Nowadays, e-commerce businesses tend to navigate the online marketplace. This is where an e-commerce website builder serves as a pivotal tool for success, enabling anyone to establish a unique, functional, and professional digital store. In this article, Viindoo provides businesses with effective e-commerce website builders and tips to choose the suitable one to use.
The Importance of a Robust E-Commerce Platform
Having a robust e-commerce platform is essential for any business looking to succeed in the online marketplace. It's not just a matter of having a virtual storefront to sell products; it's about creating a hassle-free, enjoyable shopping experience for your customers. Here are some reasons why a strong e-commerce platform is crucial:
- Enhance Customer Retention: A well-designed e-commerce platform provides a seamless user experience that keeps customers coming back. With features like easy navigation, personalized product recommendations, and secure payment options, customers are more likely to trust your brand and become loyal customers.
- Increase Sales: A robust e-commerce platform can help increase sales by offering customers multiple payment and delivery options. Additionally, features like abandoned cart recovery, customer reviews, and upselling can help boost sales and increase revenue.
- Expand Brand Reach: An effective e-commerce platform can help expand your brand's reach beyond traditional brick-and-mortar stores. With a well-designed website and optimized SEO, your business can attract new customers from all over the world.
- Provide Security: Security is a top concern for online shoppers. A robust e-commerce platform can provide secure payment gateways, fraud protection, and SSL certification to ensure that customer's sensitive information is protected.
E-commerce platforms can help businesses succeed in the online marketplace
Features to Look for in an E-Commerce Website Builder
1. User-friendly Interface
One of the primary features to look for in a website builder for ecommerce is its ease of use. Regardless of your technical proficiency, the platform should be intuitive and accessible, allowing you to set up your online store quickly and efficiently.
2. Customization Capabilities
Your e-commerce platform should allow for extensive customization to reflect your brand's unique identity. Look for website builders that offer a range of templates, color schemes, and design elements, along with the ability to incorporate your images and logos.
3. Mobile Responsiveness
With an increasing number of consumers shopping on mobile devices, your online store must be responsive across all platforms. Ensure the website builder tool you choose offers templates that are mobile-friendly and adaptable to various screen sizes.
4. Integrated Payment Systems
Your platform should support a wide array of payment methods to cater to a diverse customer base. This includes credit cards, digital wallets, and other popular payment gateways. Additionally, it should provide secure transaction processing to build customer trust.
5. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
A good website builder for ecommerce will have built-in SEO tools to help your online store rank higher in search engine results, driving more organic traffic to your site and increasing your chances of converting visitors into customers.
Good website builders for e-commerce should include these features
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Popular E-Commerce Website Builders
Viindoo Website builder
Viindoo Website Builder is an all-in-one solution designed to help e-commerce businesses, especially SMEs create and optimize their websites for search engines, build brand trust, and accelerate growth. Here are some of the key characteristics of Viindoo Website:
Key Characteristics:
- SEO-optimized website builder that helps businesses reach potential customers.
- Offers various forms for different needs such as survey, contact, and email marketing subscription.
- User-friendly interface with drag-and-drop functionality for easy website design and customization.
- Real-time reports that track and optimize every touchpoint on the website.
- Seamlessly integrated with other solutions such as live chat, events, e-commerce, blogs, and e-learning.
Pros:
- Viindoo's SEO optimization feature helps businesses improve their website's search engine ranking, which can lead to increased website traffic and sales.
- The user-friendly interface with drag-and-drop functionality makes website design and customization easy, even for those without programming knowledge.
- Viindoo offers various forms for different needs, allowing businesses to collect important information from website visitors and potential customers.
- Viindoo's seamless integration with other solutions such as live chat, events, e-commerce, blogs, and e-learning, makes it easy for businesses to manage their online presence in one place.
Currently, Viindoo is offering the One App package, which allows retail businesses to use the Viindoo Website Builder for free and unlimited users. This is a cost-saving solution that is especially suitable for E-commerce businesses that are beginning to self-build a website.
Viindoo Website Builder is an all-in-one solution for businesses
Shopify
Shopify is a popular e-commerce website builder, offering a powerful platform for larger businesses. Here are some of the key characteristics, pros, and cons of using Shopify:
Key Characteristics:
- Shopify is known for its sales features, making it a great option for e-commerce websites.
- It offers easy management of inventories, which is essential for businesses with a large number of products.
- Shopify provides excellent reporting tools to help optimize sales.
- It has diverse multi-channel integration options, including Shopify Payments.
- Shopify offers many payment gateways, including 100 other payment gateways if you're not using Shopify payments.
Pros:
- Shopify provides a helpful and predictive website-building experience, making it easy to build and customize your website.
- It has a massive app selection for unlimited customizability.
- Shopify is a great option for multi-channel integration, allowing you to manage all your sales, inventory, and accounting through one platform.
- Shopify provides excellent shipping options and inventory management tools.
- It offers loads of different website templates, all of which are optimized for mobile, and can be edited and changed to your liking with remarkable depth.
Cons:
- Shopify has limited customization options, making it less ideal for businesses that want to have more control over their website's design.
- It has few built-in features, requiring businesses to rely on apps to add more functionality, which can cost extra.
- Shopify has a high transaction fee without Shopify Payments, which could lead to a loss of profit on purchases.
- The interface isn't always intuitive and can be clunky to navigate, especially for those new to website builders.
- Shopify can be more expensive than other providers, with the cost of its app library adding up quickly.
Shopify is a popular website builder for e-commerce businesses
Wix
Wix is a website builder that is ideal for smaller e-commerce businesses. It offers advanced business functionality like CRM and is the best choice for e-commerce platforms. The platform provides also a friendly onboarding experience, uses SEO best practice prompts, and has an almost unbeatable user experience.
Key Characteristics:
- User-Friendly Interface: Wix has an easy-to-understand interface and is easy to navigate once you get past the initial learning curve.
- Stellar Design Features: Wix uses the same design tools for its e-commerce platform as its regular website builder. It offers a great range of templates that you can customize with new text and images for all your products, plus contact forms and extra pages.
- SEO Capabilities: Wix's SEO capabilities give users granular, page-level control over their SEO data, and its recent partnership with Semrush gives them access to extensive keyword data, making it easier to identify keywords and user queries to target.
- Multilingual Sites: Wix allows users to create multilingual sites easily, which is ideal for users in countries with one or more major languages.
Pros:
- Advanced Business Functionality: Wix offers a range of business functions like CRM that allows you to centrally control and automate a range of business functions, from promoting your business with marketing emails to giving customers help and support with chatbots.
- Useful SEO Best Practice Prompts: Wix provides users with helpful SEO best practice prompts that ensure your website is optimized for search engines.
- Friendly Onboarding Experience: Wix offers a friendly onboarding experience that guides users through the platform and its features.
- Stellar Design Features: Wix provides users with a great range of templates and design features that allow them to build a brilliant-looking online store in minutes.
Cons:
- Inability to Change Site Design After Publishing: Wix does not allow users to change the site design after publishing, which can be frustrating if you want to make modifications to your website.
- Slower Server Response Time: Wix has a slower server response time than some competitors, which can impact website performance.
Wix is ideal for e-commerce businesses
Squarespace
Squarespace is a website builder that offers extensive marketing features for businesses looking to build an online presence. While it is primarily a website builder, it offers a competent online store builder as well, making it an excellent option for small to mid-sized businesses. Here are some of the key characteristics, pros, and cons of Squarespace:
Key Characteristics:
- Extensive Marketing Features: Squarespace offers a wide range of marketing features to help businesses reach new customers. This includes built-in SEO features, social media integrations, and free integration with Mailchimp for email marketing.
- Scalable: Squarespace's built-in scalability allows businesses to develop along with the platform, making it a great option for growing businesses.
- Great Templates: Squarespace offers some of the best website builder templates on the market. The templates are designed in-house and are optimized for mobile devices.
Pros:
- Incredible Value: Squarespace offers excellent value for the money, making it an affordable option for small to mid-sized businesses.
- User-Friendly: With a user-friendly site builder and intuitive back-end design, Squarespace is easy to use and requires little technical knowledge.
- Marketing and Promotional Tools: Squarespace offers built-in SEO features, social media integrations, and free integration with Mailchimp for email marketing, making it a great option for businesses looking to maximize their reach.
Cons:
- Poor Site Speed Performance: Squarespace has been known to have poor site speed performance, which can be frustrating for users.
- Few E-commerce Templates: Squarespace has a limited number of e-commerce templates available, making it less customizable for businesses.
- Limited Inventory Management: Squarespace's inventory management system is not as comprehensive as some other providers, making it less suitable for businesses selling physical products.
Squarespace helps businesses build an online presence
BigCommerce
BigCommerce is an e-commerce website builder that is highly regarded for its inventory management capabilities. Here are the key characteristics, pros, and cons of using BigCommerce:
Key Characteristics:
- Inventory management: BigCommerce is best suited for businesses with large or complex inventory. The platform offers advanced inventory management tools that allow for granular product inventory detail and a wide range of sales channel integration.
- Sales features: BigCommerce offers a variety of features that allow for an excellent sales experience. These include transactional emails to confirm purchases, real-world point-of-sale transactions, and sales analysis tools.
- Pricing plans: BigCommerce has three pricing plans that vary based on annual turnover. The cheapest plan is $29/month, and the most expensive plan is the Pro plan at $299/month. The pricing plan you choose will depend on your sales volume and the features you require.
Pros:
- Free trial: BigCommerce offers a free trial, allowing you to test the platform before committing to a paid plan.
- No transaction fees: Unlike Shopify, BigCommerce doesn't charge transaction fees on sales. However, there is a sales cap depending on the pricing plan you choose.
- Multiple sales channels: BigCommerce allows for the management of multiple sales channels, including Instagram, eBay, and Amazon, in addition to your website.
- 24/7 support: BigCommerce offers 24/7 support for its users.
Cons:
- Limited customization: One of the main drawbacks of BigCommerce is its slightly limited customization options. While there are many templates available, customization options are limited compared to other platforms.
- Steep learning curve: BigCommerce has a difficult-to-navigate interface that can be challenging for new users to get the hang of. The lack of helpful tips during setup makes it more challenging to navigate.
- Restrictive pricing plans: BigCommerce pricing plans are based on annual turnover, which can be restrictive for small businesses.
BigCommerce is highly regarded for its inventory management capabilities
The choice of an e-commerce website builder is a significant decision that can directly impact the success of your online business. Remember, the best platform for your business is one that aligns with your unique needs, budget, and skill set. With the right website builder, your e-commerce business can create an online store that not only attracts customers but also provides them with a seamless shopping experience, setting the stage for lasting success in the digital marketplace.
