The e-commerce industry has grown massively since its official launch in 1969 by CompuServe. Today, e-commerce sales account for 14.3% of total retail sales in the US. E-commerce covers virtually all business phases, from product sales and service delivery to wholesaling and warehousing. Almost every business owner is turning online to hunt for clients and increase business reach.
Features of the Best E-commerce Platforms
For an e-commerce platform to stand out from the crowd, it has to have certain features and functions. It should provide a high-security level, mobile optimization, and good inventory management. Its support should be top-notch. A good platform must be capable of producing a website that’s user-friendly and scalable. As a client, look for one with budget-friendly rates and a fantastic user experience.
Shopify
Launched in 2004, Shopify is a globally accepted e-commerce platform serving millions of businesses worldwide. Shopify employs over 5,000 workers, and customers constantly praise its robustness, affordability, and ease of use. With this e-commerce platform, you can sell almost every product ever invented by man.
Shopify lets you view orders and stock levels with a mouse click. It provides comprehensive product pages with pricing rules, metadata, and images. In addition, Shopify has a built-in payment processor that supports Google Pay, Apple Pay, credit cards, and debit cards.
BigCommerce
BigCommerce is another industry-leading and credible e-commerce platform similar to Shopify. The platform has two versions targeting different businesses. The higher-powered enterprise version targets experienced entrepreneurs. As for the simple essentials version, it’s suitable for small businesses with lower budgets and audiences.
BigCommerce provides a customary-like experience, enabling you to build your store and select your favorite themes. Its headless approach allows for customizing the store’s front end while improving the backend. You can choose from various code stacks and add dedicated plugins for Drupal to make your business more alluring.
Wix
Wix is a user-friendly e-commerce platform born out of the desire to solve the challenges business owners face while building e-commerce websites. Developed in 2006, Wix is an established brand with over 3,000 workers in over 190 countries. It’s the favorite choice for many business owners because of its ease of use and ability to provide a simple yet affordable way to build an e-commerce website from scratch.
Wix provides users with hundreds of professional templates and a drag-and-drop editor feature. With this user-friendly and efficient e-commerce platform, you can create your website in minutes. When you upgrade to Wix’s paid plan, you get dozens of amazing features and functions. Additionally, the platform offers you multiple payment gateways.
Weebly
Weebly, developed and launched in 2007, is another e-commerce platform. The Weebly platform was built with the needs of the modern business owner in mind. It provides a simple yet seamless way for business owners to create e-commerce websites to sell their goods. Weebly powers over 50 million e-commerce websites today. The platform has found favor among business owners because it’s free and lets you create fully functional e-commerce sites within hours.
Weebly provides a step-by-step guide, enabling you to create and run an e-commerce store quickly. You’re in total control of all the features you add to your store, including layout, site name, pages, colors, and fonts. It supports payment systems such as Square, PayPal, and Stripe.
Squarespace
Squarespace is the 2003 brainchild of University of Maryland alumni. The initial goal was to create a platform to support hosting and blog creation. Ten years later, the team behind the platform added e-commerce features characterized by a drag-and-drop interface. That made it more like Weebly and Wix and a good e-commerce platform for business owners.
Squarespace enables the creation of portfolio-style websites with visual and sleek designs. It doesn’t only target e-commerce clients who sell products. The platform also targets e-commerce businesses that sell membership programs, gift cards, subscription services, and online appointments. It comes integrated with email marketing and functions with other apps such as ShipStation and Printful.
When creating an e-commerce website using Squarespace, you might want to scrape competitor websites to gather intelligence. For successful scraping, access blocked websites online – IPRoyal and collect more intelligence.
Conclusion
If you’ve been considering putting your business online, it’s time you developed your e-commerce website. These industry-leading platforms enable and facilitate the creation of user-friendly and functional e-commerce websites at budget-friendly rates.