As of 2024, 2.71 billion people shop online. Analysts expect about a fifth of retail purchases to happen online this year, and this share will increase to 22.6% by 2027.
There were approx. 26.5 million stores online in 2023, and in 2024, ecommerce sales will exceed $6.3 trillion.
In light of this data, choosing the best platform has never been more challenging. This article outlines three good options.
Squarespace is the beginner-friendliest option, with a wide array of free templates. The Business package is quite affordable. Its SEO tools and drag-and-drop editor make it an ideal choice for new vendors.
The platform walks users through the process of adding products. You add a title and a description and set the stock number. The “limited availability” option creates a sense of urgency.
WooCommerce lets you convert a WordPress website to an online store. The basic version is free. You can use extensions to sell subscriptions and accept online bookings and recurring payments. You can also accept pre-orders, create coupon referrals, etc.
If you choose WooCommerce, you can choose from premium WordPress hosting options. Examples include WP Engine, Flywheel, and Kinsta.
Now, a bit more about these. WP Engine offers a global CDN, EverCache technology, and various caching mechanisms to ensure fast loading times. It has been optimized specifically for WooCommerce, providing seamless integration and enhanced performance.
Flywheel runs on the Google Cloud Platform with custom caching, CDN, and performance monitoring. It ensures fast load times and reliability for WooCommerce sites. The dashboard is intuitive, with one-click staging and easy SSL management.
Kinsta uses Google’s premium tier network for high performance and uptime. It was built for WooCommerce with features like automatic scaling and optimized database queries. It is also developer-friendly with SSH access, staging environments, and Git integration.
This leading website builder is easy to use and has many free, high-quality e-commerce store templates and a highly customizable site editor. Its feature-rich plans make selling online much easier.
The site editor features many pre-built order forms. You won’t have to waste any time on designing that section. On the downside, it’s hard to resize forms.
Vendors can set up forms to take payments and direct customers to the checkout. If they have integrated contact lists, they can also choose which fields to save. Common fields include names and emails. Once this is done, Wix labels contacts who have used the online order form.
Wix lets users set up automated email responses, automated reminders to create tasks, etc. The main advantage is that all of these features are together in one menu.
It’s also easy to add products to the store. You just upload photos and add a title, a description, and product versions, prices, and SKUs. An SEO assistant orders the aspects that are important for SEO. Indexing items is one of the most crucial ones.
Finally, there is an option to set types of discounts, such as percentages and dollar-value discounts. You can also set limitations like “one per customer,” total number, when an item expires, and more.
Recap
