There are a multitude of online editors for creating an e-commerce site with a back office. This article aims to offer you the best ones according to your needs. Bear in mind, however, that creating a website is a tedious task carried out by professionals for good reasons. In any case, remember that e-commerce sites that are not international platforms work mainly through their design and SEO. Design is essential for retaining visitors and obtaining good conversion rates, and for giving them confidence to place their credit card securely. An ugly site will not make sales, or very few. As for natural SEO, also known as SEO, it is important to be ranked on search engines in order to bring in traffic. It is indeed important to have an e-commerce site that appeals, but if it is not visible you will sell nothing.
WordPress
You have certainly already heard of WordPress, and for good reason! More than 1/3 of websites are powered by WordPress since it is an extremely flexible open source online editor. By installing the WooCommerce plugin you can automatically transform your WordPress site into an e-commerce site.
Advantages:
- One of the best solutions for creating a beautiful site (design & animation).
- Easy to use and modify.
- WordPress is the world’s most flexible CMS.
- The most SEO-optimised CMS.
Disadvantages:
- If you want highly customised online sales modules you will probably need to call on a developer and several plugins.
- In the same vein, product and logistics management is not as powerful as others.
How to create a site with WordPress?
Shopify
Shopify is a solution focused on e-commerce. Its system therefore offers many basic online sales customisation modules. However, it has many drawbacks that make Shopify a debatable CMS for online selling.
Advantages:
- Customised merchant site for online selling from the start and easy to do.
- The best solution for dropshipping.
- On logistics and product management, Shopify is fairly good.
Disadvantages:
- Your site does not belong to you: you must pay a monthly package with no possibility of changing hosting server or migrating your site out of their platform.
- SEO, design, and modifications in general are tedious and fairly complicated tasks.
- Not very flexible.
- Strict business model.
Webflow
Webflow is undeniably the revolution in website design, whether showcase, e-commerce, or any other type. If you place absolute priority on design (and you would be right to), Webflow is an online site creation editor with animations and design more incredible than anything you have ever seen before. However, its editor is rather complex at first glance compared to others. It is very easy to compare the structure and complexity of Webflow’s interface to Photoshop. Except this is not about modifying images but creating websites and animations completely as you wish, without a line of code. The structure is admittedly complex to master, but after a few weeks it will be better than any other CMS interface.
Advantages:
- The design and animations exceed all possible expectations. To understand, you have to see it. (URL example of a Webflow site).
- Optimised for SEO (but less so than WordPress).
Disadvantages:
- Your site does not belong to you.
- The e-commerce features are more than sufficient but still not as advanced as other e-commerce CMSs in general.
- Rather complex to get started with, but only for the design and animation part (fine for the sales solution). There are, however, free video courses accessible at any time to master the interface that allows the creation of 3D modules, embeddable as interactive animations on your Webflow site.
Webflow VS WordPress: the battle of the titans.
PrestaShop
PrestaShop is a solution for creating a serious e-commerce site, specialising in online sales and equipped with advanced e-commerce modules. However, its drawbacks must not be forgotten!
Advantages:
- Highly customisable e-commerce solution.
- Very good product logistics.
- You choose your hosting.
Disadvantages:
- Difficult to get started with.
- Complicated design.
- Complicated SEO.
Magento
Magento is comparable to PrestaShop since it allows the creation of large-scale e-commerce sites. Magento is probably better able to handle logistics and the volume of products. In my opinion, it is the best CMS for creating a large-scale and highly customised e-commerce site for online selling with many different and varied applications. Moreover, with Magento 2 (which now belongs to Adobe), the interface is really simplified. It is possible to create designs fairly easily and manage the site overall rather simply. Although in the case of a large merchant site, the functional aspect will be very complex to set up.
Advantages:
- Formidable e-commerce solution.
- Very advanced logistics and product catalogue.
Disadvantages:
- Fairly difficult to get started with.
- Design not exceptional.
- Complicated SEO (better than PrestaShop).
Create an E-Commerce Site for Free?
Is it possible to create an e-commerce site for free? Absolutely not. Free CMSs do not allow selling online properly, due to several limitations that will certainly hold back your users. However, Webflow is the only solution in this article that allows you to try creating a site for free by accessing their online site editor directly.
Call on Professionals for Your Online Shop
It is ideal to call on a professional for the creation of an online shop. This requires a great deal of experience, whether in technical development, design, SEO, and other areas. This spans several professions that exist for very good reasons. Moreover, it will take you several years to have even a minimally good site, which would have already allowed you to repay the provider or web agency.
Do you need help? createur2site.fr is an expert in SEO and in the creation of WordPress and Webflow sites!
Summary on Creating an E-Commerce Site:
To summarise, the choice of platform for creating an e-commerce site depends primarily on its size. If you want a small-scale e-commerce site, it would be wiser to look towards a WordPress, Shopify, or Webflow solution. However, unless you want the most optimised possible SEO (WP), or a dropshipping store (Shopify), Webflow is in my opinion the best choice for a small e-commerce site. For a medium-scale e-commerce site, it would be more feasible to go with Shopify, but if you do not need advanced online sales customisation, WordPress and can work very well. If you need a large e-commerce site with very complex logistics, it is better to look towards Magento or PrestaShop depending on your needs.