Recommended Platforms
- Feature-rich platform with no transaction fees added
- Integrates wirh Amazon, eBay, Facebook, and Pinterest stores
- Integrates wirh Amaavzon, eBay, Facebook, and Pinterest stores
- Don’t need to have any technical skills to start
- Integrates with Amazon, eBay and Google Data Feed
- Search engine optimized eCommerce stores
Detailed Overview
Below, we will be going over some of the most popular eCommerce platforms that can propel your business forward into the digital age.
Shopify
Shopify is one of the clear leaders in the industry. One of the best things that Shopify has going for it is the scalability that it offers small businesses. After all, an eCommerce platform is intended to help your business grow. With Shopify, it provides the ability to scale effectively from small to large with ease.
All-In-One Platform
Shopify offers an all-in-one solution for small businesses. With it, you can have your domain name with the built-in tool. You will even be able to find products that you can sell through curated vendors on the platform.
User-Friendly
Shopify has built one of the most user-friendly platforms on the entire market. To create a store, you don’t need to have any coding experience at all. They have a full library of extensive and beautiful themes to choose from. Shopify is the clear winner when it comes to being able to build out highly customized storefronts with little to no experience.
Third-Party Support
It might be what makes Shopify stand apart from the rest of the crowd. With Shopify, you get access to thousands of third-party developers apps, which can add essential functionality to your storefront, helping you with everything from customer relationship management to email marketing.
BigCommerce
BigCommerce is another eCommerce platform that offers an excellent value package for a small business. Like Shopify, BigCommerce can properly scale for small and large companies according to their individual needs. BigCommerce offers extensive built-in features that your business would need to thrive in the marketplace with zero transaction fees.
No Fees
It is perhaps what sets BigCommerce apart from Shopify. With BigCommerce, you get a feature-rich platform with no transaction fees added. You pay the fee for the storefront, which can save you a lot and boost your bottom line accordingly.
Built-In Features
With BigCommerce, a majority of the features that you need as a small business and even as a scaling business are baked into the platform itself. Therefore, you won’t need to be a developer or have to find third-party plugins to add to your storefront to get the most out of the platform. It has just about every feature you would want from an eCommerce platform, including tight integration with eBay and Amazon marketplaces.
Volusion
Volusion is another eCommerce platform that you can consider for your small business. This platform offers tight integration with third-party marketplaces like eBay and Amazon.
No Transaction Fees
Volusion does not charge transaction fees, which is a significant benefit. You are only going to have to pay for the storefront itself.
Built-In Features
Volusion offers a lot of features built directly into the platform itself. You will be able to access just about all of the features you will want and need directly from the dashboard. These built-in features include tight integration with third-party marketplaces like eBay and Amazon, which can make controlling your entire eCommerce efforts a breeze.
Social Media Management Tools
One of the big focuses of Volusion is allowing small businesses to better grow their businesses by leveraging social media. The platform itself offers a lot of great tools to help market and sell on different social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram.
What You Should Consider When Choosing One:
1. Access To Essential Features
When choosing a platform, you want to focus on finding the one that offers all of the essential features that can help you grow and scale your business. Identifying the platform with the right features can make or break the overall growth of your small business as a whole. Finding the platform with the most features that you can leverage to grow your business will put you in a better position to compete successfully within the marketplace.
2. Cost
You will need to factor several things into the equation when you are looking at the cost of integrating the platform into your business model. For one, you want to look at the comprehensive pricing of the platform itself and the potential transaction cost that will impact your business. A platform like Shopify will cost you on a per-transaction basis along with the storefront fee. If your company does a lot of transactions, it might get very costly as you scale your business. Whereas, a platform like BigCommerce might be much better suited for companies that do a lot of transactions. However, you have to compare the value that you are getting with the cost to ensure that you are not giving up essential features due to higher pricing.
3. Access To Experts
As a small business, you likely don’t have access to developers. Because of this, a platform like Shopify, which has a curated list of Shopify Experts to choose from can help you get started the right way. Not only will hiring an expert end up saving you time, but it can ensure that you get a fully customized and great looking website to maximize your eCommerce potential.
Choosing the right platform comes down to knowing what you need out of an eCommerce platform in the short and long run to succeed. Finding one that offers essential core features that you can leverage in your business is vital. But you also want one that is fully scalable to your intended business goals.