For several years, e-commerce businesses have grown rapidly, playing an important role in meeting people’s supply and demand while preventing corporate stagnation. The growth of eCommerce will undoubtedly accelerate in the coming years. So, what are the best eCommerce platforms for startups to watch? Here are three of the hottest and most promising eCommerce platforms for startups in 2023 that you should consider.
What is an eCommerce Startup?
An eCommerce start-up tends to refer to a company or store that is in its early stages and intends to market its products via the Internet. Here are a few pointers to consider when launching an e-commerce website.
How do you start today’s eCommerce Startup?
- Define your startup capital
- Decide on a name
- Register your domain name
- Choose an eCommerce Platform
- Define Your niche and business model
- Setup your email, phone number, and address
- File your corporate paperwork
- Register with the State for Sales Tax
- Setup your bank account
- Fund your account
- Get checks and debit/credit card
- Decide on an accounting strategy
- Design your logo and brand identity
- Setup your online sales platform
Best eCommerce Platforms for Startups
It’s time to take the eCommerce market’s next major leap forward by moving to a technology platform that offers simple and easy-to-manage products and services. There are a variety of platforms that are currently being used for eCommerce solutions, but here are the ones that we chose to recommend.
1. Payhip
Payhip is a hosted e-commerce platform that lets you start selling for almost free. You can run promotions and track your sales. Payhip is an online store builder, which means it is hosting your showcase. You do not operate the eCommerce server or software.
You don’t need to pay for hosting in the free plan. Go to Payhip to create a free account with an email address and password. You can customize your store, add a refund method and start selling after you create a free account.
You can start selling your products on a hosted storefront but that’s not all you can also sell on social media and websites. You can place a checkout or card on your preferred sales channel and sell products. Payhip also allows you to embed a product page on your website instead of adding a buy button.
If you prefer, there is seamless integration between Payhip and these sales channels. Payhip enables fast payment on desktop or mobile devices.
After a successful sale, your customers can download digital products immediately. Payhip also sends download information via email. It supports PayPal and all other major cards for processing payments in addition you can accept several different currencies. You can even choose the number of download attempts by default. It allows three downloads for aged digital products if you sell software licenses. Payhip can generate software keys for you. What’s more, Payhip can handle your EU v80 calculations by itself.
You can customize the color and logo according to your brand. You can change the color and borders of the buy buttons and the cart buttons. You can set a background image for the storefront Payhip’s design editor.
Sell digital downloads, courses, coaching and more from one simple platform - Payhip.
You are able to upload a profile photo and set a short bio for your store. It allows you to add social media links.
If you know CSS you can control more of the visual aspects of your store. You will receive basic but reliable analytics to track traffic to your store by connecting Google analytics and Facebook pixel to your Payhip store for detailed analytics. Moreover, you can create a letter template, just change the subject and message of the email and send it to your customers.
This shouldn’t be a hindrance if you build your online store as part of a larger main platform like a block. It also works if you want to sell on social media but if you are looking to build an eCommerce brand, Payhip is not for you.
You must take note of this severe limitation before registering with Payhip.
If you are planning to sell memberships on your website, Payhip might be a good option. You can set up different plans for your subscribers including free trials. You can even sell exclusively content to your member’s affiliate programs. It can be a huge source of traffic or income for your online store for this reason affiliate programs should be part of your marketing strategy.
Cons:
- Not able to build an eCommerce brand.
- It does not support physical products.
2. Shopify
If you spend a large amount of time searching for reviews or comparing the top CRM and eCommerce website builders on the internet, you will notice that Shopify has a lot to offer. There is something for everyone, whether you plan to launch your store entirely online or as usual. Shopify has such a robust feature set that they either have a built-in tool or allow you to install it via an app. For example, taxes and shipping are included in the Shopify interface for many themes. Shopify is an all-in-one eCommerce cloud platform.
You must still locate a free social media button app. Both options work, and you rarely have to pay extra money when selecting an app.
The platform has one of the most comprehensive dashboards I’ve ever seen; all tasks, from order processing to inventory management, are simple to complete. The platform also includes a partner finder interface where developers can experiment with new sites without having to open free trials every time.
It’s similar to a sandbox interface where you can install new themes, customize full-fledged websites, and easily transition from the partner finder site to the live site. Furthermore, you receive a commission for each customer.
If you bring Shopify on board, going forward, reports in Shopify are my favorites of all eCommerce platforms because they are organized, clean, and simple with options like viewing sales by billing address, sales by traffic, and total sales by product name. if you want to sell your products in a real retail environment you can opt for a post this includes everything you need to sell your products offline both from the software and hardware side the software includes an iPad app that makes it easy to sell your products offline.
Shopify recently upgrade their free trial plan as 3 months instead of 14 days free trial. It costs only $1 per month and 3 days fully free.
You can even get additional equipment from the company such as a cash register receipt printer and barcode scanner. Shopify also offers one of the largest app stores of all eCommerce solutions.
They provide hundreds of free and paid apps that will improve your store they have been
thanks to their formidable content management system.
Shopify: The most integrative eCommerce platform
You can create additional pages as well as pages through which your customers can easily contact you. Shopify makes it easy to run your blog as everything is handled from one panel. Keep in mind that the whole Shopify is tricky to get through the features set in one section.
Don't miss out on Shopify more:#Is Shopify the best eCommerce Cloud Platform? #7 Benefits of Shopify over WordPress for Your eCommerce Store
#It’s worth mentioning that each of the Shopify themes available in their theme store is responsive to mobile-ready. Your site will automatically adapt to the size of the client screen whether via a tablet or a smartphone along with direct Facebook, YouTube, and Pinterest integrations gift cards, discount codes, and a decent customer profile.
Shopify has partnered with YouTube to collaborate on new methods of sales. You can sell it by installing YouTube Shopping on your Shopify store.
If you want a feature that is only available in the app store, you can always test it out and move on to another option. If it doesn’t work on your website if you have an amazing store but your customers can’t find chances are you will be very disappointed with the sales data you have an amazing store but your customers can’t find it, chances are you will be very disappointed with the sales data.
Gift cards are incredibly user-friendly, and you don’t need to seek a third-party app to enhance your gift card experience.
With built-in search engine optimization features, Shopify gives better SEO and marketing opportunities.
Your site will be easily found in all major search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo. The nice thing is that even if your SEO settings are automated. You can go to each product page and set up your own target keywords, URLs, and more.
If you really want to customize your store
Furthermore, the interface offers a customizable title and meta tags, and all URLs are SEO-friendly.
Shopify has worked with Google to periodically provide you with advertising money for a new AdWords account as well.
Cons
- Highly Costing
- Difficulty With Content Marketing
- Difficult Exit Shopify
3. Ecwid – A Litespeed Webserver’s Company
The Ecwid platform’s main feature is that you can easily take your Ecwid system outside and integrate it there in a matter of minutes.
You can also mirror the system on other sides if you plan to sell it elsewhere online ultimately. You can manage all of these sites for one centralized location rather than switching between multiple dashboards and speaking of which Ecwid provides tons of eCommerce management options.
For example, you can add a wide range of products accompanied by their various attributes such as weight prices, photographs, etc.
Ecwid is officially Lightspeed company! Litespeed is a 4th most popular web server, used by 10% of websites. Learn more about Ecwid.
You can process various card payments and fulfill orders accordingly in short by setting shipping rates. You will be everything that comes with a standard eCommerce platform.
All this can be done in the Ecwid online system via your web browser, but not really.
Additionally, you may sync equity across various platforms, allowing you to sell on the fly from your smartphone. Although they may not have the same capability as what is provided in the online store, Ecwid has produced its own store management apps for Android and IOS smartphones.
You can rely on apps to edit product attributes and upload eCommerce products and images.
This system is also designed to integrate well with social media, so you can sell your items on Facebook.
You need simply configure Ecwid to add your products directly to your Facebook page and you’ll be able to sell and sync each product accordingly. Ecwid allows you to export your product catalog to such platforms and then automatically sync sales data when you systematically sell items across multiple channels; however, the most prominent channel should be the Google Adwords storefront; expect Ecwid to revamp your site turning it into an Adwords storefront.
Another part of Ecwid that we especially love is the delivery aspect, with real-time shipping integration. You are constantly aware of what is happening with your orders and where they are going.
Finally, Ecwid recently introduced a new feature called the starter site. This is a simplified one-page showcase for businesses looking to migrate to Ecwid.
You can think of Ecwid as a kind of eCommerce widget.
Cons:
- Restrictions of sales channels on Facebook and Instagram
- The available storefront design templates are very limited.
4. Yo!kart – For startups and enterprises
Yo!Kart is a multi-vendor eCommerce software to launch an eCommerce platform tightly packed with a number of essential features and functionality. The software is an ideal option for startups and enterprises to enter new markets and build competitive advantage. The multiple APIs and third-party integrations extend the capabilities of the software making it an optimum software to accelerate the growth of your muti-vendor eCommerce business.
Leveraging the demand of the B2B marketplaces, Yo!Kart’s other version is built specifically to cater to the needs of modern B2B transactions. To enable entrepreneurs to capture the growth in this flourishing domain, the B2B-specific features of Yo!Kart such as RFQ module, minimum order quantity, quote management, etc. align manufacturers, distributors, and service providers under one roof.
Yo!Kart has a refined UI with purpose-built features that make it quintessential software to build an eCommerce marketplace. The API-driven eCommerce ecosystem offered by Yo!Kart enhances the possibilities of your business. The new additions like badges and ribbons amplify contextual information available for buyers and build trust leading to better buying experiences and higher conversion rates.
Cons
- Changes in design via themes are limited. Further customizations are paid.
- Updates have to be purchased. But the need arises only if the updates come with features essential for a business.
- First-time users need to invest time to learn the system.
