Want to cut right to the case? The best eCommerce platform for CBD is Nexcess Woocommerce.
Cannabinoids, popular called CBD, are chemical substances derived from the Cannabis Sativa plant or marijuana. According to medical research, cannabinoids provide our bodies with many health benefits. For instance, it reduces anxiety, kills cancer cells, reduces inflammation, relaxes the muscles, stimulates appetite, and improves weight gain.
However, scientists have discovered hundreds of cannabinoids in cannabis plants. So, CBD health products are plenty in the market today, and they appear in different forms. Such as lotion, spray, balm, piles, and oil. Cannabinoid products were legalized in the US in 2018 by the 2018 farm bill. The regulation resulted in a massive rise in sales of cannabinoid products in the US.
Consequently, the CBD market keeps increasing every day. Currently, the major distributors of CBD products are pharmaceutical stores, supplement retailers, and online stores. The rapid growth of e-commerce has made online stores the largest distributors of CBD-related products; thus, many people enter the market daily to sell CBD products online and make a profit.
However, not every online CBD store is successful with the sale for different reasons. Prominent among the factors that determine the success of an online CBD store is the choice of the e-commerce platform you decide to set up your CBD online store on. You can’t just build your online store on any e-commerce platform and expect instant success. There are some e-commerce platforms better suited for CBD product Sales.
There are many reasons why you just don’t choose any e-commerce platform for your CBD online stores. For one, some e-commerce platforms could have issues if third-party payment processing because of third-party payment processors. This makes it difficult for you to accept and process payment thus, affect sales.
Secondly, some e-commerce platforms’ features and extensions are not suitable for online sales of CBD products. Thirdly, there are just so many e-commerce platforms for building an online store that could make you choose an e-commerce platform that is not CBD-friendly.
Finally, due to some country’s restrictions on the use of cannabis and cannabinoid products, not all e-commerce platforms support CBD products’ sales. Hence, the need for you to know the best e-commerce platforms for CBD products.
Similarly, there are some important factors to consider before selecting an e-commerce platform for building your online CBD product online store. These factors will make you select the perfect e-commerce store for your CBD store. Below are some of these facts.
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8 Factors To Consider For CBD Ecommerce Platform
- Price range
- Product management
- Marketing integration
- In-depth analytic tools
- Support for CBD product
- Multiple channel marketing
- SEO capability
- Security and speed
1. Price Range
The prices for the various best e-commerce platform for CBD products vary. So, your choice of e-commerce platform to develop your e-commerce store should be one that won’t be too expensive for you to create and properly manage.
On the other hand, some e-commerce platforms best for CBD stores might need you to incur the cost of a developer to your budget in addition to the subscription fee you are to pay for the platform. You, therefore, need to consider this before choosing a platform.
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2. Product Management
CBD products, like other online products, require effective product management to sustain increased product sales. Ensure that the platform you are selecting to build your CBD online store has excellent project management features and tools.
In addition, the e-commerce platform should help properly manage your product image, product descriptions, product prices, order, inventory, shipping, delivery, and your online guests and customers.
3. Marketing Integration
CBD store requires adequate marketing; the e-commerce platform you are to select for your store should have sufficient marketing tools to integrate the email marketing system to the platform in order to help your sales increase.
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4. In-depth Analytic Tools
The chosen e-commerce platform form for your store should have outstanding google Analytics tools to help you get precise information about your product sales, store guests, page per session, highest margin products, and many others. Analytic tools are very crucial to the success of an online CBD store.
5. Support For CBD Product
Due to the regulation issue of CBD products in some countries, not all e-commerce platforms support the sales of CBD products. So, be careful not to select an e-commerce platform that doesn’t support sales of CBD products. Later in this article, we shall intimate you with some e-commerce platforms that don’t support CBD sales.
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6. Multiple Channel Marketing
There are many buyers of CBD products scattered across many social platforms and sites. Therefore, for you to drive your sales, you need to select an e-commerce platform that allows you to sell across different channels like Facebook, Instagram, Amazon, eBay, Pinterest, and many more.
7. SEO Capability
An ideal e-commerce platform for CBD stores has many built-in SEO enhancement tools. These tools make your online store discoverable and drive sales to your website. For most buyers of CBD shops online, a platform with strong SEO tools for your site optimization will help you sell better.
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8. Security and Speed
Be careful not to choose an e-commerce platform that will limit your page speed. Some e-commerce platform comes with features that slow that your page speed. Also, choose a platform that guarantees the security of your client’s personal data. This will make your site reliable and trusted among buyers.
Now. We will be taking a detailed look and the major types of e-commerce platforms and the ones best for developing an online CBD store.
There are two major e-commerce platform options available for optimal CBD solutions to online CBD stores. These are:
- Self-hosted Content Management System (CMS)
- Software as a service eCommerce platforms (SaaS)
CBD online stores are different from other online stores; thus, for you to set up an online CBD store quickly and start selling fast, you need to develop your store on self-hosted or SaaS e-commerce platforms.
Though there are other options, these are the best if you don’t want to waste unnecessary time. But, again, you have to pay adequate attention not only to the attractive outlook of your online CBD store.
Let’s take a comparative look at self-hosted e-commerce platforms and SaaS e-commerce platforms.
Best Self-Hosted CBD Ecommerce Platform
Nexcess Woocommerce (Best Overall)
With Nexcess, WooCommerce solutions give merchants an e-commerce foundation that fosters development by integrating exceptional functionality, an easy-to-use interface, and a strong managed hosting infrastructure.
Scalability
With built-in autoscaling, you can easily expand your eCommerce shop by bypassing PHP capacity constraints for brief periods of time
Security
Payment information is safeguarded by stringent security procedures and PCI compliance. To keep your online company secure, iThemes Security keeps watching on your store.
Speed
Your WooCommerce online store is supported by the greatest hosting stack in the business thanks to its use of the most recent PHP version. moreover, a built-in CDN and DNS for added power.
Assistance
The WooCommerce experts at Nexcess are skilled in assisting you and will do so fast. 24/7/365, contact our WooCommerce support team by phone, email, or live chat.
Creating Your CBD Online Store Using Software as a Service (SaaS)
Another viable option for creating a great CBD store is through software as a Service (SaaS). SaaS enables you to solve problems simultaneously. One important benefit of the SaaS e-commerce platform is that, unlike hosted platform, it doesn’t require users to perform the platform’s maintenance by themselves.
Instead, your third-party provider will do the maintenance, security, and evaluation of the store’s performance. The two best Saas platforms are BigCommerce and Shopify.
BigCommerce and Shopify
Though BigCommerce comes with many e-commerce features that make it ideal for any form of online store. It is even more ideal for CBD stores. The reason being that it’s very easy to use, it requires no coding skills, and it offers CBD stores many sales and marketing features. It allows you to creatively develop your CBD online store to suit your specific needs more without any technical skills.
Shopify, like BigCommerce, also comes with many awesome features for the fast and easy setup of online CBD stores. So, it is well also suitable for beginners with no tech knowledge. Moreover, it has great design options for easy customization of your online store.
Shopify also has security features that protect buyers’ personal information. Both BigCommerce and Shopify provide your online CBD store fast loading service. The two e-commerce platforms offer free trials and flexible subscription plans to their users.
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Benefits of SaaS Platform to CBD Stores
Both BigCommerce and Shopify provide many advantages to CBD stores. Some of these benefits include:
- Being an out of box eCommerce platform, SaaS has many pre-built basic shopping cart functionalities, customizable themes, and product management and marketing tools. You don’t necessarily need the service of developers to use these tools.
- When you use SaaS eCommerce platforms, your third-party provider hosts and maintains your website. Your providers handle your store uptime, software bug fixes, performance speed, and software update.
- You won’t have to worry about your business growth on a SaaS eCommerce platform. SaaS platforms are structured to grow your business. It allows you to increase your bandwidth on the server to drive traffic. This is needed when running flash sales.
- SaaS eCommerce platforms make it easy for you to integrate your online CBD stores with different financial software such as POS, ERP, 3PL, and other software. The platforms also allow you to sync your orders, inventory, customers, products and track your data, thus making your business process automated.
Drawbacks of SaaS Platforms
SaaS lacks adequate customization options. Most SaaS platforms don’t give you access to change software codes like open-source platforms. You can alter the SaaS platform much. What you get is work you will build your store with.
Final Thoughts
After elaborating on the two major e-commerce setup options for CBD stores, selecting the best e-commerce for developing your CBD online stores shouldn’t be a thing anymore.
If you’re fired up to get your CBD store running as quickly as possible and don’t want to spend more effort on maintenance, Shopify or BigCommerce is the best store for you.
However, if you love a content-based Website, have full ownership of your store, and don’t mind spending a little cash on WordPress developers to help you create a great CBD online store, you can go for WordPress and WooCommerce. Whichever choice you make, you are on the right path to success.