9 Tips to Improve Your e-Commerce Marketing Strategy

Reaching your target audience online through e-commerce marketing strategies means more website views, more customers and, ultimately, more sales. The importance of e-commerce for any business these days cannot be overstated. Consumers not only want to be able to find products and services online, they expect to. A solid e-commerce marketing strategy is therefore no longer optional for successful businesses.

Tips for Building an e-Commerce Marketing Strategy

Building your business online requires a solid e-commerce marketing strategy to back it up. Having a strategy before you jump into the world of e-commerce marketing will help keep you on course as you grow your business online.

 

Some of the key elements of an e-commerce marketing strategy are: templates, marketing, email, content, social media, personal interaction, using multiple content channels, mobile marketing and search engine optimization.

 

This list sounds like a lot to try to keep straight as you venture into e-commerce marketing, but we’ll break it down into easy to understand chunks. You can start where you feel most comfortable and expand naturally into other aspects of e-commerce marketing. There is no one right way to do e-commerce marketing, so pick and choose the strategies that work best for your current expertise and business needs.

What is e-Commerce Marketing and What is an e-Commerce Marketing Strategy?

e-Commerce marketing and marketing share many similarities. When it comes down to it, marketing is marketing, whether it happens online or in person. However, there are some important peculiarities about e-commerce marketing that you should be aware of if you’re trying to make the leap into e-commerce marketing for the first time.

The privacy of shopping online makes a big difference in how customers think and behave. That is a crucial factor to keep in mind while coming up with an e-commerce marketing strategy. When someone walks into a physical, brick-and-mortar store, they already feel a certain amount of investment in their shopping experience. Shopping online, however, is more fickle and unpredictable. Customers don’t necessarily feel invested when they shop online. They can flit from one website to the next on a whim, or stay on the same website for hours or days.

This creates a different sort of dynamic between the seller and the buyer than when you interact in person. Customers online aren’t going to behave in the largely predictable ways they do in person. You have to grab their attention and offer the right product at the right price to convince them to stay on your website instead of bouncing off to a different one quickly. Grabbing and holding attention is a key component of good e-commerce marketing strategies. The best online stores keep people on their website for as long as possible, increasing the chances that they eventually buy something.

So then what is an e-commerce strategy? Partly, it is the process of understanding the difference between online and in person. But there is a lot more to it than that. For example, strong content and interesting articles might help your overall e-commerce strategy, even if your business is not one that would usually need a blog or articles.

In addition, it has become more and more important these days to offer customers a mobile option so they can shop from their phones. People want convenience more than almost anything else when they’re shopping online and being able to shop using just a phone is quickly becoming a standard of successful e-commerce marketing.

Who Needs e-Commerce Marketing?

e-Commerce marketing may once have been a niche field, but more and more it is transforming into standard business practice for industries of all sorts. Amazon is probably the most famous e-commerce business. They’ve been hugely successful marketing online and allowing customers to shop from anywhere conveniently.

However, one of the keys to Amazon’s success is that you can buy just about anything from their website. You can see just from what Amazon offers that there are fewer and fewer businesses who shouldn’t be online. Everything from clothes to furniture to cars can be purchased online without ever having to go to a store. If you’re wondering if your business needs an online presence, the answer is almost certainly yes.

Who are your Customers Online?

Just who is driving this push toward online shopping and e-commerce? Statistics reveal that it is a larger and larger portion of consumers who are doing their shopping online.

• 64% of consumers in the United States (with access to the internet) shop online at least once a month
• Only around half (55%) are satisfied with their ability to purchase online through their phone – highlighting how crucial mobile offerings are becoming
• Free shipping makes 80% of customers more likely to purchase a product online
• Free returns makes 64% of customers more likely to purchase a product online
• 36% of customers will compare websites to see which can offer their product the cheapest
• 50% of customers are using their smart phones and 60% are using tablets
• 78% never see the product in a physical store before purchasing it online
• 31% of people think they will spend more time shopping online next month than they did the previous month
• 49% of people are shopping via PC, 37% via smartphone and 14% via tablet
• 84% of shoppers use social media such as Facebook to get recommendations before they buy; among those sites, Facebook accounts for a whopping 77% of shoppers, with Twitter at 26%, LinkedIn at 22%, Pinterest at 18% and Google Plus at 17%

And just what are all these online shoppers buying? Interestingly electronics, books and clothing all rank very highly, at 69%, 67% and 63%, respectively. But other things people are purchasing online include: household goods (35%), office supplies (30%), consumer packaged goods (28%), sporting goods (20%), pet supplies (20%), and food and groceries (20%).

This highlights a few of the myriad industries that are profiting massively from the move to digital e-commerce stores. Most businesses, from those selling notebooks to those selling puppy chow, can benefit from having an online store of some sort.

Now, we’re going to look at 9 ways to improve your e-commerce marketing strategy and grow your online business into a success.

1. e-Commerce Marketing Strategy Template

If you’re unsure where to start, try drawing up a template for your e-commerce marketing strategy, or using a pre-made template to help guide you along.

Pre-made templates are not always perfectly tailored to your business or what you hope to achieve with e-commerce, but they can be a good place to start. This website even has a “retail and online store” section among its business plan template markets. There are other resources available as well if you want a marketing and sales template to help you get started.

If you are more ambitious, you can design an e-commerce marketing strategy template on your own. The key things to remember are your goals for your e-commerce business, a timetable for implementing your strategies and how you plan to approach the launch of your online business. Put in dates and key goalposts in order to make sure you’re hitting metrics at the right time and moving steadily toward your goal.

2. Marketing through an e-Commerce Marketing Strategy

As you make your e-commerce marketing strategy template, you should pay close attention to the “marketing” aspect of that plan. Marketing is different for e-commerce compared to brick-and-mortar stores. When you market in person, you can talk to customers, give them flyers or posters or business cards. Not so online, where you will need to use marketing strategies discussed here like SEO and email.

Marketing should be part of your overall plan so that when you start building your e-commerce business, marketing is seamlessly integrated into the rest of your online store. Marketing that is unobtrusive in this way is not only effective, but it is more likely to appeal to shoppers. With convenience being such a big reason for why people shop online, marketing that is annoying can really harm your e-commerce business. Employ the right marketing strategy in order to get customers excited, but not annoyed.

3. Email Marketing Strategy for e-Commerce

Email is great way to reach customers online. Email offers ways to get your name out there and drive customers to your e-commerce business.

However, email marketing is not as simple as just blasting out an email to as many people as possible. In fact, that’s a good way to tank your email marketing strategy. Email needs to be targeted and follow certain best practices in order to be as effective as possible for an e-commerce business.

First, choose your audience. Many people have their inboxes set up to automatically delete junk emails that they didn’t sign up for. This could mean your email marketing strategy goes into a trash bin before it even has a chance for success. The simple action of asking people to sign up for your emails could make the difference between your marketing being seen or being deleted.

It can be tough getting people to opt into emails. Try one of the following to boost your success rate:

• Have in-store sign ups so people are opting into email in person
• Offer incentives for signing up such as discounts and coupons
• Offer special promotions within your emails that entice customers to keep those emails instead of deleting them
• Keep your email marketing short and sweet – less it more! People don’t read long emails so make sure you get right to the point
• Ensure that your emails are formatted in a reader-friendly way. An email that just looks like a block of text will quickly get shuffled into the trash bin
• Title your emails appropriately. An email with no subject line or a bad subject line may make customers think the email is junk and not valuable. For example, if you offer a discount in the email, put that right in the subject so people click on the email
• Include links in your email. Make it easy for people to go from your email marketing to your website where they can buy your products

Follow these best practices. Also, ensure you aren’t sending too many or too few emails. Striking the right cadence for your email marketing campaign is crucial to its success. You need to stay on your customers’ minds without bothering them too much.

4. Creating Content for e-Commerce

It may come as a surprise, but filling your website with high-quality content can actually really help your e-commerce business. Content can drive traffic and give valuable feedback to users who are intensely interested in your products and services.

This is easier said than done for many businesses though. A website that sells shoes may have a lot of content they could create about shoes. Shoe enthusiasts might be looking for in-depth articles on a range of topics related to the e-commerce business of shoes. This draws in customers and also entices them to stay. They will start to see your business as a valuable resource rather than just a place to buy things.

But not every e-commerce site has such an obvious path toward great content. You may need to get creative with the content you offer in order to populate your website.

5. Using Social Media in your e-Commerce Digital Marketing Strategy

Studies like the one above have shown that people use social media to research what to buy. Facebook is no longer just a way to interact with friends. People are now using it to research products and services and get recommendations. The same goes for the other major social media platforms, including Twitter and Pinterest.

Having a solid social media presence, if it’s appropriate for your business, can spike your e-commerce sales. But before you leap into the online realm, make sure you’re doing it the right way. Here are some tips for advertising through social media:

• Have a consistent voice and tone when you post on social media
• Create a persona and stick to it. Your “online self” will represent your business, so make sure the persona is professional yet personable
• Research which social media networks work best for your business. You don’t need to post on every site out there, just the ones that will work
• Make sure your formatting is correct, otherwise you risk appearing clumsy and out of touch
• Post things that are relevant to your business. Sometimes those posts won’t get much love, but if your account is all over the place it will seem disorganized and unprofessional

6. Personal Interaction

Social media leads to the next two recommendations: personal interaction and using multiple content channels.

First, personal interaction. When you are operating an e-commerce business via social media marketing you will have to interact with customers a lot. There is a delicate balance worth striking here between being professional and personable. Customers want to interact with businesses as though they are people; they desire human interaction that is authentic and less “corporate” sounding than traditional business advertising.

Managing personal interactions with customers sometimes falls to a social media marketing manager. More and more companies are employing social media managers to ensure their online presence effectively markets their business while staying professional and friendly to customers. Social media marketing managers do things like planning a social media campaign and setting goals for that campaign; developing your brand’s reputation online; managing what kind of content you post online; ensuring good SEO, or search engine optimization; and finding leads and sales opportunities.

7. Using Multiple Content Channels

There are so many social media channels to choose from that you probably won’t stick to just one when doing your online marketing campaign. Choosing a range of appropriate social media channels can maximize your impact and reach online.

However, with this comes certain challenges. Every social media platform has its own guidelines, rules and formatting to be aware of. Your social media marketing manager should be an expert on as many of these as possible so they can guide you as you post across a wide range of channels.

But content channels doesn’t only mean social media. Content can get from your to your customers in a wide variety of means. Perhaps a blog would be appropriate for your website. Many e-commerce businesses use blogs as a way to write long-form content for their most avid fans. If video demonstrations suit your business, you could have a YouTube channel dedicated to your company. You can even continue to use traditional marketing means like flyers, posters and pamphlets while running an online business.

Here are some tips for managing multiple content channels for your e-commerce business:

• Know your audiences. Different social media and marketing channels have different audiences. Know who you’re talking to when you post a blog vs a vide vs a Facebook post
• Know the rules and guidelines for each channel
• On top of that, know the best practices for each channel. Best practices for a blog are very different from those for a YouTube video
• Produce valuable content. Don’t have all these channels just to have them. Choose channels that are genuinely appropriate for your business and create content that is relevant and useful in those channels

8. Mobile Marketing

As we’ve already mentioned, mobile is becoming a bigger and bigger deal for e-commerce marketing. People want to research products and buy them on their phones, so having a strategy for mobile marketing greatly improves your overall e-commerce marketing strategy.

With mobile marketing, your goal is to reach people on their smartphones and tablets. You can use things like email, text messaging and social media to accomplish this.

• SMS Marketing: This is a form of mobile marketing where you send short messages to people’s smartphones.Sometimes the message is just a short reminder. SMS marketing can also include things like coupons and deals. Your customers must opt in to SMS marketing before you can send them any messages, but it can be a cost-effective way of marketing.
• MMS Marketing: This is very similar to SMS marketing as it is a form of marketing in which your customers opt in to having messages sent to their smartphones. But where SMS marketing is short text-based messages, MMS marketing is multimedia messaging, which can include audio, video and images.
• Push Notification Marketing: Push notifications are fairly recent. A user must have an app related to your business installed on their phone. This does require your business to have an app to offer, but if you do have one then you can send notifications through it called push notifications. These will inform your customers of deals and coupons, as well as products you have to offer. If they follow the notification and open your app, they can usually shop through that app as well.
• App-Based Marketing: Similarly, app-based marketing relies heavily on apps themselves. This is a marketing strategy where the focus is intensely on developing an app and reaching customers through it. This can be a difficult road nowadays because so many businesses have apps. It is likely someone has already made an app similar to the one that would be appropriate for your business. You need to convince customers to use your app instead of a competitors’.

There are other forms of mobile marketing, but these are some of the biggest ones. You can also use in-game advertisements if your company produces a mobile game, for example. Creativity in the realm of mobile marketing will not only make your campaign successful, but it will also save you a lot of money in your advertising budget. Simple, low-cost mobile campaigns can more than pay for themselves when run correctly.

9. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search engine optimization, or SEO, impacts every one of the marketing techniques we’ve already discussed. It is therefore vital to have a strong understanding of what SEO is and how it works.

SEO is the process of getting your website to appear high on the first page of Google searches by creating relevant content around strong keywords. This will change depending on your business. Keyword research is a crucial first step in the process of developing strong SEO. For example, if you run a business around selling laptops, you would want to hit all the keywords people use when researching laptops and making a purchasing decision. This could be things like “best laptop” or “which laptop should I buy” or “best laptop brands.” You have to first know how people are looking for your business before you can try to capture that website traffic.

Once you have some keywords, you can build content around those keywords. This can be blogs, videos, social media posts and more. Long-form blogs that target fans who want in-depth knowledge on specific topics can reach a huge swatch of internet traffic and drive it to your website. Even if the buying and selling part of your website is separate from the content part, the content should have strong SEO if you want to increase traffic.

You must do more than just create a bunch of content around keywords, however. Your content and your website need strong site structure in order to have good SEO. Google will prioritize websites with good structure and place them higher in searches. Make sure your website is seen by the right audience by following SEO best practices.

e-Commerce Marketing Strategy Examples

There are some excellent examples out there of successful e-commerce marketing strategies. Companies like Eat24 and Wendy’s are extremely successful in their social media and email outreach programs. This is in part because they have struck the right balance in terms of their tone and personal interactions with customers. Both companies are very friendly. They sound natural and at ease when posting on social media, rather than stiff and corporate. While they still have guidelines to follow when sending an email or posting on social media, they manage to at the same time seem like a real person. Fans gravitate toward that.

Other companies like Starbucks have found successful with blogs and longer-form e-commerce marketing strategies. One of the things that makes Starbucks successful in this realm is that its content is relevant to its fans. Its blog posts are insightful and meaningful to those with a deep, vested interest in its products and services, and the world of coffee more broadly. Along with that, their content is targeted to the right audience. Keyword searches online place their website high up on the first page, increasing the chances that they will be seen online organically.

Building Your e-Commerce Marketing Strategy: The Final Word

So when all is said and done, how should you build your e-commerce marketing strategy in order to be successful online? Unfortunately, there are no quick or simple answers here. The right e-commerce marketing strategy depends on what you’re selling, how you’re selling it and to whom you’re selling it.

Some broad principles that work across many types of industries include things like smart social media management, email marketing, SMS and MMS marketing and SEO. All of these strategies work together to form a cohesive and powerful e-commerce marketing strategy.

If you are struggling for inspiration, you can look to companies who are experiencing success in the realm of e-commerce marketing. Aside from businesses like Starbucks and Wendy’s, our own Logic Inbound website has had success with e-commerce marketing. Our article on Instagram support outranks Instagram’s own website, for example. This is due to the strength of our content and SEO.

In the end, you know your business best. Design an e-commerce marketing strategy around who you are and who likes your products. Be authentic, smart and decisive and you will find success in the e-commerce marketing realm.

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Shopify vs Volusion: Which e-Commerce Platform is Best?

Shopify vs Volusion

Shopify is one of the best known and most established e-commerce platforms out there. But it is far from the only option. Other platforms like Volusion are competing for customers in the e-commerce market and they have a lot to offer as well. In this review, we’ll compare Shopify and Volusion head-to head and examine the following factors:

• What is Shopify?
• What is Volusion?
• Shopify Login vs Volusion Login
• Shopify Stock vs Volusion Stock
• Shopify and Volusion Themes
• Shopify and Volusion Apps and App Store
• Shopify and Volusion Reviews
• Shopify and Volusion Pricing
• Shopify and Volusion Customer Service, Support and Help
• Shopify and Volusion Stores
• Wrap-up

While we hope to provide the most insightful reviews possible of Shopify and Volusion, the ultimate determination will come down to you. When reading this review, keep in mind your business’s size, needs and normal means of operating. The best e-commerce platform relies more on those factors than anything else.

What is Shopify?

Let’s start with the better known of the two platforms. Shopify has been in the e-commerce business for more than a decade and has been the impetus behind a lot of the features and customs that are now standard across e-commerce platforms.

Founded in 2004, Shopify has grown into an e-commerce titan partnered with the likes of Amazon. Shopify claims to power 500,000 businesses online and have more than a million active users on its website. According to Shopify, more than $46 billion in goods and products are sold on Shopify. That’s part of the reason for its success and popularity among e-commerce business owners.

What is Volusion?

Volusion is not the behemoth Shopify is. Volusion says it had $28 billion in merchant sales, still quite impressive even if it’s not as much as Shopify. Plus, they offer many of the same tools and features as Shopify, things like themes, customer support and help, and various pricing options to accommodate various budgets.

Volusion has more than 30,000 merchants who active use their platform each month and more than 180,000 customers around the world. They’ve fielded 185 million orders since shifting from a web design agency to an e-commerce platform in 2002. That means that Volusion has technically been around even longer than Shopify, which bodes well for their experience and knowledge in the realm of e-commerce. The current Volusion is actually the second version of the site since the initial launch. That may explain some of why it lags behind Shopify in certain statistics. However, the Volusion team undoubtedly has tons of experience in e-commerce.

Shopify Login vs Volusion Login

Logging in can be a pain. No one wants to deal with a hassle when they’re just trying to get to their website to make necessary updates and changes.

Both Shopify and Volusion have pretty standard login processes. You will see about what you expect when you attempt to log in to your site. Just sign up with your email address or username and come up with a good password and you’ll be ready to go. Be sure to use a secure password. Since both Shopify and Volusion are large networks, there is a risk of someone who breaks in getting a lot of stores’ information all at once.

One thing in favor of Shopify here is their mobile app. This app makes it way more convenient to login. It’s super easy to view your store right from your phone in order to keep an eye on how it is performing no matter where you are or what you’re doing.

Shopify Stock vs Volusion Stock

Those keeping a close eye on the stock market may be starting to notice how valuable e-commerce companies like Shopify and Volusion really are.

Some investors see e-commerce businesses such as Shopify and Volusion too risky to buy into. However, their stocks do well on the market. Shopify stock has been hovering around the $102 mark. Across five years, the stock has seen an increase in value before leveling out more recently. Volusion stock cannot be found on NASDQ.

Investors are somewhat wary of these companies. Perhaps it is the ever-shifting nature of e-commerce, but many are a bit cautious about buying Shopify stock. Those who can stomach the risk, however, see volatile Shopify stock as a potential gold mine. The main risk involved with Shopify stock is its public image. In 2017, that image was tarnished somewhat, making the stock a bit riskier to buy. Uncertainty and risk tend to scare off Wall Street, which has made Shopify stock a rocky road for investors.

Shopify and Volusion Themes

Those who are building on Shopify and Volusion often rely on themes. Not everyone can be a code and design master as well as a business owner. Many of those who are running e-commerce businesses don’t have time to also design a complete website head to toe. That’s why themes are highly relied upon and valuable when it comes to e-commerce platforms.

Shopify and Volusion have similar packages when it comes to free and paid themes for their e-commerce platforms. Here is a simple breakdown of each:

Shopify	Volusion
Currently offers 10 free themes to choose from	Currently offers 11 free themes to choose from
Currently offers 51 paid themes to choose from	Currently offers 38 paid themes to choose from
Paid themes range from about $140 to about $180 per theme	Paid themes all cost $180 to use
Offers styles to augment free or paid themes	Does not offer any styles, only themes

It is clear from this chart that Shopify has more themes and more variety in their themes. While Volusion does have one more free theme than Shopify, it has fewer themes overall. All of Volusion’s themes cost $180 if they are not free, while Shopify themes come in a wide range of prices.

Another crucial factor is styles. Styles allow you to customize a theme even further. Only Shopify themes come with additional styles. Volusion does not offer styles on its e-commerce themes at this time.

Shopify and Volusion Apps and App Store

We mentioned above that Shopify itself has an app that you can use on your phone to monitor and update your store at any time from anywhere. But that is not the only way that apps interact with e-commerce platforms. Apps can also enhance the platforms themselves to offer you more functionality and options.

Volusion has the Volusion Marketplace where it offers apps that can plug in to your Volusion e-commerce website. These apps include PayPal, which can offer your customers express checkout, and ShipStation, which allows you to easily create batch shipping labels. There are also accounting apps, Amazon tie-in apps and data-related apps that can give you stats and data feeds about your site. Some of these apps cost additional money to add to your site. It depends more on what the app provider prices their app at than Volusion.

Shopify has a very similar app marketplace. The Shopify App Store offers many of the same apps that the Volusion

Marketplace has, including apps for creating 404 pages, for editing products in carts and for optimizing checkout procedures.

Overall, the Shopify app store is easier to use and more user friendly. The search functions let you see which apps are popular as well as which are the newest. You can also sort apps by their price to make sure you stay within your budget. With Volusion, you have to click each individual app to see what it will cost you.

Shopify and Volusion Reviews

Volusion tends to get mixed reviews from customers online. Many users do not find it as easy and straightforward to use as other platforms. They also are not always impressed with Volusion customer service offerings and rate it lower out of frustration when they run into an issue and can’t find a way to solve it. However, you can try a free trial of Volusion to see if they user interface issues impact you or not.

Shopify is tougher to review. It has gotten so many reviews over such a long time that its rating is all over the place. It is widely regarded as very easy to use and user friendly, so it is great for those who are just starting out in e-commerce. We so many users, you’re sure to find some who love it and some who don’t. However, some say it lacks some of the professional features they need for their business, such as listing more than three options per product and charging high transaction fees for third-party payment gateways. Shopify’s public image also suffered from bad public relations in 2017, turning some away from the platform.

Shopify and Volusion Pricing

Volusion is willing to start you off with a 14-day free trial of its platform. After that, you will need to pick one of these options:

Plan	Mini	Plus	Pro	Premium
Price	$15/month	$35/month	$75/month	$135/month
Support Level	Online	Phone + Online	Phone + Online	Account Manager
Number of Products	1GB	3GB	10GB	35GB
Number of Products	100	1,000	10,000	Unlimited
File Storage	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited

Shopify also offers a 14-day free trial period so you can test it out on your own without any risk. After that, Shopify’s costs break down this way:

Plan	Basic Shopify	Shopify	Advanced Shopify
Price	$29/month	$79/month	$299/month
Credit card rates	2.9% + $0.30 online	2.6% + $0.30 online	2.4% + $0.30 online
Transaction Fees	None for Shopify payments; 2% for third-party payments	None for Shopify payments; 1% for third-party payments	None for Shopify payments; 0.5% for third-party payments
Staff Accounts	2	5	15
Number of Products	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited
File Storage	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited

See the full list of features and pricing differences here. Shopify also offers a super simple version of its platform called Shopify Lite. It is only $9/month and allows you to sell on Facebook and chat with your customers via Facebook Messenger. You can add products to a website or blog and accept credit card payments. However, it does not have much else going on.

For large businesses, Shopify offers ShopifyPlus. This is beyond even the Advanced Shopify option. The price is determined per business. ShopifyPlus is meant for enterprise-grade solutions, high-volume merchants and large businesses.

Shopify and Volusion Customer Service, Support and Help

Shopify’s Help Center is a full service customer support center. They have an FAQ, a customer support phone number (if you’re willing to dig for it) and other helpful tools. You can even watch video tutorials designed to help people get started and troubleshoot their own issues in Shopify. It can be frustrating trying to reach an actual person when you need help, but one benefit only Shopify can offer is its massive community of e-commerce businesses.

The Shopify community can offer help to other users. The community is simply users on a forum, but they post tips and tricks and try to answer each other’s questions. In many ways, this is the best way to get help and support when you have problems with Shopify.

Volusion is more accessible when it comes to help and customer support services. The main menu on their website displays a phone number without you even having to leave the home page. This is a big contrast to Shopify, where you’ll dig through a few pages before finally finding a phone number to call a real person.

Volusion also has a live chat. Reviewers have said this live chat is a bit hit or miss, but in theory someone is always online and able to chat with you to help with your customer service issues. This can be nice when you don’t want to or can’t make a phone call and potentially wait a while on a customer service phone line.

Shopify and Volusion Stores

When all is said and done, Volusion can help you make some nice-looking e-commerce stores. You have plenty of options in terms of themes and designs to get a layout that looks professional and clean with your Volusion store. Volusion stores look similar to most other e-commerce stores. They aren’t branded like Etsy or hyper-customized like a fully coded store. This does not mean they lack quality or polish, however. Volusion highlighted five of its own stores to show off the kind of look you can get with a Volusion store.

Shopify stores are likely exactly what you imagine when you imagine an e-commerce store. Shopify shops have become the unconscious standard in the industry. You may have even visited a few without even realizing it. Check out these real e-commerce shops that were all built using Shopify:

• Tattly
• Death Wish Coffee Co.
• Pipcorn
• Skinny Teatox
• Poopourri
• Twelve Saturdays

There are literally dozens more examples of Shopify stores out there. Clearly, it is a powerful platform that can adapt to a wide range of business needs.

Wrap-up

In the end, it all comes down to what you need. Shopify has been around a lot time and has only improved over time. Despite some bad PR, it is essentially the same company it has always been. It can adapt to most business needs, though it may get pricey.

Volusion is not as established. It has changed a few times in its history as an e-commerce platform provider. Its tools are not quite as intuitive as Shopify’s and its interface is not easy for all customers to figure out.

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Magento vs WooCommerce: Reviews of e-Commerce Platforms and Plugins

Magento vs WooCommerce Head-to-Head Comparison

When searching for an e-commerce platform, there are a dizzying number of options to choose from. Magento and WooCommerce have emerged as two of the most popular options among online marketers because of their ease of use and affordability. However, they are not one size fits all solutions. Learn the differences and similarities between Magento and WooCommerce before making your decision.

• What is WooCommerce?
• What is Magento?
• WooCommerce Pricing vs Magento Pricing
• How to Get WooCommerce Shortcodes
• WooCommerce Themes vs Magento Themes
• What is Magento Connect?
• WooCommerce Plugin vs Magento Plugin
• WooCommerce Subscriptions
• Overview

Our review examines Magento and WooCommerce to help you decide which is best. We look at pricing, themes, plugins and more to help make the difference between the e-commerce platforms clearer. Hopefully, by the end of this guide, it will be clear to you which platform better suits your online e-commerce business.

What is WooCommerce?

If you aren’t familiar with WooCommerce but have been hearing a lot of the buzz about this platform, you may be confused about just what it is.

To understand WooCommerce, you need to understand WordPress, a free blogging platform. It may sound strange that WooCommerce, an e-commerce platform, started at a blogging site, but it’s true. WooCommerce started in 2008 as a project between WordPress enthusiasts. They ended up creating WordPress extensions that work for the e-commerce world. Today, they provide all kinds of toolkits for WordPress to make e-commerce possible.

The toolkits WooCommerce offers vary significantly. They can suit small sellers all the way up to large businesses. Yet the WooCommerce plugin and the tools it comes with gained popularity (and maintain it) because of how easy they are to use and because you can try out a basic version for free.

What is Magento?

Magento is very different from WooCommerce. Rather than a plugin, it is an open source platform written in PHP. Though Magento is a private company, as an open source tool it also relies somewhat on help from volunteers. Magento Open Source, also called Magento Community Edition, allows developers to customize their e-commerce platform however they want. The community changes and supports this platform and innovates on it by coming up with new plugins and functionality.

Magento also produces Magento Commerce. This product came later in the company’s history, after Magento spent many years as only an open source platform. While open source products are free for anyone to use and change, Magento Commerce is an enterprise tool that businesses need to purchase in order to use.

With the creativity and flexibility of open source does come some risk, though. For example, in 2015 it was found that Magento was susceptible to certain types of hacking attacks. In 2017, further weaknesses were found. This is one of the known pitfalls of open source operations, however.

WooCommerce Pricing vs Magento Pricing

A comparison of pricing is somewhat tricky when it comes to WooCommerce and Magento. Partly, that is because they are such different platforms. Where WooCommerce is a plugin, Magento is an open source platform that also has paid versions. We will break down the different prices of all these versions.

WooCommerce	Magento
Totally FREE as long as you have WordPress	Open source community version is FREE
Offers extensions and plugins that range from FREE to $200+	Magento Commerce Starter for small merchants starts at $2,000/month
Offers “storefront” for free, though you can pay $69 for “Storefront Powerpack,” which will allow you to customize without needing to code	Magento Commerce Pro for large organizations starts at $3,417/month

As you can see, Magento is a bit more expensive if you opt into one of the professional versions instead of the open source community version. However, Magento does offer free 30-day trials of both the Magento Commerce Starter and Magento Commerce Pro. This gives you an opportunity to test them out and see if the extra money is worth it for you.

How to Get WooCommerce Shortcodes

One advantage of WooCommerce – because it is connected to WordPress – is that it can use shortcodes. Shortcodes are a type of macro that can initiative certain functions when added to the code of a page. If you have some coding knowledge, you can easily add these WooCommerce shortcodes to your store to get certain features. WordPress itself already has many shortcodes you can use. Here is a quick look at some useful WooCommerce shortcodes you can implement as well:

[woocommerce_cart]	Shows cart page
[woocommerce_checkout]	Shows checkout page
[woocommerce_my_account]	Shows user account page
[woocommcer_order_tracking]	Shows order tracking form
[products], [featured_products], [sale_products], [best_selling_products], [recent_products], [product_attribute], [top_rated_products]	Display products by best selling, most recent, featured, SKU, category, etc.
[product_category]	Displays specified product category
[product_categories]	Displays all product categories
[product_page id=”99″], [product_page sku=”FOO”]	Display a single product by ID or SKU
[related_products limit=”#”]	Display a set amount of related products (replace # with number)
[add_to_cart id=”#”], [add_to_cart_url id=”#”]	Show the price and add to cart button of a specific, single product by ID number (replace # with number)
[shop_messages]	Display WooCommerce notifications on non-WooCommerce pages

There are more WooCommerce shortcodes and combinations of shortcodes. This is just a basic list of some of the most obvious ones. You can find help with these shortcodes and other WooCommerce related questions here.

WooCommerce Themes vs Magento Themes

WooCommerce has a basic “Storefront” theme that it says “covers all the basics.” This may work for people who don’t want to spend much time on their WooCommerce themes and layout. The Storefront theme is simple and nice looking. It will certainly get the job done in many cases. Plus, it’s totally free. It may be the right place to get started if you’re just testing out the waters of e-commerce.

However, if you’re looking for more options, WooCommerce also has Storefront themes so you can find something more customized to your needs. A couple of the other WooCommerce themes are also available for free, though most will cost you a little extra money. Many of the themes are in the $30 range, which is pretty affordable considering how much else you get for free with WooCommerce.

The Magento Marketplace offers several themes that you can use with the free or paid versions of Magento. Magento themes tend to be a bit pricier than WooCommerce themes, but the range of prices is huge. There are free Magento themes, and at the same time there are themes costing hundreds of dollars.

What is Magento Connect?

Magento Connect is just another name for the Magento Marketplace. Magento created its own original marketplace for extensions to its platform. There are a huge number of extensions available, partly because they are community created. With anyone creating extensions, hundreds have popped up in the marketplace of Magento Connect.

Magento Connect has two main audiences: Buyers and sellers. People looking to buy extensions can browse the things other people have made. And those with the skills to create extensions can list them in the marketplace and sell them to other Magento users. Magento does have quality standards for extensions submitted to Magento Connect, but as long as your extension meets those guidelines, you can go on to earn money from sales of your extension to other Magento users.

Here’s a partial list of some of the extensions you can find on Magento Connect:

• Frontend / Backend Single Sign On SAML
• SEO Suite Ultimate
• Layered Navigation
• Pearl Responsive Theme
• Couture Fashion – Responsive Theme
• Electronics Theme
• PayPal, Inc
• MailChimp
• Magestore

Don’t worry if you don’t see the exact extension you need right now. The community is always innovating and adding new extensions to Magento Connect. That is one of the most attractive features of Magento, in fact. The community surrounding it is always coming up with new ideas and improving on the platform. It truly is a collaborative e-commerce environment.

WooCommerce Plugin vs Magento Plugin

This is a difficult comparison to make. WooCommerce is a plugin. That is how it works with WordPress. Magento is not a plugin, but it does have plugins you can add to it. It refers to these as extensions rather than plugins, however, so the terminology can get confusing.

The WooCommerce plugin for WordPress allows you to build your e-commerce store right in wordpress. It is free and designed to integrate into WordPress with no fuss or hassle. There is also a premium WooCommerce Plugin for WordPress that will cost you a bit of money.

The WooCommerce plugin is hugely popular on WordPress. It has been installed more than 3 million times and receives frequent updates. It’s comforting to know that WooCommerce is still actively working on even the free version of its plugin. They have by no means shifted only toward their paid version. They still fully support the free WooCommerce plugin. Plus, the WooCommerce plugin comes in 51 languages and, according to WordPress, powers 30% of all online stores. With WooCommerce, you get full control over your store. You can add and remove more plugins and extensions to further customize your store and change the design as you see fit. By starting with the basic WooCommerce Plugin and the default Storefront theme, you can get a totally free e-commerce platform to start off with.

Magento does things differently. It is an independent open source platform. It does not work as a WordPress plugin, as WooCommerce does. The closest it gets is its offering of “extensions,” which are very similar to plugins, but work directly with Magento. We described several of these plugins above. They can be found through Magento Connect, also called the Magento Marketplace.

Put simply:

WooCommerce

• Is a plugin for WordPress
• Only exists within WordPress
• Is customizable within that frame

Magento

• Is its own e-commerce platform that is independent of WordPress and other hosts
• Has plugins, or “extensions,” you can choose to add on to the basic platform

The right choice depends on a lot of factors, including how comfortable you feel with WordPress. If you’re already using WordPress or familiar with that platform, you may find it easier to just add on the WooCommerce plugin and run your store that way. However, if you’re brand new to WordPress, you may want to choose Magento. That way, you don’t have to learn both WordPress and WooCommerce. You can just learn Magento and customize that as you see fit in order to get your e-commerce shop up and running.

WooCommerce Subscriptions

One interesting feature of WooCommerce is the ability to create subscriptions in your e-commerce store. WooCommerce subscriptions lend you the security of knowing how much revenue you’ll take in each month.

While many extensions for WooCommerce are free, you will have to pay for WooCommerce subscriptions. WooCommerce subscriptions for a single site costs $199.00. For five sites it costs $249.00 and for 25 it costs $399.00. You will save a little money if you are running many websites. However, all of these plans come with a year of updates and support from WooCommerce if you run into any issues with your subscription service.

WooCommerce subscriptions comes with several enticing features, including:

• Reporting features that show you how many active subscribers you have, how much revenue you’re generating with subscriptions and other information.
• Tools that allow your subscribers to upgrade or downgrade their own subscription plans.
• Automatic payments from providers like PayPal, Amazon Pay, Stripe and many more.
• The ability to have multiple billing schedules.
• Subscription renewal reminders that are both manual and automated (in the form of emails and receipts).
• Automatic rebilling on failed subscription payments.

These features make it very easy to host subscriptions on your WooCommerce website and certainly add some enticing features.

Overview

WooCommerce and Magento are very different platforms for hosting an e-commerce store. Magento is an open source platform that users are free to innovate on. If you use Magento, you will only need their product in order to run your store. The Magento platform stands on its own, but also costs a bit more than WooCommerce.

By contrast, WooCommerce is a plugin for WordPress. You will need a WordPress login in order to get started with WooCommerce. Then there are further extensions and plugins for WooCommerce on top of that, such as the subscription services it offers.

All this said, WooCommerce is a very easy e-commerce platform to get started with. You can use it entirely for free if you stick to the basic version and one of the free WooCommerce themes. This makes it an enticing option for those on a budget or who prize simplicity. That is not to say it isn’t powerful. WooCommerce can handle a wide array of e-commerce business needs. And if you need more than what you find in the free version, you can upgrade to paid versions of WooCommerce that have more options, themes, customizability and other features.

To read more articles like – Magento vs WooCommerce: Reviews of e-Commerce Platforms and Plugins, visit logicinbound.com

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Shopify vs Etsy: Comparison and Review of Online Shops

Are you looking to sell goods online but confused by the amount of platforms you can do it on? That’s understandable, given the amount of choices out there right now.

Etsy and Shopify are two of the most popular choices for selling online. Despite that, they are vastly different platforms. Jumping into one or the other will give you totally different options as a seller. Don’t try to pick one before you’ve got all the facts on these two very different ecommerce platforms.

Read on to find out more about:

• What is Shopify?
• What is Etsy?
• How is an Etsy shop different from Shopify?
• Etsy Pricing vs Shopify Pricing
• Etsy Look and Feel vs Shopify Themes
• Etsy Coupons and Coupon Codes
• Etsy Login vs Shopify Login
• Etsy Stock vs Shopify Stock
• Etsy Store vs Shopify Apps
• How to Sell on Etsy vs How to Sell on Shopify
• Etsy Support vs Shopify Support
• Our Pick

What is Shopify?

Shopify is one of the largest ecommerce platforms in the world. It hosts hundreds of thousands of businesses and a thriving community of sellers. Shopify has been around for more than a decade and has become a standard among ecommerce platforms. It offers a lot of powerful ecommerce tools for large businesses all the way down to individual sellers. Shopify stores are very customizable. You can make them look exactly the way you’d like. You will also enjoy the prestige of being part of the Shopify network.

What is Etsy?

Etsy is a marketplace of individuals. This differs greatly from Shopify. Where shopify is a large network of stores and shops, Etsy is a marketplace where artists, designers and crafters display their wares. If Shopify is a mall, Etsy is a craft fair.

That doesn’t necessarily make one better than the other, but it certainly means they serve different audiences. Etsy has a huge amount of sellers, 1.8 million by its most recent count. It also claims 30.6 million buyers and hundreds of millions of monthly visitors. So while it sounds like a small indie production, Etsy can be hugely profitable for the right type of business.

How is an Etsy shop different from Shopify?

There are a few key differences between Etsy shops and Shopify stores:

• Domain name/URL
• Site design
• Pricing
• Types of visitors
• Marketplace rules
• Stock and inventory

Domain name/URL: Shopify gives you a temporary URL when you initially sign up. After that, however, you are free to change that URL to something more customized. You can also customize the URLs of internal website pages.

Etsy gives the same style of URL to all its sellers. Everyone selling products on Etsy gets an Etsy URL. It will appear as etsy.com/shop/YourStore. The only part you will get to customize is the “YourStore” piece of the URL. In this regard, Shopify gives you much more flexibility.

Site design: Shopify offers a lot of customizability with themes and templates. You can choose free themes or paid templates. You can also use HTML, CSS and other coding languages to customize your design. Etsy, in contrast, applies a global design to all Etsy stores. Your Etsy shop will look very similar to all other Etsy shops.

Pricing: Pricing will be described in more detail below, but the short answer is that Shopify has a higher up-front fee, where Etsy changes per transaction. Etsy can get expensive as those fees add up, but at first glance Shopify is the more expensive option.

Types of visitors: This is a metric that is easy to overlook, but the types of shoppers who search Shopify and the type who search Etsy are very different. Shopify stores almost require marketing plans to make them successful. While some of the apps within Shopify can help with that, you will be responsible for driving most of the traffic you get.

Etsy, however, is well-known as a hub of artists and crafters. People already like Etsy and scour it for certain types of goods. If you are selling those sort of goods (mostly handmade craft items), you can benefit from the overall popularity and site traffic of Etsy.

Marketplace rules: Shopifty allows sellers to sell whatever they like, for the most part. It doesn’t matter what kind of store you run, you can put it on Shopify. Etsy, however, has marketplace rules that limit who can sell and what they can sell. Etsy built its reputation and popularity by narrowing its sellers only to people selling handmade items made by the sellers themselves. They also accept vintage goods and craft supplies.

Stocks and inventory: Shopify has systems built into it to manage inventory and process payments. Etsy, by contrast, requires you to take care of inventory elsewhere. It merely lists the products you have to sell.

Etsy Pricing vs Shopify Pricing

Shopify’s pricing differs depending on the complexity of the services you require for your online store.

Plan:	Basic Shopify	Shopify	Advanced Shopify
Monthly Pricing:	$29/month	$79/month	$299/month
Credit Card Rates:
Online	2.9% + $0.30	2.6% + $0.30	2.4% + $0.30
In person	2.7% + $0.00	2.5% + $0.00	2.4% + $0.00
Transaction Fees
Using Shopify Payments	None	None	None
Using external payment gateways	2.0%	1.0%	0.5%
Features:
Staff accounts	2	5	15
Number of products	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited
File storage	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited
Retail package	+$49	+$49	+$49
Shopify shipping discount	Good	Better	Best
Print shipping labels	Yes	Yes	Yes
24/7 support	Yes	Yes	Yes
Fraud analysis	Yes	Yes	Yes
Manual order creation	Yes	Yes	Yes
Discount codes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Website and blog	Yes	Yes	Yes
Free SSL certificate	Yes	Yes	Yes
Gift Cards	No	Yes	Yes
Professional reports	No	Yes	Yes
Abandoned cart recovery	No	Yes	Yes
Advanced report builder	No	No	Yes
Third-party calculated shipping rates	No	No	Yes

Shopify also offers ShopifyPlus for entrepreneurs. This is a good option for large businesses. For smaller sellers and individuals, Shopify has Shopify Lite. It costs only $9 per month and offers simple services that are good for a single person selling only a few items.

Now let’s take a look at Etsy.

Etsy has no monthly fees like Shopify, which can make it cheaper to get started. Each of your listings on Etsy cost your $0.20. In addition, all payments will go through Etsy Payments. You will pay a 3.5% transaction fee, as well as 3% + $0.25 payment processing.

The advantage to Shopify is that their payment structure is more straightforward. If you are a small seller you will almost certainly save money by going with Etsy, but it’s hard to say exactly how much you’ll pay to sell on Etsy because it will change for every seller based on how much they’re selling and the fees involved.

Etsy Look and Feel vs Shopify Themes

As mentioned above, all Etsy shops look the same. They are all branded with Etsy’s look and feel. For some, this might actually be a benefit. You won’t have to worry about designing a website. You can just get down to selling your products while benefiting from Etsy branding.

Those who want more freedom to customize should go with Shopify, however. With Shopify you can choose free and paid Shopify themes. These come with styles that you can apply. That alone offers a lot of options for customizing how your store looks. You can even use HTML and CSS to customize the finer details.

However, this customizability certainly comes at a cost. Some Shopify themes cost nearly $200, on top of the monthly fee you already pay. If you are on a budget, Etsy will save you a lot of money.

Etsy Coupons and Coupon Codes

A nice feature of Etsy is that the site itself can offer Etsy coupons and Etsy coupon codes to customers. However, sellers can also offer coupons and sales on Etsy.

Etsy has built-in tools that allow sellers to make special offers. You can customize the details of your discount or coupon and view statistics about your sale while it is running. Etsy even offers some promotion tips for people who are new to selling online.

Etsy Login vs Shopify Login

Etsy has a pretty standard login. You can even choose to link your Facebook or Google+ account directly to Etsy to make logging in simpler.

Shopify has a similar login on its main website. However, Shopify also offers an app. If you download this app and log in to it, you can check up on your store’s performance no matter where you are. This is a good feature for sellers with higher volume who need to constantly keep an eye on how their store is performing. Those who don’t need this constant checkin will find Etsy’s login sufficient.

Etsy Stock vs Shopify Stock

Recently, Etsy stock has been valued around $21. This has been fairly consistent for a few months. However, stock prices are very fickle and can fluctuate wildly at any time. While it is tough to say with much certainty what will happen to stock prices, Etsy’s has been fairly stable.

Shopify stock is much more valuable, which is no surprise given that Shopify Inc is a larger brand that hosts larger sellers than Etsy. They are valued around $105. In the past five years, Shopify stock has generally trended upward, though it’s hard to definitely say how any stock will do in the long-term future.

Etsy Store vs Shopify Apps

One of the trades you will have to weigh when deciding between Etsy and Shopify is the Etsy store vs Shopify apps.

Etsy shops are all Etsy branded. They don’t come with a lot of flexibility. However, the Etsy brand is well-established and broadly popular. Etsy as a brand can help boost your sales. If you are willing to trade flexibility, you can benefit from Etsy even as they benefit from having you as a seller.

But Etsy does not come with the bells and whistles that Shopify offers. Those bells and whistles include dozens of apps that can integrate with your store to help you run it and help customers use it. Many Shopify apps are free, including things like MailChimp that help with organizing email and Google selling apps. The paid apps are generally inexpensive and serve specific purposes. If you do end up using Shopify, it is definitely worthwhile to check out the apps they offer and see which ones work with your store.

How to Sell on Etsy vs How to Sell on Shopify

Etsy is an easier place to get started selling items. Because there is so little customizability, you can quickly get a site up and running and start selling your products. You don’t need to design an entire website in order to start selling with Etsy. If you have products and images of those products, you’re good to go.

Shopify, while more complicated, is still very easy to set up. You will need to invest more time and money in order to get started, but once you have your store up and running you will not need to spend much time maintaining your Shopify store.

Etsy Support vs Shopify Support

Shopify has many support options. Because it has so many users, it can offer a thriving community where users help each other out. This is sometimes quicker and easier than dealing with support staff. However, Shopify also has a support helpline that you can call if you need help. Another interesting feature of Shopify support are the video tutorials it offers as a way to help people troubleshoot problems.

The Etsy support center can assist with most questions you’ll encounter using an Etsy shop. Like Shopify, Etsy has a support community where you can go to ask questions. However, Etsy’s support site can be a little confusing. The help center serves both seller and buyers, so finding an answer to your particular question can take some digging. It can also take some digging to manage to contact Etsy itself. There is no obvious phone number available for Etsy support, if you want to get help from an actual person.

Our Pick

Shopify is a massive ecommerce giant while Etsy is a smaller company tailored specifically to artists and creators. Both have advantages and ultimately the right choice comes down to what you are selling and how much you are selling.

Choose Shopify if:

• You have a lot of inventory
• You sell a lot of products
• Most or all of your products are not crafts, vintage or art
• You want your store to be fully customizable

Choose Esty if:

• You have a smaller budget
• You are an artist or crafter
• You want the benefit of Etsy’s brand
• You aren’t concerned with customizability

To read more articles like – Shopify vs Etsy: Comparison and Review of Online Shops, visit logicinbound.com

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BigCommerce vs Shopify: Reviews of the Top Ecommerce Platforms

Shopify vs BigCommerce

When starting out in ecommerce, the number of platforms you can choose from is truly daunting. Newcomers easily become overwhelmed with choices. Two of the most prominent platforms for ecommerce are Shopify and BigCommerce. While similar in many regards, there are important differences between these platforms.

Here, we’ll break down what each of these platforms are and do thorough reviews of each, helping you find the right ecommerce platform for your business. We’ll do our reviews around the following topics:

• What is Ecommerce?
• What is Shopify?
• What is BigCommerce?
• Shopify vs BigCommerce: Pricing
• Shopify vs BigCommerce: Themes
• Shopify vs BigCommerce: Apps
• Shopify vs BigCommerce: Support
• Shopify vs BigCommerce: Stocks
• Shopify vs BigCommerce: Login
• The Final Word

Skip ahead to the topic that is most relevant to you or get started here with the basics. Whether you’re a seasoned seller or completely new to the ecommerce world, we can help you pinpoint the factors that will make the most difference to you while choosing a platform.

What is Ecommerce?

Ecommerce simply refers to “electronic commerce,” or selling things online. These days, ecommerce is revolutionizing the way people buy and sell. There are fewer and fewer reasons for people to need to leave their homes to purchase goods now. Even things like groceries are moving toward ecommerce with services like Amazon Fresh, which will deliver groceries right to people’s homes.

Some other areas where ecommerce has changed retail includes:

• Online auctions
• Food ordering
• E-books
• Streaming television and movies
• Comparison shopping
• Trading
• Currency
• Advertising
• Banking
• Flower delivery
• Travel
• Pharmacy

Clearly, there is no end to the industries ecommerce can impact. Business has had to adapt rapidly to this shift toward online. Customers expect to be able to use websites like Shopify and BigCommerce to be able to buy just about anything. But ecommerce also impacts business-to-business sales, in which one business buys source materials or other goods from another business directly. No matter what particular field you’re in, understanding and adapting to ecommerce technology is critical toward continuing success.

Now that you understand ecommerce a bit better, let’s look at two specific ecommerce platforms: Shopify and BigCommerce.

What is Shopify?

Shopify has been around for more than a decade and has grown tremendously in that time. In now boasts more than 1 million active users of its ecommerce platform. Originally, the creators of Shopify simply wanted to open their own online store for snowboarding equipment. When they discovered they didn’t like any of the ecommerce platforms available, they decided to build their own.

Thus, Shopify was born in 2006 and today is one of the biggest ecommerce platforms available. They claim to have 500,000 active stores on Shopify that produce $46 billion worth of sales. With offices all over North America, the company has expanded tremendously since its humble beginnings. It is hailed as a cleanly designed, easy-to-use ecommerce platform and that is part of the reason it has remained popular for more than a decade.

What is BigCommerce?

BigCommerce is a similar ecommerce platform. It hasn’t been around quite as long as Shopify, having started in 2009. It is also a slightly smaller company and does $8 billion in sales compared to Shopify’s $46 billion. In addition to its standard BigCommerce platform, it also offers BigCommerce Enterprise for high-volume retailers.

Shopify vs BigCommerce: Pricing

The price you pay for either of these platforms will ultimately come down to what you plan to use them for. Go into your decision knowing how much support and how many services you need. These factors will play a large role in which pricing plan is right for you, regardless of the platform you choose.

BigCommerce offers monthly and annual plans. If you can afford the annual plan, you’ll save up to 10% on their Plus and Pro plans. Here’s a comprehensive view of their pricing plans.

Plan:	Standard	Plus	Pro	Enterprise
Pricing:	$29.95/month	$79.95/month ($71.95/month for the annual plan)	$249.95/month ($224.95/month for the annual plan)	Custom pricing.
Features:
Responsive website	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Single-page checkout	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Apple Pay	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Coupons, discounts, gift cards	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Shipping label discounts	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Real time shipping quotes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Professional reporting tools	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Blog	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Product ratings and reviews	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Free sitewide HTTPs and dedicated SSL	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
ShipperHQ shipping rules engine	Available	Available	Available	Yes
Customer groups and segmentation	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
Abandoned cart saver	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
Google customer reviews	No	No	Yes	Yes
Faceted search (product filtering)	No	No	Yes	Yes
Custom SSL	No	No	Yes	Yes
Unlimited API calls	No	No	No	Yes
Online sales per year	Up to $50,000	Up to $150,000	Up to $400,00	Custom
Service and Support
24/7 live agency support	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Premium account services, express routing, priority support and strategic account management available	No	No	No	Yes
Payment Processing
No transaction fees to use leading payment gateways	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Optional special credit card rates from PayPal	2.9% + $0.30 per transaction	2.5% + $0.30 per transaction	2.2% + $0.30 per transaction	2.2% + $0.30 or lower per transaction

All of their plans include no transaction fees, unlimited bandwidth for products and file storage, and unlimited staff accounts. All BigCommerce plans also include sales channels for: a branded online store, eBay, Amazon, point of sale, Facebook, Pinterest, and Google Shopping.

BigCommerce offers a 15 day free trial so you can figure out which plan works best for you.

Shopify’s pricing is extremely similar, but lacks the enterprise option that BigCommerce offers. Here’s the full breakdown:

Plan:	Basic Shopify	Shopify	Advanced Shopify
Monthly Pricing:	$29/month	$79/month	$299/month
Credit Card Rates:
Online	2.9% + $0.30	2.6% + $0.30	2.4% + $0.30
In person	2.7% + $0.00	2.5% + $0.00	2.4% + $0.00
Transaction Fees
Using Shopify Payments	None	None	None
Using external payment gateways	2.0%	1.0%	0.5%
Features:
Staff accounts	2	5	15
Number of products	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited
File storage	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited
Retail package	+$49	+$49	+$49
Shopify shipping discount	Good	Better	Best
Print shipping labels	Yes	Yes	Yes
24/7 support	Yes	Yes	Yes
Fraud analysis	Yes	Yes	Yes
Manual order creation	Yes	Yes	Yes
Discount codes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Website and blog	Yes	Yes	Yes
Free SSL certificate	Yes	Yes	Yes
Gift Cards	No	Yes	Yes
Professional reports	No	Yes	Yes
Abandoned cart recovery	No	Yes	Yes
Advanced report builder	No	No	Yes
Third-party calculated shipping rates	No	No	Yes

Shopify offers two other pricing packages complete separate from these main three. One is the Shopify Lite option, which allows you to sell on Facebook and chat with customers in the Facebook Messenger app. For $9 a month you can add products to your website or blog and accept credit card payments.

The other option is Shopify’s enterprise plan, called ShopifyPlus. This is best for high-volume merchants and large businesses who need more services than Shopify Advanced can offer.

Head to head, BigCommerce offers a little bit more at a slightly lower cost. However, there are a lot of extra factors to consider. If you are a small or individual seller, Shopify Lite is a great option that is very affordable. Likewise, if you’re a large company or brand, you may skew toward Shopify due to their additional years and experience in ecommerce.

Advantage: BigCommerce

Shopify vs BigCommerce: Themes

A big part of an ecommerce store is the layout of the website, or theme. Choosing a theme sets the tone of your ecommerce store. It can entice customers, or confuse them and send them away.

BigCommerce offers the ability to customize your website with HTML, CSS and other popular code libraries. This is excellent if you have the coding skills to wrangle your website yourself and don’t want to deal with fussy templates at all.

However, BigCommerce also offers many themes and templates if you aren’t a developer. BigCommerce has many free templates, though others will come at an additional charge. Be warned: BigCommerce offers far more paid templates than free ones. It only has a handful of free templates you can choose from, though each comes with additional styles. The free template will suit your needs if your website is simple and straightforward. However, those who want to customize their ecommerce store more will soon find themselves browsing the premium themes. These can come at a hefty additional cost of another $150 – $200 for your website theme.

Shopify is very similar. It offers full customizability if you have a Shopify Plus account and coding skills. It also has 10 free themes you can choose from with additional styles for added customizability. Choose a free Shopify theme to get started and determine if it offers the right look and feel for your ecommerce store. However, you may soon find that you want more features, and for that you’ll need a paid Shopify theme. Like BigCommerce, Shopify themes cost $150 – $200.

Overall, the difference here between the two sites is very slight. Finding the right theme will be a matter of your taste and needs.

Advantage: Neither

Shopify vs BigCommerce: Apps

App integration can boost sales tremendously when you’re selling online. Many apps are essential for helping you run your store, while others relate to marketing and social media. Both BigCommerce and Shopify offer apps that can integrate with your store to enhance your ecommerce business.

BigCommerce offers a ton of apps for free, including things like MailChimp, Google Shopping and PayPal Marketing Solutions. Some of the paid apps include things like LiveChat, which lets you chat with customers and provides a virtual help desk, and catalogue builders like Now In Store. The price of the paid apps vary depending on who provides them and what kind of services they entail. BigCommerce sorts all apps into categories that can help you find apps that suit your store, though. Whether you’re looking for accounting apps, mobile apps or product sourcing apps, BigCommerce has a wide range of apps, many of which are free.

Shopify also has a mix of both free and premium app plugins that can improve your online store. Many of the same apps you’ll find for free with BigCommerce you will also see listed as free for Shopify. The pricing mostly comes from the app developers and not the ecommerce stores. Free apps include things like Instafeed from Instagram, and NeatTracker, which can help you see which of your products is the most popular.

The app offerings from both of these ecommerce companies are extremely similar. We don’t recommend basing your decision only on apps.

Advantage: Neither

Shopify vs BigCommerce: Support

Support is important. Problems with your ecommerce site can literally cost you money. So you need to know not only that your website will work, but that someone will be able to help the moment anything goes wrong.

BigCommerce offers a range of support features, including: a community forum, a support center and partner and affiliate programs. The community is an interesting feature. It allows fellow business owners to help each other and crowd source questions and issues. This is especially good for things that aren’t bugs or problems, such as layout, design and user interface. Having the support of a community in your same field can be a huge source of support while building your ecommerce business.

BigCommerce also offers a “university” with how-to videos, guides to help you learn about features and the “partner marketplace,” where experts can help explain things like SEO and app building. In addition, they have live chat, phone support and email support, though these take a little digging to actually get to. You will have to click through a couple pages to actually reach a phone number you can use to call for support.

Shopify has a support contact phone number right at the bottom of their site. That does make Shopify support more accessible compared to BigCommerce support. However, similarly to BigCommerce, if you go to the actually Shopify support page, you will have to do a bit more clicking before you find a phone number. It seems possible that people could miss the phone number on the bottom of the page and then get frustrated digging for it on the Shopify support page.

Shopify support offers other help features, though. The Shopify community is similar to BigCommerce’s community. However, considering how much bigger Shopify is, you will likely find a more active community with them. Shopify support also includes video tutorials and webinars to provide guidance.

Both sites are fairly typical when it comes to support. The contact information to reach an actual human is somewhat buried on both websites, but accessible after a couple clicks. Shopify has an edge when it comes to hosting a support community simply because it is a larger ecommerce site than BigCommerce. However, BigCommerce has more diverse options for offering help and support. On BigCommerce you can live chat with support to get assistance.

Advantage: BigCommerce

Shopify vs BigCommerce: Stocks

How many products do you have? Depending on how large your stock is and how often it is updated, BigCommerce and Shopify will have different offerings for you.

Some ecommerce businesses never deal with stock at all. This is referred to as drop shipping. Drop shipping is when someone doesn’t actually have any stock in their store. Instead, when someone orders from them, they order the product from a third party. They never actually handle the product themselves, but rather serve as a sort of middle man between a customer and supplier.

This can be a beneficial situation as it makes it easier to get started and requires less investment. You can order products as needed rather than holding on to a large stock. However, it does come at the cost of having to rely on an outside supplier and lower margins, so consider carefully before going this route.

No matter how you offer products to your customers, Shopify and BigCommerce offer various stocking options. Shopify allows you to display an unlimited number of products on your website, as does BigCommerce.

If you are using drop shopping, third-party shipping rates may be a concern. Shopify offers to calculate third-party shipping rates only with Shopify Advanced accounts. BigCommerce gets the edge here, offering unlimited products, file storage and bandwidth on all accounts, even the standard one. This is going to be much better for stores with large stocks of inventory and many products they want to display. If you are working with lots of products and a lower budget, BigCommerce will give you more flexibility.

Advantage: BigCommerce

Shopify vs BigCommerce: Login

Your store login for Shopify or BigCommerce is more important than it sounds. It will impact the URL of your store, for one thing.

Ecommerce business owners want to login quickly and simply. Both Shopify and BigCommerce offer standard logins with password and username support if you misplace your information. However, Shopify also has an app that makes it slightly easier to update and monitor your store on the go. Having this option makes a big difference. Being able to keep track of your business from your phone no matter where you are makes a massive difference when you’re a busy ecommerce store owner.

That’s fine for your own login. What if you want to make customers login to your ecommerce site?

That will take a little more technical knowledge. Even with the themes offered by Shopify and BigCommerce, you may want more out of a customer login function. This tutorial is a great help for ecommerce businesses trying to create a login:

Be wary, logging in is not right for all ecommerce stores. Businesses tend to like having customers login because they can track purchases and gain more insight about buying habits. However, many customers are annoyed by logins that slow down their process. Many people come to online shopping because they want things to be easier, not more complicated. So think carefully before adding a login function to your Shopify or BigCommerce store that might put off some customers who don’t want the hassle.

Advantage: Shopify

The Final Word

It’s hard to definitively state which ecommerce platform is right for any individual business. There are factors beyond what we’ve analyzed in our reviews that will impact your decision. How big is your business? What kinds of products do you sell? Do you already have a website or are you starting from scratch?

This chart breaks down some of the overall pros and cons of both platforms.

	Shopify	BigCommerce
Pros	Larger website More experience in ecommerce Pioneers in ecommerce Offer an app for easy updating and monitoring Many professional tools Large, thriving community ShopifyLite great for very small sellers	May be more affordable Offers unlimited products for all accounts More accessible support numbers, plus a live chat function for instant communication with support staff who can help
Cons	May be more expensive depending on the plan you choose Support page can be confusing	Smaller and less well-established Hasn’t worked in ecommerce for as long as Shopify
Tied	Both offer the same apps at the same prices Both offer roughly the same amount of free themes and paid themes at about the same cost Both have similar login structures and support

As you can see, Shopify and BigCommerce share a lot of similarities. Our best advice would be to start a free trial at the site that sounds best to you and your business’s needs. Test out any many features as you can during the free trial in order to discover how well the site you chose meets your expectations and solves your ecommerce challenges. Either way, you can’t go wrong offering your customers the convenience and ease of ecommerce.

To read more articles like – BigCommerce vs Shopify: Reviews of the Top Ecommerce Platforms, visit logicinbound.com

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