What Ecommerce Platform Should You Work With?

The ability to open up a digital storefront and sell goods over the Internet is a must, especially now that more and more people do their shopping online. The problem here is that there are many options out there for setting up a digital store. So what are the best platforms to start out with?

Shopify – one of the most popular ecommerce platforms out there, and for two very good reasons. One, a robust app store that makes customizing your storefront a lot easier than having to manually code in all the changes yourself. Two, live chat functionality that makes it easy for your customers to get in touch with you or your sales team. This makes it easier for you to scale your storefront to keep pace with the size and scope of your business – perfect for when you start small and expect to grow big over time.

SquareSpace – if you plan to keep your business very small, like catering to a very specific niche, then SquareSpace is a pretty convenient platform to work with. The platform offers many attractive layouts to choose from, and you don’t need to know any coding at all thanks to the drag-and-drop approach to setting up a storefront. SquareSpace has limited tools for more advanced features like SEO or CRM, but it’s one of the easiest (if not the easiest) ways to set up an online storefront.

3Dcart – another relatively easy platform to use, with a drag-and-drop interface responsible for most website building tasks. The real draws of 3Dcart, however, are unlimited storage space for all plans and a built-in blog attached to the storefront. The free storage space is excellent for businesses that offer a wide variety of items. The built-in blog, on the other hand, helps make SEO easier since you just need to add content without setting up a separate blog and connecting that separate blog to your storefront.

BigCommerce – if you don’t mind spending a little extra, then BigCommerce helps you set up a storefront while simultaneously teaching you how to better manage your online storefront. BigCommerce lets you edit your storefront using either HTML or drag-and-drop, making for a much more flexible platform that adjusts to your capabilities. The main draw of BigCommerce, however, is its University. Tutorials, instructional videos, knowledge-bases, and a direct line to a live representative are all useful tools for sharpening your ecommerce skills. It’s a bit more expensive compared to other platforms though, though the

GoDaddy–if you do a lot of business on eBay or have an existing website that you’d rather stick with, then GoDaddy is a pretty good choice to work with. The main draw of GoDaddylets you integrate your storefront with a website and eBay at the same time – meaning you can manage sales for both on just one platform. GoDaddy also plays nice with existing websites, meaning you can add storefront capabilities to your site instead of building one from scratch.

Do note that there are a lot of other ecommerce platforms out there. Volusion, CoreCommerce, PinnacleCart, Xcart, and DrupalCommerce to name a few. If you’re new to setting up an ecommerce site though, then the aforementioned platforms – Shopify, SquareSpace, 3Dcart, Bicommerce, and GoDaddy – are good places to start.