Digital commerce is a key way for businesses to grow their customer base and sell their most important goods and services. Online platforms give you the tools to build not only a website but also an online store, which helps people find your products and learn more about your brand.
These platforms have a strong mobile and social presence and take advantage of new technologies and ways to communicate. To get the most out of ecommerce, you need to use platforms that fit the needs of your business model. There are so many to choose from, but the five listed here are the best ones for companies that want to improve their digital marketing and sales.
1. Shopify
Shopify might be the most popular and effective eCommerce platform out there, and you probably already know about it.
Shopify is the most complete and full-featured platform out there. Millions of merchants in 170 countries use it. It also makes up 10% of all U.S. ecommerce and is responsible for $444 billion worth of economic activity around the world.
Shopify has a lot of tools to help you run your store. For example, you can:
- You can sell goods and services in person and online.
- Sync with social networks like Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest, as well as online stores like Amazon.
- Use more than 100 different payment gateways, such as Shopify Payments and Google Pay.
- Its built-in abandoned cart recovery lets you finish sales that you didn’t finish.
- Customers should be given discount codes
- Get SEO support
- Use the online invoice maker on Shopify to keep track of payments.
Shopify doesn’t just make it easy to run an online store; it also makes it fun. For your checkout, you can change things like logos, brand colours, and fonts.
You can drop-ship, sell downloads, and sell anything else your heart desires. Shopify has different price levels, with the most basic starting at $34. Shopify might be the best place to start for companies or digital marketers who want to get into eCommerce.
2. Wix Platform Wix
Wix used to be a drag-and-drop website builder, but now it is a good place to create online stores. It’s not as flexible as Shopify because you can’t sell on different channels without apps and there’s no way to recover items left in a shopping cart. As a website that can be used for ecommerce but isn’t made just for that, it doesn’t have the same number of options.
But you can see how your storefront will look because you can drag and drop things. Also, your online store is set up to work well on mobile devices, which makes it easier for people to find what they want and buy it. The prices are also reasonable, with the ecommerce plan costing about $27 a month.
You get support by phone, email, and social media. You also have access to a forum and a deep knowledge base. You also get help while building your store right on the page. This makes it perfect for small businesses or people who want to start their own business.
With its highly customizable features that let you see how your storefront will look to customers as you make changes, you have full control over which features are most visible. You can add videos of your products, use lead capture forms, and use Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificates to keep your site safe. With this certification, you can reassure your customers that their information is safe when they give you their information when they buy a product.
You can add apps like Wix Stores and Ecwid to your eCommerce site to make it as useful as possible. Ecwid lets you sell products on Instagram and Facebook, and Wix Stores lets you send automatic confirmation emails to customers and make discounts. You can manage your website on the go and get good value for your money as you learn how to build a site and run a business at the same time.
3.BigCommerce site
BigCommerce is the best fit for large businesses that are growing quickly. It is a hosted ecommerce platform that works both as a full SaaS solution and as a shopping cart for other types of websites. Because of this, many people compare it to Shopify.
This platform makes it easy to run a store. It has a lot of tools and features, such as promotions, ways to handle returns, discounts, coupons, and more. BigCommerce also has a variety of shipping options with live quotes and rate calculators for customers.
It has a number of well-known clients, like the shoe company Clarks and the ice cream company Ben & Jerry’s. Big companies trust BigCommerce because it has features like email marketing, search filters, and the ability for customers to sign up and leave reviews.
Everything you need for your ecommerce website to be successful is already there. This makes it more likely that your online store will grow into a big business. All of this is possible with plans that start at $29.95. But you may have to work around some problems. For one thing, it doesn’t have a mobile app, and its interface isn’t the easiest to use.
As soon as you set up your store, you can start selling, and the analytics report on the platform will let you know how well your products are doing. There is a store overview report, a real-time report, a customer report, a report on carts that were left empty, and a report on merchandising. There are no transaction fees for more than 65 different ways to process payments. You also have complete control over how the URL looks, and there are many templates to choose from.
This is a great way to start a business if you know a lot about business or technology.
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4. Weebly
Weebly is one of the best eCommerce sites in terms of value for money. It has four price plans that are all made for ecommerce and include things like Google Ads credits and email marketing.
Your business will tell you what the best plan is. With its basic plan, you can sell up to 10 items. Using the business plan, you can sell as many items as you want without worrying about transaction fees. Only the most expensive plan, the Performance Plan, has features like recovering shopping carts that have been left behind, gift cards, and real-time shopping rates.
Weebly lets you sell digital, physical, and service-based goods. To keep track of your stock, you can use built-in tools to upload items in bulk. There is also a mobile app that lets you manage your online store while you’re on the go. You can even print shipping labels from your phone. Weebly also gives you a blog and a portfolio for your store, so you can interact with customers and show them the best parts of your business and products.
There are many different ways to use it. You can put your business’s Instagram feed on your homepage and add a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) section where customers can comment on the store or product features. It works like Wix, with a drag-and-drop interface, so you can make your store quickly while following the rules of your theme.
Weebly is better for small businesses than big ones because it doesn’t have enough tools for managing store inventory for big businesses. There are also not many ways to check out because there are only three main ways to pay: PayPal, Square, and Stripe. Still, Weebly gives you more creative freedom than almost every other eCommerce platform, is great for SEO, and can give you a good return on your investment if you use it right.
5. Volusion
This platform is a hosted, cloud-based option that lets you set up customer accounts, safely store customer information, and make shopping easy.
Volusion is a drag-and-drop website builder that lets you change things on the page itself. It also has a site search feature and eCommerce and product management tools, such as rich text product descriptions, options for native fulfilment, and subscription or loyalty options. It works with a lot of different payment services, like PayPal, Stripe, and Apple Pay.
A Volusion website can be linked to a Facebook store to help integrate multiple channels. It works with marketplaces like Amazon and eBay, which helps website owners make the most of their online presence and learn more about their customers. On the other hand, you can’t use this platform to sell digital products or use blogging tools to help sell your products or services better.
Volusion’s inventory system is easy to understand and has many helpful prompts. It has detailed analytics and insight reports that let you keep track of all your stock in one place. This feature gives you more ways to sell through multiple channels without having to do a lot of heavy lifting. Users of the website can get help via live chat and phone 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. As part of a comprehensive knowledge base, customers can find articles, guides, and more.
Volusion is a better choice if you have a small to medium-sized business or a small store. Plans have set bandwidth limits, and you’ll have to pay for an SSL certificate for extra security. If those are costs you’re willing to pay, give it a try.
Conclusion
For your business to have a good ecommerce strategy, it’s important to choose a platform that will help you keep your customers in mind as you build and research. The examples above can help you increase the number of people who buy from you, keep your customer reviews section active, and make your products and brand more visible.
If you make a business plan and choose the products you want to sell wisely, it will be easy to choose the right platform for your business.
