SquareSpace helps you stay stylish with your site to attract a modern crowd

10-second breakdown:

SquareSpace is devoted to helping your store look good, which ultimately leads to more people on your site for a longer time. With half the battle won, you just have to sell good stuff and compel them to try it out. Easy to set up and very versatile for designers and visually appealing products.

The good:

The design of your online shop is bound to look good with this software. Beautiful templates and very intuitive tools to get you setup quickly. They’ve put a lot of work into the elements that draw the eye of your shoppers and if you don’t have much UX experience, it will help you (and your products) look their best.

There are multiple types of products that are sellable on SquareSpace. Digital and physical goods are both supported and well thought out. Downloads can even be facilitated by the platform which isn’t the case with some other ecommerce solutions.

Analytics data is rich and useful to help you figure out ways to keep eyeballs on the screen longer and sell more product overall.

The bad:

There is no third-party widget marketplace; which means less innovation from the seller point of view.

Surprisingly limited mobile site configurations given the mobile state of the internet at large.

How it works:

Right out of the gate you should know that SquareSpace isn’t exclusively an online shop builder, but a DIY website tool that allows you to create a store if you so desire. That doesn’t mean that it’s not a solid option. It’s especially useful for anyone who wants to build a content-based site that has the functionality built-in to sell products.

To get started, you’ll need to pick the plan that’s right for you. This platform only has two for online shops, here’s the breakdown of both:

Basic: With the basic plan, you can sell an unlimited number of products with no transaction fees. You get a free domain if you purchase a year’s worth of service and all sites are mobile-friendly (a must in ecommerce). Inventory tracking, tax calculators, and label-printing are also standard.

Advanced: The advanced plan comes with all of the features of basic as well as abandoned cart recovery, deeper analytics, and real-time shipping data.

One of the biggest selling points about SquareSpace is it’s seeming superpower to turn even the most design deficient users into web development pros. It’s not only easy to build a site, but you’ll be surprised at how stunningly beautiful your creation is. In online shopping, your site has to look as good as the pictures of your products, so if you need help in the visual department, take a good look at this platform.

One of the downsides here is the low number of shopping specific templates. While there are fewer than ten, the ones that are there look phenomenal, modern, and they all look just as good on smartphones/tablets. The templates are also fit for any products and aren’t made with one type of company (e.g fashion) in mind.

It’s not the biggest problem in the world, because the site-building capabilities with SquareSpace makes everything customizable. One of the coolest things is the ability to add a store onto a fully-functioning site. This makes it a great way for consultants, bloggers and other content-focused businesses to have a site that draws traffic and a store that can sell your services, digital or even physical goods.

Upon sign-up, you’ll have access to the dashboard. Even though it’s not their sole focus, adding and viewing your offers and orders is really good-looking and easy to understand. You just click, add a product and it will ask you if it’s physical, digital, or even a service (not something we’ve seen in a lot of other solutions). Then you can manipulate the details and even the page your product will sit on. It’s all super easy and you can have a store full of manually entered products in one sitting.

Add-ons aren’t really a thing with this solution. Other platforms have dozens of features that come standard or marketplaces that can include hundreds of gizmos to improve your site. It’s really basic, but effectively functional. The advanced plan has cart abandonment and the features they do have mostly come standard, but if you’re into bells and whistles you won’t find that here.

As far as taking payments, you’ll have to sign up for a Stripe account. SquareSpace doesn’t have integrations with other payment gateways (not even PayPal). Be sure to take this into consideration, even though Stripe is awesome. Another bonus is the included SSL and PCI compliance. There are a few other ecommerce platforms that offer this, but very few that include it at all levels with the price.

If you’re into making content (e.g blog, podcast, etc.) then Squarespace may be the option for you. Simple and beautiful sites are their strong suit. The functionality is enough to have a very successful site and the pricing is very inexpensive for what you get.

For complete rankings of all ecommerce software, go here.

http://authority.org/ecommerce-software/squarespace/ http://authorityorg.tumblr.com/post/150438368327

Rackspace review: Everything you need to know

Overview: Rackspace claims to be the largest managed cloud based provider and as such they offer expertise across the board with top engineers helping you with the world’s leading cloud services.

Pricing:

Managed: Contact Rackspace for pricing for managed hosting

Intensive: Contact Rackspace for pricing for managed hosting

Fanatical : Contact Rackspace for pricing for managed hosting

Ideal Customer: Any small to enterprise level business looking for an established provider specializing in managed Cloud hosting.

Trends:

Unique Features:

OpenStack Public Cloud: Often times development teams struggle to create applications in private environments. Rackspace has not only created a public cloud space that is currently used by thousands of engineers and industry experts, but also has multiple tools that help make the entire process easier than most other cloud providers. The “cutting edge” features combined with a fully-controlled environment makes this particular cloud server a playground for developers looking to work quickly on their iterations. The host promises that your server can be set up in less than 60 seconds by using either their custom control panel or the OpenStack API. This speed allows you to focus on the important things (like coding). This cloud platform is entirely scalable to your needs. Your agency won’t have to worry about having the resources to handle traffic or the files. Everything is controlled from a single intuitive panel where you can allocate resources and access all those tools. Speaking of tools, we’ll mention a few that you’ll be able to get your hands on. Auto Scale can take the guess work out of your resources and will grow or reduce your environment based on changes in your traffic. Orchestration gives you the ability to build custom templates (or use pre-existing production-ready template from Rackspace’s catalog). Each OpenStack user also gets real-time monitoring and alerts that is even customizable at the enterprise level. After you’re set up and developing there is a detailed reporting system that will give you a glimpse into the health of your creations infrastructure that will help you improve performance over time.

Professional Services: Depending on the size of your team and overall operation it may be necessary to utilize a multi-cloud system. Multiple environments can be a huge hassle, even if they are under the same host. This problem has prompted Rackspace to create a service to help larger developers with this unique problem. Professionals will listen to the goals and struggles that you have endured in order to provide the advice you’ll need when matching your clouds to your workloads. These experts won’t just offer ideas, but help you to create the roadmap to an efficient, productive set of environments. Specifically, there are a few services included in their “Professional Services” category. IT Transformation will give you real-world guidance to migrating, building, and securing your resources across multiple cloud platforms. You can also employ Migration Services to help the move from a single server to a complex development system. Making a transfer to a more complicated strategy takes a lot, but Rackspace has put valuable resources together to help make the transition quick. There are maintenance plans, DevOps Advisory Workshops, and on demand services. The pros can be as hands-on as you like in so many aspects including health checks to assist in things like performance testing and vulnerability scans. Database platform services are also available including help with “everything from planning and design to application support.”

Web Content Management: Your apps and websites aren’t just products; they are content that needs to be handled. However, development folks are focused on building new content and sometimes lack in the managing department. In another intuitive move, Rackspace has created a service for managing the files for their clients. There are so many nuances to a well-performing site, it makes perfect sense for hosting experts to handle yours. Page load time, updated content, downtime the list goes on and on. Not only is poor site performance bad for SEO, it’s ultimately bad for your customers. Rackspace will essentially manage your site’s infrastructure for you. Their teams are experts in the ways of building an optimized environment for your products to thrive. Instead of slowing down your development you can lean on the skills of an award-winning content delivery network and have a custom landscape built for speed and uptime, guaranteed. Of course, you’ll be updated and aware of everything involved every step of the way. Really, it’s a great way to concentrate on the growth of your business without the hassle of managing your site’s content.

Pros:

• Customer Support: Rackspace offers 24/7/365 support with phone number, live chat and email contact links front and center on their website
• Hybrid Cloud: RackConnect lets you link your dedicated server to their fully managed cloud for scalability and security.
• Uptime Guarantee: They offer a 100% uptime guarantee for their network with advanced network backup technology.
• Top Cloud Experts: Rackspace will help you manage and migrate anything you need to Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Cloud/Azure, and Openstack Cloud.

Cons:

• Pricing: Rackspace doesn’t provide any clear pricing on their website. There are tools that claim to give you an estimate, but mostly you have to contact them directly.
• Managed only: They offer only managed and dedicated cloud hosting, no shared or VPS available.
• Not for beginners: Rackspace is designed for businesses up to the enterprise level and some of their services cost thousands of dollars.

Summary:

Rackspace boasts over 3000 cloud engineers on staff and a rather extensive list of other professionals and certifications. They manage many large household name businesses and promise the same level of dedication for your business. Professional services, infrastructure, and content services are all available to help your business reach it’s full potential.

Takeaway: Rackspace is perfect for businesses that want piece of mind that their website is completely taken care of. Security and cloud scalability from the top cloud managed company. If you are a developer or tech-savvy webmaster that likes to have a hands on approach then this service isn’t for you.

http://authority.org/web-hosting/rackspace/ http://authorityorg.tumblr.com/post/150438174422

PinnacleCart is the stress-free way to start your first online shop

10-second breakdown:

PinnacleCart gives beginners the confidence they need to start a store with all of the basics, but will also allow them to grow into a rich set of advanced features. There are other options that are easy, but this software really seems to grow with it’s users and help them learn along the way to success.

The good:

PinnacleCart has some very impressive SEO features that can help your shop be found by more people naturally. Taking advantage of those searching for the things you sell is like free marketing that can last a long time and make you a large profit-margin. You’ll still have to do a lot of work (SEO can be tough), but it’s a great start.

Designing your site is one of the easiest experiences of all the other ecommerce platforms (except maybe Shopify). Templates and easy-to-find elements will help you to create the look and feel that you wanted; maybe even better.

The dashboard is clean and clear to keep you in the know about how your shop is performing. You can have multiple administrators which is a bonus for larger operations with multiple back-end staffers.

The bad:

PinnacleCart doesn’t have it’s own payment gateway, so you’ll have to get a third-party solution (they support 30 different ones).

Certain other limitations include limits on storage resources and bandwidth (could be a bummer for high-traffic stores).

How it works:

PinnacleCart is a scalable all-in-one commerce solution. They identify as a small business themselves and feel like they can relate to and help small businesses better that other ecommerce solutions. PinnacleCart offers four different hosted pricing plans. All plans include unlimited products, daily backups, US based support, PCI/PA-DSS Compliant, Zero transaction fees, free migration, and free Doba integration. The rest of the plan specifics are as follow:

Start Up: This basic plan offers 1GB Website Storage and 2GB Website Traffic. Those resources should be enough to get you several dozen products and around 4,000-5,000 visitors a month.

Small Biz: This plan offers 3GB Website Storage, 8GB Website Traffic, and Quickbooks Auto Sync. At this level, you’ll be at several hundred products and around 20,000 visitors a month.

Entrepreneur: This is PinnacleCart’s most popular plan. It offers 10GB Website Storage, 20GB Website Traffic, and Quickbooks Auto Sync. Up to a couple thousand products and 50,000+ visitors a month.

Enterprise: This is the largest and therefore most expensive plan made for large companies and corporations. This plan offers 50GB Website Storage, 100GB Website Traffic, and Quickbooks Auto Sync. You’re probably not going to need to worry about storage or traffic levels with these resources unless you are a drop shipper with tens of thousands of products or have a very large amount of traffic.

PinnacleCart also offers two VPS options for their enterprise level customers.

VPS1: With this plan you get 50GB disk space, 200GB Bandwidth, and includes 2 virtual stores. More can be added at an additional cost.

VPS2: With this plan you get 100GB disk space, 400GB Bandwidth, and includes 5 virtual stores. More can be added at an additional cost.

With both VPS accounts you get unlimited email accounts and an unlimited number of databases.

The hosted plans all offer a 14 day free trial. This is a truly free trial, no credit card is needed to start. If you decide PinnacleCart isn’t for you after you’ve made a purchase, you can cancel anytime without fees or penalties.

Once you decide to buy there is a quick start guide to get you started. The control panel and dashboard are simple and easy to use. The only other things you need to get started are a reliable internet connection and an updated web browser.

PinnacleCart is also mobile friendly, they integrate with iPad, iPhone, Blackberry and Android devices. They also help you with your social media presence. The PinnacleCart Social Media Commerce Platform allows customers to like and share your products to their friends using Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and more. This add-on is free to all PinnacleCart’s customers.

Setting up your store is fairly stress-free. PinnacleCart offers you 30 different free templates to get started. No worries if you don’t like it later, you can easily switch it out. “Design Mode” let you fully customize your store, their drag and drop functionality makes it easy. PinnacleCart let’s you have unlimited products listed on your site. This includes physical products, digital products, and gift certificates.

As far as functionality, PinnacleCart offers just about everything you could need for your virtual storefront. They help you handle everything from printing packing slips and invoices, accepting credit cards, inventory tracking, currency converting, and the list goes on.

They also help you understand how business is going by integrating with Google Analytics and Adwords. You can view numerous reports that break down customer flow, revenue, top viewed products, and see how customers are finding your site.

PinnacleCart support a variety of payment processors but Chase Paymentech is their preferred payment gateway. You can contact their customer service rep to see how you can integrate other services or processors. Customer Service is available by phone, web ticket, and email. They also have a decent knowledgebase to help you get through any questions you may have.

PinnacleCart offers clear pricing and their setup is straightforward. For those that have some online storefront experience this should prove to be a quick start and a clear winner. Any large or high volume retailers should check out their VPS options.

For complete rankings of all ecommerce software, go here.

http://authority.org/ecommerce-software/pinnaclecart/ http://authorityorg.tumblr.com/post/150438174302

3D Cart fits your budget while giving you great open box features for your shop

10-second breakdown:

3D Cart is a great budget-friendly option that has more features than you’d expect for the price. While it’s not as robust as some of the top players, it is definitely worth further inspection for those bootstrapped new store owners.

The good:

Every plan has more features than most other ecommerce solutions on the market and for a lower price than most of the competition. In an industry that is by and large pay to play for features, it’s a refreshing thing to see. If you want some advanced features to help your store improve, this could be the right service.

There are free shared SSL’s available if you are willing to have your shopping cart go to a sub-domain from 3D Cart. Doing so does break the experience and could create some confusion, but if you are starting out and don’t want to fork over the sometimes hefty SSL fee; it doesn’t hurt.

The live chat support is very responsive (usually in less than an hour).

The bad:

The templates for stores aren’t nearly as pretty as some of the competitors. This is unfortunate, since most owners want their shops to look appealing.

If your store gets a bump in traffic, you could end up paying a bandwidth overage charge if you break your plan’s preset limits.

How it works:

3D Cart is a straight-forward all-inclusive style platform. You choose a plan, build your store, and load up your products. Your site is hosted through your account and their pricing makes it a bargain to be looked at thoroughly. It’s one of the smaller solutions on the market and that can benefit users in a variety of ways, but the first step is choosing a plan to suit your needs. Here’s a brief breakdown:

Nano: The smallest plan is built for shops with fewer products (you’re only allowed up to 25). It also allows for up to 2000 visits per month and 1GB of bandwidth. It’s great for craft vendors and other small operations wanting to break out of the third-party platforms.

Mini: This level of the platform allows for up to 200 different products and a higher traffic level of 4000 visits every month and 2GB of bandwidth.

Starter: At this level, it’s going to be enough for many smaller ventures with 1000 products and up to 8000 visitors/mo and 4GB of bandwidth. The starter plan allows for 10 different email accounts (up from 5 for the two lower levels).

Professional: This level is called professional for a reason. Up to 10,000 products (probably more than most would need, unless you’re drop-shipping) 20,000 visitors/mo and 10GB of bandwidth. This plan also comes with an unlimited number of email accounts.

Professional Plus: This level allows for an unlimited number of products and up to 50,000 visitors a month along with 25GB worth of bandwidth resources.

High-Traffic Premium: For the top-tier shops that have a ton of regular traffic, this could be your option. Unlimited products and 60GB worth of bandwidth to hold all of that traffic (well over 100k/mo).

High-Traffic Plus: The highest plan available through 3D Cart with all of the features of the lower plans and a staggering 250GB of bandwidth; enough for a ridiculous amount of visitors each month.

Other initial features that you’ll get when you sign up for any account will be a free domain (if you don’t have one already), Facebook and mobile versions of your store (a must in today’s mobile/social environment), and phone support options. With all these extras being offered for every plan, it really makes the case that 3D Cart is one of the best options for micro and small online store owners.

This software is also entirely cloud-based which means your store will be faster and can be ran from just about any device with a solid internet connection. All of the management happens through the web and it’s fairly hands-off compared to other ecommerce tools. You simply log in and instantly have access to start building your store.

Designing your shop is easy, but could be pricey. There are several dozen free themes that are all mobile responsive and everything you need to get your products in front of the eyeballs of your customers. However, they aren’t that pretty. In fact, most of them are just above the basic level. Where this is really going to be a problem are the boutique shops that have stylish products and will need a stylish design. There are other templates for sale, but can cost upwards of a couple hundred bucks. That is a one time fee and would be worth it, especially if you need a good looking site. There is also a design service for a custom design, but that goes to a much higher cost.

There is on-boarding assistance, but right now it costs $249. If you are clueless and would like the help it could be worth it, but the platform isn’t difficult and fairly intuitive even for those who aren’t technical. The hardest part is choosing a payment gateway. 3D Cart doesn’t charge a transaction fee, but the processor you choose will.

Side Note: There are several processors to choose from and you can take a look at our top choices here.

Once you upload your products, it’s time to set up for the traffic that will be coming. There are so many awesome features to attract and retain visitors and all of them come with every account type (from nano up). For starters, you can sell either physical or digital goods and there is a one-page checkout system (proven to increase conversions). Tax and shipping calculators for your customers, order tracking, wish lists, registries, and coupon codes/discounts are just a few ways you can better serve your audience.

For you, there are multiple SEO tools, inventory tracking that helps maintain stock levels and simple product management help with uploading new sku’s and categorizing them for easy display.

All of these features are standard. You get an account and you get all of the goodies. This alone makes 3D Cart a very appealing choice for budget seekers who want power without the hefty price tag of some better known options.

For complete rankings of all ecommerce software, go here.

http://authority.org/ecommerce-software/3d-cart/ http://authorityorg.tumblr.com/post/150438174117

PrestaShop is a free software that puts you in control of your online store

10-second breakdown:

PrestaShop was built with big online shops in mind who want to build a semi-custom design in a self-hosted environment. A bit more hands-on than your full-service ecommerce shop builders and it’s not for beginners. Programming experience is almost necessary. All told, it’s a powerful way to build a shop that is truly unique and fast.

The good:

Beautiful themes and lots of them. There are over 2000 templates to choose from in the gallery and every one is really good looking in its own right. Almost all of them are responsive to take advantage of the large number of mobile shoppers nowadays and uploading them and adding your text is a very easy process.

SEO is a strong suit for PrestaShop. Organic traffic that is targeted to keywords based on the products you sell is a powerful weapon in the hands of an ecommerce shop. Free potential customers isn’t something to scoff at.

Page speeds are faster than other competitors, which could help that SEO situation as well as keep more people from skipping the site before they see what you’ve got to sell.

The bad:

The learning curve is undeniably steep for people with little coding experience. If you don’t understand programming at all, you’re going to have trouble getting started.

The software is free, but everything else will cost you including hosting, add-ons, and maybe a designer.

How it works:

PrestaShop isn’t an “all-inclusive” style of shop building software. In fact, it doesn’t share a lot in common with most of the solutions (Except Magento Community Edition). This product is an open-source software that comes in two different versions. Both products are completely free to use. While you don’t pay for the platform, there are other things that you’ll need to supply on your own. Here are the basics:

Domain name and hosting: This is a software and not an all-in-one solution, you’ll need to have your own domain and hosting account (here’s our list of top choices). There is a cloud-hosted option with PrestaShop that’s worth looking into. If you’re looking for a more inclusive option; many other ecommerce platforms (e.g. Shopify) do have just about everything you need included.

SSL and Payment Processor: In order to make money, you’ll need to take credit cards and have some security on the site that will make it safer for customers. Integrating these things is entirely on you. We’ve put together a list of the top credit card processors we like. Check it out.

Development Help: You’re probably going to need a developer to work on your shop. There are templates, but without coding knowledge it’s just not going to look the way you want.

Choosing a hosting type is incredibly important with PrestaShop. There are only two options, entirely self-hosted or hosted through PrestaShop Cloud. There aren’t a lot of reasons not to use the cloud version. It’s free, you can use your own domain name, and it’s much (like way) easier to deal with. It’s a lot less coding, too.

If you use the cloud, you’ll simple sign into a dashboard that can handle most of the inner workings of the software. There is a pretty intuitive setup wizard that helps you pick and attach a theme and punch in your first products. If you choose the self-hosted route, you’ll have to manually put everything together and upload the software to your server before you can get to this process.

Picking a template will be daunting, especially if you’re the thorough type. There are over 2000 professionally-designed third-party templates. PrestaShop only gives you the basic template that comes stock and all of the other options are paid. Prices vary more than other platforms from less than $50 to more than $500. This high number of choices is great if you want the feel of a unique design without having to do a lot of coding. Other platforms have so few templates many of the stores look the same. Probably not happening here.

Either way, once it’s set up things are noticeably easier than with other open-source shop builders.

Entering the product’s data, categories, and features can be done right when you add the product to your store. Order management is also simple and one feature we like is the ability to email your customer right from the order page. This is really cool if you like personalizing the experience. A simple email note from you could mean a world of difference and could gain the loyalty of more buyers.

Support is tricky. You can pay for support (gets costly), but with so many of the features and templates designed by third parties, you may not get the help you need. There is a lot of educational material and an active forum, which could help.

PrestaShop really shines in the features department. There are over 300 of them that all come standard with the free software. Everything you could possibly think of like a shipping calculator, currency conversion for international sales, automated emails, promotional setup, SEO tools, and even the ability to offer gift wrapping.

If you can’t find something right off hand, but feel like you need it; there is a third-party add-on store. This is a pay-to-play environment with costs ranging from around $20 into the hundreds. It’s here you’re going to find third-party selling integrations (like Amazon, eBay), design elements to make your shop look better, and advanced SEO helps.

Another difference between PrestaShop and the open-source giant Magento are the payment gateways. Presta offers 12 built in and the ability to integrate with just about any choice on the market (here’s our list of the best).

If you want a shop that is a bit more hands on and free than a fully supported ecommerce platform, but still something that is easily managed; there aren’t many options better than PrestaShop.

For complete rankings of all ecommerce software, go here.

http://authority.org/ecommerce-software/prestashop/ http://authorityorg.tumblr.com/post/150438173937

BigCommerce is worth a good look and could be the future of ecommerce

10-second breakdown:

BigCommerce is a great up-and-coming option that is challenging the leader in the ecommerce space (Shopify). This platform’s user-centered features and overall simplicity make it a big name in the making. There are multiple pros geared towards getting shop owners to think twice before signing up with someone else.

The good:

One page checkout is available for all shops using BigCommerce. This is a feature that many other ecommerce platforms don’t offer yet. If your casual “window shoppers” see that you can complete the transaction all on a single page, it has been proven to increase conversions.

There are several tools available to help with your SEO. Rank higher in the search engines for the products you sell (or related terms) and you’ll be drawing them in naturally with intent to buy.

No transaction fees. Every transaction will cost you the processing, but you won’t pay an additional charge to BigCommerce for it.

The bad:

The site builder is a bit clunky and underperforms compared to others. It could take a developer to get things the way you want.

Prices have recently changed and may be too much to start your store, especially if you have a solid growth plan. The plans increase dramatically based on your income.

How it works:

BigCommerce could be the next big name in ecommerce. With a unique and compelling pricing offer and all of the features you could want, this platform has loads of potential. The first step you take with a typical solution is choosing the package that is right for you. Not with BigCommerce. Their pricing is so clear, you don’t have to choose. It’s all based on revenue (and a few extra features). Here’s the breakdown:

Standard (sales up to $50,000/year): All plans have unlimited storage and bandwidth for an unlimited number of products.

Plus (sales up to $125,000/year): At this level, you get access to the abandoned cart saver to help you capture those visitors who are trying to leave without that item they were thinking about.

Pro (sales up to $1 Million/year): Here, you’ll get a site-wide security SSL and access to some further analytics.

There are enterprise-level options for large operations, but that’s a whole different beast that will need to be worked out with a rep from BigCommerce to move forward. The potential setback with these plans is the number of transactions you are limited to having. You aren’t charged transaction fees, but with all plans (except enterprise) you’re only allowed to have up to 3000 transactions. That works out to less than 9 transactions per day which is more than a bit low. If you sell low-cost goods you may earn at the standard level (less than $50k), but need an enterprise plan. This makes it a problem.

That said, you do get a crazy amount of features standard with all plans. Things like
single-page checkout, shipping discounts, SEO features, POS for physical stores, app integrations, coupons and gift certificates, a ratings/reviews system, customer support, and social selling options. These goodies along with the fact that you don’t need specific hardware, just a decent computer and a solid internet/mobile/wifi connection, make great benefits.

Once you sign up and sign in to your dashboard, a tutorial will show you the ropes. Next, you can play around with the software a bit and you’ll notice that it’s easy to navigate. Uploading individual products and adding things (like coupon codes) is a really simple process. The hard part with BigCommerce is picking a theme for your shop.

There are two sets of themes, but one (called “blueprints”) is being phased out. There are more free options in this set, but some aren’t responsive (a huge no-no in online shopping nowadays). The other site builder and themes are called “stencil”. It’s a bit easier to manage and doesn’t require any sort of coding knowledge. However, there are only two free themes and the rest cost around $150 bucks. All of the themes in this category are responsive and it is the site builder that will be supported for the long-term.

Your products will look good here, too. You can upload hi-res images and allow your visitors to zoom in and get a good look. Your offers will also be organized with a sidebar that is customizable and sorts out by categories, pricing, and other metrics. The ability to set up a store on Facebook and use “buyable pins” will help gain those social buyers and could be used in conjunction with advertising. There are even features to help you sell on eBay.

Your buyers will benefit from real-time quotes from all the major shippers and selling worldwide won’t be a problem with currency conversion calculators and tax estimators. Customers will have the option to signup to your site or use guest checkout. By offering the choice, you build trust and don’t alienate those who just want to buy now (that’s the goal, right?).

Before you’re ready to sell, you’ll have to be able to take payments. For that, a processor or payment gateway will be necessary. BigCommerce integrates with 40 of them and you can check out our favorites right here.

Once you’re up and going, the analytics available (with some plans) are too good not to mention. The ability to see how your visitors are interacting with your site will yield valuable insights. Split testing your offers, copywriting, and other aspects will mean better sales over time.

If you have any problems, support is available 24/7 via email, live chat, and phone. Talking to a real person when your business venture is having problems is a great benefit that isn’t offered by all of the ecommerce solutions.

BigCommerce has all of the features you could possibly want, but with only 8-9 transactions per day (3000 in a year) before you need an enterprise solution may not be sustainable for those with low-cost items that sell well. If you sell higher-priced goods and don’t see yourself breaking that limit, it’s possibly the best choice out there.

For complete rankings of all ecommerce software, go here.

http://authority.org/ecommerce-software/bigcommerce/ http://authorityorg.tumblr.com/post/150394092487

Weebly an inexpensive tool for the DIY beginner on a bootstrapped budget

10-second breakdown:

Weebly is a great entry point in the world of online selling (on your own). If you want to create a place to sell your goods, but aren’t the most tech literate, you’ll love the simple and friendly interface as well as how fast your first pages can be available to customers.

The good:

Weebly may be the easiest platform to build the kind of online store you want. The builder is intuitive and easy for beginners. There are templates that can easily be tweaked without knowing how to write code. Being able to see your results immediately in a drag-and-drop style will help you move through the process quickly.

This ecommerce software is one of the lowest cost options on our list. If you only have a few products, or have a brick and mortar store that you would like to add an online branch to, this may be the best way to “test the waters” and see if you want to take online shop building more seriously.

There are some great educational resources to help you understand everything that is happening with your account.

The bad:

Some of the features you’d expect to see on other platforms just aren’t available. Photo editing is one feature that isn’t up to par (even though you can edit photos).

There isn’t an undo button. If you make a mistake, you’ll have to manually fix it.

How it works:

Weebly isn’t primarily an ecommerce platform. It does intend to help business owners, creatives, and just about anyone else have an online platform to spread their message. However, there are online selling capabilities with every plan making them a solid option for those looking for an extremely easy way to sell stuff via the internet. As with all of the other options, you’ll first have to choose a plan. To assist you with that, we’ve put together a rundown of each.

Free: Believe it or not, even the free plan comes with the ability to sell online. You get free hosting, unlimited pages, and can have up to five products. There is a 3% transaction fee for each and you don’t have a personal domain. This means that your branding is going to be tough and we really don’t recommend this route. It’s just not a good idea for a business to rely this much on a third party.

Starter: This plan makes things more interesting for those with a few info products, or just a few items for sale. At this level you get your own domain and can sell up to 10 types of products. Your customers go to the Weebly checkout process (meaning they leave your site to purchase your goods) and the 3% transaction fee remains. Not the best option for a robust ecommerce site, but not bad to “test the waters”.

Pro: Things get a little better at the pro level. You’ll be able to have 25 products and a few more features like videos and the ability to have a membership-style site. Again, you have the third-party Weebly shopping cart and 3% transaction fee.

Business: The last plan isn’t bad for a full-fledged ecommerce operation. You can put up an unlimited number of products, the transaction fee goes away, and customers stay on your own website when they checkout. It’s a big jump, but even this plan is priced better than most other software on the market (for the features you get).

The site supports both digital and physical product offerings and gives you some impressive features. Things like a shipping and tax calculator, inventory management system, and coupon codes to discount your goods (a premium feature among many ecommerce solutions).

As far as site design goes, Weebly starts to shine. For starters, there are several dozen themes to get you started quickly. Next, the drag and drop builder is one of the easiest ways to build a site on the internet. You essentially start with a great design template and change it to be unique to your brand. You choose the elements you want (e.g. pictures, icons, and text) and move them around and change colors until you are happy.

Since this isn’t exclusively an ecommerce platform, there are some things that are done better than the top online shop builders. Blogging is extremely easy, so if content marketing is a big part of your overall strategy; it’s something to think about.

Support is both good and bad. Bad in the sense that the only real support option is email. Opening a ticket and waiting isn’t something you want to do with a site that is potentially losing money. On the plus side, there are extensive learning resources. What seems like over 100 detailed articles on every nuance and tool to run your Weebly site properly.

If running your store on the go is important, don’t write this solution off. Their app is really powerful and can help you manage your site from any smart device. This feature is something that some of the top players in the ecommerce game don’t have (yet). It’s another shocking thing that throws Weebly into one of the best value options to start a store, well, at least the business plan.

It’s easy, inexpensive, and surprisingly feature-rich. The obvious downside is building your business on someone else property. If Weebly closed down tomorrow, you’d be in for a long-haul moving all of your files and setting up shop somewhere else. While it’s not likely, building something that is a little less reliant on a third-party is more sustainable.

For complete rankings of all ecommerce software, go here.

http://authority.org/ecommerce-software/weebly/ http://authorityorg.tumblr.com/post/150393917267