eCommerce is a great way to capitalize on the online shopping market and provides an additional revenue stream rather than having to rely on traditional sales through brick-and-mortar and third-party sellers.
One of the major benefits of an eCommerce website is that you can sell directly to the consumer and handle all your advertising and marketing with a free trial. This gives you more control over your fate in terms of how you acquire customers, what promotions you offer, the ads you run, bolstering average order value and all your online marketing efforts.
The best eCommerce website builder can be a tricky endeavour though, so we’ve compiled this list of 5 great options for the best eCommerce website builder that will help you can sell online quickly and efficiently. Once you’re up and running, you’ll also need to consider SEO for your e-commerce online store or eCommerce store as well, but that’s a topic for another day.
The Online Store builder or creation process is not always user-friendly, especially if your graduate degree in web design has been gathering dust for a few years. For this list, we’ve picked builder options that are geared toward user-friendliness with a free trial while the Online store still provides everything you need to build a fully functioning eCommerce site or eCommerce store.
Table of Contents
1. Wix – No Coding and Easy to Use
Wix is first on our list for many reasons. First off, it has a good reputation and good brand recognition making one that users will immediately recognize and appreciate the variety of ecommerce features they offer.
Second, Wix requires no coding to build your site, meaning you won’t have to spend hours learning the latest iteration of Java to build your site. They come with pre-built templates for you to use. The templates focus on high use of graphics and images if that’s something you’re looking for then you’re all set.
They also have an automatic builder that builds your site for you with just a few questions upfront. You can even insert customized text. For something easy and unique, Wix is a great option that lets you get up and running without a lot of effort or time spent on your part.
2. Squarespace – Modular Website Design
This is another coding-free option that offers a customer-centric design approach focused on UX and SEO. This is great for driving sales once you’ve driven sufficient traffic to your site. The interface is drag and drop based making it extremely easy to build your site.
If you’re looking for something simplistic that gets you an eCommerce set up without a lot of fuss then Squarespace is a good choice. The overall customizations aren’t very detailed, which means your site may not be wholly different from others, but it’ll get you set up in a hurry if you’re just looking to get started quickly.
Squarespace does offer flexibility in that you’ll be able to reconfigure your eCommerce website at any point without much hassle. This means that as your product count grows you can add in more modules or even completely redesign your site without killing your SEO, having it take forever or costing a fortune.
3. Magento – Open Source eCommerce Builder
The big draw for Magento is that its open-source software that allows completely open customization of your eCommerce site builder. This allows you to build exactly what you want, provided you have the design skills or want to pay a designer. You’ll only be limited by what you can do or pay to have done.
Magento is the ultimate do-it-yourself option for an best eCommerce site builder. If you’re willing to invest the time and budget, you can have anything you want and this is the perfect option to stand out from the crowd.
The one drawback to the software is that you’ll need your domain and hosting service to use it, but with the extensions and add-ons available you’d be hard-pressed to find an eCommerce website builder that was more complete than this.
4. Weebly – Theme Based Customization
Weebly is another quick and easy CMS website builder that lets you pick a theme and put together a site. The software lets you drop in features to your pre-designed theme making setup a snap.
The great thing about Weebly is that it’s excellent for adding pictures and videos with your products and has several extensions that let you integrate your social media and marketing tools. There are also some benefits depending on which payment plan you choose.
The one drawback to Weebly is that you can’t fully customize your site with the pre-designed themes. You can add and remove elements, but you must pick a pre-designed theme which means you’ll never be unique. This is offset by the sheer number of features that Weebly offers though.
5. Shopify – Incredibly Easy With Built-in SEO
Our last entry is our favorite. Shopify is easily the most recognizable name on our list and for good reason. Shopify combines an easy-to-use interface with easy navigation and built-in SEO tools inside the site builders themselves. While I don’t personally like how the display URL options are structured in Shopify (pages, categories create more sub pages than necessary), Shopify SEO is great and super easy to implement otherwise (e.g. 301 redirects).
This means that once you build your site you’ll already be set to go and start ranking high in eCommerce searches. What’s more, you can manage your entire eCommerce experience through Shopify. Not only can you build your site, but you can also find a domain name and even host your site through Shopify as well.
The one drawback to Shopify is that the higher you go in payment tiers, the more the costs can add up. Some extensions and plugins can be purchased as well as additional fees that are charged. All in, you can spend a great deal on your custom-built eCommerce site through Shopify but the features and support you receive are unparalleled. If you’ve got the budget for it, Shopify is on of the best options out there.
Final Thoughts
There you have it, our 5 picks for easy-to-use Best eCommerce website builders. No matter your experience with web design, one of these options can provide you with just what you need to get your site up and going.
From the avid web developer to the complete novice, these options provide something for everyone. Having the right e-commerce marketing tools at your disposal can make the entire process of setting up your online sales presence much easier and simpler, letting you capitalize on all that eCommerce business or online business.
Before you use any CMS, we also recommend taking a look at our guide: How to Rebrand Your Website Without Losing SEO Rankings so you follow best-practices when building your site.
As always, if you need help with SEO services, including link building services, please get in touch!
Tim holds expertise in building and scaling sales operations, helping companies increase revenue efficiency and drive growth from websites and sales teams.
When he's not working, Tim enjoys playing a few rounds of disc golf, running, and spending time with his wife and family on the beach...preferably in Hawaii.
Over the years he's written for publications like Forbes, Entrepreneur, Marketing Land, Search Engine Journal, ReadWrite and other highly respected online publications. Connect with Tim on Linkedin & Twitter.
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