E-Commerce Guide for Small Businesses

One of the most important aspects of bringing your business online is choosing the right e-commerce platform to use.  With all the different platforms to choose from, picking the one that works best for your business can become overwhelming.

Here is a list of our favorite e-commerce platforms and the key features that makes them so great:

Shopify

Key Features:
Easily customizable
Detailed Customer Profiles
Over 70 payment gateways
Mobile Commerce
Great Marketing & SEO

Note: This is simple to set up, and they have the best themes. It’s like tumblr for e-commerce, and their design team actually helps.

Price:
14-Day Free Trial
Plans range from $14-179/month

Magento Go

Key Features:
Customizable
Unlimited Product Design
Good customer retention and loyalty options
Built-in SEO

Note: It’s tough to customize if you don’t know programming, and last time I checked there weren’t a lot of templates to choose from but it’s more robust to fully customize the backend.

Price:
30-Day Free Trial
Plans range from $15-125/month

Squarespace

Key Features:
Modern browsers that are customizable
Sync to social platforms
Customer analytics
Offers image SEO

Note: Signup process is slick, and their design looks good. They seem to cater mostly to artists displaying their work, unlike Shopify which caters to e-commerce.

Price:
14-Day Free Trial
Plans range from $10-30/month

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Big Cartel

Key Features:
Easy to use
Customizable
You can sell directly from Facebook
Easily manage customer orders

Note: Like Shopify, focuses on e-commerce, but their themes don’t seem as modern.

Price:
Plans range from $0-30/month

Wix

Key Features:
100 different website templates that are customizable
Offers Pro help to build your site
Drag n’ drop website builder

Note: Modern themes, and now they have HTML5, like Squarespace, seems to focus on people wanting to display work.

Price:
$20/month, or free if you leave the ads up

Google

Key Features:
Great SEO
Google Maps/Apps help pick up your business
You can sell directly from Facebook

Note: It’s a bit tricky to sign up, but it’s free for a year, and has SEO!

Price:
Free for one year
After your first year of free service, you’ll automatically be billed $6.99 /month