If you have a dream of opening an online store, it can be really daunting knowing where to start and what platforms to choose. There are a lot of things to consider, and the choice you make can determine whether you self-manage or leave it to your web developer.
For the clients of Tiny Design, we usually present three different options in our initial proposals. Each have their pros and cons, but they all deliver a fully functional e-commerce website. Here’s a quick overview:
Squarespace
Squarespace is an all-in-one website builder and host with pre-built website templates and drag-and-drop elements to create and modify web pages. It’s widely used – especially for “brochure-style” sites – and is in our view the most user-friendly for beginners. It can be a good option for small businesses with a limited budget or a limited range of goods or services, but it has a number of limitations. Squarespace websites can end up looking very alike once you know what to look for, as the design options are limited and heavy customisation can be tricky.
Pros: simple set-up and handover, easy to maintain, all-in-one platform, cheapest option
Cons: limited design options, limited functionality if you want to expand, site not transferable
Shopify
Shopify is a dedicated e-commerce platform. It can also be used for in-person sales, though this incurs an additional monthly cost. Shopify has a lot of depth to it, and is hugely customisable – with a big caveat. Templates are developed using Shopify’s own open-source language – Liquid. In a small market like New Zealand, if you are really committed to full customisation, finding Liquid developers can be a challenge. Shopify has a fairly steep learning curve for those who want to look after their own site – it can be unintuitive at times and some options are fairly hidden. Once you’ve mastered it though, Shopify is a great option for online stores, especially if you want room to grow.
Pros: Designed for e-commerce, expandable, all-in-one platform
Cons: Set-up can be complex, limited free template options, site not transferable
WordPress
WordPress is an open-source platform used to build 43.5% of all websites worldwide. Its e-commerce plugin WooCommerce is extremely widely used and supported. A lot of WordPress’s advantages are discussed in our post Why Do Web Designers Still Use WordPress?, but in short it has a huge and extremely supportive user-base, almost unlimited customisation, and host transferability. That said, because of its interconnected and vast library of third-party plugins, it can be a fragile beast and really does need someone who knows what they’re doing to look after it. Of all the options, this is the one I’d most recommend leaving in the hands of a web developer to maintain unless you are willing to learn quite a lot about web maintenance.
Pros: Fully customisable design, excellent e-commerce options, expandable, fully controlled by site owner, transferable
Cons: Manual site maintenance, more complexity, can require web developer to build and maintain
