By - Vangie Beal
Category - eCommerce
Source - http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk
Category - eCommerce
Source - http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk
 |
| eCommerce |
Ecommerce is taking a bigger portion of overall retail sales in the
United States. According to the U.S. Department of Commerce, consumers spent more than $194 billion online in 2011. With this kind of spending, it's not surprising to see more small businesses moving some, or all, operations online.
Top 5 Ecommerce Software and Shopping Carts for Small Business Owners
Here are five options if you plan to invest in hosted ecommerce
software to grow your small business or start a new online venture.
1. Ability Commerce: Amazon Channel Feed
The Ability Commerce
feature set includes mobile-optimized versions of stores and tools to
integrate your order management system (OMS) and accounting system. This
ecommerce platform also includes the SmartSite content manager; this
lets users without any programming knowledge change store promotions,
prices, images and products in the Web store.
A key Ability Commerce feature is the Channel Feed service to manage
products on Amazon. Once you provide the inventory to sell on Amazon,
Ability Commerce Amazon experts will monitor your products daily to help
you position products better, motivate buyers and, ultimately, boost
sales.
Pricing for Ability Commerce is customized based on specific business requirements.
2. Big Commerce: Real-Time eBay Integration
The Big Commerce platform is a good choice for any small business that wants to start an online store and maintain an eBay business.
Big Commerce offers ample features for hosting, store design, SEO,
mobile commerce, marketing and inventory--plus you can integrate your
online Web stores with eBay listings from within the Big Commerce
platform. Simply choose which products to push to eBay, create an eBay
listing template and set custom eBay shipping. Now inventory is always
synced between your online store and eBay.
Big Commerce offers five pricing plans,
starting at $24.95 per month for 100 product listings. The Silver Plan,
which is suitable for most small businesses looking to invest in
ecommerce and which Big Commerce deems the "best value," costs $39.95
per month for 500 products, 10 staff logins, 3 GB bandwidth and 300 MB
storage.
3. Intuit Ecommerce: The Merchant Account
Intuit's ecommerce offering offers a simple point and click interface that makes it easy to create and publish a store that you can update at any time.
With Intuit Websites, you'll get everything needed to design and
launch an online store, including the domain name, hosting, the SimpleStore
ecommerce software, a site builder tool and online payments via Intuit
merchant accounts. The merchant account is a big feature, as it enables
small businesses to move beyond offering basic PayPal
payments at checkout. Another nice feature of Intuit websites is the
Facebook extension with which you can create a store a Facebook Business
Page that automatically syncs with current store inventory.
Intuit websites with ecommerce start at $19.99 per month for a
100-page website, 5 GB storage, one domain and five email accounts. A
Business Plus plan offers additional features and storage for a $59.99
per month subscription fee. Intuit provides free phone support and
assistance with all subscriptions.
4. Shopify: Advanced SEO and Analytics
Shopify hosted
ecommerce lets you pick a template, optimize the design, add a product
catalog, organize your products and create blog posts from a single
administration dashboard. Shopify feature built-in mobile commerce that
includes an iPhone app and mobile storefront. Marketing tools for SEO
and coupon codes to help sell items are also available.
Shopify integrates with Google Analytics; this lets you automatically
track customer purchases and shopping cart transactions connected to
Google Analytics data. It also features built-in analytics to benchmark
your online store's performance to help you track ecommerce over time.
Shopify starts at $29 per month and includes unlimited bandwidth, 100
products, 1 GB of storage and a 2 percent transaction fee. For $50 per
month, the basic business account is good for up to 2,500 product
listings, a 1 percent transaction fee and 5 GB of storage.
5. Vendio: Automated Selling on Amazon, EBay and Facebook
With a focus on automation, Vendio
ecommerce software saves you time with tools to easily put products on
eBay, Amazon, Facebook and your own online Web store. List products once
and they'll be published simultaneously on the supported marketplaces.
Other Vendio features include inventory control, sales and order
management, email marketing, the shopping cart with drag-and-drop
features and analytics reporting. Vendio Online Stores provides business
owners with marketing features, including Google Analytics and built-in
options, while a Vendio-powered Web store is optimized for mobile Apple
iOS devices.
Vendio pricing
starts at $99.95 per month and includes 200 products, 2-GB of storage,
Vendio Applications and your own Web Store plus the aforementioned
Amazon, eBay and Facebook marketplace integration.
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