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Let’s start with what’s your idea of ECommerce Platforms? What comes to mind when you listen to E-COMMERCE PLATFORM?
According to the knowledge of a common merchant eCommerce platform are the software used to setup your online store. These platforms are loaded with features and support you to successfully run the online store. There are many such platforms who charge a few subscription fees and provide you with services for their eCommerce platform.
But as a shop owner, one cannot answer which platform will suit or which method will be the best for your next online venture. Don’t worry, you should be overwhelmed that there are a number of options available in the marketplace to setup your online store.
Are you looking for a professional looking website loaded with all the features and it gives you a sufficient online presence? Maybe you would not want to hire a developer and designer rather you would search for an option which will be easy for you to maintain.
There are a number of online store builder options that will make your website creation a breeze. If you are ready to build your online store, read through the guide below.
The guide is all about the features to look upon before choosing an online store builder, and a quick recap of the basic features offered by the top best eCommerce platforms.
How To Choose The Best E-Commerce Builder?
Features and Functionality
The most important thing to look upon before choosing an online store builder to setup your online store is its features and functionality. The best E-Commerce platforms provide you with best convenient tools for handling your product catalog, your orders, product stock, setting offers and discounts. Also, check for store responsiveness and loading speed of your website pages.
Customer Support
Merchants do pay attention to your E-Commerce solutions customer support section. Sooner or later you would face some technical difficulties that need to be solved immediately. Make sure the E-Commerce website builder lends a helping hand when you need one.
Pricing
Thirdly, look for the pricing plans monthly or yearly. A free plan may attract customer, but it gives limited opportunities. So think and go for the plan that suits the best with your requirements and gives you the features you were expecting from your online store builder.
Ease Of Use
Think once the reason why you opted for eCommerce platform to get your online store was that they are easy to handle even if you have little or no technical knowledge. Before starting off with an eCommerce platform you must review how the site works, add features and plugins and arrange the physical layout.
Themes
The theme refers to the physical layout of how your site will look. The layout has the ability to highlight all the key features and services and make it easy for the customers to navigate through the website. Learn about different services offered by different themes and choose the best that fits with all the features.
Top E-Commerce Platforms –
#1 Shopify.in
Looking for great design and functionality, go to Shopify. It is one of the most popular e-commerce online eCommerce platform today.
Its robust features and some natural tools help you maintain and market your online store. For any category from electronics to food, Shopify has more than hundred of themes with a ready-made layout. The user-friendly and mobile responsive makes Shopify compatible enough for every device.
Let’s look up in more depth to understand this most popular and best E-Commerce platform and how it has become the first choice for all from small business to enterprises.
Themes
Whether you own a book club, a coffee shop or have an enterprise, find themes that will fit your brand identity. Choose the best-suited template that reflects well your brand and products.
Ease of Use
The best feature of Shopify platform is its seamless UX allowing you to start building your website with minimal effort. Get on Shopify, and start creating your store with any past experience of coding or technical skills.
Integrated Payments
Shopify supports more than 70 payment gateway platforms, PayPal, BitPay, Amazon Payments to name a few. This feature of Shopify increases conversion rates and make it easy for these store owners to process payments.
Mobile Support
The whole world is confined to the 5” screen. You need to make sure your eCommerce site is mobile compatible i.e. both mobile friendly and responsive. Shopify allows you to integrate your mobile site with mobile devices so that you can appeal to the mobile crowd with the same intensity as the desktop crowd
Price
Gives 14 days free trial
- Basic Shopify Plan has all the basic tools to start your online business- $29/MO
- Shopify Plan has everything you need to grow your business- $79/mo
- Advanced Shopify Plan has all the advanced features to scale up your business- $299/mo
- Shopify Gold for high volume merchants, and large businesses.
- Shopify Lite – Sell on Facebook and chat with your customers on Messenger, add products to any website or blog, and accept credit card payments for only $9 per month.
#2 BigCommerce
Doesn’t matter what the industry you belong to, BigCommerce will make the process of website building as simple as possible and make you succeed.
From its establishment in 2009, BigCommerce has grown a lot, all thanks to its major sponsors and financial backers.
BigCommerce makes it easy for you to manage your store, first create unlimited product options and organize your products into categories. The control panel allows easy control to manage and process orders.
From years BigCommerce has been the top choice for enterprises; find out how-
Themes
BigCommerce does offer various templates for your online store. There are seven free templates and sometimes the other 70 paid layouts come out to be more useful, according to the need. The template shows how your site will look on the desktop as well as on mobile
Ease of Use
BigCommerce the E-Commerce solution is very scalable. Add products, services, images, and videos to each page. However, it totally depends on the template how the products will be displayed. Create product variant and sync up your BigCommerce site with social media accounts.
Integrated Payments
BigCommerce supports more than 40 payment options and also 200 local payment methods that me vary according to your country and region. Download free to use plug-ins to support Stripe, PayPal, Apple Pay or Amazon Pay systems among others.
Mobile Support
The templates at the time of desktop demo are give a mobile demo too. Any layout you will look up from BigCommerce will look fantastic on smaller screen.
Price
Gives assurity of not taking any hidden fees. Provides you with 15 days free trial
- Standard Plan – sell online with basic features at $29.95/mo
- The most popular plan PLUS Plan, provides you with marketing tools to increase conversion. At $79.95/mo
- Pro Plan to scale your growing business with a comprehensive set of features at $ 249.95/mo
- Enterprise plan to power your team’s success with the best full-service open platform. The quote is given on special request and they claim to have less prices than Shopify and Magento
#3 BuildaBazaar
Launched in 2011, BuildaBazaar has been the first choice for small businesses, entrepreneurs, SME’s, small retailers & entrepreneurs to start their own business as well as enterprises. Some of its major Indian clients are Fortune, Amul, HiDesign, and Crossword.
BuildaBazaar claims to make your eCommerce site in just 24 hours. The user gets to select from 100+ premium themes which are mobile responsive, user-friendly, have great UI and UX.
Find out the best features of this E-Commerce solution and how it has become the first choice any merchant in India-
Theme
BuildaBazaar recently created its theme store called ThemeJungle. ThemeJungle has 100+ free premium and professional themes to choose from. Whether you own a coffee shop, a music store or a toy store, ThemeJungle will have hundreds of option for you to choose from.
Ease Of Use
As BuildaBazaar’s major clients are small enterprises and entrepreneur the ease of use factor has to be present in the online store builder. BuildaBazaar has its own CMS, which makes it easy for the merchants to upload, delete and manage the price and stock of the products. BuildaBazaar allows the creation of unlimited store web pages to showcase products
Integrate Payments
BuildaBazaar supports a number of payment gateways, both domestic and international payment gateways like TechProcess, CCAvenue, HDFC, Axis, and PayPal. It becomes very easy for any store owner to collect payment from Credit cards, Debit cards & net banking.
Mobile Support
All the themes from Theme store of BuildaBazaar are designed as such it is mobile friendly as well as mobile responsive helping you to attract mobile customers.
Price
BuildaBazaar has plans that meet all your business requirements. Also offers 15 days free trial
- Silver Plan with just Rs 1000 per month. Start an online store with just 500 products catalog
- Gold Plan of Rs 2500 per month. Add up to 5000 products.
- Gold Plus Plan Rs 5000 per month. Add up to 15000 products and extra benefited features
- Enterprise plan is given on special request.
Conclusion
So, it’s time for you to choose the best E-Commerce platform for your online store. I hope this article will help you in any way and you will select the ideal suited platform for your business.
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