The eCommerce platform you choose to power your online shop is extremely important. Your choice will influence your ability to manage the product inventory, to add new products, to update prices, to run promotions, and to provide your clients with advanced features such as 3D product views, zoom in facilities, and one-click checkout.
These are only a few of the things you should consider before making your purchase. Other factors that may influence your experience with the product include but aren’t limited to the ability to import product feeds, the integration with the major payment processor suppliers, the SEO friendliness, the security, the scalability, and the mobile friendliness.
The price of the eCommerce platform is also important, as you need to make sure you’re going to be able to afford it in the long run.
Keep in mind that switching to a new eCommerce solution in the future may be a cumbersome endeavor, particularly if you wish to keep your website live while implementing the change.
This article takes a closer look at the different eCommerce solutions available today, in order for you to find the best one for your business.
- BigCommerce
Big Commerce is a robust and secure solution that doesn’t compromise on security, scalability or stability. Effective, versatile and fully customizable, this eCommerce platform enables you to deliver a seamless commerce experience to your customers.
The storefront design features allow for easy layout and checkout customization, mobile optimization, and WordPress integration. Thanks to the Stencil CLI tool, you’ll be able to develop, test and preview changes in a local environment, thus eliminating downtime.
The storefront conversion tools allow the creation and implementation of coupons and discounts, custom product recommendations, digital wallets, SEO-friendly URLs, and faceted search with custom field support for narrowing down the search results.
The cross-channel commerce capabilities of Big Commerce are nothing short of impressive. It provides integration with major marketplaces such as Google shopping, Amazon and eBay, as well as with Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest. Also, the platform allows you to automatically update in-store sales with native POS systems.
B2B and international commerce facilities are also available. You can try BigCommerce free for 15 days before picking a plan.
Pros
- Professional and high-converting predefined online store themes
- Highly customizable platform that allows code-free updates, as well as professional developer work
- State-of-the-art security and 99.99% average uptime, thanks to the top-notch eCommerce hosted solution
- Easy product import and store migration, thanks to the API-based software
- Optimized for conversion
Cons
- The price is on the expensive side, with customer segmentation not available in the basic package
- API support with unlimited calls available only in the most expensive option.
- Shopify
Shopify is another popular eCommerce platform you can use to bring your business online. This user-friendly solution makes it easy to build and manage an online store.
Thanks to the 70+ professional themes, you can customize your storefront to suit the needs of your business and to match your main branding elements. All templates come with intuitive settings, hence being very easy to adjust and customize. HTML and CSS editing is also possible, so you can work with a web developer to fine tune your online shop as you wish.
The shopping cart comes with free SSL certificate included, as well as with 100 payment gateways integration, abandoned checkout recovery, automatic carrier shipping rates, automatic taxes, and multiple languages.
The store management features offered by Shopify include customer accounts and profiles, fulfillment centers, dropshipping, refunds, and custom email templates.
The platform supports SEO best practices, social media integration and product reviews. In addition, you can benefit from Google Ads credits to use for your SEM campaigns.
Pros
- Fully customizable storefront, thanks to the 70+ themes and web-based website builder
- Advanced shopping cart solution featuring integration with 100 payment gateways, secure payments, abandoned cart recovery, flexible shipping rates and automatic taxes
- Mobile app that’s fully synced with the associated online store
- API support
- Associated app store synced with the website
Cons
- Additional transaction fees for using third party payment gateways
- Professional reporting only available in the expensive packages
- Reviews and ratings require the installation of an additional app
Magento is synonymous with eCommerce. It has been around since many years now, powering some of the largest online stores in the world.
Magento is extremely flexible and easily scalable. You can add any feature you may think about. This is why so many fast growing businesses choose it.
The biggest challenge of using Magento for your online store is that you need either to have good web developing skills or to hire a web developer to help you. This is not a solution for people with no coding skills. Even tweaking the layout of the storefront can be a cumbersome experience to anyone who has no technical skills. Otherwise, the software is powerful, solid and secure, being therefore a solution to rely on no matter what.
Pros
- Extremely powerful solution, with excellent catalog management and site management features
- Private sales are possible
- Excellent site security and third-party integration opportunities
Cons
- Requires coding skills
- Cumbersome to learn
Building an online store with Squarespace can prove to be one of the best ways to bring your business online. This platform has everything needed for you to power your online store, regardless of the type of products or services you want to sell.
Squarespace features exquisite storefront templates. It helps creating professional looking, extremely polished websites that load fast and offer users a seamless browsing and shopping experience.
All templates are SEO-optimizewd and mobile-friendly. The sales and marketing features are up to par with the ones offered by very expensive eCommerce solutions.
If great design is one of your top priorities, this platform could be the one you need to power your online store.
Pros
- Extremely beautiful templates, featuring sleek design and modern elements
- Great page loading speed
- Easy to install and to use
- Excellent product inventory system and tracking tools
Cons
- It requires time to learn it
- There isn’t an associated app store, and there’s no way you can add one
3dcart is a platform that allows the building of various types of websites such as dropshipping, print-on-demand, furniture, apparel, electronics, arts and crafts, subscriptions, downloadable ebooks, and event tickets, among many others.
All core themes of the platform use responsive web design, for a seamless mobile browsing experience. All these layouts are optimized for a business website, in order to comply with the best eCommerce practices such as hero units, balanced whitespace amounts, and prominent calls to action. SEO optimization is good. All pages created with 3dcart are fast, being therefore in line with Google’s best practices.
Thanks to the shop builder, you can easily have an online shop up and running and start adding products right away. Also, customizing invoices and invoice terms is pretty straightforward. If you don’t like any of the 50 free templates, you can buy a premium one.
3dcart integrates with 100 payment gateways, and it doesn’t charge any transaction fees.
Pros
- Mobile responsive and SEO optimized themes that are easy to customize
- Intuitive website builder and step-by-step wizard that makes it easy to create an online store
- Multiple payment processing integrations, with no transaction fees
- Competitive pricing
Cons
- Limited design and additional features implementation options
- Advanced features available only on pricey plans
WooCommerce is one of the most popular open source eCommerce solutions. It is affordable, it gets regular updates, and it comes with extensive documentation and customer support.
This platform allows you to list your products on Google shopping and to sell on social media networks such as Facebook. The MailChimp integration is excellent for emailing customers about new offers and special promotions.
WooCommerce comes with translation into 24 languages, hence being one of the best solutions to sell to a global market. It supports prices in multiple currencies.
Affordable and scalable, this software is open source. This means that you have complete ownership over your store. Its REST API allows you to integrate your store with any third party service or app.
The WooCommerce blocks allow you to display and select your products in a modular way. You can define hand-picked products and any other groups you may wish, and showcase them on your website with ease.
Pros
- Free, open source solution that allows you to start an online business on a budget
- REST API solution that allows the easy integration with a wide array of third-party apps
- Frequent updates and excellent documentation
- Easily scalable
- Translation in 24 languages, with associated currencies for global selling
Cons
- Website speed and server uptime depend on your webhosting plan
- Scaling up requires upgrading your hosting package, so you have to ensure this is possible when you choose your webhost.
Volusion is free to try for 14 days, without the need for adding your credit card. It features a series of responsive themes and a solid site builder. This makes it easy to create a good looking and unique store without any coding knowledge.
The eCommerce features include inventory management, payment collection, and unlimited product options. It provides CSV products import, variant pricing, as well as rich text product descriptions.
Adding advanced functionality to your online store is easy, thanks to multiple apps and integrations. You can integrate with PayPal, Stripe, Amazon, FedEx, and many others. The social media selling tools will enable you to sell your products online, on Facebook or on other networks.
Marketing your Volusion-powered business is easy, thanks to the built-in SEO management, newsletters, and CRM system.
Pros
- Very easy to use and intuitive setup
- Low pricing
- Unlimited products
- Unlimited file storage
Cons
- Abandoned cart details not available on the basic plan
- Transaction fees
If you want an online store but you want to keep things simple, Weebly may be exactly what you need. Even though it isn’t as good as other eCommerce platforms, Weebly offers a good selection of storefront themes, thus allowing you to build a fairly good looking and a very effective website to sell your products or services.
Weebly suits small to medium-sized online businesses and it is very easy to setup and run. If you only have a handful of products, you can put them up for sale online quickly with Weebly.
If you don’t want to spend money, you can use Weebly for free, but this version of the platform comes with embedded ads that may not be the best to display alongside your own products.
Pros
- Easy to setup and start selling
- Support for physical goods, and digital products
- Shipping and tax calculator included
- Good SEO right off the bat
- Flexible cart function
Cons
- Only online payment accepted
- Limited design options
Prestashop is one of the oldest and most reliable eCommerce systems available today. Offering a great looking user interface, excellent third-party extension market and exhaustive documentation, it is a tool that allows you to build a powerful online store.
Although this shopping cart is open source software, it requires purchasing several add-ons to make it truly flexible and versatile.
Prestashop comes with a ‘What You See Is What You Get’ editor, so there’s no need for coding skills to customize your online store. Nevertheless, you may need to hire a web developer to make the most out of your eCommerce platform.
Pros
- Very old and reliable open source eCommerce platform
- A wide array of third-party add-ons to add functionality and to make the online store more flexible and better suited to the needs of your customers
- Excellent customer support
Cons
- Some modules may not be compatible with each other
- Adding third-party modules may increase a lot the cost of setting up a solid online store
As you can see, there are enough eComemrce platforms out there to suit any kind of business and any types of products or services. In order to make the right choice, you have to assess your business and to determine your real needs. If you only want to sell a few items but you need an exquisite presentation, you may want to choose Squarespace. If you have thousands of products to sell, you may need something more complex such as Magento, BigCommerce or Prestashop. If you don’t want to hire a web developer, you should use a platform that includes a template builder. Once you set your priorities and you define your needs, the ideal choice will become obvious.