Wrapping It Up - How to Choose the One and Only E-Commerce Builder

by Janz Nordman, Guest Contributor

An e-commerce store is a unique type of website designed specially for online business, whether you are selling phone accessories, flame lamps or La La Land posters.

All website builders save time, money and energy. They simplify the creation process and make site management easier. This also applies to all well-known e-commerce builders as they let you build, customize and run your online business. It's almost impossible to use a standard website building platform to set up your online store.
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Modern e-commerce builder creates the online store of your dreams
There are quite a many e-commerce builders on the market - WixStores, Shopify, BigCommerce, Magento, Volusion, WooCommerce, Sitebuilder, Squarespace – just to mention couple of the biggest and more well-known platforms.

Nowadays most of e-commerce platforms are user-friendly environments meant for wide segment of users with different expectations and are highly tested in terms of usability, security and all kind of technical parameters such as uptime and speed. Most common keywords to be taken into account while choosing the suitable platform are design, pricing, hosting, payment and shipping options, marketing   possibilities, support and security level for processing sensitive data. For sure not all e-commerce platforms offer similar options and pricing may vary actually a lot.

The best e-commerce platform for you is the one that works as the very best solution to set up your dream site. Even if you are the Jon Snow of technology and know nothing about setting up a website, for instance Shopify is the perfect e-commerce tool for you since it’s meant to work for literally everyone. Even granddads. You’ll be able to start your online store from scratch faster than a kid running for an ice cream truck.

Within modern online store you can sell almost everything, whether you sell homemade coffee, an e-book or a cow. Ok, maybe not a cow because it would be really, really weird. But seriously, almost everything: tangible products, services and e-services, downloads, and so on. Quantity is no issue either, since you can sell one copy of your product or thousands. A proper online store helps you handle issues like inventory, taxes, shipping settings including dropshipping, and several payment methods.

Most important features to be considered
All biggest builders are actually excellent tools for building an e-commerce website, the features and build-up of the platforms are more or less similar. Some overall recommendations from my experience are following.

With every builder look for existing great variety of beautiful and professional themes that work perfectly for all possible devices. The theme store designed by qualified should include free and paid themes to match different industries such as jewelry, fashion, art, furniture, beauty, sport, movies, and many more. For instance every theme in Shopify is optimized for desktop, mobile, tablets or any other Silicon Valley technology.

Transparent fee structure is crucial as there should be no hidden fees, a recurrent headache with some e-commerce platform providers. Choose the entry-level plan and if you ever need more functionality, you can upgrade your plan. Most of e-commerce builders offer trial period with all plans to test your store, this trial can be cancelled for free at any time. True Customer Support via different channels such as e-mail, phone, live-chat, user forums is vital  since it may be really helpful when you are in trouble. Plus never underestimate how your sensitive data is kept safe and sound.

The last but not the least issue with e-commerce builders is the installation and overall usage. Based on my personal experience Shopify is all you need to build an efficient and smooth-looking online shop from the scratch. You may find useful my quick guide to install Shopify which I wrote especially to help you walk through the main steps on the installation process.

Wrapping it up
Remember that choosing the right e-commerce platform is not an easy task. This decision has great impact on your overall business for years. Therefore you should know beforehand as well as possible what are your needs and requirements.  Hopefully this article gives a little help for finding the right one, You are welcome to browse my TOP 5 e-commerce builders here.

Author bio:

The article is written by Janz Nordman, web developer and author behind www.bestcloudtools.com. He has university degree and over a decade of professional experience collaborating with different IT international corporations. Recently moved over to the freelance world in order to have a more rational distribution of work and private life.

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