One of the biggest decisions you’ll need to make when setting up an e-commerce business is which platform you’ll use to create your online store. There are quite a few options when it comes to e-commerce platforms, and choosing the best one for your business will be key in giving it the best chance of success.
There are some big names in the world of e-commerce platforms so it can seem like you should pick one of those, but they might not actually be best suited to the needs of your business. Depending on the size, budget, and goals of your business – you need to make sure whichever e-commerce platform you ultimately choose will work exactly as you need it to.
By spending a bit of time now researching what is the best e-commerce platform, you can save a lot of time, effort, and money later on as changing platforms can add stress to your business. There are some very good e-commerce platforms out there that could be a great match for your business needs.
BigCommerce
BigCommerce is a useful e-commerce platform for businesses that want to sell a lot of items with multiple variations. While it’s probably too complex for small businesses, it’s well-suited to those with large inventories. For example, BigCommerce allows you to have 600 variations of each SKU. This gives you the opportunity to offer your customers a huge range of colors, sizes, shapes, designs, and other variants of each individual product.
If you have multiple people that will need access to the back-end of your store, then BigCommerce could be even more useful as it offers you unlimited user accounts. Again, for small businesses, this might be a feature that isn’t necessary. However, it’s an important one to have if you have plans for rapid growth, or if you have a few people helping you set up your business. A lot of other e-commerce platforms restrict the number of user accounts you can have so this is a big plus for BigCommerce.
A big selling point to BigCommerce is that it gives you a large amount of functionality without the need for plugins or third-party apps. Things like discount codes, price variations for bulk orders, and pretty much any other price variation you can think of can be set up directly in BigCommerce. Again, other platforms give you the opportunity to do this but it’s usually a much more complex process with plugins and apps being required.
BigCommerce is an e-commerce platform that allows you to give your customers a great deal of choice, variations, and the ability to find exactly what they want. Even things you might not have considered when creating your online store, like only showing images of the selected variant of a product, have been considered. Things like this are built-in to BigCommerce and can be achieved with relative ease. It’s these little things that can give your e-commerce business a more professional and organized appearance.
Despite having so many features built-in to the platform, there do appear to be some seemingly basic functions that will need a plugin or third-party app to be used. Things like printing shipping labels isn’t something BigCommerce can do independently.
Another potential issue with BigCommerce is that your website will only ever come across as a standard e-commerce site. The look and feel of websites created on BigCommerce can seem very rigid and templated unless you have good knowledge of the platform and can edit the design templates accordingly.
These issues can be overcome if you build up experience using the platform (or get a professional to help you), but they can be a big factor in deciding whether this is the e-commerce platform for you.
When it comes to cost, BigCommerce has a few different pricing options with each one having different benefits to you and your business. Prices vary between around $29 per month up to around $300 per month for small businesses. You can use the lower end of the price range until your sales clear $50 000. After that, you will need to move to the more expensive options to get all the features you need for that level of business.
BigCommerce could be a good choice if your e-commerce website is going to offer a large inventory and you want to give your customers lots of options to help them find what they want. It can be a little bit more challenging for business owners to use than other e-commerce platforms, but the additional benefits you get from it can make it worth the extra work.
Shopify
Shopify is not only the most popular e-commerce platform out there, it’s also one of the easiest to use. It’s very well-suited to new or small businesses that want a platform that won’t take up a whole load of time to set up, but is still able to handle a lot of sales as the business continues to grow.
As an e-commerce platform, it’s got a lot of functionality that can be highly useful to your business and you probably won’t need a professional’s help to get things up and running. You have the ability to work out the best way of building your online store as the platform teaches you how to do it as you go through the process yourself. Once you have the basic foundation of your store setup, adding products to your inventory becomes easy and you can quickly get new products added and online ready to sell.
As a standalone platform, it’s by no means the most functional though. Shopify gets around this by offering the largest e-commerce app store of any other platform out there. With close to 7000 apps and plugins that can be immediately installed on your site, you are very likely to find a plugin that allows you to do what you need to do on your website. While some of these apps and plugins come at a cost, several thousand of them are free to install and use.
Although Shopify is one of the easier e-commerce platforms to use, you can contact customer support 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. This is extremely beneficial if you have an issue that is preventing your website from performing correctly and need it resolved as soon as possible. One thing that Shopify has to help you resolve issues without the need of reaching out to anyone is their extensive knowledge base. You can find the solutions to thousands of issues or questions simply by searching through the huge collection of information.
Shopify gives you the option to sell on multiple platforms such as eBay and social media sites. A great feature that Shopify has that some other e-commerce platforms don’t, is allowing your customers to buy directly from Instagram and TikTok. This is a huge deal as so many people are influenced by what they see on social media. Giving them the option to buy a product as soon as they see it on their feed with just a few clicks can have a very positive impact on your sales.
On the flip side, there are a few issues that you might run into when using Shopify. The first one is the limited website templates. There are actually only 9 free store layouts to choose from with Shopify. While you can add your own branding to these, it can limit your creativity when it comes to showing your business in a positive light.
Another issue you could face with Shopify is the potential for added costs from plugins and third-party apps. Having multiple plugins running on your site can also slow down its performance and can add a level of difficulty for both you and your customers. There’s also a bit of a risk from plugins not working very well together which can lead to bigger website issues.
While these issues might be a problem for some, most businesses will be able to do exactly what they need to do with Shopify. With prices ranging from around $29 to around $300 per month depending on the features you want to be included, it compares well to other platforms. It’s always worth keeping in mind though, the additional cost related to those additional plugins you may need.
Wix
Wix is a very good e-commerce platform if you have a relatively small inventory and you want to be able to create a great-looking website. With more than 100 built-in templates to use as a base for your website, you can very quickly get to work creating a professional e-commerce store without too much of an issue.
One of the things that makes Wix so easy to use is the drag-and-drop feature. This allows you to edit your website by dragging any element featured on each page and dropping it anywhere you want it to be. Giving you this much creative freedom helps you make your website stand out from others rather than looking exactly like one of the built-in templates.
Wix lets you track orders and print shipping labels from inside the platform. You can even use one of the shipping service partners that Wix has to further improve your shipping process. If you only ever plan on selling a small number of products, Wix will likely be enough for you to keep track of everything.
Probably the biggest issue with Wix is that it’s not necessarily the best choice if you want to grow your business. While it can handle small inventories and a reasonable amount of orders, once things start getting big, it can quickly get overwhelmed and make your life a bit more challenging.
Wix is a very good e-commerce platform if you want to get your website up and running quickly at a relatively cheap cost. It may limit your business growth in some ways but it can help small businesses in a very big way as it’s a very user-friendly platform.
The price of Wix seems cheap compared to other e-commerce platforms but it appears you do have to be careful that you don’t get caught out by the seemingly low costs. Basic Wix plans cost somewhere between $23 and $49 per month depending on your needs. This is obviously a lot cheaper than other platforms out there. The issues tend to come when you start using plugins or additional features that aren’t always clear whether they are included in your current plan or not.
If you want to get your online store working quickly without too much time, effort, and money being needed, Wix could be a good choice for you.
SquareSpace
SqaureSpace gives you the ability to make your e-commerce website perfectly match your brand and business theme while still offering some useful features. It lets your customers purchase your products through social media and it also continues the look and feel of your social media channels on your website. This is important when it comes to brand consistency so customers know who you are as a business.
A great thing about SquareSpace is that you can easily change the design of your website without affecting functionality. With some other platforms, once you have chosen a theme for your site, you can’t change it without having to start from scratch. With SquareSpace, you can change the theme you are using as often as you like and only the look of your site will change – you won’t have to re-enter all of your product details.
SquareSpace is a great choice if you want a low-maintenance e-commerce store. Once its setup, there isn’t too much you need to do to keep the site looking as good as it needs to. With SquareSpace, you can make your website as complex or as simple as you want it to be. You get a lot of creative freedom so you can make some very impressive websites on the platform.
As with all e-commerce platforms, there are some issues that you might encounter with SquareSpace. One of them is the templates that make creating your site so easy. As much as you can edit the look of the templates to make your website meet your brand, you’re somewhat limited in how much you can change the layout. While it is possible to make big changes to templates, you’ll probably need the help of a professional to do so.
It might also be difficult to manage anything other than a small inventory and low order numbers with SquareSpace. As soon as you get to anything more than a few hundred orders, you’ll likely need additional functionality that SquareSpace might not be able to offer.
Pricing ranges from around $14 per month up to around $50 per month depending on which features you want to be included in your plan. At these prices, SquareSpace could be a great choice for small businesses that are just starting out. This e-commerce platform can be a useful starting point for making a professional-looking e-commerce business without having to spend a lot of money.
