BigCommerce is a versatile ecommerce platform designed to support various business models, including drop shipping, print on demand, small stores, boutiques, and brick-and-mortar establishments. It offers robust features, user-friendly design tools, and scalable solutions that cater to the needs of small business entrepreneurs, helping them build and grow their online presence efficiently.
Shopify is a leading cloud-based ecommerce platform founded in 2004, initially created to sell snowboards online. Today, it powers millions of businesses globally, offering an all-in-one solution to start, run, and grow a business. Best suited for dropshipping and small boutiques, Shopify includes features like SSL site security and doesn't require extra web hosting.
Printify is a powerful print-on-demand platform designed to simplify the creation, customization, and selling of unique products online. With a catalog of over 900 products from 84 global print providers, Printify serves small business owners, content creators, and ecommerce marketers. It allows users to expand product offerings without the challenges of traditional inventory management.
Gelato offers a streamlined print-on-demand service with multiple integrations for easy setup and quick delivery. Users can set their own prices, enhancing control over profitability. Though product selection is limited, the Gelato+ subscription at $24/month or $239/year provides additional features. Note that shipping costs are not included in prices.
TeePublic is a prominent online marketplace that offers a platform for independent artists to sell their unique designs on a variety of merchandise, including T-shirts, hoodies, and mugs. With millions of designs available, TeePublic supports the creative community by enabling artists to reach a wide audience and earn from their artwork.
CustomCat is a dynamic print on demand platform that allows users to create and sell custom products without the hassle of managing physical inventory. With a vast catalog ranging from apparel to accessories, CustomCat offers high-quality printing methods like DIGISOFT® to ensure vibrant and durable designs. The platform seamlessly integrates with your ecommerce site, making it easier to grow your brand and increase sales.
Wix is a leading platform for building professional websites, offering a complete suite of tools to create, manage, and grow your online presence. With its intuitive drag-and-drop editor, AI website builder, and extensive business solutions, Wix is perfect for smaller online stores, boutiques, and brick-and-mortar businesses transitioning online. Founded by Avishai Abrahami, Nadav Abrahami, and Giora Kaplan, Wix continually evolves to provide innovative tools for success.
GearLaunch is a leading ecommerce platform specializing in print on demand (PoD) products. Catering to both novice and expert businesses, GearLaunch simplifies online selling by eliminating the need for inventory management. With a focus on customer service and dependable fulfillment, GearLaunch empowers sellers to maximize their sales potential and aims to generate $1B in sales over time.
teelaunch is a family-owned print on demand company partnered with District Photo, operating on a global scale while maintaining personal customer care. With six factories worldwide, teelaunch efficiently serves a vast customer base, printing over a billion items annually. They pride themselves on blending the values of a family business with the capabilities of a large corporation, ensuring quality and customer satisfaction.
Jungle Scout, founded in 2015 by Greg Mercer, is an all-in-one platform designed to empower Amazon sellers with powerful data and resources. It offers tools for product research, supplier sourcing, listing optimization, and inventory management. Known for its intuitive interface and market insights, Jungle Scout supports over a million entrepreneurs and brands globally, fostering a positive and successful selling environment.
ShipMonk is a dynamic ecommerce fulfillment company that simplifies logistics for online retailers. They offer an all-in-one solution for inventory management, order processing, and shipping. With advanced technology and a customer-centric approach, ShipMonk aims to help businesses scale efficiently. Their services are tailored to enhance operational efficiency and customer satisfaction, making ecommerce fulfillment hassle-free.
Shift4Shop is a robust ecommerce platform designed to support businesses of all sizes. With over 21 years of experience, it offers a comprehensive suite of tools including an intuitive website builder, product and order management, and customer marketing. Shift4Shop guarantees 99.9% uptime and provides 24/7 customer support, ensuring your business thrives online.
WooCommerce, established in 2008 as WooThemes and rebranded in 2015, is an open-source ecommerce solution built on WordPress. It empowers small to medium-sized businesses to create customizable online stores. WooCommerce offers flexibility and control, allowing users to sell anything, anywhere. With a robust community and extensive features, it remains a leading choice for content-driven and SEO-focused brands.
Volusion, founded in 1999 by Kevin Sproles, is a leading ecommerce platform designed to empower SMBs with fast, flexible, and reliable digital commerce solutions. With a focus on helping merchants grow their online storefronts, Volusion offers robust tools for managing all aspects of digital sales. Known for its affordability and excellent support, Volusion serves over 250,000 entrepreneurs globally.
eFulfillment Service (EFS) is a trusted and award-winning third-party logistics provider, recognized for its seamless inventory management and integration with major platforms like Amazon. Established in 2014, EFS excels in customer service and offers a wide range of shipping options. Their dedicated support team ensures prompt handling of orders, allowing businesses to focus on growth and efficiency.
Zazzle is an online marketplace that enables users to create, customize, and sell a wide range of products, from clothing and accessories to home décor and office supplies. Offering both a standard and premium membership with benefits like unlimited free shipping, Zazzle supports creative expression and entrepreneurial ventures. However, the platform requires some technical know-how for integration, and international order tracking can sometimes be inconsistent.
Easyship is a comprehensive shipping platform designed to streamline logistics for ecommerce businesses, enabling seamless international and domestic shipping. The platform offers intuitive management tools, discounted shipping rates, and integration with major ecommerce platforms. Easyship's robust global network and advanced features empower businesses to efficiently reach new markets, ensuring transparent duties and taxes and fostering growth.
Simpl Fulfillment is a comprehensive ecommerce fulfillment service that provides tailored solutions for businesses. They offer a range of services including inventory management, order fulfillment, and shipping. Simpl Fulfillment is known for its transparent pricing and advanced technology features, which help streamline operations and enhance customer satisfaction. Ideal for small to medium-sized enterprises, they prioritize efficiency and reliability in their service offerings.
Packlane is an innovative custom packaging company that empowers brands to create unique unboxing experiences. Specializing in mailer, product, and shipping boxes, Packlane offers a variety of shapes, colors, and materials to fit your needs. With a custom design lab, live preview, and instant quote features, Packlane ensures efficient and precise packaging solutions that impress customers from the outside in.
ShipBob is a technology-enabled 3PL (third-party logistics) company founded in 2014. It offers ecommerce fulfillment services, including inventory management, warehousing, and shipping solutions. With multiple fulfillment centers across the United States, ShipBob aims to optimize delivery times and reduce shipping costs. Its platform integrates with popular ecommerce platforms to streamline operations for online businesses.
Deliverr is a leading Canadian alcohol delivery service that offers a wide selection of beer, wine, and spirits delivered to your door in under 60 minutes. With competitive, store-based pricing and occasional free delivery offers, Deliverr ensures convenience and affordability. Their commitment to customer safety and satisfaction makes them a reliable partner for all your beverage needs.
Printful is an on-demand printing and fulfillment company designed to help turn your ideas into tangible products. Whether creating an online brand or gifting personalized items, Printful handles the order, fulfillment, and shipping process. Committed to quality and sustainability, Printful aims to minimize waste with on-demand manufacturing and offers a comprehensive range of services to support ecommerce growth.
CafePress is an online marketplace that collaborates with designers to bring a wide array of personalized products to consumers. Their mission is to foster human connections through unique and engaging merchandise, from apparel to home decor. They offer a user-friendly platform, ideal for beginners, with a free-to-use model and a scaled royalty structure for designers. Despite some limitations, such as higher base prices and longer delivery times, CafePress provides a broad customer base and a satisfaction guarantee, making it a solid choice for those looking to express creativity and share their stories.
ShipStation is a leading web-based order management and shipping software designed to streamline ecommerce operations. It integrates seamlessly with over 100 top carriers, marketplaces, and selling channels, enabling efficient processing, fulfillment, and shipping of orders. With global offices, ShipStation supports businesses worldwide, combining inventory management, shipping labels, and customer communication in an intuitive interface.
Shippo, founded in 2013 by Laura and Simon, provides multi-carrier shipping software designed to streamline the shipping process for ecommerce businesses. Trusted by over 100,000 brands, Shippo helps save on shipping costs and supports business growth. While it offers numerous benefits, such as potential savings and ease of use, some users may find its customer support options limited and response times slow during peak periods.
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All ecommerce sites need conversions. Without them, you’ve just got a site that might be great-looking and even fun to visit but absolutely no use in ecommerce. It’s the same with a brick-and-mortar store. It’s great to have customers come in and check out the goods. But if none of them buy, that store’s not going to be in business for long.
This is why ecommerce conversion rate optimization is crucial. By bringing it in, you will dramatically improve your ecommerce site’s performance. Happily, there are some easy-to-implement steps you can take to do just that. We’ll go through some of the best. But, before we do, let’s look at exactly what we mean by ecommerce conversion rate optimization.
Ecommerce Platforms
Basically, ecommerce conversion rate optimization (CRO) is a process whereby a sales site becomes more likely to make more sales. There are numerous ways this can happen, as we’ll see shortly.
There’s a lot to consider, and the amount of data it’s possible to work with can be a little overwhelming. Therefore, it can be useful to think about how exactly you use the data and your data governance definition. In other words, how you gather, store, and stream data for maximum organizational effectiveness. Thinking about this will help your site become more responsive and will assist your CRO.
CRO will enable not just an improvement in sales. It will also help cut promotion costs, and it will tell you more about your customers. This information can come in very handy when you want to target particular sectors. It will also boost your Google rankings, which is a significant consideration in ecommerce.
So, CRO is a big deal. Let’s see how you can start to use it.
Website Builders
There are many methods you can use to optimize your CRO. Let’s consider six of them.
1. User Observation
If you want to enhance your appeal to your potential customers, you need to see what they’re doing when they visit. By using recordings and click heat maps, you can see where users are tending to go on your site. You can then see what’s working (your site’s ‘hooks’) and learn to use the characteristics of those portions throughout your site.
Even more importantly, you can spot what’s not working: parts of the site that are standing in the way of conversion (your site’s ‘barriers’). You can then implement corrective work so that the barrier no longer operates as such, and your average conversion rates will soar.
This can be of use in all kinds of websites. Say you have a site that’s all about fraud prevention and detection. One part of the site has a banner that looks like a link, and, sure enough, users are clicking on it. But it is not a link, so users end up frustrated. When your click heat map shows you this, you can see clearly that you should turn it into a link.
Whenever you want to improve your appeal to customers, you will do very well to see how they interact with your site. This reveals a huge amount of user experience data that you can put to work immediately.
2. Use Appropriate Language
Let’s consider product descriptions. Make no mistake: writing them is an art. They need to have an attractive succinct layer, followed by a more detailed story that informs and compels. There should be wording used that chimes with your target audience.
An awareness of who you’re talking to will make all the difference to your ecommerce strategy. If you have a product that’s aimed at a more ‘establishment’ customer, who is perhaps a little older and more conventional, you need to think in terms of proper sentences using the kind of orthodox grammar that would have earned you a great mark in high school.
For a funkier, edgier product with a younger customer base, you can afford to be a little more creative with your language. You can feel free to sacrifice grammatical exactitude on the altar of commercial impact. So, Apple can go with a slogan like ‘Think different’. Anyone with even a passing acquaintance with adverbs will know that the phrase should read ‘Think differently’. But the former isn’t as punchy as the latter. So, ‘different’ it is.
This kind of targeting and tone variation to improve the customer experience is one of the most important ecommerce marketing strategies.
3. Use Social Proof
Customers love social proof. Customer reviews are a form of evidence of quality. So, you have two jobs here:
Firstly, encourage your customers to leave reviews using well-timed pop-ups and incentives. You can offer your prospective reviewer the chance to be entered into a draw, perhaps, or to receive a small discount on their next purchase.
Average out your customer testimonials, then make sure that the (hopefully fabulous) star rating displays clearly under the product name, together with a link to your review section if the customer should want a more detailed breakdown.
Ecommerce platforms can vary, so make sure that whichever one you use gives you the opportunity of making the most of social proof.
4. Optimize the Checkout
Going back to observing your site visitor behavior, you can usually see very clearly where the barriers are just by identifying where visitors tend to abandon your site. One of the key areas in this regard is the checkout process.
Why is this? Because the very best sites now make the checkout flow incredibly smooth. Take Amazon. Online shoppers can buy a product generally with no more than two clicks. This kind of high-performing site makes less slick sites seem all the clunkier.
Start by ensuring that your “add to shopping cart” CTA is clear. Use responsive design so that the action button is on screen with both desktop and mobile experiences.
If you’re a customer, asked to complete lengthy registration forms galore and credit card payment forms that go on forever, you’re not going to be well-disposed toward the site you were meaning to buy from. You may pull out altogether, either from frustration or simply because of circumstances.
So, site owners should go through the process themselves to see where it might be smoothed out and streamlined. An obvious shortcut you can employ when it comes to payment is to put in a PayPal link. This speeds things up considerably and helps lower cart abandonment rates.
5. Attend to Off-Site Matters
Never forget that your site doesn’t exist in a vacuum. The factors that influence your brand’s reputation will also affect your ecommerce conversion rates. Take that social proof we talked about. If customers are praising the customer service of your agents or the product’s build quality, this will help with your ecommerce conversion rate optimization.
However, on the flip side, if there are problems that surface in your user feedback, then you need to attend to them without delay. Let’s posit that your customers cite having to wait a huge period of time for their goods. You then need to dive into your fulfillment operation to see what’s occurring. It might be the case that there are problems with the manufacturing process, in which case you might need to employ supply chain optimization tools to eradicate the problem.
It’s often tempting to think of cyberspace as a domain entirely separate from the concrete world, but this is a signal error. There are significant links between the two that are overlooked at your peril.
6. Ask Customers for Data
There are two items of information that you can seek from your customers that will help ecommerce conversion rate optimization:
How did customers find your site? It doesn’t take long to ask this, and it can help build on your site’s appeal. One thing’s for sure: if you want conversions, you need visitors in the first place. So you need to be attracting as many as possible, whether via better advertising or other means.
Why is a customer about to leave the site? This is absolutely vital to know. What’s putting them off? Asking customers what might be the issue is not only useful to you. It also shows the customer how concerned you are about making their experience as good as it can be, so this can be a very powerful tool.
Using these techniques, your site will deliver the ecommerce you want to see happen and you’ll be turning your visitors into customers in huge numbers. But don’t stop there. Ecommerce conversion rate optimization is all about continuous improvement. Just because a site’s doing well today doesn’t mean it’ll do well tomorrow.
This is because it’s a rapidly evolving environment and it’s all too easy to fall behind. So, keep looking at your site the way a customer does. And look at other sites, too. Grab the best ideas and make them your own. Because all’s fair in love and ecommerce.
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