Top 10 E-commerce Platforms for Marketing

In the same way that there have been silk routes, spice routes, or amber routes in history, today there is an e-commerce route where there are tens of millions of e-businesses. It is experiencing a historic boom right now. The number of digital customers has surpassed a billion, and it continues to grow. Global e-commerce revenues are expected to reach $4.921 trillion this year alone, and growth will remain steady going forward. In such a challenging environment, you need to know what tools to use if you want to succeed in competition.

Using e-commerce tools can automate your online business and make it more efficient for both you and your customers. In today's flooded marketplace, specific e-commerce features together with solid capabilities such as cart abandonment emails, customer segmentation, a successful search in your online shop, inventory management, and the aesthetics of your e-commerce site play a significant role.

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In the words of Master Yoda, "Your path you must decide", so let's get straight, we do not provide a definitive assessment of which tool is the most effective. In this post, we highlight 10 e-commerce platforms which are among the top performers and with enough marketing features for you to market your business. Choosing the right e-commerce  tool depends on which tool suits your needs.

In this article, we summarize tools that can help your business succeed through e-commerce. 

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Shopify

Most suitable for: Medium-sized business and Enterprise

Even though there is always debate about this, Shopify is probably the most popular tool for this type of business with more than a million and a half brands using it. Shopify is primarily designed to help you set up an e-commerce store as easily and successfully as possible. The smooth user experience and customized options allow you to make your website uniquely yours. That is why it is so popular among many users. The platform provides a complete solution - the hosted package takes care of the entire process, from installation, management, backups, security to updates.

The drag-and-drop component feature of Shopify lets you create your own online store. Furthermore, you will benefit from analytics that will simplify the management of orders, shipping, payments, and advertising campaigns. Even if you already have a site on Wordpress, Webflow etc, integration is possible.

Additionally, Shopify offers many pre-built templates that you can modify in a matter of minutes besides the option of creating a website from scratch. A library of hundreds of plugins and a mountain of apps will help you add new features to your website that will enhance the user experience, increase conversion rates and reduce abandonment rates.

Shopify isn't cheap, and that's one downside. It may not be an option for you if your company makes a few thousand dollars or less in profit per year. Clearly, the cost of Shopify comes with benefits, such as being very easy to set up, so you don't have to hire a developer or a tech-savvy person.  

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Key features:

• Storefront
• Shopping Cart
• Abandoned Checkout Recovery
• Store Management
• Marketing & SEO
• Products
• Web Hosting
• Analytics
• Mobile App
• 24/7 Support

You can learn more about Shopify's features here.

WooCommerce

Most suitable for: Middle-sized business, Enterprise

In addition to having a very heated debate about the most popular e-commerce tool, WooCommerce is definitely a fierce competitor to Shopify. In fact, WooCommerce is actually a Wordpress plugin that's quite customizable when building an online store, easy to set up if you're familiar with Wordpress and know HTML and CSS... In either case, you will have to hire a designer or developer to add more advanced features. WooCommerce is probably the best choice if you're on a budget, need an open-source solution, and plan to integrate WordPress. That's what makes this tool so popular.

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Key features:

• 400+ official extensions
• Countless themes
• REST API - manage from products to orders
• Unrestricted customization
• Built-in blogging
• Checkout process
• Product ratings and reviews
• Unlimited products
• Built-in payment processing
• Shipping options
• Email templates

You can learn more about WooCommerce's features here.

SquareSpace

Most suitable for: Small business

Squarespace is especially popular with small businesses. If you run a restaurant, paint, take pictures, or even have your own podcast or ninja academy, this is the right platform for you. You can use it to manage inventory, send abandoned order emails, auto-email or segment your audience. Simple but beautiful websites are possible with this platform. If you need an advanced online store for your business to flourish, then Squarespace is not the right platform for you. In comparison to other e-commerce platforms, it is quite complicated to master. In any case, it isn't harder than being a ninja master. Squarespace comes with a limited range of apps and plugins, so you are largely limited to their capabilities right out of the box.

Key features:

• Customizable templates and layouts
• Multiple contributors and access levels
• Built-in mobile websites 
• Sell products, services and subscriptions
• Inventory management
• Product merchandising and subcategories
• Order management
• Customizable checkout
• Custom forms for products
• Multiple payment methods

You can learn more about SquareSpace's features here.

Wix

Most suitable for: Small business

Simply put, Wix is a popular platform. And popularity matters, too. Like Squarespace, Wix is a platform for small businesses. This platform is primarily designed to provide users with a simple, non-complex website creation experience. A variety of e-commerce features have been added to the drag-and-drop builder itself so that you can create a simple online shop that supports the shopping process. Among the features of Wix platform are adding your products, accepting online payments, getting found in search, and managing your store. A large business that requires advanced technical features should, of course, consider other platforms.

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Key features:

• 500+ designer-made templates
• Custom design
• Store manager
• Product pages
• Multiple payment methods
• Coupons and discounts
• Worldwide shipping and tax
• Bookings
• Online payments
• Cryptocurrency payments 

 You can learn more about Wix's features here.

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Magento

Most suitable for: Enterprise

Magento is one of the tools in the Adobe package. Its advantage is the complete versatility for creating engaging e-commerce sites that lead to an enjoyable shopping experience. You can create your e-commerce site from scratch using a modern drag-and-drop tool and an intuitive user interface. You can run multiple online stores from a single installation. Magento also offers you the possibility of creating a custom-designed website, defining users and permissions, and creating your own prices and cataloges for your e-commerce website. However, you need to be tech-savvy in order to use this platform. Otherwise, hire a designer / developer. Magento provides full analytics, allowing for management and optimization of your website, as well as order tracking. In addition to being open source, Magento is also fairly pricey for additional functionality and features. It also offers a huge marketplace for extensions.

‍Key features: 

• Marketing, promotion and conversion tools
• Site management
• SEO
• Catalog management
• Product browsing
• Catalog browsing
• Checkout, payment and shipping
• Order management
• Customer accounts
• Analytics and reporting

You can learn more about Magento's features here.

Weebly

Most suitable for: Small-sized business

From Silicon Valley comes another drag-and-drop web builder with e-commerce features. Over 40 million businesses choose Weebly as their default platform for building their simple, responsive websites and online stores.

The philosophy of Weebly is to provide a three-in-one platform for marketing novices: website creation, e-commerce, and marketing strategies. It is a direct competitor to Wix and Squarespace, so the same rule applies here as well, if you are an extensive business looking for another option.

The platform allows you to choose custom fonts, to add animation effects, to edit photos without the need for additional software, and to add video backgrounds, among other features. You can also choose apps to customize your storefront through the App Center.

A cool feature of building an online store with Weebly is that you can provide a second chance to the customer. The customer is automatically reminded if they have left the process for any reason, giving them a chance to complete the process again.

Weebly also offers a marketing tool that allows you to send customized newsletters and marketing messages to different customers. However, the downside is the limited design flexibility, meaning it is not possible to create more advanced websites.

The free plan gets you started with your online store, and right next to that is the custom plan, but you know you will have a Weebly ad in the footer, which is probably not what you want.

Weebly users agree that the Professional plan is a decent option if you want to build an e-commerce site.

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Key features:

• Inventory management
• Mobile optimization
• Shopping cart and secure checkout
• Inventory tracking
• Filtered product search
• E-commerce templates and storefronts
• Free e-commerce hosting
• Search engine optimized online store
• Worldwide shipping and tax
• Process and manage orders

 You can learn more about Weebly's features here.

PrestaShop

Most suitable for: Medium-sized business

Many agree that the offer of functions can compete with WooCommerce and Shopify. A great advertisement for the platform is the community of more than one million users, which provides support in putting together your e-commerce business. With PrestaShop, you can create a fully customizable online store and manage multiple online stores from your dashboard at the same time. With this software, you can control currency settings, create products in multiple languages, ensure compliance with European laws, and you have full control over your online store's source code. You are also the sole owner of your data, sales, and management. The key point to remember is that prior knowledge of HTML and technical know-how are very important in order to build a successful e-commerce site with this platform.

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Key features:

• Customizable design
• Inventory management
• Orders management
• Worldwide shipping and tax
• One-page checkout
• Special offers creation
• Products highlight
• Abandoned Checkout Recovery
• Customer database running
• Marketing performance, sale, and product insights

You can learn more about PrestaShop's features here.

BigCommerce

Most suitable for: Medium-sized business and Enterprise

Complete hosted solution without large limits. It provides all the powerful built-in tools and technology that you need for your e-commerce business. They provide significant support and a community for help. BigCommerce's pricing can be the same as Shopify. One thing that many complain about is their "selling limits". If you exceed the limit you purchased/agreed to, BigCommerce will start to charge you. WordPress integration is possible.

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Key features:

• Website customization
• Growth without scale effects
• Without reliance on third-party
• Payment & Inventory management
• 24/7 support
• 70+ types of discounts
• SEO
• Product comparison on category page
• Product options updating on the cart page
• App integration

You can learn more about BigCommerce's features here.

OpenCart

Most suitable for: Small-sized, Middle-sized business

It is initially free and is used by 350,000 entrepreneurs worldwide. You can download many free updates, but some extensions and themes will cost extra. It has a built-in tool for SEO, store management, and the help of a friendly community. Additionally, you will need to pay hosting fees. Fortunately, OpenCart is a light platform and hosting does not cost the earth.

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Key features:

• User management
• Administrator dashboard
• Multi-store management
• Special offers, coupons
• Multilingual
• Unlimited categories and products
• Product reviews and ratings
• Many integrations
• 20+ payment getaways
• Shipping calculations

You can learn more about OpenCart's features here.

SAP Commerce Cloud

Most suitable for: Enterprise

SAP is a headless e-commerce platform, which means it separates the storefront from all the back-end logic and process. You can clearly manage your products and add multiple attributes through SAP’s CMS. Also included is an experience management tool that offers the ability to create a responsive design on desktop, tablet and mobile. Another feature is customized, AI-optimized mobile-first storefronts.

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Key features: 

• Web app storefronts design
• Search capabilities
• Flexible built-in promotion
• Plug-and-play integration
• One-to-one customer engagement
• Personalized experience
• Behavior-based recommendations
• A/B testing
• Intuitive website editing
• Multilingual catalogs

You can learn more about SAP's features here.

Now, we have presented 10 platforms for e-commerce businesses. Sure, it's always interesting to keep up with the discussion about who is the clear winner. However, to succeed in such a business, you need to use the most suitable tool that meets your business needs, such as design, easy usage of the platform, management of stores, security, and 24/7 support. You should choose the platform that is most suitable for your team and yourself depending on your level of technical proficiency. Some of them are also geared more towards marketers who only want to run online shops. It is completely up to you.