Gone are the days when businesses had to spend $1,000s and hire qualified professionals to set up their online stores. Today, turnkey eCommerce solutions can help you set up your online operations with products, customizations, and even payments in less than a day. Not only do they add convenience for consumers, but they can also significantly expand reach and scale for business owners.
To get started effortlessly, an extensive range of CMS platforms and ecommerce solutions is available for businesses of all sizes, with varying levels of customizations, themes, and plugins.
Best eCommerce Platforms For Your BusinessÂ
Shopify
Shopify comes as a web application that facilitates creating an online store easily and quickly with the help of templates. You can easily customize these templates to achieve the desired style for your store without any coding skills required. It caters to small businesses and large enterprises, which means you do not need to worry about switching when your business expands.
Over 1.75 million merchants worldwide currently use Shopify to power their sales. There are hundreds of themes available for different kinds of businesses. You can choose a theme that best matches the aesthetic of your store. They are all equipped with a responsive design that ensures that your website can adapt to the device the user views your site from.
Magento
The best eCommerce platform for established businesses looking to take their sales online, Magento is used by some of the biggest brands in the world, including Procter and Gamble, Nike, and Cisco. Therefore, the service focuses on coding and is perfect for those who can afford to hire a developer to create something amazing. It comes loaded with all the capabilities you need to get a feature-rich online store.
The software can be downloaded for free, but there is also a paid version for large businesses looking for enterprise-level solutions. A great feature of Magento is the community of developers willing to answer questions or work on your website for free. You also get access to a marketplace where you can explore a variety of themes and extensions to extend the functionality of your system.
Magento partners with professionals who can help you build an online store seamlessly with your physical business. Being an open-source platform, it allows running multiple eCommerce stores with a single instance.
Also read How to build an ecommerce website from scratch
Squarespace
Squarespace is a user-friendly, simple-to-use eCommerce platform that allows users to create attractive websites without any coding knowledge.
It is a comprehensive system that gives you all you need to run and expand your business, whether it is a startup or an established brand. This platform is well-known for its world-class designs, intuitive drag-and-drop tools, and templates that let you design your site to your taste.
While many eCommerce platforms are mobile-friendly, Squarespace takes more caution to ensure users get a high-quality experience on mobile devices. Every template design comes with a unique mobile experience that matches the overall style of the store by automatically detecting the type of device being used and loading the right content for optimal viewing.
When you build your eCommerce store on Squarespace, you get access to their inventory management system. That integrates into the site to help stay on top of the inventory and notify you when you are low on stock for specific products. The platform also allows controlling different aspects of the website like managing email lists, setting up shipping configurations, and coupon offers.
Wix
Wix is another eCommerce platform that works great for those with a small selection of product offerings. It enables small businesses to create beautiful websites using its drag-and-drop editor.
You can quickly add and remove features as you find suitable for your business, creating a customized storefront for your products. Like other platforms, Wix offers several attractive themes to choose from. This means you do not need to possess design skills to build an awesome-looking website on Wix.
Wix has delivered great value to small eCommerce businesses and solopreneurs. Its features have evolved much over the years and today facilitate everything from abandoned cart recovery and multi-channel integration to print-on-demand and dropshipping.
You can choose a template and customize all the elements to your liking. As the business expands, you can add new features to improve the store.
WooCommerce
WooCommerce is a free platform that lets you run your affiliate site and eCommerce business in one. A WordPress plugin converts your website into a functional eCommerce store by adding functionalities that make it easy for people to view and purchase your products.
Like plugins for your blog, this platform has plugins for your eCommerce website. It has over 300 extensions covering shipping, payments, accounting, and marketing.
You can easily customize the storefront to your liking using your skills or with the help of developers from the community. You simply need to install it, add products, and choose settings to build a customized eCommerce store.
BigCommerce
Another powerful eCommerce platform is BigCommerce, ideal for small to large-scale businesses looking to sell their products online. This platform offers a variety of tools to help build a website for your business. You also get a chance to integrate social media channels into the site to promote and sell the products through these networks.
BigCommerce makes it easy to sell on other channels by creating storefronts on sites like eBay and Amazon. It also helps expand the business reach while creating a brand identity across platforms. This platform offers 24×7 customer support to resolve any concerns or questions users might have. You can always reach them out for expert guidance while building your website.
BigCommerce also helps manage payments easily and take care of shipping. Overall, it is a flexible system that offers a convenient way to create and monitor a website for your online store.
Volusion
This eCommerce platform has been around for about two decades and offers an all-in-one solution to help create, manage and expand your online business. It is equipped with a plethora of intuitive and handy features that enable users to easily build an online store.
Volusion offers you an easy-to-use website builder with built-in editing capabilities along with custom domains, themes, navigation styles. Other features that help deliver a pleasant shopping experience to visitors.
Once you create the website, this platform also provides an easy way to start selling. You get a comprehensive order system, appealing product pages, top-notch security, a flexible payment system, and more.
Volusion even offers you features aimed at scaling your online business. Social integrations help increase your website exposure. Powerful SEO tools allow making the pages search-engine friendly and reporting features to help gain insights about everything associated with the store.
Final Thoughts
Each eCommerce platform has its features and benefits. There is no single best platform that suits every business; it ultimately comes down to what suits you the best.
As you consider the options, look for mobile responsiveness, cost, ease of use, and scalability, among other things. To narrow down your choices and pick the right eCommerce platform for setting up your online business.