Best E-Commerce Website Builders For Small Businesses
A functional, intuitive, and seamless e-commerce site is essential for small online businesses. Developing one starts with choosing the best e-commerce website builder.
Nowadays, you don’t need to know how to tinker with codes to build an e-commerce website from scratch. Website builders such as Squarespace, Wix, and Shopify empower people to create their own online shops, complete with all the knick-knacks needed to run a business on the internet: catalogs, cart functions, check-out processes, etc.
What To Look For In An E-commerce Website Builder
As you set strategies for developing your e-commerce website, it’s important to consider the advantages and limitations of each and if these are relevant to what your business needs. Here are some factors to consider when choosing a website builder:
Features
Generally, all website builders can set you up with the basics of an e-commerce shop. For a lot of small businesses, this is enough. But for those who want to increase their e-commerce conversion rate, you’ll want to look for features such as multi-channel selling, social media integration, multiple payment options, and other e-commerce marketing tools.
Design Functionality
Some website builders come with ready-built templates that you can simply add your details and products to, making it easy (and quick!) to set up shop.
But for small businesses who are particular with the design and functionality of their website, you’ll need a website builder that supports from-scratch-creations or one that allows you to integrate your own designs and visions into the platform.
Ease Of Use
Website builders are either designed for beginners, developers, or people in between. Those with technical know-how should consider website builders with back-end coding functions to do more advanced customizations.
But for many small business owners, building a website using simple tools like drag-and-drop features and templates is better.
Pricing
Although some website builders allow you to create a functioning online shop for free (with limitations), you’ll likely have to carve a bit out of your budget to use and maintain your site through these platforms. Depending on the features you want to be installed, this could be between five to three hundred dollars.
Business Needs
It won’t make sense to pay a premium every month for website building features that you won’t use. Consider your business—what it is, what you’re selling, who you’re targeting—and look at these with what website builders offer so that you choose the one that works for you.
Best E-Commerce Website Builders For Small Businesses
Here are four of the best e-commerce website builders for small businesses:
Squarespace
Squarespace is unmatched in website design with its award-winning templates, making it a top choice for small businesses who want to create visually stunning shops. There’s a bit of a learning curve when working on the back-end, but once you’ve got it down, it translates to a seamless and intuitive website for your customers.
Squarespace doesn’t have an extensive line of features, but it has built-in sales functions that are enough for most small businesses. It also has email integration (via Mailchimp), inventory management, product variant flexibility, and unlimited product capacity, as well as marketing features like search engine optimization (SEO), and social media integration.
You can choose between a basic or advanced e-commerce plan ($26 or $40 monthly, paid annually). Both include Squarespace’s core and marketing features, plus e-commerce functionality. The advanced plan has additional shipping and discount functions, abandoned cart recovery, and the ability to sell subscriptions.
Wix
You’ve probably heard of Wix from the ads that show people building websites without so much as a single line of code. Wix extends this service to small business owners through their e-commerce plans ($17 to $35 per month, depending on the tier). You can easily build an online shop, whether from scratch or using their templates, complete with extensive sales and marketing features such as:
● Support for multiple product types and variations
● Over fifty payment options
● Inventory management (supporting unlimited products)
● Multi-channel selling
● Abandoned cart recovery
● Shipping management and personalization
● Built-in SEO tools
● Robust app integration
Wix is easily one of the most well-rounded website builders out there, making it a value-for-money service for small businesses.
Shopify
As a dedicated e-commerce website builder, Shopify blows away its competition when it comes to sales features. They have everything you’ll need already built-in, whether you’re just starting or expanding a physical presence.
It has an extensive library of apps and extensions that you can plug into your site to create the best customer experience. It also supports multi-channel selling and over one thousand payment options. It even helps you compute taxes, allows point-of-sale (POS) transactions, and offers drop-shipping services, on top of assisting your e-commerce marketing strategies through email marketing, analytics, etc. They even have multilingual support for businesses that cater to foreign customers.
However, Shopify’s range of features comes at a price—one that might not be feasible for small businesses just starting. The basic plan costs $29 monthly, while its advanced program comes at a whopping $299 a month.
Square Online
Square Online, built on Weebly website builder, is an easy-to-use builder that can get your shop up and running for free (paid plans start at $12/month). It’s handy for brick-and-mortar stores that use Square POS, which you can seamlessly integrate into the website. Though it does have limitations, especially in design, it has enough to build a foundation to get you started, including automatic inventory, delivery features, and custom invoices.
Which E-Commerce Website Builder Is Best For Me?
Ultimately, choosing the right e-commerce website builder rests on your business’s needs. After identifying that, you can investigate the features (and limitations) of different builders to choose one which provides you with the functions you need to run a successful site.