Top 10 Best Ecommerce Platforms to Launch a Business

When choosing your ecommerce platform, some features are absolute must-haves and some are just nice to have.

Knowing which features are important to you from the outset will make this decision so much easier.

These are the features we think are must-haves and nice-to-haves, but feel free to make your own list that suits your business needs.

To get more customers, it's helpful for your products to appear on Google’s first page.

The best way to achieve this is through search engine optimization.

When choosing your ecommerce site, you should check out its SEO performance.

Good SEO performance is about knowing what is being searched for online and using a series of best practices to tailor your site so it responds to those searches.

If your site has bad UX (user experience), users will abandon it and you’ll lose sales.

This comes down to things like the attractiveness of a site or how intuitive it is.

38% of shoppers will leave a website if they find it unattractive and 88% won’t return to a website with bad UX.

Therefore, your conversion rate literally depends on flawless UX.

Efficient loading speed contributes to your site’s UX.

As mentioned, this comes with having sufficient bandwidth.

40% of potential customers will exit your site if it takes more than 3 seconds to load!

Your choice of platform will affect your loading speed, but don’t worry ― we’ll warn you about this.

To be successful, your online store needs to integrate with these back-office systems:

Connecting all of these systems will save you loads of time, money, and stress!

Application programming interface (API) is the easiest way to do this.

If this is sounding complicated, here’s an article to help you out.

If something goes wrong on your site, you’ll need support from your platform provider.

And if you can’t get this support, you’ll ultimately lose sales!

So, it’s important to check what kind of customer support your platform offers ― phone or on-page support is best.

Platforms often have limits on how many products you can sell and how much money you can make.

It’s important that your site can handle growth.

You need to be prepared ― what if your product goes viral and your sales skyrocket?

Some platforms will simply upgrade you to a more expensive tier if you’re surpassing the limit, but others might crash!

You need storage space for your customer database, shopping cart software, and your product catalog, among other things.

Aim for between 1GB and 4GB of storage depending on the number of products you plan to sell.

You’ll also need sufficient bandwidth to help your website load faster.

Between 5GB and 50GB are standard among leading providers.

1-click selling is when customers can make purchases with just 1 click because your website already has their credit card and delivery details stored.

This incredibly efficient selling system eliminates the issue of abandoned carts and smoothens the buying process for irresistible UX.

Most ecommerce platforms don’t offer 1-click selling, but some have apps available that do.

Ultimately, you need to get paid.

All of the platforms in this article come with payment methods built-in, but not all of them let you customize this.

Try to cover all your bases by having multiple payment gateways.

Some customers have specific payment methods that they know and trust ― and this can be a dealbreaker.

And make sure you check which countries your payment methods support.

If you’re keen to know more, read this list of the top 5 payment systems to use in 2021.

You’re using these platforms because they’re so much cheaper than building your site from scratch.

So, if your platform isn’t easy for you to set up without paying for a developer, what’s the point?

You want your site to capture your brand perfectly, so a platform that allows for lots of customization is key.

You can customize your site using themes.

Some platforms come with lots of free themes while others offer expensive ones. Some even let you tweak the themes!

If customization is a priority for you, sites with limited or out-of-date themes are probably not worth your time.

Having an active blog on your ecommerce site is a fantastic way to get website traffic because it’s great for SEO.

It’s also a way to get customers invested in your business so they’re more likely to make purchases.

Some platforms have blog features while others let you use plugins for this.

76% of shoppers abandon their shopping carts ― that’s 76 out of every 100 sales lost!

Abandoned cart recovery gives you a second chance by reminding shoppers about their abandoned carts.

So, if a site visitor has items in their cart and they leave the page, they’ll receive an email nudging them to go back and purchase the items.

Luckily, most of our top platforms offer abandoned cart recovery.

Email marketing is absolutely essential for your online store.

It helps you build relationships with customers to ensure that they always choose your brand.

You need a platform that can gather email addresses and assist you in powerful email marketing campaigns that generate sales.

Social media channels and marketplaces are bursting with opportunity ― 130 million Instagram users tap on shopping posts every month.

Why wouldn’t you want a piece of that?

In 2021, it’s smart to choose a platform that lets you use more channels to reach more customers.

Now that you know what features to look for, this is our ultimate list of ecommerce platforms.

All these features are 100% free in our freemium plan ― it's amazing!

Our proven sales funnel and email marketing tools will get you higher conversion rates with minimal effort on your side.

And, we’ve made website building a no-brainer with professional templates and a drag-and-drop editor ― you’ll have your website up in minutes!

And, in case you forgot, systeme is free!

There are also three other plans to choose from:

We’d love to help you launch your online business ― visit systeme.io to create your free account!

Unfortunately, your UX with BigCommerce will probably not be great.

This is because it only has two themes that can be customized to create 7 variations, so your site might not end up looking exactly how you wanted it to look.

It also doesn’t offer 1-click selling and it has inconsistent reviews regarding its loading speed.

These prices are almost identical to those of BigCommerce.

However, Shopify is often preferred for dropshipping, and for local brick and mortar stores looking to expand into ecommerce.

There are 77 payment method options and over 70 design themes in their instant site builder.

Besides 1-click selling, Ecwid has everything on our list of must-haves and nice-to-haves.

It has a free option but then you can’t have more than 10 products, and there is no shopping cart recovery, email tools, or support.

So the free tier probably isn’t worth looking at.

Otherwise, it’ll cost you $15, $35, or $99 for their Business, Venture, or Unlimited packages which are fairly comprehensive.

We suggest you look at the Professional and Business accounts which cost $79 and $299 per month respectively.

There is also a Personal account option for $29 but it excludes newsletters, customer ratings, and abandoned cart recovery.

That was our feature-rich top ten ― we hope you’ll give at least one a try!

If you really want to know, we think systeme is your best bet ― we offer you by far the most features for the best prices.

Give our freemium version a go if you’re not sure!

It all depends on what your business needs, don’t be scared to shop around for the perfect fit.

So, shall we start the countdown to your launch?