E-commerce platforms have been growing with time. Reports state that more and more people have turned to online shopping. This is surely good news for the sellers. If you are planning to start an online business, then you must know that the right e-commerce platforms can either make or break your brand. There are a wide variety of types and sizes of businesses and choosing the right one is a daunting task indeed. Each e-commerce platform is different from one another. But, when you conduct proper research and analysis, you will be able to find the one that perfectly works for your business.
Conducting deep research will make you realize that there are a lot of e-commerce platforms available. But, which of these would stand out for your business by providing you with industry-specific templates? It is not a daunting task for any small business to start selling its products online and participate in the gold rush. With a decent e-commerce builder, you can easily promote your products, receive payments, and handle shipping from the comfort of your home office.
But creating a storefront that appears professional, along with an online store that achieves a rank on Google is not that easy when it comes to establishing an online business. Customers usually expect a high-quality user experience from e-commerce stores. If your online business does not perform well then it can turn off your potential customers and create a negative impact on your business. When you have the correct e-commerce software, you will easily be able to fix all of these problems. You should just know the correct way to choose the right e-commerce platform for your startup.
Best E-commerce platforms for startups & SMEs
Wix
Wix has come a long way over the recent years. They are known to deliver great value for solo entrepreneurs and even various small businesses. It offers business owners multi-channel integration, drop-ship, abandoned cart recovery, and print-on-demand features. It is one of the beginner-friendly platforms perfect for start-up businesses with on-page customer support.
Here, you will get various features such as drag-and-drop elements to add cool videos, and functionality, and create the website you want. You will also be able to enjoy a ton of amazing free themes. Wix provides their users with three different financial plans. If you choose a standard website plan you will not get the features that are required for an online store. The three different plans available for business are – Business Basic at $27 per month, Business Unlimited at $32 per month, and Business VIP at $59 per month.
Shopwired
Shopwired has become very popular in recent times. It is a well-known e-commerce platform that serves consumers from all around the globe offering high-quality services in terms of its features, ease of use, etc. All the feature sets of Shopwired are highly competitive.
Shopwired is an e-commerce platform that offers five different plans that range from $29.95 per month to $499.95 per month.
You will get a 14-day free trial available for all the plans of this platform. Also, if you choose to opt for the annual billing option, then you will also get the added advantage of a 20% discount on all plans.
Zyro
Another e-commerce platform that is known to offer the best services to startup owners is Zyro. Zyro has been recently launched in the market, but it is developed by the very popular web hosting company Hostinger.
Zy is not just limited to providing a website builder to business owners. It also comes with various artificial intelligence tools that appear to be beneficial for businesses in various ways such as:
- It can create logos and favicons
- It provides the option to resize, upscale, and remove backgrounds from images
- Creating a business name and slogan
- It also has tools that help to create blog post titles and write content.
Zyro has a drag-and-drop builder to customize your e-commerce site. There are also a variety of free themes that can be used as a basis for your design. Moreover, it enables you to sell both digital and physical products. This e-commerce platform has four different pricing plans and you can select one as per your preferences. However, out of these four plans, there are only two plans that provide storefront functionality – the Online Store plan and the Advanced Store plan. The lowest plan starts at $8.90 per month, but business owners need to commit to four years of service to get the lowest per-month pricing. The best part of Zyro is that all its plans come with a 30-day money-back guarantee.
BigCommerce
BigCommerce is considered to be the best ecommerce platform of all. It has a very large search engine for the products making it ideal for big brands. Business owners who want to start an ecommerce store or want to expand their actions to achieve more online orders can use this platform. Various tools in this platform enable any business to gain success.
It comes with a user-friendly interface which makes it easy for you to customize your online store using the customizable templates available here. BigCommerce is helping business owners who do not know a lot of web development skills, but it also enables tech-savvy people to tweak the HTML and CSS to achieve more control over web design. Moreover, this platform comes with a headless ecommerce structure enabling maximum customization for big brands.
Coming to the financial plans, the initial plan of BigCommerce which is the Essentials plan costs $29.95 per month. The other two Bigcommerce plans are $79.95 per month and $299.95 per month, respectively. You will also be able to enjoy some added benefits such as discount codes, gift cards, unlimited bandwidth, and professional reporting. BigCommerce does not offer any custom SSL or abandoned cart saver, but it is still a really good option when it comes to startup businesses not getting sales worth more than $50k per year. As the plan goes higher, so does the sales limit. All plans come with a free trial. You will also receive an added 10% discount when it comes to purchasing annual plans.
Conclusion
The import-export industry has given a fortune to a lot of people around the globe. It has turned out to be one of the latest industries of the millennium and this has led to the growth of the online markets. You should know about all the best ecommerce platforms available out there and what works best for you if you are planning to start an import-export business. You must also gather knowledge about the various export schemes provided by the DGFT of the Indian government such as the Advance Authorisation Scheme which helps the exporters to ensure a smooth exporting process.
