With the amount of online shoppers increasing each year, now is the time to cash in. If you’ve been planning on starting an online store, but have no idea where to start, this might help. The following are the 5 platforms that can be used to start your eCommerce empire.
Wordpress
Wordpress is used by over 20% of the websites on the internet. It’s a very popular option for those looking to get into the eCommerce game. It offers great versatility and loads of custom themes, allowing you to create your dream site quickly, with no web development skill needed.
Wordpress is a great platform to start your store on, but there a few drawbacks. One of them being that it is somewhat hard to customize the theme exactly to your specifications without purchasing a costly theme or hiring a coder to develop you a custom theme. However we think the pros out weight the cons on this one. The website Theme Forest is a great place to find awesome, affordable themes.
Example: Tinkering Monkey is a custom, handmade sign shop site using Wordpress.
Magento
Magento is also considered a good platform to start your new online business. The basic membership comes at no cost to the user and has an excellent community help forum where users can learn how to take their business to the next level and receive technical support. However, it is very pricey if you want to upgrade your package. By pricey I mean $15,000-$50,000 a year pricey. This can be very intimidating for those who are just starting out and just want to test the waters. So if this one looks like something you'd be interested in using, make sure to try out the free version first.
Example: The Store is an online retail store using Magento.
Joomla
Joomla is great for getting lots of content and or products out on your site at once without having to manually do everything, which can very tome consuming. Joomla is known for being in the middle of the learning curve web development wise. It’s not basic enough for the average person to use easily, but is not customizable enough for seasoned developers looking to have freedom of creativity. If you want to dive in and learn to really manage and customize your store, it might be a good option.
Example: Beeyond the Hive is an online store focusing on honey and products created with honey that uses Joomla.
Shopify
With Shopify’s new partnership with Facebook it’s only getting more popular. It makes it a breeze for users to purchase items from their favorite fan pages or from the companies Shopify Facebook store. Before it was on Facebook, Shopify had been serving the eCommerce world. It’s known for being one of the most user friendly sites in terms of adding products and getting your store up and running. It’s also lightning fast compared to many other solutions. It isn’t free (they do offer a free trial, though), but if you have the volume it is definitely worth it. Overall, Shopify is a great product that allows very easy customization and endless options to make the site your dream website.
Example: Kutoa is a retail and charitable site using Shopify. They sell healthy snack bars and feeds kids for every bar sold.
Etsy
Etsy has been becoming more and more popular. It’s the eBay of arts and crafts and allows those who have talent to showcase it and profit from it. The site does mainly only accept handmade craft items, but they do make exceptions. Esty is not pricey in the slightest bit. There is a marginal percentage taken out of every purchase, but to list a product it is only $0.25. If you aren’t selling a large volume and like the pay as you go model, this is the best route to take.
As you can see, the options are endless when it comes to choosing which platform to pick when setting up your new eCommerce. It all depends on the person when choosing which platform they want to go with. As long as you can drive traffic to the site and sell converting products, the platform may not matter much. It just depends on what you need or want in your new site.
