There are many great ideas out there. People think up plans for businesses all the time. There’s something great about being an entrepreneur. The growth of your business is a rewarding feeling that is often unmatched. Combine that facet with being your own boss, and starting your own business is a very alluring option for many people.
However, how do people get started? An idea is only that. It takes effort and a marketplace to start a business. Thankfully, there are a lot of places online which allow people to take their business dreams and make them a reality. These websites and ecommerce platforms allow people to start their own business online and reach a large number of people very quickly.
1 - Shopify
When it comes to looking for an all purpose ecommerce website, Shopify is one of the most popular and easiest to manage. Shopify allows people to build themselves a web portal for their business. Shopify can let you sell your products in any way imaginable on any platform you want. Even if you only want to sell things locally, you can allow your purchases to go through Shopify.
Shopify allows full customization, but also allows a business to automate many of their things. Their pre designed storefront processes sales easily. It can also automate shipping and marketing if that’s not your thing.
2 - BigCommerce
This is another of the online platforms you may wish to consider. BigCommerce is a good platform for any company from startup to larger sizes. This makes it ideal to grow alongside a business. Admittedly, BigCommerce can take longer to learn than a platform like Shopify. However, this is because it has more complex features.
3 - WooCommerce
WooCommerce isn’t the largest oor most popular platform, but is excellent for people running a business through a blog. WooCommerce is especially good with integrating through WordPress. While it’s open source, it does require some management. WooCommerce is best used as a starter platform.
4 - Squarespace
Squarespace started as more of a web creative location. It allowed creative and artistic people to create magnificent websites to show off their creations. This naturally escalated and now squarespace also offers the ecommerce platform to assist in selling these works. Squarespace doesn’t offer an overly technical platform however. The ecommerce features are fairly basic, but are great for low volume and artistic sales.
5 - Big Cartel
Big Cartel is the perfect ecommerce platform for simple small businesses that only offer a few items. People who make custom clothing or bands who need to sell t shirts often will use Big Cartel. It’s a perfect platform for businesses who are amateurs when it comes to technology.
6 - Prestashop
Prestashop has an excellent ability to function in multiple languages. People who are operating a business and operate in multiple languages can make use of this open-source platform. Another benefit to Prestashop is that it is entirely cloud-hosted, meaning there’s no need for expensive private servers.
7 - 3dcart
This is one of the more minor online business platforms, but it does have one excellent feature. 3dcart has built in shipping solutions that are incredibly easy to use and very functional. The downside is that a lot of the web themes are not nearly as impressive as elsewhere and it’s not equipped to handle huge traffic levels.
