It is a convenient way of shopping and has made it possible for people to shop from around the world no matter where they are and what time it is. Buyers get many options to choose the products, shops, locations, pricing options, payment methods, and whatnot. All thanks to the mighty internet, no wonder why online shopping is increasing every single day. According to a report, 2.14 billion people purchased items online globally in 2021. And this number accounts for around 27% of the global population. Interesting, isn’t it? Let’s look at some more points that prove why starting an eCommerce business is beneficial:
Low setup and running cost.
The cost of setting up an online shop is significantly lower than a brick-and-mortar business. You don’t have to spend money on buying the plot and constructing the building or renting it. Additionally, you can even save money on staff, salaries, electricity, and other expenses. If you go online, buying a domain and renting web hosting won’t cost you much, just a few dollars a month. That’s it. The entire sales system would be automated online, from taking orders and shipping to delivery.
No restriction with time or location
Online shops do not need to be confined to a place or restricted to a specific opening and closing time, unlike offline shops. And you can operate your business from anywhere using your smartphone to access your website, emails, and other tools. Additionally, you can serve a wider audience, not just your locality. People from all over your country and world can view your products and order them (wherever you want to serve).
Easily scalable
Growing your business is easy online, and you don’t have to rent another shop or inventory when stocks increase. When your customers, products, and traffic increase, you can choose a suitable plan, which won’t cost you much. You can find out which product(s) are getting sold successfully and increase their stock levels easily. You can also diversify your product ranges into different sectors and grow your business more.
Better profit margin
You get higher profit margins by selling online as you don’t have to spend huge money on maintaining your shop, giving salaries, and so on. Plus, you also get 100% payment straight away whether customers go for online payments or cash on delivery (COD). Plus, you can ease the payment process by partnering with providers like PayPal, Stripe, and credit card companies and making the payment convenient for you and the customers. Additionally, your eCommerce website will be highly traceable and measurable with results and statistics like the number of orders, cart abandonment, etc., to determine the success rates, growth, revenue, and profit.
Effective marketing channels
Digital marketing methods are becoming more popular these days, like search engine optimization strategy, content marketing, Facebook and Instagram ads, and more to get your shop and products noticed by the global audience. You can even create a blog section to produce high-quality blogs and promote them on your social channels to inform your target audience that you exist in the market. Explain your product’s uniqueness and authenticity and how you can help them attract more audiences and convert them into your loyal customers. In addition to all these, you can collect quick feedback and ratings to understand how your customers feel about your products and services and improve your offerings. So, if you want to delve into the online selling business, it’s not late. In fact, with the emergence of technology, starting an online shop has become a lot easier. It doesn’t require you to spend too much money or effort. In fact, platforms like Shopify, BigCommerce, etc., have made it effortless to get started within a day. So, let’s find out how these platforms can help you build your online shop quickly, manage and run it efficiently, and help you grow your business.
StoreBuilder
Get to business and build your unique online store with StoreBuilder by Nexcess. Leverage the power of artificial intelligence and customize your store the way you want without any coding skills or cookie-cutter templates. Say goodbye to getting overwhelmed or head-scratching while building your store, all you need is just a few inputs, and you can easily design your eCommerce site in minutes with a fully optimized homepage. Their interface is easy to use and intuitive which takes all the pain of building, designing, and deploying your online store. You can include smooth navigation and use their intelligent engine to develop your customized store according to your specific requirements and industry best practices instead of using age-old pre-made themes and templates. If you are using WordPress or WooCommerce, StoreBuilder allows you to reap their benefits without complexity. You can get started with your store and start selling quickly by spinning up your site, reviewing it, editing it, and opening it for your customers with no hassles. You can choose your domain name, sell unlimited products, connect the store with PayPal or Stripe, and make it Omnichannel ready or pre-configured for smartphones. All of this is at just $19/month.
Shopify
Start your eCommerce business anywhere and anytime you want with Shopify. It has already empowered 1M+ businesses in 175+ countries to generate over US$200 billion in sales. Shopify helps you create your store with powerful tools that can drive sales, manage your store on a day-to-day basis, and attract more customers. Jump into building your store from scratch with a fresh idea or add another stream to making money with an online store on any domain like food and drink, beauty and cosmetics, jewelry, clothing, and more. If you already own a retail shop, you can move it online and keep serving your customers by offering them an even more convenient option to buy products anytime. No matter what shopping platform you are using now, you can easily migrate to Shopify to utilize its wonderful offerings. You can also hire an agency or a freelancer to set up the store for you by finding them on Shopify’s Experts Marketplace. Use just one Shopify platform to sell your products anywhere in-person using Point of Sale or online using your site, online marketplaces, or social media. They offer built-in tools to help you create, execute, manage, and analyze your digital marketing strategies easily. Gain deeper insights to grow your store by using their clear dashboard and manage your orders, payments, shipping, and more.
Pagecloud
Pagecloud is a powerful and straightforward option to build an online store and start selling like a pro. Although there is a free tier comprising a one-page website with limited features, it’s the paid plans that really help to spread your wings. The subscriptions are based on the size of your products catalog with the top tier permitting unlimited offerings. All plans come with the essentials like inventory management, multiple payment gateways, shipping estimates, customer accounts, tax and shipping tools, etc. Pagecloud also allows many product variations, filters, multi-lingual catalogs, and automatic abandoned cart recovery. Besides, you can create customer groups to promote special discounts. Finally, with the custom domain, free SSL certificates, and a drag-and-drop website editor, Pagecloud shouldn’t miss your attention.
WP Engine
Build and launch your online shop effortlessly using WPEngine, or migrate your existing store on this secure and superbly fast platform. It offers streamlined online store creation and is optimized for WooCommerce and WordPress to boost your sales with instant store searches. Start building your store using a quick setup wizard, drag-and-drop tools, and ready-to-use themes. You can easily start adding your products and content to your store in a few minutes without coding knowledge. Provide your visitors with instant search results powered by Elasticsearch to showcase the relevant and valuable items and convert them into your customers. Impress them more with advanced features like “did you mean…” or autocomplete capabilities and offer them a more convenient shopping experience to increase your conversion rates. Grow your online business even more by using your store along with a content website that can create buzz around your promotions and products with the help of high-quality content and blogs. They offer you 3 sites on their Professional plan that you can use for your store, blogs, and one for another purpose you can think of. WPEngine hosts your WordPress site on industry-leading infrastructure that is optimized for scalability, speed, and security. They also keep updating your plugins and website so you can avail the latest benefits on your online shop. If your site is hosted on another platform, they help you migrate it on WPEngine easily within minutes. Just install their migration plugin and authorize the site transfer to move it instantly. With WPEngine’s WordPress Managed Hosting, you own your data and store it completely as WordPress is open-source. WPEngine includes powerful technology, workflow tools, and award-winning services to spice up your online business. You get DIY store designs, curated eCommerce plugins, and the option to test changes before you go live. They offer platform-grade protection to find threats and block them, free SSL certificates, automatic PHP and WordPress updates, WordPress-optimized WAF, multi-factor password authentication, user permissions, and activity logs. They have data centers located across the globe and offer WordPress-optimized caching, cloud CDN, dedicated server cluster, 30+ StudioPress premium themes, Genesis Framework, and more. Their plans start at $30/month.
Squarespace
Whether you are just a beginner in the online selling space or are already an established brand, SquareSpace’s powerful platform empowers your business and helps you grow more. Use their easy-to-customize templates designed by top designers globally and create your expressive and convenient online store. Display your products in their best forms and let your visitors browse them, add their preferred items into the shopping cart easily, and check out quickly. Besides adding your physical products, you can also create a site that grabs more eyeballs with your services. Let your visitors book your services or set appointments easily within a few clicks. You can also use your site to build your email list by collecting user emails, announcing the latest news utilizing integrated social media pages, and embedding maps to help customers find you. Magazines can sell subscriptions; musicians can drop their latest tracks; creators can sell their content like eBooks and find many more ways to grow their online business. Squarespace also helps you keep your customer data and inventory in sync, whether you sell in-person or online. Manage your logistics efficiently using their integrated payment systems. They also offer built-in tax tools, allow you to offer gift cards and discount codes, abandoned card recovery features, and more.
Wix
Start your online selling journey with Wix e-commerce which offers the complete solution, so you build your store, move your retail store online, and maximize the business of already established brands. Wix offers an industry-leading website builder along with advanced features so you can launch your store quickly and run and scale it successfully. They offer 500+ professional e-commerce templates suitable for various eCommerce businesses and allow you to customize your site design for product pages, shopping cart, store member area, etc. Adding products and content is no more complicated with Wix, and it also helps you connect to a payment provider plus set up your shipping in no time. You also can choose your custom domain and then start selling your products and continue growing. Shape your store the way you have dreamed of by using business tools such as Wix Logo maker, Business Name Generator, and more. You can offer unlimited products, manage your inventory and suppliers, define shipping rules, and automate taxes for each sale. Create recurring revenue streams using store subscriptions and offer them monthly or weekly to delight your customers with themed and curated subscription boxes. Grow your offerings with print-on-demand items featuring your designs or dropshipping. Drive sales from search engines such as Google, create SEO patterns automatically to save time and still rank your product pages. Advertise easily with automated Instagram and Facebook ad campaigns, boost sales with email marketing, social posts, and promotional videos, and go global with multilingual support. Track, manage, and process store orders using one dashboard and handle fulfillment and shipping and add suppliers easily. Review the sales success with integrated analytics, create business reports, and focus on enhancing your marketing efforts using the insights.
Webflow
Showcase your unique product offerings by creating a stunning eCommerce store with Webflow whether you sell custom products, digital items, or services. It helps you shape your customers’ journey at every step by using its advanced online store features without writing any code. You can create pixel-perfect and branded purchase flow to delight your customers. Leverage the platform to highlight useful product details, features, images, etc., by customizing every product field. You can even create effortless checkout pages and shopping carts by customizing them and matching them with the store to keep brand consistency. Webflow also allows you to customize your homepage layout and gallery pages to grab that first impression using animations, effects, and more. Tweak colors, upload your logo, and maintain your order notification emails and receipts in line with your brand. Tailor your preferred delivery methods for the products, simplify the order checkouts that need no shipping, and add some download links to confirmation emails and pages. Webflow helps you define your shipping rules and regions and sync orders with your shipping software to automate tracking and create shipping labels. Accept payments via Stripe, PayPal, GooglePay, Apple Pay, and credit cards from 200+ countries. You can view your order details clearly, issue refunds, see customer order history and accounts, and update status using their client-friendly dashboard for order management. Calculate VAT and sales taxes automatically for customers in the US, Canada, Australia, and the European Union. Integrate with hundreds of applications such as Zapier, QuickBooks, Shippo, Printful, Mailchimp, and more. Additional features included are custom landing page creation, on-page SEO automation, running efficient promotions with discounts, connecting products on social media pages, integrated analytics like Google Analytics, and more. If you are a beginner, you can also take up a video course on building an online store from Webflow University. The entry pricing is $29/month with a 0-2% transaction fee.
BigCommerce
Build your online business that is sturdy and flexible using BigCommerce and keep growing and innovating. Start designing your store with a solid foundation with impactful features like multi-currency support, headless commerce integrations, and more. Fuel your creativity with design tools that can help you design how you want your store to look using beautiful templates, themes, and other design elements. Operate without any complexity because you have a secure and easy-to-use platform by your side. BigCommerce helps you deliver a blazing-fast commerce experience to the customers, so they keep visiting your store and buy from you more to drive your ROI. Their customers vouch for their reliability and appreciate it for fewer maintenance needs so you can dedicate your time to making store improvements. Stay agile with the help of this high-speed platform BigCommerce and adapt headless architecture to create a content-rich experience for your audience. Strengthen your backend by integrating with third-party applications. They also help you convert high-value orders to exceed industry benchmarks, reach a wider audience with omnichannel support, and use powerful analytics to unlock useful insights and customer data. For security, they use PCI DSS 3.2, ISO/IEC 27001:2013, and Level 1 certification. They also leverage Google Cloud Platform to deliver top-level server response and uptime.
Big Cartel
Are you an artist or a creator looking to build your online store? If yes, then try Big Cartel. It makes everything easy so you can build your eCommerce store in minutes, sell your creative pieces, and run your online business successfully. They have helped 1M+ creators to sell their art pieces, t-shirts, clothing, prints, jewelry, merch, and other wonderful stuff since 2005. The platform helps you design your site and customize it complementing your creative brain by offering many design elements, colors, templates, themes, layouts, fonts, and more. You won’t feel trouble managing your shop, updating products, fulfilling orders, running promotions, and checking stats using any device on the go or anywhere you want. Their plans are affordable, and they don’t charge you insanely for your sales. The basic plan is free, and you can add 5 products to your shop and enjoy many useful features. It includes 1 image/product, customizable free themes, the option to sell online and in-person, custom domain, real-time stats, shipment tracking, offer discounts, product groupings, and automatic sales tax calculations. Paid plans start at $9.99/month for 50 products and added features like 5 images/product, theme code editing, inventory tracking, Google Analytics, bulk editing, shipment tracking, and more.
Volusion
Your dream of opening a beautiful-looking and highly responsive online store can be fulfilled by using Volusion as your store builder. They already have helped 180k+ entrepreneurs to create successful online businesses. They offer many powerful eCommerce store features such as inventory management, unlimited product listing, and payment collection. They also offer responsive themes along with a comprehensive website builder so you can create your out-of-the-box store in minutes, no coding needed. No matter if your customers use desktops, mobiles, or tablets, your store will be responsive across devices and screens. Volusion offers an Easy Editor so you can make quick changes on the go. You get a custom domain to get found easily, a navigation editor for easy browsing, product subcategories, and images. Customers can easily find items with search functionality, highlight products and discounts using homepage slideshows, and upload your favicon and logo to display your brand. Experienced coders can also use CSS editors to tweak their site design a bit more. Expand your store’s functionality by using powerful integrations with several applications and services crafted by their certified partners such as LegalZoom, Stripe, FedEx, MailChimp, PayPal, and more. Market your products and store like a pro to reach out to more customers, drive conversion rates, and clock more revenue by using a built-in CRM system, SEO management, and newsletters. In addition to all these features and benefits, you get SSL certificates and fraud scores to secure your site and view your security status. Try Volusion for free for 14 days and make your best decision. So, these were some of the best platforms to create your online store. But what if you don’t want to build a website in the first place? Don’t worry; there’s still a solution. You can start selling your products on an online marketplace. Let’s see what those online marketplaces are and how they can help you.
Etsy
Etsy is a creative marketplace that brings together buyers and sellers and helps you sell your items with ease. Just list your item for $0.20, and after you make a sale, they charge you only for payment processing, transaction fees, and offsite ad fees. Etsy offers powerful services and tools to help you manage, grow, and promote your business.
Gumroad
Get paid for your work by selling your stuff on Gumroad. The platform has been helping creators from 131 countries to generate over $429M+ since 2011. They offer features like personalizing your landing page, embedding follow-up forms, and the option to import your mailing list and gain insights with universal analytics. You can offer discounts, generate license keys for your software, sell in multiple currencies, choose release dates, limit sales by country, sales tax support, address verification, and more. Its entry plan is free, while paid plans start at $10/month for 1000 customers.
Depop
Build your empire from scratch by choosing Depop to sell clothes online. Its application is available on Google Play and the Apple Store. The best thing about Depop is that there’s no listing fee for your products; pay just 10% when your items sell. You can express your stuff through styling, branding, and photography, and they also offer some tips for it. Just create your account, take 4 images of your products, describe it, decide the price, and start selling. Choose from multiple plans, fulfillment options, and product categories based on your business requirements. It costs $39.99/month plus selling fees.
Conclusion
The craze for online shopping continues to increase. And starting an eCommerce business can be a great source of making money for you. Thus, if you haven’t started your online shop yet, the time is now. Just choose any of the platforms mentioned above and start selling your products online in a day.
