What Is Ecommerce? Guide To Selling Online 2024

e commerce portal

Ecommerce can happen through a website, smartphone app, social media platform, online marketplace, or other sales platform. If you want to sell at a marketplace, a fair, or a festival then this is the best option for you. It has a really simple website builder with no monthly fees. You can also get a Square credit card reader or a virtual terminal, which acts just like a digital cash register. It’s great for getting up and running quickly, has a 14-day free trial, and is really easy to use. There are ten free themes and over 50 paid themes that start at electronic filing e $140.

Also, there are extensions available for integrating payment gateways, social media, email marketing, 1-click selling, and shipping. Since its release to the public in 2001, 3dcart (now Shift4Shop) has served over 22,000 online businesses with clientele including PCMag. They have some practical features like unlimited storage and no transaction fees. You can also use their POS, and they support multi-channel selling. Dropshipping can be an appealing business model for small business owners in the e-commerce space because it removes the need to manage inventory yourself. BigCommerce caters to this space with its ready-made database of dropshipping suppliers.

e commerce portal

How Much Does an E-Commerce Platform Cost?

From our stats, I’d say – stay away from Shopify if SEO is your top priority. Where’s WooCommerce scored 5, they got 2.5 and the median is 3.7. It’s not surprising that where the average organic traffic score is 20,346, Shopify only passes half of that by a thread but Woo is at a 70+. There are more than 100 free themes to choose from, and if you have an existing website, you can use Shift4Shop with it.

Make the leap to ecommerce today

  1. Wix’s ecommerce features have evolved drastically in a few years.
  2. Built-in security measures and automatic updates ensure your online store is always running on the latest software.
  3. Below, we highlight some of the essential features we wouldn’t compromise on.
  4. Shopify is the most well-known platform in the eCommerce space and for good reason, they offer everything you will ever need for your eCommerce store.

Zoho Commerce has an online knowledge base including user guides and FAQs, where you can look up answers to common issues yourself. The provider also has email support and offers the option of a telephone callback, which you can request with an email. Although we were unable to find evidence of chat support, there is also a Zoho Community, where you can consult other users on trending topics and queries. SEO tools, email marketing tools, social media integration, and customer review functionality will help you develop an ongoing marketing strategy. With Volusion, there is no free plan, and you can’t sell digital products. So, if you want to sell ebooks or music, you’ll need another ecommerce solution.

WooCommerce Features and Plans

They will also be easy to use, so you can get your store up and running quickly and without any headaches. BigCommerce stands out for its 24/7 tech support, which includes phone, chat and ticket help, even for its lowest-cost plan. Knowing that there’s someone you can reach at any time can bring peace of mind.

The templates they have are more industrial, but they feel outdated. Also, customizing the store takes a lot of time to understand and get used to except for experienced users because there’s no drag-and-drop functionality. Fortunately, there’s a community of developers willing to assist with theme development and other modifications.

We also considered platforms that enable multiple currency and store, allows integration with Google services, and 3PLs. If you’re running a self-hosted platform, you can optimize it for speed, but again that takes time and effort. Most self-hosted sites don’t bother; the average Adobe Commerce site loads in 5 seconds. Forget collecting any credit card payments with that slow site. Customer support should be available when you need it, not just during business hours. You want to know that if something goes wrong with your store or payment gateway in the middle of the night, someone will be there to help you fix it.