What are the best ecommerce platforms for sellers?

Whenever I hear someone complaining about the fees charged by online platforms like Amazon or eBay, I know they've probably never run an offline retail business. Otherwise, they'd understand the concept of "footfall" - and why landlords can charge more rent for a site in a busy shopping mall than for an off-pitch side-street location.

There's a premium to pay for ready-made traffic. It doesn't do away with the need for other forms of promotion, but it gives a retailer a head start as well as some degree of built-in credibility to have a presence in a high traffic location.

You'll have to decide if your business is structured to be able to absorb the extra costs of using these platforms and whether the platform is a good fit - for example, Etsy is probably best suited to hand-made or independently crafted goods (although that's gradually changing), and eBay has always rewarded a more price-led approach. But for an individual or small start-up ecommerce venture, there's a lot to be said for piggybacking on the huge existing buyers market that the major selling platforms offer.

Build your own website. Then, try to drive traffic to it. Buy ads, spend time getting other sites to link to yours so that eventually your site may rank well and do some social networking to see if you can get some traffic that way.

THEN, you'll know what it costs in terms of time and money to drive enough traffic to make sales. Sometimes it is cheaper than Amazon or eBay; often times it is not. If nothing else, it might give you some perspective into the value that eBay and Amazon bring.

Either way, it doesn't hurt to have multiple ways of getting traffic. You never know when something might happen and one of your traffic avenues is cut off.

I think Following are the best ecommerce platform for online sellers.

1. Amazon,
2. eBay,
3. Alibaba.com,
4. Google Express.

In my opinion ecommerce platforms are based on the purpose of business and the process that business will follow in near future.

I will suggest you Shopify for getting up and running quickly

If you already have sales on amazon, then you don't need amazon to sell...people are getting away from amazon in the long term bc it out of control....their own employees are taking inventory from paying customers. read the reports amazon under investigation.

as far as the fees go, if you create something online and have conversations with people online, they will look at it and read it. that is how the internet works, it is your job to show them that you are real and can deliver whatever it is that you are selling, whether with a video or without video with reviews or without reviews.

it is about how you communicate with users that builds trust.

for the other platforms, you really don't need them all unless you have the budget for it. do it simple, create a blog, create a video, show them the product/service, have a payment button, there you go.

All the in between stuff is just filler unless it helps your marketing and overall long term business plan. the bells and whistles is what gets users to have a good user customer experience, but it DEPENDS ON THE MARKET.

i dont a fancy website if I am selling ebooks, people who read don't need pictures, if they did, they would only watch how-to videos, people who read, just need the words and properly explained topic to understand it.

When you read a book online or offline, you aren't interested in anything else, are you? my point as far as the fees are concerned, selling higher priced products to make up for their fees

this is all interesting but how come Samcart, shopify, dropshipforsale, alidropship, etc aren't mentioned? aren't they legitimate sites to consider when starting or expanding an ecommerce business? If not, please tell me. The reason I ask...

For the last few months I have been researching most, if not all, of the ecommerce startup opportunities out there. On the surface, they all appear to offer the best revenue opportunity. But that's when you're looking at the window dressing. Peering through the window reveals another story. Samcart for example, strongly recommends in their training videos that selling ebooks is the best revenue option, but then you research the ebook market in general and it seems to be a dying market. Now before you comment about needing to put in the hard work, and that there are no get rich quick solutions, dada dada dada, let me tell you i'm not the guy looking for the easy way out. I'm no stranger to hard work, and I know you get out of life what you put into it.. I'm an IT professional with over 20 years experience, making a very nice six figure salary managin multi-million dollar budgets. I struggled to get where I am, and the hard work paid off. My goals are different now to the point I want to ultimately leave the 9-5 rat race behind and start an online business where I can work from home, or anywhere else in the world. For those who are using any of these specific programs, I would like your real thoughts and experiences. Please, no salesy stuff or general philosophical guidance on how to succeed in life. I already know that stuff. I'm looking for a deeper understanding of these specific solutions. Do they really work as advertised or do I, like most, have to learn the hard way by spending hard earned cash only to be disappointed later. Can anyone help? I'm sure many of you have gone down this path and have learned a thing or two. I would love to learn from your mistakes, and more importantly your successes. For the record, I have looked at Samcart, dropshipforsale, bradafy, dropshiplifestyle, sellthetrend, alidropship, etc.

Amazon does charge high fees, but it has a wide reach and is profitable in the long run. Etsy is best for selling handmade products, so why not try creating your own website.

If you have a single product, you can create a WordPress website. You can go for Shopify if you have many products to sell. And like Amazon, you need to advertise your products on Google. Research different types of Google advertisements to figure out how much they will cost you.

You can also try social media advertising to increase your product sale, etc. But keep in mind, it doesn't get over the budget.

I personally user Amazon so till now I didn't get any problem and for my personal brand I use Shopify it's to o easy to handle for non-technical users also.

great information. Thanks for sharing. For those who have created multiple shopify stores, have you setup separate LLCs for each store? This seems to be the recommended method by many. But doesn't quite make sense if you are still trying to figure out which store will make money, and ultimately keep. Dave_Her mentioned opening 100 stores and keeping only the 12 that made money. I doubt he created 100 LLCs that now need to be managed accordingly, and dissolved accordingly. Any thoughts on this? Can one overall LLC cover it all, if so, how does it work with having multiple Shopify stores? each with it's own niche?

All the e-commerce platforms work. It is either marketing or paid advertising.

I can get in front of over 1 million people within hours (of course a budget figured out)...on amazon and other networks.

You don't even have to sell on amazon or google and don't even need social media or really anybody else if you have advertising figured out.

Get any online ecommerce store up and running and then start advertising your products on many sites. (it is so funny and simple, you can literally get results)

I got results without any social media, advertising, marketing, creating content, seo, etc, etc, etc...I just create a profile and start connecting with people within the forum/community and show them my offer by replying to their words.

I only responded to this forum because you showed up and typed something for an output in the form of an answer.

My point you shouldn't worry about the fees/associated costs...if you have to think about those types of costs, spend your time advertising and coming out with good ad copy. This way you know your ads are being targeted properly to your specifics and not just some moon shot in the dark .

2cents: I have tried Local eCommerce here in my country.

I have built my own website using WordPress + WooCommerce and drove traffic through Facebook ads.

WooCommerce is nice because you can practice using it with the integrations for free. Unlike Shopify where you will have to pay a fee upfront. At least that's what I know about Shopify.

You can of course get a free domain name with free hosting to practice using WooCommerce for totally free, if you want.

Shopify is great, ebay can be good for flipping. I have issues with Amazon, you don't control your store. Amazon has released "amazon essentials" bullying successful companies and pushing them out. You also don't control your customer's email addresses (HUGE).

great info guys.. I am forming the LLC, and am building a few shopify stores. I guess my only real challenge is the advertising on FB part. seems a bit complicated but once I do one or two i'm sure I'll get the hang of it.

On the general topic of Shopify - thought this chart was mightily impressive. $120 Bn in consumer spending on its platform last year puts them likely around ~40% of Amazon's 3rd party merchant sales. As the analyst Benedict Evans said in his write up on them, "Shopify is riding a wave of both consumers and brands becoming ready to go direct. For 20 years Amazon had trust and it had your address and credit card. But for all sorts of reasons, we now have an explosion of new consumer brands using the internet as their first channel, and most of them want to go direct and own their own customer relationship."

This obviously isn't to cast aspersions on Amazon, but pretty eye opening to see such impressive sales acceleration for SHOP.

We all know E-commerce is the most popular in the world. E-commerce is the activity of electronically buying or selling products on online services or over the Internet.

Here are the 6 best E-Commerce Platforms

Shopify - Shopify for getting up and running quickly.
BigCommerce - BigCommerce for large-volume sellers.
Ecwid - Ecwid for starting with a free plan--then growing.
Wix - Wix for building a complete site.
WooCommerce - WooCommerce for adding a shopping cart to an existing WordPress site etc.

As a mom and a parent I choose a perfect home catalogue at finance.co.uk

Shopify and Ecwid are best ecommerce platforms in the world.

Ebay ,Etsy, Amazon etc will take more and more from us every year, so I belive the best option is to build up your own webshop ,find some expiried domains related to the niche you want to sell in , with good backlinks profile, make some seo work and forget about ebay,amazon etc fees .....

I honestly don't know how people are making money with these platforms. I know shopify and others have their monthly fees, but then there's the apps you need to install, those have fees, plus the dropshipper monthly fees, and "our cost" for their products seems closer to retail. not much room, if any, for markups. Finally there's the ads expenses, domain, email accounts, and you're required to file quarterly taxes whether or not you have any revenue to show. Again, is anyone on our end (the actual user of these services, making real money? I would love to chat with one of you who are. (edit - paid ads only)

Shopify is the best eCommerce platforms for sellers