also, customizing the store takes a lot of time to understand and get used to except for experienced users because there’s no drag-and-drop functionality. Fortunately, there’s a community of developers willing to assist with theme development and other modifications.
I think one of their strongest points is in shipping; they provide advanced shipping solutions with no API required.
Similar to BigCommerce, Shift4Shop restricts the volume of sales you bring in on each plan. The lowest which costs $19 per month allows up to 50k.
The value overall is great. I still think it’s missing out by not offering abandoned cart saver as a core feature. Shopify made a move to make it included – really undercutting the competition. Nevertheless, it still has more features out of the box than Shopify.
Pros
- Better blog feature than other SaaS ecommerce
- Supports all the integrations you would need
- Great business user management tools (email, QuickBooks, inventory, etc.)
Cons
- Templates are inline with trends, but never at the cutting edge
- Negative feedback on customer support
- Potential issues upgrading
- Not for beginners
How to Choose the Best Web Design Software
When making a decision, you’ll need to consider the factors that matter to you and your business.
When you choose platforms like WordPress that offer more flexibility and customization options, it also means there’s a learning curve. But once you use the software for a while, it becomes easy to use and is a better option for when your website grows.
Conclusion
Creating a professional online store for your business is not an easy task. Considering the technical requirements, you need to examine various factors before choosing the best ecommerce website builder software. Technology has changed so rapidly that the term “web design” has evolved from simple static pages to complex interactive applications. And professional ecommerce software made it easier for you to create a powerful and professional online presence for your business.
The best ecommerce software is the one that has both powerful features and is easy to use. You probably want to spend less time on setting up your online store and more time on doing business.