Statista indicated that retail eCommerce sales reached more than US$4.2 trillion in 2020, equivalent to 18% of the world’s retail revenues. This figure is forecasted to increase to 21.8% by 2024. Such numeric outcomes lead to a surge in eCommerce websites these days.
To approach an increasing number of digital shoppers, more traditional stores undoubtedly digitize their business activities. Even various startups intend to build virtual stores in order to satisfy the more diverse demands of end-users.
The 12 Best eCommerce Website Builders
However, instead of building a website from scratch, a company turns its focus on the best eCommerce website builder to shorten the time between development and launch. This article will mention the top eight affordable tools to commence with web development resourcefully.
1. Wix eCommerce
One of the most prevalent eCommerce web builders is Wix. It’s famous for building a store with ease in no time. The Wix eCommerce platform eases your development of virtual stores with both basic and advanced business features as follows:
- 500+ free templates for different types of stores;
- Free business tools including Wix Logo Maker and Business Name Generator to build your unique brand identity;
- Secure Wix Payments methods with prestigious payout providers;
- Wix dashboard to track and process orders, remittances, revenues and inventory as well as devise data-centric business plans;
- ADI builder to create a whole website automatically based on your answers for pre-established questions;
- SEO tools to grow your organic traffic;
- AppMarket with 250+ outstanding apps possibly incorporated in websites;
- Wix Owner app to administer your business activities 24/7, even on the go.
Moreover, the process of setting up your online business with Wix is straightforward. Shortly after free-of-charge registration for an account, you may customize your online store with the potential capacity of up to 50,000 products. Beyond that, you may tailor shipping rules and automate your taxes for every sale.
Other accompanying benefits of Wix are not limited to incredible add-ons and plugins but also expand to $300 in ad vouchers, unlimited bandwidth, one-year free domain, secure hosting and security for your virtual shop.
2. Zyro eCommerce
This is a perfect eCommerce website builder for beginners who have no coding knowledge or even lack the ability to produce decent content for their online stores. Despite offering affordable pricing plans, Zyro still comes with excellent features to create an interactive website as follows:
- Drag-and-drop tool to select suitable functions for your specs;
- Customized themes in nine distinct categories;
- Responsive designs on mobile gadgets;
- A myriad of universal payout solutions;
- Unlimited bandwidth and storage;
- Free domain with cloud hosting;
- Transaction and website security with HTTPS encryption;
- Powerful integrations with external websites such as Google Analytics, Hotjar or Facebook to analyze end-user behaviors and target the right audience on social networking sites.
Further, AI business tools are provided to leverage the creation of your brand and website:
- AI writer to produce SEO-friendly content;
- Blog Title Generator to get awesome titles for your blog posts;
- Business Name Generator and AI Slogan Generator to create a catchy brand name and tagline;
- Logo Maker to build a unique logo;
- Website Heatmap to explore what promotes potential visitors to purchase.
Recommended reading: 6 Best eCommerce App Development Companies
3. BigCommerce
If you want to develop multi-channel or omnichannel websites, BigCommerce is a good option for your future online store without doubt. So BigCommerce users can make sales across different platforms such as Instagram, Google Shopping, or Amazon.
Accordingly, this eCommerce website builder comes with exceptional B2B-driven functionality that renders your company scalable with ease:
- Quote management with native CSR-generated tools (e.g. B2B Ninja and BundleB2B);
- Bulk pricing management;
- Custom pricing lists for different B2B end-users;
- A broad spectrum of B2B payment solutions and shipping providers;
- The industry’s fastest APIs to sync massive data from third-party systems automatically into BigCommerce-based websites;
- Advanced search with Elasticsearch;
- High uptime rates and business-level security;
- SEO strategies and integrated POS plugins to increase your website’s traffic.
Moreover, the process of designing a website’s storefront becomes simpler thanks to the Page Builder Editor which allows you to drag and drop elements. Both desktop-based and mobile-responsive websites are easily built with BigCommerce.
Importantly, when you struggle to build an intended website, you may consult BigCommerce experts or get advice from its community forum.
Recommended reading: How to Save Big on eCommerce App Development Cost?
4. Renderforest
Renderforest provides an online suite of creative tools for making attractive videos, animations, logo maker, mockups, websites, and business name generator. The platform is easy to use and employs advanced features, making it possible for people and companies to produce high-quality content without significant design or technical knowledge.
Additionally, Renderforest offers various customizable graphics and templates that users can use to create unique content in minutes.
5. Squarespace
Markedly, Squarespace features award-winning website templates and already built-in eCommerce tools. It accordingly helps your company create an intuitive, appealing, and highly responsive website, regardless of pricing packages and business goals (e.g. providing physical products, services, or digital commodities).
Like other website builders, Squarespace offers common functions (e.g. the drag-and-drop editor, blogging tools, website analytics, SEO tools). It also offers connected services that lead your business to external payment solutions, shipping providers, and social media. Surprisingly, the Squarespace mobile app is available to design, manage and edit your eCommerce website on the go.
Even when you’re too busy to build an online store yourself, you may consider hiring Squarespace experienced developers and designers to develop a professional website on your behalf.
FURTHER READING: |
1. eCommerce Websites Definition: What To Know About This? |
2. How to Build an eCommerce Website Fastest in 2023 |
3. 10 Best eCommerce Website Design Services for Succes |
6. Square Online Store
Generally, Square is well-known for its software installed in point-of-sale (POS) systems. Therefore, seamlessly integrating the Square POS system in your brick-and-mortar store with a Square Online website helps build a centralized database where sales and inventory data is synced and well-managed online. Thus there’s no need for manually processing inputs in separate databases. Concurrently, you can easily track and control your real-time sales and stocks.
Other featured benefits of setting up an eCommerce website with Square Online entail:
- SEO tools;
- Powerful analytics and reporting tools so as to track your customer behaviors behind your sales and make improvements to boost sales;
- Sell products and services across platforms (e.g. social media or website);
- Allow online payments, facilitate auto-billing, send professional receipts and check them in real-time.
7. Shopify
Shopify is considered the most popular eCommerce website builder in the current market. This web-based platform particularly comes with a wealth of benefit packages as follows:
- 70+ free and premium templates, each of which is customized to add functionality and features on the Shopify App Store to your company’s website;
- 100+ payment gateways to select, hence there’s no need to link with external remittance processors;
- Web hosting, unlimited bandwidth a content sending network, and unlimited email forwarding;
- SEO and marketing tools;
- Analytics and mobile optimization tools.
In addition to the mentioned functions, your online store can be established with customer accounts, dropshipping, shopping rate management, and more without hassle. Even when you struggle with setting up a high-traffic website and require a business-level solution, Shopify experts are on hand.
8. Weebly
This is a Square-powered eCommerce website builder that supports entrepreneurs to build online stores at a reasonable price. Therefore, the Weebly website may be easily incorporated with the Square POS to control inventory and products in a centralized place.
The platform offers a free plan which excludes eCommerce functionality. So companies that are well-prepared for web development should upgrade to paid plans (Pro, Business, and Business Plan). In particular, Weebly comes with exceptional eCommerce features as follows:
- Powerful product search and badgers for sale items;
- Secure checkout and payments;
- Inventory management;
- Smart marketing and SEO tools;
- Analytics tools to measure site performance;
- Display and merchandising options to showcase products or services;
- Bulk import and export management;
- Automated abandoned cart emails
9. Shift4Shop eCommerce
The final prevalent name is Shift4Shop. This builder is suitable for those who wish to build an enterprise-grade website at the lowest possible costs. Like other given counterparts, Shift4Shop affords all essential features to build even a high-volume entrepreneur website. They particularly involve 100+ templates, unlimited products, unlimited bandwidth, SEO marketing tools, free hosting, order and product management, and more.
Markedly, Shift4Shop has eCommerce automation to handle various business tasks without much human intervention.
10. Magento
There is a big difference that distinguishes this eCommerce platform from others. There are two ways to work with it, do it yourself or pay a lot for it.
The first solution is named Magento Open Source. This is a free tool to build an eCommerce site on your own. The self-hosting software offers you the ability to customize the website as you desire. As a result, you must know how to code in PHP or hire some developers to help you here.
Nevertheless, there are still several standard features that every online store owner would like to use such as integrated checkout, payment, and shipping, mobile-optimized shopping, global selling, etc.
The second is Magento Commerce. It’s a cloud service that you must pay a large amount of money to use. By large, I mean $10.000 to $15.000/year or even more. With this package, its sales team and specialists will help you set up the system and everything else. That’s why if your business is getting bigger, and at the same time, your capital manages to afford this pricey tag, Magento Commerce is a perfect choice.
High-profile clients: HP, BevMo!, Sigma, Zumiez, etc.
Pricing:
- Magento Open Source: free
- Magento Commerce: varied
11. branchbob
Pricing: $0
branchbob is considered one of the most supportive tools to use during this pandemic as it’s completely free (according to the statement here): no monthly fees and no transaction fees. Nevertheless, this eCommerce platform was designed as a cloud-based one and is great to use on web browsers. However, such a great tool like this is still unpopular compared to the two above platforms.
It offers a wide range of features that you can ever imagine for an eCommerce site including 150 currencies supported, integration of social media channels, variants, and options for items, open-source code, customized homepage.
And the biggest obstacle when using this eCommerce platform is that coding skills are needed to upgrade your website.
12. Jimdo
Pricing: starting at $0.
With a free plan, you will get 500-MB storage, 2-GB bandwidth, and only 5 website pages. So this plan best suits personal and very small businesses.
But we cannot forget to mention that the eCommerce website builder also offers HTTPS security in the free pricing plan.
Users will have 2 options for making an eCommerce website:
- Jimbo Dolphin: for people who don’t know coding.
- Jimbo Creator: for developers.
One of its weaknesses is no credit card gateway available.
Conclusion
After all, an eCommerce website builder plays an important role in supporting companies to build a fast, yet high-quality, online store. Despite several facilities, each of the listed tools serves a separate purpose. Therefore, you should ponder your specific requirements for an eCommerce website, then pick the right builder to optimize business activities over the Internet.
We know it isn’t easy to make the right choice, but we at Designveloper are here to help you. We offer a wide range of services from web development and mobile application to business consulting. Tell us now for free estimations! Don’t hesitate to contact us now if you want to upgrade your business with this latest technology.
