5 Website Builders With Great eCommerce

Website builders were once spartan affairs, providing little more than a canvas onto which you could plop your best (or your worst) HTML. As the years have rolled by, website builders have emerged from the primordial digital soup, adopting WYSIWYG code-free editing, jumping on the freemium business model, and adding an increasing number of ready-made features for their users.

With your own online store, you can drive traffic to your website — traffic that can then be monetized in ways that go beyond eCommerce itself. Intriguing, eh?

Let’s highlight the website builders that provide you with versatile, powerful eCommerce.

(Note: My focus here is not on such dedicated eCommerce platforms as Shopify or Volusion, but on website building platforms that provide eCommerce)

Weebly

Weebly’s online store is widely regarded as one of the most well-featured of any website builder. Given Weebly’s status as an exceptionally intuitive website builder that absolutely anybody can get into, this combination makes Weebly an ideal choice for those new to the worlds of both website building and eCommerce.

For more details about Weebly’s plans and features, check Weebly’s pricing page.

When you add an item to your Weebly store, a product page is generated. That way, when a customer clicks on a product in your store, they are taken to a separate page where they can cycle through multiple images of your product. They’ll also be able to choose between the available product variations (if there are any). When making your product available in the store, you can allow for as many product variations as you wish. A t-shirt could be offered in multiple sizes, styles, and colors, with every permutation on display for your customers to choose.

As for payment processing, Weebly Business and Performance subscribers will get four options – more than with most competitors:

• PayPal
• Stripe
• Square
• Authorize.net

Each payment processor will charge you 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction. If you have a Starter or Pro subscription, Stripe will be your only option.

Other Weebly eCommerce features include a filtered product search for your customers and the ability to import your products from your Etsy or Shopify stores, or from a CSV file. You can also export your sales and orders into Quickbooks (or to a CSV file) so you can get those books balanced.

Weebly’s eCommerce platform is flexible, powerful and – perhaps most importantly – intuitive. No other website builder places this degree of emphasis on simplicity, and that’s really saying something.

Wix

Wix has over 100 million users in over 190 countries. It is the 800-pound gorilla of the DIY website builder industry (or, if you prefer, the 362.87-kilogram gorilla). Naturally, given Wix’s immense footprint on the landscape, you might assume it has a comprehensive eCommerce system. Well, you’d be right. Let’s delve into what Wix has to offer the online vendor.

Clicking the “My Store” button along the left-hand side of Wix’s editor brings up the Store Manager, the hub from which you can build your online store. From here, you’ll see that Wix’s online store has a lot in common Weebly’s. Each product you make available will have its own product page where you can upload multiple pictures set up however many product variants you wish — size, color, etc.

Other features of Wix’s online store include order/inventory management, shipping/tax settings that can be individually set for every country, an optimized mobile store, a discount code creator, store-wide SSL encryption, and a customizable shopping cart page.

For sellers in North America, Wix offers the same four online payment processors Weebly does – Square, Stripe, Authorize.net and PayPal (further options are available for sellers in other regions – the full list is here). You also have the option of setting up offline payments with Wix. Just give your customers notice as to what forms of payment you’ll accept (cash, money order, wire transfer, etc) and the instructions will appear during the checkout process.

There are some notable differences between Wix’s online store and Weebly’s as well. To sell audio tracks, you’ll have to go through Wix Music, a separate Wix app that can be added from the Wix App Market. Though this may seem slightly inconvenient, the use of Wix Music doesn’t require an eCommerce/VIP plan, so you can sell audio tracks via Wix for no cost whatsoever. Not too shabby! Another difference is the fact that Wix doesn’t let you export your orders/sales to Quickbooks or to a CSV file. Instead, Wix makes available three different accounting/invoicing apps in the App Market that you can integrate with your store. Also, note that Wix does not charge a transaction fee to sellers. The only fee charged is that of the payment processor.

Wix’s online store is a robust and comprehensive eCommerce solution. For the full story on Wix, check out my Wix review.

Squarespace

Squarespace (see our review) may be better known for impeccable aesthetics and ads featuring John Malkovich than for eCommerce capabilities, but its online store is one that definitely merits consideration.

You can sell both physical and digital products in your Squarespace store. In fact, Squarespace even came up with a third category: service products. These include classes, consultations, and the like.

When creating your online store, you’ll need to first create a Products Page, which you can then populate with products. Creating a product entry is a very straightforward process. You can add as many images and product variants as you desire. You can add a Product Form for people to fill out when adding the product in question to their cart. You can even add tags and categories to your product’s individual page as if it were a blog post.

For payment processing, you can use Stripe and/or PayPal. You can also accept Apple Pay from customers checking out on an Apple device.

Read more about Squarespace and its elegant approach to website building here.

Duda

Duda is a fresh, fun website builder with a number of interesting and innovative features. Duda punches above its weight as a website builder, and its eCommerce platform is no exception.

Duda’s full and exhaustive list of eCommerce features is posted here.

Creating an online store and adding products is done in just about the same way as the other website builders mentioned in this article. I like that you can set SEO settings for individual products and specify “related products” that Duda will suggest to the customer after they buy a certain product, Amazon-style.

Duda is an underrated website builder with an impressive eCommerce platform.

Jimdo

Jimdo doesn’t generate as much buzz these days as Wix or Squarespace, but with 15 million websites created, it’s still one of the major players in the industry. Its online store has long been regarded as one of the better options out there.

Did I mention that Jimdo charges no transaction fees? Well, I did now.

Adding products with Jimdo is done in a similar manner to the other website builders discussed here, except that an individual product page isn’t automatically created when you add a product – you have to do so manually if you want your product to have its own page. Not so convenient. Also, selling digital products involves going through a tricky process – it isn’t easily done like with Weebly et al. Otherwise, all the expected elements and features are here – multiple images, product variations, tags, a customized order confirmation page, etc.

It’s not the freshest or most exciting entry of the bunch, but Jimdo is a solid website builder with robust eCommerce.

Now What?

You might have the means to start up an online store right now and not even realize it. Think about those clothes/boots in your closet that you never wear anymore. Or those old Ninja Turtles action figures. Or that artwork you created that now sits in the corner. There’s money in those piles of unused goods. Why not use an eCommerce-enabled website builder and make this stuff work for you, all the while driving monetizable traffic to your site? There have never been more ways to make money online than there are right now. Take the plunge and give it a try! You just might find that you enjoy it.