Three best E-commerce platforms to create an online store

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Developing an E-commerce store is easy if you don’t have any specialized features. You have many options to choose from the existing E-commerce platforms that allow you to create an online store within an hour.

And if your store is simple in the product listing, and you do not have any plan to scale in the future, these platforms help you a lot.

The only thing you need to focus on is product marketing. Marketing plays a role in consumer understanding of your brand and attracting them into the store.

I reviewed some of the E-commerce platforms and compared them against some fixed criteria as follows – you can compare them against your criteria;

  1. Easy to set up an online store.
  2. Products import and export features. You do not want to lock in the platform.
  3. User interface customization options. Your store should be different from others. Right?
  4. Payment gateways integration. And how easy can you add any third-party payment gateway?
  5. In-built marketing and SEO tools.

I took the challenge and filtered the three best E-commerce platforms for you. And these are Wix, Shopify, and Bigcommerce.

  1. Wix: You can use it if your online store is small.
  2. Shopify: You can use it if your online store is medium and the user base is not big enough.
  3. Bigcommerce: You can use it if you are planning for a big online store.

All three platforms have many features in common, and all are easy to use. The difference lies in the infrastructure and the ease of scaling in the future.

Wix and Shopify require no or less learning whereas, Bigcommerce requires some usage learning in the beginning. But, you can scale your online store with ease and effectively.

And yes, their services are good, and therefore, you will not find any trouble in the future.

Benefits of using an existing E-commerce platform

You can ask a question why I should use an existing E-commerce platform.

In my opinion, you do not want to invest your time in building the complex features that drive the online store. Instead, you want to invest your time in marketing your products.

Following are some great benefits you can rip from using an existing platform;

Self-hosting store:

Web hosting is a real challenge, and you do not want to invest all of your time managing it. Let your preferred platform handle your online store by using their self-hosting service. The solution is speedy and secure, and you can scale it without even worrying about hardware issues.

It gives you online access so that you can control your online store from anywhere.

Search Engine Optimization and Marketing tools integration:

Your focus should be on marketing the store. And these platforms know it. And therefore, they created inbuilt marketing tools for the online store.

For example, Shopify integrates Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest social media platforms. And you can use them in marketing your store. Wix and BigCommerce have similar features.

On the other hand, you do not need to put extra effort into SEO techniques. You can easily manage all the aspects of SEO in the page like title, meta, unique URL, redirect, and many more.

Technical support at best:

You may not have sufficient technical knowledge, and sometimes you can make mistakes. And it may ruin your online store. Do not worry anymore. All of these platforms have a knowledgeable technical support team. And it is available 24/7 so that it can help you with any technical problems.

They help you in creating your store and payment integration. Also, you can request them to export the information of the existing products from another site or spreadsheet, and they will upload this information into the store.

On a side note, premium customers get this service free of cost, but you may need to pay a little if you are not a premium customer.

Payment gateway integration:

Your online store should make money for you, and users should not worry about payment errors. And all payment solutions should be seamless.

These platforms support many payment gateways and different payment methods. And if you worry about the payment gateway fees, you have the option to choose their payment gateway.

For example, Shopify payment gateway offers no transaction fees and lower credit card fees.

And following are other benefits;

  1. Easy to set up an online store.
  2. Reduced development time – because you do not need to develop any feature.
  3. Physical server cost – you are renting the E-commerce service. And these platforms provide all the necessary hardware in the back-end.
  4. Pre-built user interface templates – responsive and support all devices. The look and feel matter a lot when selling online products.

Building an online store from the ground is hard work. And it requires deep experience of many technologies. And the development team needs to invest many hours to create a robust solution. So overall, it is not a good option for small business owners to create their online store from the ground.

At last, if you do not feel comfortable using any one of the platforms, you can contact us, and we will set up an online store for you.