The Best eCommerce Platforms for Small Business

Choosing the best eCommerce platform for your small business can be a difficult task. There are a lot of different platforms to choose from, and each one has its advantages and disadvantages. In this blog post, we will discuss the top three eCommerce platforms that you should consider when choosing an eCommerce solution for your company.

What to Consider for eCommerce Platforms

To narrow down our list, we considered many aspects such as features and pricing. We also eliminated any that were too complicated to use or had difficult interfaces with a lot of clutter. Here are the full attributes we considered when choosing our top choices:

• Makes it easy to create a website that looks great on any device. Their variety of customization tools lets you design the page so that it matches your brand’s style perfectly.
• Makes it easy to market any product, whether you intend on selling digital or physical goods. It also offers the versatility of working with various payment processors and sales tax calculators for national/international markets.
• Offers capability to manage orders, shipments, inventory, and other back-end responsibilities. Platforms must offer a complete eCommerce experience instead of merely offering a way to collect payments.
• The platform must offer the capability to integrate with other services, marketplaces, or apps through a plug-in and extension marketplace. Modern businesses rarely use just one software suite; we feel it’s important for an eCommerce platform to provide integration options so that business owners can add new customers to their mailing list or sell items on social media platforms.
• An all-in-one eCommerce solution can be a great tool, but only if it comes at a reasonable price. Platforms often have monthly fees, payment gateway fees, and transaction charges that make the overall cost of using one prohibitively expensive for small businesses.

Now that you know what to look for in the tools your eCommerce website needs, let’s take a closer look at some of our top contenders.

1) Shopify

Shopify is a powerful eCommerce platform that will help you build the ultimate online store. It offers an extensive range of features, like 24/7 customer support and security with free SSL certificates for your site; all available on top of some other great options too! You can sync inventory across sales channels or get discount codes sent straight to customers’ inboxes so they always know what’s in stock at their favorite retailers while still being able to keep up-to-date via email when new products become available just by signing into one account instead.

Pricing: 14-day free trial followed by $29 per month for the basic Shopify experience. Advanced Shopify is available for $299 per month.

2) Square Online

Square Online Store is perfect for starting an online store or expanding your brick-and-mortar business to the digital space. With its easy interface and essential eCommerce features, you’ll have all of the tools necessary—even if you don’t know how web design works. It was designed by experts with years of experience, so it comes packed full of features that will make your store look great from day one!

The platform’s free plan allows you to set up your store and access e-commerce features without paying a single cent upfront. It’s also connected with the Square suite of products, including their POS system. When you sell something online, it updates your inventory in the back-end. Additionally, because everything integrates with Square’s point of sale system and can be found on both front & backend channels for increased efficiency, there are many features that make this process much easier than ever before!

Pricing: FREE to get started with options to upgrade

3) BigCommerce

BigCommerce is a great option for any company, whether you’re starting out or migrating from another platform. This platform is a scalable and affordable solution for business owners who want to expand across multiple selling channels. It offers everything from an intuitive user interface, advanced marketing tools that allow you to track your ROI on social media, advertising, and a free trial in case you’re not ready to commit just yet.

Pricing: 15-day free trial followed by plans starting at $29.95 per month

4) WooCommerce

WooCommerce is a powerful, easy-to-use FREE ecommerce solution that you can use to sell your products on WordPress. However, please note that WooCommerce is not an actual platform. It’s actually a WordPress plugin that allows you to turn any WordPress website into an online store. With WooCommerce’s wide range of features and integration capabilities for hundreds of apps with the ability to handle inventory management in addition to its own shipping rates making this great if your website already has an established base or if it’s just getting started!

Conclusion

So, how do you decide which eCommerce platform you’re going to use for your small business? This will depend on your business’ needs. For instance, if you’re looking for a sales-specific platform, Shopify will be your best bet. Square provides the tools you need to combine on and offline selling. Additionally, BigCommerce will be able to provide the functionality you could want with multi-channel selling.

Which solution will you be using? Let us know in the comments!