What if I told you that choosing the best eCommerce platform for your small business is essential to make sure it scales to an enterprise one day?
You knew it already — the eCommerce platform a business chooses definitely impacts their customers’ user experience, which then impacts their revenue.
This article will give you an overview of the best eCommerce platforms for small businesses. We’ll also look at the factors you need to consider to make the best bang of your bucks.
That said, let’s get started.
Factors to Consider When Choosing an eCommerce Platform for Your Small Business
You’re looking for a happy purchase. To ensure that, consider the factors below when choosing an eCommerce platform for your business:
Ease of Use
If an eCommerce platform makes it hard to customize your store layout, drag and drop items, and twinkle settings for the best user experience of your customers, you should probably avoid it. Make sure the platform you pick is easy-to-use for satisfaction.
Design Flexibility
You want to customize your store at your best. You might be consistently making changes to your store’s theme. Consider design flexibility when choosing an eCommerce platform to ensure a user-friendly experience, good design, and customization options.
Value for Money
You need funds to run your business and you cannot invest everything in the eCommerce platform of your store. So, make sure you go for a budget-friendly eCommerce platform. Also, go for the one that offers the best bang for your bucks.
Help and Support
It’s not uncommon to come across technical issues in the online space. If your store goes down unexpectedly, you’d like your eCommerce platform to have your back. So, we recommend choosing a platform that offers 24/7 support to help you through the hard times.
Customer Satisfaction
I don’t have to break it down to you: the customer satisfaction rate of a product or service matters more than anything. That’s why people opt-in for iPhones. The same goes for an eCommerce platform — the one with a high customer satisfaction rate should be your priority.
Feature Quality
The quality of features offered by an eCommerce platform will impact what kind of store you can build. The stores with many integrated payment methods and forms available will make your life easy. Such an eCommerce platform should be your preference.
1. Shopify
Shopify is our top pick for eCommerce platforms for small businesses. It’s one of the most advanced eCommerce solutions with various sales tools available.
They help you build your store at your best and provide your customers with a fantastic user experience. If you can’t seem to find a feature you need, Shopify’s app store is all you’ll have to browse through — install an app with the click of a button to improve your store’s functionality.
Shopify is a dedicated eCommerce solution — making it a more advanced option than the site builders that seem to offer support for eCommerce, like Wix and Weebly. So, if giving your small business a boost is what you’re looking for, Shopify is your best bet.
Furthermore, the platform also holds the highest customer score for the best eCommerce platforms. The reason lies in the fact that it offers the best sales tools on the planet — allowing you to build your online store conveniently.
But, what if Shopify doesn’t offer what it promises or you don’t like its functionality? Get started with their 14-day free trial to ensure you don’t waste your money.
The one thing usually businesses are worried about is to use their own hosting, and you are bound with them. Here is the detailed comparison between Shopify vs. WooCommerce.
Where Shopify is hands down the best eCommerce platform in terms of functionality, it comes with sharp pricing. The plans start from $29 per month, which may not suit small businesses. However, those with a reasonable budget should certainly take Shopify as the top priority.
2. Best & Free: WooCommerce
WooCommerce is an open-source plugin that anyone can install & use for free. WooCommerce is a self-hosted eCommerce solution for small businesses. It’s essentially a plugin that you can install on your WordPress site to add eCommerce functionality.
Moreover, WooCommerce is a flexible solution that you can use to create a one-product eCommerce page as well as an enterprise eCommerce store — there are no limits.
However, installing WooCommerce will require you to build a WordPress website first and purchase a domain & hosting.
You can also purchase a managed WooCommerce hosting from a reliable platform and get your website rolling in minutes; the best part is you get pre-installed WordPress. Alternatively, you can go for Hostinger — it’s a cheaper option for those running low on budget.
With the help of some must-have plugins, you can easily incorporate any functionality from development to SEO and Payment gateway integration in your WooCommerce store.
- Small to Enterprise: Magento
Magento is a famous eCommerce platform for building an online store regardless of store traffic and catalog size because it can easily handle thosuands of products with a million traffic on an hourly basis.
The development of Magento store requires a high level of development expertise with high cost compare to other CSM, but if you are planning to create some big store or brand, then Magento is a good choice for you.
The community support of Magento is average. Sometimes you need to do a lot of research when it comes to bug finding and error resolution. The paid and free themes with all options are easily available on Magento Stor. If you want to use a Free Magento theme for your store, visit this article to know the best Free Magento themes in 2022.
Key Takeaways
What are the best eCommerce platforms for small businesses? Here are the takeaways:
- The best eCommerce platform for small businesses with a high budget is Shopify.
- If you’re looking for a free solution with no restrictions, then WooCommerce is your best bet.
- Lastly, Magento is free but needs a high level of development expertise but if you are planning a store with 100k products in the catalog, then go for Magento.