Design is a very fundamental element of online store creation. It involves the creation of the visual aspect and layout of a website. Therefore, design plays a pivotal role in ensuring the success of any online e-commerce website.
A website must be made up of impressive and visually stimulating designs to attract customers; Starting from the storefront to the check-out page. A captivating design makes your store and product stand out from the rest. That is why successful entrepreneurs invest huge resources in their website design because they expect a high return on investment.
For you to get quality design service, you need the service of a seasoned web designer. Their major responsibility is to ensure the website is visually appealing and easy to use by guests to stay as long as possible on the site.
Unfortunately, not all e-commerce platforms provide web designers the creative freedom to give optimal design services and create a well-customized and attractive website that meet the business need. Therefore, in the article, we will be looking at the best e-commerce platforms suitable for design services.
Factors to Consider before Selecting an Ecommerce for Web Design Services
Before delving into discussing the best e-commerce platform for a designer, it is vital to note the thing you have to consider as a web designer before selecting an e-commerce platform to provide your client design services.
- First, you have to consider your client’s budget about how much design you need to set the website up.
- Try to know the ecommerce theme and template capacities.
- Also, determine if you want a self-hosted solution or separate hosting.
- It is also vital to consider the ecommerce platform integration options and product management tools.
After getting clear with these, you can now select an appropriate e-commerce platform to start your design services. There are many e-commerce platforms best for design services; these platforms are what we will be discussing in this article. Come along!
6 Top eCommerce Platforms for Web Design Services
- BigCommerce – best for advanced custoomization
- Shopify – best for ease of use
- Magento – best for a wide marketplace
- WooCommerce – best for WordPress
- OpenCart – best for strong SEO
- Volusion – best for smal businesses
1. BigCommerce – best for advanced custoomization
BigCommerce is an open SaaS e-commerce platform that stores many custom e-commerce solutions. That means it provides you more customization options. This is one vital feature needed to sell design services. It an all-in-one e-commerce platform that provides many tools and features that is essential to your design services.
Though it’s made for easy use for people with less tech knowledge, people well versed in tech can also explore the platform’s features to build a more functional and customized website. For example, they could explore the HTML and CSS that comes with BigCommerce to create great design concepts for their client’s online store.
Benefits of BigCommerce to Designers
- BigCommerce is fast and easy to use. No one wants to waste time on developing a website; whether you are tech-savvy or not. You need an ecommerce platform to get your website running easily in the shortest possible time. The open API makes BigCommerce endearing to designers to create their choice website easily.
- It also has responsive templates that allow it to fit into any device, making it a more preferred choice for design services. BigCommerce themes are compatible with laptops and smartphones.
- BigCommerce gives designers more design options with the ability to edit and customize using HTML and CSS. Designer loves to explore these feature to create unique designs.
- BigCommerce provides you with many features and tools to build a very attractive storefront. As a designer, you can’t just exhaust the many features that BigCommerce offers you.
- It has great SEO features that enable you to create your short URL. The SEO feature helps the site rank top of google search results which will greatly benefit the site.
Drawback of BigCommerce
Its major drawback is the limit placed on annual sales. Once you exceed the sales, you need to upgrade to a more costly monthly plan.
» MORE: Best Live Chat Software for Bigcommerce
2. Shopify – best for ease of use
Shopify is another ideal e-commerce platform for design services. It is a simple website builder with many great features to set up a fully functional website. Shopify is a hosted platform that makes it run on its server, meaning you don’t need web hosting. As a result, you can run your website from anywhere.
Furthermore, it allows you to sync your website with various financial apps, marketing apps, and social media platforms. It offers design services providers many benefits. Again, Shopify is a scalable platform that grows with your business.
Benefits of Shopify to Designers
- Shopify comes with over 170 themes for proper customization of the website. This comes as a huge plus to design services store because it makes designing service fast and easier.
- One of Shopify’s greatest benefits is the ease of use. It is easy to use to create an online store and for proper documentation. It is also easy to navigate.
- Its templates and themes are fully responsive to any device too. Therefore you can use it to build sites that will be compatible with smartphones, laptops, and tablets.
- It allows for the building of an online store in various language versions and accepts different currencies for transactions. This will increase the site visit and sales.
- It enables socia media sales sales and email marketing. So, you can integrate your site with multiple social media platforms. It equally comes with a built-in email marketing tool to reach thousands of subscribers freely.
Drawbacks of Shopify
You might need to purchase some apps to add some functions to your online store. Also, its plans may appear too expensive to some people.
» MORE: Is Shopify The Best ECommerce Platform?
3. Magento – best for a wide marketplace
Magento is one of the leading e-commerce platforms for web design services. It is free to download and comes with many functionalities and design options that make it an ideal platform for designers to create a unique website.
Though, it is not suitable for people with little tech skills. However, most designers have adequate skills to work through any constraint and build an impressive website for their clients. So, designers with little tech skills can utilize it to provide excellent design services.
Benefits of Magento to Designers
- It provides all that is required to carry out effective design services and create a great online store; making customization of the client’s online store easier.
- Magento provides designers with a wide marketplace to get apps that will enhance them to build online sites that accommodate all their business services and products.
- It has a large community of users that can help you get through problems and understand how to use the platform better. This one very important benefits to users.
Drawback of Magento
It has no customer support service; you have to depend on support from their vast users. Supports from the community of users may not fully address the challenges faced by the user. It also requires little tech knowledge for proper use.
» MORE: Magento Hosting
4. WooCommerce – best for WordPress
WooCommerce is the best option for a design service provider who wants to build their clients’ site on WordPress. It is the most popular e-commerce platform. Being an open-source e-commerce plug-in for WordPress implies that it allows for open collaboration; you can change the code to meet your website needs.
This makes it effective for creating custom-made websites. Designers with sufficient knowledge of WordPress will find WooCommerce really fun to work with to create a unique and attractive site. It provides many integration opportunities as well.
Benefits of WooCommerce to Designers
- It is free and open-source. WooCommerce offers online design services online store customization opportunities through its open-source features.
- It’s a safe and secure ecommerce platform. Its regular updates prevent it from hacking. This makes your site trustworthy and earns you more clients.
- It has a large community of users that can act as a reservoir of support for you. You can always get support from the WooCommerce support forum to help troubleshoot issues when necessary.
- It has over a thousand plug-ins that can be used to improve the functionality of your online store. It’s a template that allows designers to get busy with creating a fully functional website.
Drawbacks of WooCommerce
- It requires initial knowledge of WordPress to use it effectively in creating and design an online store on it.
- The thousands of plug-ins it offers could also be seen as a disadvantage. It drains memory and consequently affects performance in some ways.
» MORE: Best WooCommerce Hosting
5. OpenCart – best for strong SEO
OpenCart is also an open e-commerce platform that allows you to twerk the platform to create your online choice store. But you need little coding knowledge to do this perfectly.
Furthermore, it offers users over 13,000 add-on and integration options to provide optimal e-commerce solutions. These and many other features make it suitable for performing design services. So, if you have coding skills, there is no limit to the designs you can create on OpenCart.
Benefits of OpenCart to Designers
- OpenCart allows users to offer as many products and services as they want. Also, manage multiple stores from a single admin dashboard. You can also create multiple admins if you run a large business.
- It enhances designers to carry out their services better and create an online store that sells better for their clients by allowing them to upload their products’ pictures and designs.
- OpenCart has many payment integration options. You can integrate your website with the most popular payment gateways on OpenCart. It makes it easy for you to receive payment, thus improving your sales
- You can create over 45 language versions of your website and accept payment for sales in different currencies.
- It comes with a strong SEO built-in feature. The features help modify your meta description and titles to make your site rank top of google search.
- OpenCart is free to use, allowing users to set up their online store at no cost.
Drawbacks of OpenCart
- It requires coding skills to create a custom site effectively. So, it’s not ideal for beginners with no tech knowledge.
- Large sites with many products could witness slow loading speed on OpenCart.
» MORE: OpenCart Pricing
6. Volusion – best for smal businesses
Volusion is a hosted platform e-commerce platform with many awesome features at affordable prices. It’s ideal for those just starting their business and who don’t have much to spend on the e-commerce platform.
In addition, it provides its users with simplified customer support materials for the easy creation of a website. Finally, its design and template features make it handy for designers. So, you can use it to design a great store for small businesses. Its features may not meet some big businesses’ needs, but it is perfect for small businesses.
Benefits of Volusion
- It has a wide array of free themes and apps for design services providers. It comes with 13 templates which makes it easy to use.
- Volusion has tons of features for developing a functional website, such as SEO tools, barcode creator, knowledge center, discounts services, and many more.
- Also, it provides many Integration services with apps, social media, and payment platforms. You can link your site to social media marketplace like Facebook, Amazon, and eBay. Some of the links of the third-party app with Volusion are kabbage, legal zoom, MailChimp, and many more
Drawbacks of Volusion
Volusion is not well suited for big businesses; it lacks a certain scalable feature that can accommodate business growth.
Final Thoughts
Now that you know the best e-commerce platform for design services and their various benefits, selecting the appropriate e-commerce platform depending on your client’s budget and business need should be any problem again. Any of these outlined e-commerce platforms enables designers to offer quality design services to help their clients create an impressive online store.