In today’s digital era, ecommerce has become the lifeline for businesses worldwide. As consumers increasingly embrace online shopping, ecommerce brands face fierce competition and the need to optimize their websites for higher conversion rates. In this article, we delve into the marketing strategies employed by popular ecommerce brands, uncovering the secrets behind their success and exploring how they optimize their websites to maximize conversions.

1. Customer-Centric Approach

Leading ecommerce brands understand the importance of putting the customer at the center of their marketing strategies. They invest in understanding their target audience, conducting thorough market research, and collecting customer feedback. By analyzing customer preferences, needs, and pain points, they tailor their marketing messages, website design, and user experience to align with their customers’ expectations.

2. Seamless User Experience

Optimizing the website for a seamless user experience is crucial for higher conversion rates. Ecommerce giants like Amazon and Shopify have mastered the art of simplifying the shopping journey. They ensure that their websites are intuitive, easy to navigate, and mobile-friendly. Streamlined product search, categorized navigation menus, and well-designed product pages contribute to a frictionless shopping experience.

3. Persuasive Product Presentation

Successful ecommerce brands understand the power of persuasive product presentation. They invest in high-quality product images, interactive videos, and detailed descriptions. By showcasing products from different angles, enabling zoom functionality, and providing accurate specifications, they empower customers to make informed purchasing decisions. Additionally, they leverage social proof by including customer reviews and ratings, building trust and credibility.

4. Personalization and Recommendation Engines

Customization and personalization are key to enhancing the customer experience and boosting conversions. Top ecommerce brands utilize advanced recommendation engines that analyze customer behavior, purchase history, and preferences to offer personalized product suggestions. By showing related products or items frequently bought together, they enhance cross-selling and upselling opportunities.

5. Social Media Marketing and Influencer Collaborations

To reach a wider audience and drive traffic to their websites, ecommerce brands leverage the power of social media marketing. They create compelling content, run targeted ads, and engage with their followers on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube. Many ecommerce brands also collaborate with influencers who have a substantial following in their target market, amplifying their reach and building trust among potential customers.

6. Email Marketing and Retargeting

Email marketing remains a potent tool for ecommerce brands. They build a strong subscriber base by offering incentives like exclusive discounts, early access to sales, or informative newsletters. By sending personalized emails tailored to customers’ interests and behaviors, ecommerce brands nurture relationships and encourage repeat purchases. Additionally, retargeting campaigns use tracking pixels to display relevant ads to users who have shown interest in specific products, increasing the likelihood of conversion.

7. Streamlined Checkout Process

A clunky checkout process will lead to abandoned carts and of course, lost sales. Top ecommerce brands optimize their checkout pages to be simple, secure, and efficient. Trust is a huge factor today and shouldn’t be taken lightly. 

They offer guest checkout options, allow customers to save payment details for future use, and provide multiple payment gateways. 

Furthermore, they display trust badges, SSL certificates, and transparent refund and shipping policies to instill confidence and reduce cart abandonment rates.

8. A/B Testing and Data Analytics

Successful ecommerce brands continuously experiment and optimize their marketing strategies. A/B testing enables them to compare different variations of their website, landing pages, or marketing campaigns to determine the most effective approach. By analyzing data from web analytics tools, heatmaps, and conversion rate optimization (CRO) platforms, they gain valuable insights into user behavior, identify bottlenecks, and make data-driven decisions to improve conversions.

Conclusion

The world of ecommerce is highly competitive, and achieving higher conversion rates requires a comprehensive marketing strategy

“If you’re competitor focused, you have to wait until there is a competitor doing something. Being customer-focused allows you to be more pioneering.”—Jeff Bezos

The steady increase of ecommerce sales over the past two decades turned into a dramatic upwards spike between 2020 and 2021.

It’s no secret that Covid-19 triggered a major turning point in the ecommerce universe. Businesses are now scrambling to keep up with both the consumer demand and the competition of others within the industry.
There has never been a more critical moment for anyone working in ecommerce to dive deep into upcoming trends.

Now is the time to implement updated marketing and development techniques in every ecommerce business—big or small.

In this article, we are going to look at six points of interest around eCommerce strategies for optimization that will help put your brand at the forefront of the online shopping industry.

6 eCommerce Strategies

• Site Optimization
• Social Media and Content
• Augmented Reality and Filters
• SEO and Blogs
• Data Analytics
• Alternative Payment Methods

The sales peaks ecommerce hit over the last year were beyond what anyone could have foreseen. But now that we know what we’re up against, we can prepare with the right ecommerce strategies to get ahead of the game.

Site Optimization

It’s 2021, and ecommerce websites are seeing more traffic than ever before. Yours needs to stand out like a peacock amongst pigeons, and function like a well-oiled machine.

Using tools like Google Analytics to track which parts of your site are seeing the most clicks and which ones are becoming redundant affords you a wealth of insight. You can easily pinpoint where to make adjustments that best suit the typical trajectory of your online customers.

Ensure that your product pages are easy to navigate, that calls to action are clear, and that all your content is easy to read. Your contact options must also be immediately obvious, and customers shouldn’t have to hunt about to get in touch.

If you have a support chatbot, the pop-up shouldn’t become annoying and must be easy to close.

Mobile optimization is also important, and your site must function flawlessly across all devices.

Accessibility is part of optimization too. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) provide excellent insight into how you can make your site as accessible as possible to the largest number of people.

If you can budget for it, hiring a UX or UI developer to identify and correct site issues can make all the difference in a competition where your customer’s attention is the prize.

Social Media and Content

Fresh content is what your customers want and what all of your competitors are providing.

The internet offers consumers a never-ending menu of content to choose from. If you want to uphold your reputation in the ecommerce world, your content needs to be piping hot and regularly served.

It is no longer enough to simply upload one 500-word blog a week and post on Instagram every two days. Your ecommerce site and social media platforms need a comprehensive and detailed marketing strategy that is thoroughly researched for the most effective results.

Creating a content calendar that outlines the type of content you’re creating, where you’ll post it, and when is crucial to success. You can plan when you’ll post blogs, social media updates, giveaways, promotions and any other content that is engaging and drives interest.

Decide which platforms you want to focus on and keep them up to date at all times. If you cannot curate content for Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok and Twitter, pick the channels that are most popular with your audience. A great social media presence on two or three channels is far better than a weak presence across several different channels.

Always respond to questions, comments and queries as quickly as possible, and never ignore negative feedback. Engaging with customers is key, and social media provides the ideal platform for this.

Augmented Reality and Filters

This may seem far-fetched, but it’s one of the ecommerce trends expected to gain the most traction over the next decade (and beyond).

Augmented reality (AR) is the use of digitally created objects or information superimposed onto real-life scenes. Filters fit into the AR category, as does the mobile app game Pokémon GO.
AR features are becoming increasingly popular as big names like Kylie’s Cosmetics by Kylie Jenner and the iconic denim brand Levi’s use it to let customers virtually “try on” different products or outfits through use of a filter.

If you can add an AR feature to your site, that’s a huge bonus. However, if this is out of reach for now, consider using Snapchat to promote your brand. There are plenty of AR filters that can make marketing material fun, and you can engage with customers on a new platform too.

SEO and Blogs

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the bread and butter of the current online marketing world.

Blogs featuring trustworthy backlinks and fresh content that is relevant to your brand should be a significant part of your ecommerce marketing strategy.

Blogs increase your site’s domain authority and can boost SEO rankings dramatically over the course of a full year. Quality content gives both existing and potential customers the opportunity to discover your brand online via organic trafficking.

Guest blogs written by external figures or brands can also be a low-cost way of effectively attracting business.

Make your blog interesting, informative, and exciting, and update it regularly. You don’t have to rigidly stick to topics that relate to your brand, you can get creative too. For example, if you sell office furniture, you can tie in content that relates to the importance of taking holidays, or tips for desk-bound workers who need a little extra exercise. Including good quality photographs and video content will boost engagement, and in turn, boost your SEO rankings too.

Data Analytics

Most of the strategies on this list are only possible through the efficient tracking of data analytics.

Data is said to be the new oil, and it’s easy to see why. It’s never been simpler to track trends, understand customer behavior and see where you’re on the right track or going wrong.
Data analytics provide a visual representation that immediately pinpoints problem areas and highlights positive performance.

There are hundreds of paid and free high-quality software tools available online. These tools can provide you with the necessary insight into your customer’s preferences, aversions, and general behavior.

Once you have this information, you can then apply it to your marketing and development strategies in a way that best meets your customer’s needs. This results in higher sales and online traffic.

Without data analytics, your brand is blind to what customers really want. You will needlessly miss out on many opportunities to make pivotal changes that drive profits.

Alternative Payment Methods

All over the world, cryptocurrency platforms like Bitcoin and Ethereum are becoming valid payment options. Many users prefer these payment options over card payments, and research tells us this is only going to become more normalized in the future.

PayPal (the world’s leading financial platform) recently announced that they would be adding in a virtual coin wallet option for those who want to send or receive cryptocurrency across countries.

Millions of consumers are buying cryptocurrency not only for the purpose of investment but also as a simple way to transfer money when making online purchases.

By working cryptocurrency payment methods into your new ecommerce marketing and development strategies, you can stay ahead of the game. This may require the adoption of accounting software that accommodates cryptocurrency, but the results will pay off. You’ll ensure a solid position in the future of the online shopping industry.

Of course, cryptocurrency isn’t the only alternative payment method that’s growing in popularity. Digital wallets such as Apple Pay and Samsung Pay are gaining traction and QR codes are also becoming commonplace.

The more ways you offer your customers to pay safely and securely online, the easier they’ll find buying from you.

Prepare for the Era of M-Commerce

The term “M-commerce” refers to mobile app-based ecommerce.

The presence of mobile sites is not new by any means, but it is on the rise. Make it a priority to put mobile-centered strategies into place if you want to be a part of the upcoming m-commerce era.

Studies claim that m-commerce will cover as much as 54% of all online sales over the course of 2021.

The global m-commerce sales sat at $1.4 trillion in 2017, and by the end of 2022, that figure is estimated to reach a staggering $5.4 trillion.

More than 50% of all online traffic happens on mobile devices, and studies claim this percentage will only grow over time.

The rise of m-commerce was always inevitable. But the Covid-19 pandemic has wildly accelerated its course and brought the future much closer than we originally anticipated.

M-commerce is about to take center stage in the highly profitable online shopping industry, and the success of every ecommerce site or platform is going to come much faster if designed for easy and accessible mobile app usage.

Start Moving Forward Now

The trick with ecommerce is to always stay ahead of the curve. This is a challenge, but it’s one you need to meet to achieve success.

The best time to start implementing new strategies and development techniques?

Right now.

Looking to find the best e-commerce platform for your impact business? We compare and contrast two key solutions: Shopify vs. Wordpress. Which one wins? Do you need one or the other? Should you have both? Make a more informed choice and start here.

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Salesforce is a powerful platform. Used by over 150,000 people, it is known as one of the best CRM (customer relations management) platforms out there. It’s a great tool that can help you to run your business more effectively – but it can be customized further using their App Marketplace.

The question is – which apps are the best? With over 3,000 apps to choose from, it’s hard to know where to begin. In our guide on the best Salesforce commerce cloud apps, we’ll take you through the top ones out there.

We’ll look at a variety of apps in different categories – event management, accounting, analytics, marketing automation, and more – looking at the main features they have to offer. We’ll also take a look at customer reviews, giving you an overview of what real users think, and we’ll give you the average star rating out of 5 for each app.

Plus, we’ll tell you which tiers work for each app – as not all apps are compatible with every tier.

We’ve tried to pick an app from a broad range of categories, so you can find something to suit your business.

Let’s start off with marketing!

Best for Marketing – Lead Scoring

For a free app, this one packs a punch. Lead Scoring gives your customers a score based on rules that you can set yourself (for example, making a purchase). The higher the score, the more likely the customer is to make a new purchase – meaning you can specifically target those customers in your marketing strategy.

It’s a simple app to install and run, and it doesn’t take long to set up the rules. If you’ve never encountered lead scoring before, this app provides a good way to try it.

Main Features

• Capture leads based on a variety of criteria
• Highly customizable
• Easy to install

Available For

• Professional
• Enterprise
• Unlimited
• Developer
• Performance

What Do Users Think?

Users enjoyed how easy it was to install the app, and how many features it offered for free. They also report that the app is very customizable, allowing you to set your own criteria for lead scoring. This may put some people off if you’ve never attempted lead scoring before, but it may be just right for you if you want to have full control of the process.

It has an average rating of 5 stars.

Pricing

Lead Scoring is a free app – you can find out more here.

Best Page Builder – Shogun

Shogun will give you the power to create beautiful pages for your eCommerce store. Whether you need to make landing pages, blog posts, or product pages, the easy-to-use drag-and-drop editor will enable you to do so.

What’s great about Shogun is that it’s a very visual platform, simple to learn and easy to use. Just drag and drop the page elements where you want them – and then customize it to your hearts’ content. If you want to make page building simple, this is a great app to go for.

Plus, it comes with extra features, including A/B testing for your pages, and analytics (depending on which price plan you choose).

Main Features

• Create great-looking pages, using templates or from scratch
• Simple drag-and-drop page editor
• A/B testing
• Analytics suite

What Do Users Think?

As Shogun doesn’t appear on the App Exchange, we weren’t able to get user reviews. However, you can find our review of Shogun for Shopify here (it works in the same way once you’ve got the integration up and running).

Pricing

There are different price plans for Shogun, depending on which features you want. To find out more, visit Shogun’s website.

Best for Events Management – Cvent Events App

If you need to sell tickets to an event online, this app is a must-have. It streamlines a lot of the processes that come with event management, saving you time and effort – and it’s particularly well-suited to businesses with larger teams. You can allow your teams to invite and register customers to events and track how well your events have performed.

The great thing about this app is that you can follow your contact’s journey with your business – at past events for example. This can give your sales team an idea of which future events they can market to specific customers. From your point of view, you can track and manage the performance of your sales team easily.

The data from your events is displayed clearly – making it much easier to report the results of an event to your wider team.

Main Features

• Streamline the processes that come with running events
• Clear reporting shows you the success of each event
• Sales team can individually track and pursue potential customers

Available For

• Enterprise
• Unlimited
• Developer
• Performance

What Do Users Think?

Users really enjoy how much this app streamlines their work processes, eliminating some of the time-consuming manual tasks (like manual invitee list uploads).

It has an average rating of 5 stars.

Pricing

Starts at $2,450 per company per year – click here to find out more.

Best for Analytics – Conga Grid

With a huge amount of 5-star reviews, Conga Grid is the ultimate analytics solution. It will organise data in a way that makes it simple to understand. It allows you to manage information, simplifying it so you have the most accurate data available. Using their grid system, you can create a customized display that will show your data in one screen – this saves you time and allows you to see how well certain products or pages are performing, so you can make adjustments if necessary.

You can also use Quick Start Grids if you want to get up and running right away.

Main Features

• Create your own personalized grid to organise data
• Keep data organised and clear
• Quick Start Grids allow you to get going straight away
• Clear display allows you to see and understand your sales data in one glance

Available For

• Professional
• Enterprise
• Unlimited
• Developer
• Performance

What Do Users Think?

Users find Conga to be intuitive and simple to use, with little training needed to get up to speed with it. They also found Conga’s customer service to be brilliant, with dedicated account managers available if needed. They enjoyed how easy it is to import data in one click, saving a lot of time and effort.

It has an average rating of 5 stars.

Pricing

Conga starts at $18 per month for 10 users (this is the minimum user amount). They offer discounts for non-profits. Find out more here.

Best for Accounting – FinancialForce

Keeping on top of your accounts can be complicated and time-consuming, so when you’re looking for an app, you want one that is going to simplify the process as much as possible, saving you a lot of headaches. Financial Force is a great one, as it has tons of features and helps to break things down in a simple, easy-to-understand way.

With a modern, clean interface, Financial Force allows you to automate the billing and collections process, saving you time. It gives you comprehensive financial reporting, with very readable information that is updated in real time. It also allows you to streamline some of the more boring processes, like recurring journal entries and reversing of entries. You can also monitor cashflow, even across multiple bank accounts – which is a vital tool.

You can even get access to trend forecasting, and it’s easy to access data wherever you are, even on mobile.

Main Features

• Streamlines tedious processes, making bookkeeping much easier
• Gives you comprehensive financial reporting
• Automates billing and collections process
• Trend forecasting
• Easy to access live information at any time

Available For

• Enterprise
• Unlimited
• Developer
• Performance

What Do Users Think?

Users found the app to be user-friendly and intuitive. They found the reporting to be very powerful, too. Some users found it slowed things down a little, as the app installs a lot of objects, tabs, and pages, so that’s something be aware of. However, most reviews are positive.

It has an average rating of 4.6 stars.

Pricing

Pricing starts at $420 per company per month. Click here to find out more.

Best for Marketing Automation – ActiveCampaign

When it comes to marketing automation, ActiveCampaign are well-known, and their app for Salesforce is brilliant. You can create personalized email marketing campaigns using information you already have in your Salesforce accounts. You can manage leads and contacts easily, allowing you to specifically target certain customers with marketing campaigns that are just right for them.

It’s packed with features, including marketing automation, email marketing, site messaging, online chat, segmentation, and conditional content – meaning you can create highly personalized, customisable campaigns.

Whether you want to send follow-up emails, target leads with specific campaigns, or just observe how your leads are interacting with your email campaigns, ActiveCampaign covers it all.

Main Features

• Marketing automation which allows you to create highly personalized campaigns
• Email marketing, site messaging, and online chat
• Lead management allows you to segment and organise your contacts
• Set unique goals for each customer
• Start a campaign to win back previous customers

Available For

• Professional
• Enterprise
• Unlimited
• Essentials

What Do Users Think?

Users think that the app takes a little time to learn – so if you don’t want a learning curve, it might not be for you. However, most users report great results, meeting or exceeding all expectations when it comes to creating marketing campaigns.

It has an average rating of 4.4 stars.

Pricing

ActiveCampaign starts at $9 per company per month, with discounts available for non-profits. Find out more here.

Best for Shipping – FedEx Shipping App

If you want to manage your shipping seamlessly, FedEx is a great choice. You can mail and ship products to any lead, contact, or account. The app automatically calculates FedEx shipping rates, too – meaning it can quickly print shipping and return labels, saving you time and effort.

It also allows you to keep in touch with your customers using the ‘Chatter’ service, giving them real time tracking updates.

Main Features

• Send mail or ship packages to any Lead, Contact, or Account
• Automatically calculates FedEx rates
• Generate and print labels automatically
• Track shipments using Chatter service

Available For

• Professional
• Enterprise
• Unlimited
• Force.com
• Developer
• Performance

What Do Users Think?

Users enjoy how easy this is to use, especially as you never have to leave the Salesforce cloud to do it – saving you from having to learn to use multiple platforms. They found the automation of otherwise time-consuming tasks to be extremely useful, which is great.

It has an average rating of 4.9 stars.

Pricing

The price starts at $208.75 per month, with discounts available for non-profits. You can find out more here.

Best for Customer Feedback – Formstack

Sometimes, you need to capture data from your customers. Whether you want feedback on a certain event, campaign, or sale, or you need to collect data for an order form, Formstack has you covered with it’s easy to use form builder.

You can create a variety of forms, including customer feedback, event registration, waivers and disclaimers, job applications, order forms, and more. You can even create a contact form so your customers can contact you directly. The form builder itself is intuitive and simple to use, and best of all, it’s safe – it’s HIPAA, PIPEDA and GDPR compliant, meaning you can trust that your customer’s data will be kept securely.

Main Features

• Create any kind of form using an easy, intuitive form builder
• Form builder is HIPAA, PIPEDA and GDPR compliant
• Forms are responsive and mobile-friendly
• You can send forms to customers via email
• Includes a free 14-day trial

Available For

• Professional
• Enterprise
• Unlimited
• Force.com
• Developer
• Performance

What Do Users Think?

Users think that the form builder itself works really well, and they like how customizable it is even if you have no technical experience. They also praised the customer support, saying they were responsive and helpful.

It has an average rating of 4.8 stars.

Pricing

FormStack starts at $79 per month with discounts available for nonprofits. You can find out more here.

Best for Staff Training – Trail Tracker

If you run a bigger business and you manage a sales team, motivating your team to learn a new platform can be difficult. Trail Tracker is designed to train your staff to learn how to use Salesforce in a fun, engaging way. Your employees can collect badges as they learn new skills.

It’s also very easy to keep on top of how your employees are doing. It automatically syncs on a daily basis, and it gives you all the customer data you need, including most active users, most popular badges, and records of activity for each user.

It’s a fun app – and if you want to encourage your staff to learn new skills and reach their goals, this is a good way to do it.

Main Features

• Fun platform encourages staff to reach their goals to earn badges
• Data syncs every day, so you can track the performance of each staff member
• An easy, fun way to motivate staff to learn new skills

Available For

• Enterprise
• Unlimited
• Force.com
• Developer
• Performance

What Do Users Think?

Users find Trail Tracker to be an excellent way to motivate staff. Many found that a sense of friendly competition pushed their staff to work harder – which is a great result. A few people had some issues with installation but found the customer service team to be very responsive.

It has an average rating of 3.2 stars.

Pricing

Trail Tracker is free to use. You can find out more here.

Best for Email Marketing – iContact

If you want to send mass emails as part of a campaign, but you don’t want to leave the Salesforce platform, this could be the app for you. You can send an unlimited amount of emails per day, choosing from over 600 responsive email design templates – and you can personalize them using Salesforce custom fields.

You can track how interested your contacts are in your email campaigns, so you can then target them with specific emails that will interest them.

The best part is that you don’t have to learn a new platform – it’s all in one place, so as long as you’re already familiar with Salesforce, you’ll be good to go.

It’s also the 2 x winner of the Best Mass Email App by App Exchange in the Customer Choice Awards – so you know they’re a popular choice with Salesforce users.

Main Features

• 600+ email templates to choose from
• Send an unlimited amount of emails each day
• Track how contacts interact with your emails, so you can target them based on their interests
• Functions within Salesforce platform

Available For

• Professional
• Enterprise
• Unlimited
• Developer
• Performance

What Do Users Think?

Users praised the simplicity of this app, and they like that they don’t have to leave Salesforce to use it. They found the interface to be user-friendly and modern, and felt the customer support was excellent.

It has an average rating of 4.6 stars.

Pricing

iContact starts at $99 per company per month, with discounts available for non-profits. You can find out more here.

Best for Translation – Lingotek Translation

We’ve got one more free app to round things off. If you want to translate information into different languages, you’ll need an app to help you out – and Lingotek is a brilliant one. Not only does it allow you to translate knowledge base articles and content, it also allows you to translate leads – allowing your sales team to get the right information on each lead in their native language. This helps to improve communication overall, which is great if you have staff in different locations.

All that, for free – and you don’t need to know any coding languages or have strong technical skills.

Main Features

• Translate pages quickly and easily
• Translate knowledge base articles to help users
• Translate lead information for your sales team
• No coding required

Available For

• Professional
• Enterprise
• Unlimited
• Force.com
• Developer
• Performance

What Do Users Think?

Users liked how simple this app is to use, and how effectively it was able to translate information for different staff members. They found it saved time and allowed their team to work more efficiently.

It has an average rating of 5.0 stars.

Pricing

Lingotek is a free app. You can find out more by clicking here.

Frequently Asked Questions

Have any burning questions about Salesforce Commerce Cloud apps? We might have the answer here.

Conclusion

Salesforce Commerce Cloud, formerly Demandware, is a great tool for an ecommerce site, but sometimes the AppExchange can be pretty overwhelming.

We hope this guide has helped you to figure out which apps you need the most on Salesforce for your digital commerce. With so many attractive apps out there, it’s tempting to dive right in and download as many as you can – but by being strategic, you can maximize your Salesforce experience, streamlining a lot of processes, like marketing, inventory management, and shipping, that would have otherwise taken up a lot of time and energy.

If you run a Shopify store, you may be a little frustrated at the lack of templates, and you may wish that you could have better-looking landing pages for your business. In that case, you might be looking at Shopify Apps. Designed to extend your Shopify experience, third-party apps can allow you to design the page you’ve been looking for.

In this PageFly vs Shogun app comparison, we’ll be looking at two similar apps for Shopify. Both allow you to create multiple pages for your website, using a simple drag-and-drop builder. However, there are some differences between the two. We’ll take a look at each platform in detail before directly comparing them to see which one is better for your eCommerce business.

Let’s start with the main differences between the two.

The Main Differences Between PageFly vs Shogun

The main differences between PageFly vs Shogun are:

• Shogun has a great design and templates, whereas Pagefly is easy to use.
• Shogun has built-in analytics and split testing, whereas with PageFly you have to integrate with third-party analytics
• Shogun is more expensive, whereas Pagefly even offers a free plan

What is PageFly?

PageFly is an app built for Shopify that allows you to build landing pages, product pages, blogs, and FAQs. Using a simple drag-and-drop page builder, you can build great pages for your Shopify products, creating a better shopping experience for your customers.

The Main Features of PageFly

In a nutshell, here are the main features you can expect from the PageFly app:

• Simple to use drag-and-drop page builder which allows you to make pages
• 50+ templates and 40+ page elements to choose from
• Save features you have designed to use on other pages

Page Builder

PageFly allows you to choose from the following:

• Regular page
• Home Page
• Collection Page
• Product Page
• Password Page
• Blog Post

The only one we could test in our free trial was a regular page, but the page builder itself seems to work similarly for each type of page.

There are over 50 templates to choose from – you can choose to filter them by industry or by page type. You can also quickly view how each template looks on widescreen, desktop, tablet, or mobile device. The templates are attractive and look easy to navigate.

Once you’ve chosen a template, the page builder will load up. You can build your page using the options on the left.

Elements

Elements are the building blocks of each page. You can play around with the layout here, adding ‘blocks’ in which you can place content.

You can set preferences for each section on the page, including setting ID and class, visibility on different devices, and set a click action (for example, you can send a customer to a certain link if they click on the section).

You can also add headings, paragraphs, buttons, icons, and QR codes. You do this simply by dragging the item you want onto the page. You can then play around with the settings to make it look exactly the way you want it to.

There are other things you can add too, including:

• Media, like SoundCloud clips, YouTube videos, and other videos and images
• Social media, like Instagram, Facebook Like, Facebook Page, and Twitter
• Advanced features, like a countdown timer, MailChimp Form, tabs, tables, accordions, slideshows, lists, dividers, Google Maps, and custom HTML.

Shopify

The Shopify section allows you to add products directly from your Shopify account. You can choose from the following:

• Product List
• Product Details
• Product Image
• Product Title
• Product Vendor
• Product Price
• Product Compare at Price
• Product Variant
• Product Quantity
• Product Add to Cart
• Product Description
• Product View Details

However, a lot of them are limited to Pro mode, so you need to consider this when deciding which price plan to choose.

Being able to add these elements is really useful, and it’s easy to adjust these if needed.

Third Party Elements

PageFly integrates with other apps, which you can use when you’re building a page. You can add Judge.me Product Reviews, Ali Reviews Product Reviews, and Loox Photo Reviews. 

Premade Sections

You can also add premade sections. These are only available on the Pro plan and are easy to drag and drop into your page. It’s great to have these premade sections available, especially if you want to build a page from scratch.

You can choose to see how your page will look on different types of devices whenever you want to, and it’s easy to switch between them as you edit the page.

You can see your page outline and bring up a custom code editor – so if you know coding, you can get stuck in here.

You can also build a page from scratch, in which case, the page editor looks like this:

On the Premium plan, you can create sections and save them. So, if you create a design element that you really like, you can save it and use it on other pages. This is really useful if you have multiple pages you want to create that look similar.

The page builder is pretty simple to use, although it doesn’t look as pleasing to the eye as it could do.

SEO

PageFly allows you to improve your SEO in the following ways:

• Page URL
• Meta Description
• Page Title

This is really simple to do as you set up each page, and PageFly reminds you of this when you create a new page.

Analytics

PageFly doesn’t have its own analytics – you have to integrate with Google Analytics or Facebook Pixel instead. PageFly gives you a tutorial to walk you through this process step-by-step.

Support

PageFly has a great, easy to navigate knowledge base. 

It has a wide range of tutorials, articles and videos. It also has a great ‘Best Practice’ section which will teach you how to make the most of the platform.

If you need support, you can ask a question using a ticket system, or you can join the Facebook community if you want to seek support from other users.

Pricing

PageFly has three pricing plans to choose from:

Free

Free is – as the name suggests – free! It offers the following:

• 15+ templates
• Basic page elements
• 1 saved section
• 3 page limit
• New regular page
• Page outline

The Free plan would really suit someone who only wants to create, say, a landing page and an about me page. However, many of the better page elements are missing from the Free plan, which is something to keep in mind.

Pro

Pro is $9.95 per month (or $8.25 per month if you choose to pay for a year in one go). It offers:

• Everything in the ‘Free’ plan
• 40+ templates
• Advanced page elements
• 5 saved sections
• No page limit
• Product page add-on
• New Home page
• Autosave

Premium

Premium is $29.95 per month (or $24.96 per month if you choose to pay for a year in one go). It offers:

• Everything in the ‘Pro’ plan
• 20 saved sections
• Collection page add-on
• New Coming Soon page
• New blog post
• Import/export page
• Slideshow element
• Version history

You can find out more about PageFly’s pricing plans here.

Pros

So, what are the pros of PageFly?

• Price plans – the prices are very reasonable, and the addition of a free plan is a great bonus.
• Simple to use – the platform is pretty easy to use
• Good knowledge base – the knowledge base is extensive and useful

Cons

There are a few downsides, however:

• Design of platform – the platform isn’t as pleasing to the eye as it could be
• No analytics – there aren’t any analytics built into PageFly, which would have been useful

What is Shogun?

Shogun is a page builder for Shopify (and is available for BigCommerce and Magento too). It allows you to build beautiful landing pages for your Shopify store, including standard pages, blog posts, product pages, and collections.

The Main Features of Shogun

Here’s what you can expect from Shogun:

• User-friendly drag-and-drop editor
• Range of beautiful templates to choose from
• Easy to install split-testing
• Analytics to measure how well your pages are doing
• Page scheduler which allows you to choose when to publish each page

Page Builder

With Shogun page builder, you can create four types of pages: standard pages, blog posts, product pages, and collections.

There are many great templates to choose from – they look professional, well-designed, and easy to navigate. You can also choose from a series of ‘blank’ templates, too:

This is great if you want the basic building blocks of a page without the images or text that accompany the other templates.

You can preview your chosen template and see how it looks on different devices. Once you’ve settled on a template, you can choose your basic settings, like the page name and URL.

The page editor itself is incredibly user-friendly, and it looks great. The bar along the top allows you to quickly switch between device types – you can view (and edit) how your page will look on widescreen, desktop, tablet, and mobile device. The menu on the right allows you to drag and drop the elements you want to include onto your page.

Structure

The ‘structure’ section allows you to build the basic layout of your page. You can make:

• Sections
• Columns
• Sliders
• Tables
• Tabs
• Accordions

Once you’ve chosen the structural element that you want, you can drag it onto the page wherever you want it.

Once the structure is in place, you can start to add content.

Content

Adding content is as simple as clicking and dragging it into the block you want. You can choose from the following:

• Images
• Videos
• Headings
• Text
• Buttons
• Icons
• Countdowns
• Separators
• Forms
• Maps
• HTML

If, for example, you’re uploading an image, you can drag and drop the ‘image’ icon, then upload the image you want to use. You can also choose an image from other places, like Facebook, Google Drive, Instagram, and Evernote.

It’s so easy to use, and very intuitive – it all runs very smoothly.

Shopify

The Shopify section allows you to add content from your Shopify store. For example, you might want to create a product page that includes a specific product image, reviews, and price. You can drag and drop these wherever you want on the page. This way, you can create a beautiful, eye-catching page that will be attractive and easy to navigate for your customers.

Social

This allows you to add social media buttons to your page. The great thing about this is that you can change the size, color, and positioning of the buttons, making them match your page exactly.

Structural Blocks

Structural blocks allow you to add whole blocks of content to your page in a specific style, using their premade templates.

This is particularly helpful if you’re starting from scratch and you’re not sure how you want your page to look – you can simply assemble these blocks together to create a great-looking page.

Scheduling

You can also schedule your page – this is great if you want a product to launch on a certain date. You can also ‘unpublish’ the page, which is good if you have a sale on for a certain amount of time.

Blank Pages

If you’d rather forego the templates and build your page from scratch, you can choose to start with a blank page.

Split Testing

One excellent feature of Shogun is split testing. Say you have two slightly different ideas for a page, and you would like to know which one performs better. Shogun can run a split test for you, calculating which one is the most likely to win, and automatically choosing that one for you (if you wish). This is easily set up during the page editing process.

You can choose from three objectives – clickthrough, sales, or add to cart. If you want to see which page will cause the most customers to press ‘add to cart’, for example, you can click that, and then easily switch between the two pages to make changes to them:

You can tell which page you’re currently editing by the colored border that will surround it. This will help you to differentiate between the two.

The ‘Versions’ tool allows you to see all previous versions of that page, switching between them if you want to. Once the split test is finished, you can choose to view the results or have Shogun choose the winner for you. 

If you’re running a split test on a page, that page will have the status ‘currently running test’, so you’ll know that a test is ongoing.

The only downside to this tool is that it’s only available on the most expensive price plan – so keep that in mind if you’re on a tight budget.

SEO

What about SEO? Shogun has a few features that will allow you to optimize your SEO for the best results:

• You can set page title and meta description easily when you make a page
• You can easily add alt-tags to your images
• Your images will be compressed, making the load time faster
• Shogun uses semantic HTML, resulting in SEO-friendly pages

Analytics

Shogun has its own reporting system, which is great.

You can choose to view each page and how it is performing on different types of devices. You can check the following:

• Sales Conversion
• Add to Cart
• Total Sessions
• Bounce Rate
• Top Clickthrough Destinations
• Top Outside Referrers

You can directly compare one page to another, too. (The graph will show a different colored line to represent the page you’re comparing it to). This is really easy to use, and a great way of visualizing how well your pages are performing, without needing to use another analytics platform.

You can also see the results of your split tests here.

The downside is that the analytics are only available on the medium-priced plan.

Extra Features

Shogun offers a few more features, too. These include:

Syncing

Syncing allows you to copy content between your stores. For example, you could copy across whole pages, blog posts, snippets of pages, custom elements, and data collections. If you have two or more stores on a paid plan that share the same verified email address, you’ll automatically be good to go with syncing.

Advanced Settings

If you want to customize your Shogun pages even more, you have the option of doing so. You can create custom elements using Liquid, CSS, and JavaScript – this is great if you’ve envisioned an element that Shogun hasn’t created yet. You can also:

• Use MailChimp forms
• Add custom fonts
• Make an anchor, which will point users to a certain point in a page
• Embed third-party forms

Support

When it comes to support, Shogun has a pretty detailed knowledge base:

It includes guides on how to get started, tutorials, videos, and FAQs.

You can also view FAQs at any time on the main navigation area. You can leave a message to have a Shogun representative get back to you – they aim to reply within 24 hours. If you have the Measure or Optimize plan, you can use a live chat feature to speak to an advisor if you need support right there and then.

Pricing

There are three pricing plans to choose from:

Build

Build costs $39 per month and includes the following:

• Drag and drop page builder
• All page types
• 30 + page templates
• Design by screen size
• SEO controls
• Email support
• 2 user seats

Measure

Measure costs $99 per month and includes the following:

• Everything in the ‘Build’ plan
• Analytics Suite
• Multi Site CMS/page syncing
• Content scheduling
• Dev tools
• Email and live chat support
• 4 user seats

Optimize

Optimize costs $149 per month and includes the following:

• Everything in the ‘Measure’ plan
• AB testing
• 6 user seats

They also offer a free 10-day trial: click here to find out more.

Pros

Here are the pros of Shogun:

• Whole platform looks great and is very user-friendly
• Templates look professional and beautiful
• The drag-and-drop editor is very easy to use
• The analytics are very informative
• Split testing is a great extra feature

Cons

• Split testing is only available on the most expensive plan
• There aren’t many integrations yet

Frequently Asked Questions

PageFly or Shogun: Which One is Best?

To decide which is the best, we’ll take a look at both platforms in a few different categories, starting with the page builder itself.

Page Builder

Both apps offer a great drag-and-drop page builder. You can easily see what your page will look like on different types of devices, and both have a great selection of pre-made templates to choose from. Both apps make it simple to add products from your Shopify stores.

However, in terms of ease of use and user-friendliness, we’ll have to pick Shogun as our winner in this category. It looks nicer, and is a little more intuitive than PageFly’s page builder.

Extras

PageFly doesn’t have much to offer in terms of extra features, whereas Shogun offers split testing, which is obviously a huge advantage (with the caveat of this feature only being available on the most expensive plan). We’ll have to pick Shogun as the winner here.

Analytics

The obvious winner here is Shogun, as PageFly do not offer their own analytics. Shogun’s analytics suite is great – really simple to use, giving you a great visualization of your page’s performance.

Support

Both Shogun and PageFly have a pretty good system when it comes to support – we’ll call this one a draw.

Pricing

This is a tricky one. Shogun has more features than PageFly, which may justify the expense for you. However, the big drawback is that they don’t offer a free plan. PageFly, on the other hand, offers a very basic package for free, which may be enough for people who just want to create one or two landing pages for their Shopify store. For that reason, we’ll choose PageFly as our winner in this category.

Conclusion: Which is the Winner?

Both platforms are great if you want to build landing pages. 

PageFly is simple to use, and the templates look good. It could be a good option for you if you just want to build a single landing page, given the free plan.

However, in terms of user-friendliness, design, and content, we’ll have to go with Shogun as our winner. The whole platform is easy to navigate, and the extra features make it a really great app. It could elevate your online store to the next level – and there’s not much of a learning curve at all. If you can spring for the split testing, it may be worth giving it a shot – you might find it makes a big difference in the long run to your overall sales. Plus, the ability to further customize your pages with advanced settings is really useful, and the analytics suite is great and easy to understand.

If you want to create beautiful pages for your Shopify store, Shogun might just be your best bet.

Further recommendations:

• Best Shopify Page Builder App – Which is the Best Page Builder for You?
• OptimizePress vs Leadpages: Which Landing Page Builder is Best?

Product pages are the unspoken heroes of e-commerce. They serve as the stage where the most crucial purchase decision takes place on your online store.

A visitor could decide to either abandon their cart or check out because of the influence of your Magento website product page. Unfortunately, many business owners are caught in the race for web traffic and forget to optimize these very crucial pages.

Magento has also not been easy to configure in the past forcing website owners to hire expensive Magento developers to do the job. The platform does require knowledge of coding to set it. Fortunately, Magento 2.3 has an easy to use Page Builder for easy page creation. There are also excellent extensions out there that make product page design easy.

The platform is a gem for B2B businesses that require robust, configurable, and customizable e-commerce solutions. It is especially beneficial for retailers with extensive product catalogs. It provides customizable features such as quick ordering portals and merchandising and onsite marketing. It also utilizes layered attributes and navigation that make fantastic product attributes and type definitions.

Why you need optimized Magento product pages

If a website visitor gets to your product pages, then they are interested in what you have to offer. They might have come across your store via an ad, social media campaign, or through search. Your efficient site navigation then takes them to your product pages. They are now just a clock away from making a purchase.

If your pages are not optimized, your visitor will most possibly click away or abandon the cart. Unoptimized product pages are the bane of many an e-commerce store. If you want better sales results than your ordinary e-commerce shop owner, below are some tactics that you can use to create and optimize your Magento webpage.

Parts of a Magento product page

First, you need to understand what the components of a product page are. Every product page should have;

Branding on every product page

Your visitors might bypass your homepage and miss your logo. To ensure that you are easily recognizable, place your branding elements on your interior pages as well.

A product at the center of the page’s attention

Do not place it as an afterthought.

Fantastic copy

Ensure that your text flows with other elements of your product page to give everything a harmonious feel.

Design

This is a crucial element of your pages, and you can use it to create harmony amongst all items. Let your design be user-friendly and functional.

Tips on how to optimize your product pages

Clarify your product page’s call to actions (CTAs)

Do not place your buy button out of sight. Your visitors should not have to look for it. Make your buy button colorful, bold, and big. Ensure that it is the only text on your page that has a background or fill color.

If you have other CTAs on your page, place them away from your buy button. Let them not steal the thunder from your moneymaker. As for the button’s text, let it be as simple as possible.

Use high quality and creative images

An e-commerce store is very dependent on images. Nevertheless, not all photos are created equal. Do not take your product pictures using your Smartphone. You need professional photography to impress your visitors. So, pay a little more for professional photo shoots or take a photography class and buy proper photography equipment.

Have good shots at all angles and put them in the context of use where possible. Pair your product image with its accessory image. Data shows that well-placed accessories can increase your conversions by 271%

Use social proof

Data shows that a consumer is more likely to purchase a product or service from your e-commerce store if other consumers recommend it. Consequently, 84% of all online buyers trust online reviews as much as they believe word of mouth recommendations from their friends.

You, therefore, need to encourage reviews on your website or blog by making follow-ups for reviews after purchase are made. Do not place long review sentences on your product page. Instead, place minute information such as several reviews and ratings above the fold, then place the reviews further down the page.

Videos

Did you know that 90% of all online buyers say that videos assist them when they are making their final purchase decisions? A video can display your product much better than multiple images can.

This is why 70% of all marketers agree that a video converts buyers better than other types of content if your products require more explanation that text or images can use a “how-to” video instead.

Create killer product descriptions

If you can infuse your product descriptions with imagination and emotions, you will attract more buyers. The description should be short and direct so as not to bore your buyers. Ensure that the language that you use on your descriptions fits your target audience.

Put trust signals on the pages

Trust signals are features that help increase your shopper’s comfort and trust when they are making their purchase decisions. Place yourself in your shopper’s shoes and understand their worry when checking out your product pages. It could be the cost or duration of shipping.

Ensure that you have links next to your call to action that address these questions. Enable wish lists for those visitors that are not ready to purchase immediately so that you can eliminate every obstacle to sales.

At times, simple additions such as live support option for buyers can give your buyers the privacy and comfort they need to contact you easily and fast with their product questions.

Make your Magento product pages printer friendly

Some of your customers might need to print a product page to show it to another possible buyer or to buy it later on larger screen sizes. You, therefore, do not want to constrain their access to information. Enable printing of pages to ensure that anyone can have the information on the go.

Perform A/B tests

It is impossible to tell how optimized your e-commerce pages are if you do not try various layout, copy, design, image, CTA, or video approaches. A/B testing is an ongoing process, so you will never be done with it because you will need to keep up with Magento e-commerce development requirements.

How to create product pages in Magento 2

Magento has various product type fields with different configurations and properties. You can, therefore, use this platform to sell all types of goods and services. Want to know how to create a product page via Magento admin? Here is the process;

1. If you already have a Magento installation, go to your Magento backend and access the admin section. To enter your first product, go to the Catalog tab then click Products.
2. On Products, click the Add Product tab to access its drop-down menu. Click the option of Simple Product to access the page’s general configurations tab. To configure your product, enable it, which should give you access to configurations such as;
   • The stock keeping unit or SKU. The platform recognizes that a product should have a stock keeping unit or individual number, so it will assign one to your product. You can, however, edit it if necessary.
   • Product name
   • A drop-down custom attribute set menu
   • A product taxation tab for your product’s tax class
   • A price tab where you can set simple prices or access advanced settings for complex pricing requirements such as group prices suggested manufacturer price or special prices
   • The dimension of a product and its weight
   • The quantity in stock, which can be edited in advanced inventory
   • Visibility attributes
   • Product category
   • Country of manufacture
3. Once you have chosen and edit the attributes of the products from their drop-down menus, click Save to continue.
4. Below these attributes, you will find the Content tab. Here you can add product descriptions. This tab also has the store view’s Short Description.
5. Add other content on the Images and Videos tab to attract your customers.
6. Take the next step to improve the rankings of your product page. On the Search Engine Optimization tab, set up your product’s Meta Description, URL key, Meta Keywords, and Meta Title.
7. Once that is done, you can now move to the target-marketing tab under Related Products, Up-Sells, and Cross-Sells. Here add product settings that target your e-commerce store’s customers.
8. Under Customizable Options, add any other configurations on offer to increase conversions.
9. If you have any other websites connected to your Magento admin panel, use the Product in Websites tab to assign them your product.
10. After the configurations, now move to the Design tab of the product page. Under design, you can select the layout and its type of block product display
11. Once you are all set in design, go to Gift options and enable it if you wish to
12. Save the changes.

Brilliant! Your product is ready to sell on your e-commerce platform.

Other product creation options in Magento

In Magento 2, you can also create products with different configurations beyond the simple product option. These include;

The Configurable Product tab that ensures that each product has a set of configurable SKUs that can be tracked in the inventory. You can access this tab from the Add Product menu then follow the same process that configures simple products.

In the Configurations section, you will find the Create Configurations tab with options such as Select Attributes, Attribute Values, Bulk Images, and Price and Summary. Set these options as desired, then click Generate Products.

There is also a Grouped Product option in Magento 2. You can use it to sell thematically related goods that can be purchased together. This is especially important for products that sold with their accessories. Simply select Catalog, Products then choose the Grouped Product option.

Add product’s general attributes then save. Scroll down and choose the Add Products button, choose the products that you would like to group then click Add Selected Products. In the next menu, indicate factors such as quantity, then activate the grouped products and save.

Other product page options include virtual, bundle, and downloadable product page creation, all under the Add Product drop-down menu.

Creating product pages using Magento 2 extensions

You can also use a Magento extension such as the Shogun’s drag and drop editor to build your product pages. Shogun Page Builder works with Magento 2 and is a more cost-effective product page building option for Magento developers. You can use it to create fantastic product pages, with zero code use.

To use Shogun Page Builder, install it on your latest version of Magento. How do you do that?

1. Access your Magento admin page, and then go to the System, then the Web Setup Wizard.
2. Select your site’s Extension Manager and Sign In. Input the Shogun page builder’s Private Access Key and Public Access Key and submit it.
3. Navigate to the Extensions Ready to Install tab and choose the Shogun Page Builder extension. Click install.
4. After the installation, perform a Readiness Check to verify compatibility, then a store backup.
5. After the backup, go to Setup, System Configuration, and then click Reset. Flush the cache too at Cache Management.
6. Go to the Shogun extension via your Admin bar, Stores, Configurations, and Settings.
7. Use your extension to create custom product pages or design new layouts using its intuitive visual builder.

Benefits of Shogun Page Builder

• Unlike the Magento 2 Page builder, this extension has an A/B testing feature to increase conversions. The app also has robust page analytics and reporting features.
• You do not need to learn Magento code to design beautiful product pages on it. This app is straightforward and easy to use.
• It creates mobile-responsive pages that can be previewed on your editor
• It has a wide range of customizable product page styling options and drag and drop elements as well.
• You can use the Shogun Page Builder to publish content across multiple stores.

FAQs

Conclusion

Create optimized product pages to ensure high conversion on your Magento website. Do not lose any of your customers to poorly thought out product pages.

You can use the Magento product page builder, third party extensions such as Shogun Page Builder, or hire a Magento developer to design your product pages. However, ensure that your pages follow the guidelines that we have listed above for increased sales.

Further read:

• How to Create a Landing Page in Magento
• How to Build a Blog in Magento
• 10 of the Best Magento Extensions to Boost Sales

Magento is a powerful and flexible ecommerce platform loved by many startups and large businesses alike.

On it, you will find a wide range of payment portals, such as Checkout by Amazon, PayPal, or Google. It also very mobile-friendly, critical success features for any Magento ecommerce website. Data shows that almost half of all online shoppers use mobile phones for purchases.

The Magento platform has a wide variety of SEO tools to ensure that your online store ranks high on search engines. What most business owners love about the platform is that it makes it very easy for them to manage their online shops because it is very expandable.

You can, therefore, use it to oversee thousands of product sales without much hassle. Unlike many other ecommerce platforms, Magento is highly customizable, making it easy for you to add useful ecommerce functions such as blogging features.

Why your ecommerce platform needs a blog

In the past, many online shops overlooked the importance of blogs and only focused on their product pages.

With time, the truth has dawned on many such retailers. You might have the best product or services online but have very few customers. Blogs are one method that can enhance the performance of your online store.

Blogging can create an effective content marketing strategy for your Magento ecommerce website. This mode of online marketing has become so vital for business success that 91% of all B2B online marketers use it to attract customers. More data shows that 60% of their counterparts in B2C marketing are ardent content marketers.

Benefits of a Magento blog extension

• Your blog’s content will give answers to the questions that your customers might have. Every buyer out there is looking for answers, which is why Google Search processes close to 40,000 queries each second. This search engine processes 3.5 billion searches daily.

If your blog content delivers the answers to these questions, without forcefully marketing your products, you will build confidence and trust with your blog’s visitors. These visitors will eventually purchase from you.

• Blogs can bring in more traffic to your ecommerce store. Data shows that an online shop with a blog gets 434% more of their pages indexed by Google than those that do not have a blog. An increase in crawled and indexed pages will bring you more organic traffic.
• Blogs have become vital in the customer’s purchase making process such that 46% of customers in a UK consumer study, said that they visit blogs as part of their product or service investigation. The information in your blog can inspire your visitors to reach for the e-wallets.
• An excellent blog’s return on investment can last for years, driving continuous traffic to your Magento site, nurturing profitable leads to your site passively.

How to install Magento blogs

Unfortunately, this robust ecommerce platform does not have its native blog functionality. Nevertheless, worries not; there are ways that you can implement blog features on your Magento ecommerce website. There are two main ways of integrating a blog to your Magento installation.

One is via the use of a custom Magento module or extension. The other option is via Magento to WordPress integration. Both options are not difficult to implement, as shown below.

Installing a Magento blog extension

The Magento marketplace has a wide range of blog extensions that you can use to add blog features to your online store. They provide attractive and unique blog design and marketing features that may not be as rich as those of a WordPress blog may, but very useful nonetheless.

When you have integrated these extensions through your Magento admin, the blog feature will appear on your dashboard for you to manage it.

Below is a simple process for installing a Magento blog extension.

• Log in into your Magento backend as an admin and activate Cron to run every minute. On the sidebar, access the Web Setup Wizard by clicking on System then Tools.
• On the Web Setup Wizard, choose the Extension Manager and Sign In. You will need to input and submit the extension’s Private Access Key and Public Access Key as received from the Magento marketplace.
• Go to Extensions Ready to Install tab and choose the latest version of the Magento blog extension that you would like to install. Click Install then perform a Readiness Check to verify compatibility.
• Do not forget to Create a Backup of your store, which will automatically be in Maintenance Mode till the backup is done.
• Once the backup is done, your store will go offline to prevent any shopping disruptions as you add the new module. Click Install, and when it is complete, go back to the Setup Tool, then System Configuration. Click the Reset tab at the upper right corner.
• Flush Caches at Cache Management. You can access this via System > Tools.
• Go back to your Admin sidebar and access Configuration via Stores, then Settings. You will find your extension in the left-hand side panel. Follow any other instructions from the module’s developers to wind the process up.

When the extension is fully installed, you will see the Blog tab on the Magento admin’s top menu.

Best Magento blog extensions

Mirasvit Blog MX

Mirasvit is a free and powerful Magento blog solution that you can use to build a blog in your online store. It has beneficial blog features such as;

• URLs and SEO friendly posts
• Posts preview before a blog goes live
• RSS feeds
• Multiple level categories
• Tag Cloud and Tags
• Disqus comments
• Pin posting features at the top of the page
• Featured pictures for blog posts

Mirasvit Blog MX is fully responsive and easy to use due to its intuitive WYSIWYG editor. Through this custom Magento module, you will build enjoyable and easy to use blogs that avail customized content viewing such as latest entries, featured posts, or content categories.

It has an All Posts grid that allows you to edit blog characteristics such as status, header, author, Meta description, and Meta title. Through its WYSIWYG editor, you can edit the blog code to add your custom HTML code, images, or video rolls. This extension has a 90-day free support period, comprehensive documentation, and is open source to ensure that its users can customize it to fit their blogging demands.

Shogun Page Builder

Shogun Page Builder is one of the most popular ecommerce page builders out there. It is made to enhance your page’s conversion rates and create an enjoyable shopping experience for your online store customers.

This extension has a wide range of customizable drag and drop elements that enable the building of pages such as landing pages, blogs, or product pages.

You do not need to learn Magento coding practices to use Shogun. The module has an easy to use user interface that creates mobile-responsive pages. You can use the module to build new blog layouts or use it pre-designed templates to ease your work.

Some of its fantastic blog features include;

• Robust statistics that you can use to gauge the number of blog visitors, bounce rates, and other useful metrics.
• On Shogun, you can design page variants with minimal differences such as the positioning of elements of colors then perform A/B tests. These tests will identify the pages or content that your visitors love best as a guide for your content creation strategy.
• You can use the Shogun Page Builder to launch your blog’s SEO audit to ensure that it is well optimized for search engines
• You can also use the extension to perform programmed posting so that you do not have to update your blog pages when there is too much web traffic.

WordPress Magento blog integration

WordPress is one of the most popular blog content management systems in the world. The CMS powers over 60 million of all the 500 million blogs that exist worldwide. Its influence, however, is more considerable because it runs 60.2% of the world’s content market.

The CMS has a wide variety of blogging plugins, themes, sliders, galleries, and widgets to give you complete freedom in blog customization and creativity. WordPress has a low learning curve with a very easy to use user interface.

If you choose to create a WordPress blog to supplement the blogging needs of your Magento store, you will face the problem of maintaining two separate websites. You will, therefore, pay more for additional modules and have the inconvenience of hopping from one platform’s backend to the other.

You can, however, use Magento plugins that integrate WordPress to your Magento installation. Extensions such as the free FishPig module will allow you to use one single theme or dual themes on both CMSs. It also has useful modules such as a single sign-on module or one that groups both your blog’s and store search results.

Alternatively, you can use WordPress as a standalone blog for your Magento store. A WordPress blog on a separate domain can be linked to your Magento shop via a WordPress blog link. Consequently, you will have blog links on your header or footer. You can also integrate the website and blog via the cart to the blog module.

There are, however, many disadvantages to this practice. First, your visitors will not access your cart on the header while scrolling the blog. They will always have to click back to the Magento to make a purchase.

This can force some of your visitors out of the sales funnel. There are also other disadvantages for users, such as dual sign-ups to both websites and lesser search capabilities. This option will also deny your Magento store, the SEO benefits of an excellent blog.

Frequently Asked Questions

Conclusion

The benefits of a Magento blog extension or a WordPress blog are endless for your online store. Choose the method that will help you to post better content consistently to increase traffic to your ecommerce store. Study the practices of blog building to ensure that your business is reaping all the benefits of content marketing.

Related Posts:

• How to Create Product Pages in Magento
• How to Create Landing Pages in Magento
• 10 of the Best Magento Extensions to Boost Sales

Magento is one of the most popular e-commerce platforms for growth-oriented retailers, entrepreneurs, and business owners. Magento works for all store sizes, be they small business startups, large existing organizations, or e-commerce shops migrating into its ecosystem for its many benefits. It is undeniable, however, that Magento has a steeper learning curve than you would find in other platforms such as Shopify.

In the past, it was challenging to make sense of Magento without the help of a Magento developer. Luckily for you, with the platform’s many readymade themes and extensions, you can have a Magento store up and running much faster. The platform has a large community rallying around it, so it is quite easy to have just about any e-commerce feature you would like on your Magento store. One of those must-have features are landing pages.

What is a landing page?

A landing page is designed with a specific advertising or marketing purpose. These pages give the visitor the information that they need fast. It should also provide details on how to contact the visitor. A good landing page encourages action that will improve conversions. Home pages, product pages, and their categories cannot be substitutes for landing pages.

These pages work independently, stand-alone, and have their unique elements. The importance of landing pages has come to the forefront in the new customer satisfaction oriented retail culture. They offer the customer customized and targeted products in contrast to most other web pages that have diverse options for different customers.

Landing pages are therefore used to counter the “paradox of choice.” This is a phenomenon that makes it difficult for people to make a choice when the options presented to them are too diverse.

Main differences between Homepages and Landing pages

The Main Differences between Homepages and Landing Pages are:

• Homepages have a multitude of links placed on their content, footers, and navigation menu, whereas Landing Pages have minimal connections to increase conversion rates.
• Homepages are a hub that enables users to navigate to the broadest parts of your website and rarely focus on calls to action (CTAs), whereas Landing Pages are made to convey a specific CTA.
• Homepages receive visitors at the top of the sales funnel; they are undecided about their choices, whereas Landing Pages receive visitors that are more likely to move deeper into your sales funnel since they are sure about what they want.

5 reasons why you need a landing page

1. They’re great for conversions: You direct your leads to a page with a single focus where they can only take a specific desired action. If you’re able to convince them with high-quality landing page copy, you can get many subscribers.
2. Landing pages support ads: Once you have an ad out there, it’s easier to convert leads through a landing page dedicated to giving more information on what the ad was all about.
3. You get to distinguish your services: If your site has a ton of products and services, it may easily confuse your target audience. Landing pages will be only about that one thing that your prospect is looking for.
4. They’re perfect for testing: You can easily conduct different types of tests on a well-crafted landing page.
5. Excellent user experience: Since it’s a dedicated page that has one specific call to action, your reader is not confused or distracted by any other page elements.

Different types of landing pages

Your Magento website can have two main types of landing pages

1. Lead generation or lead capture pages that are data collection tools. They will collect information on your engaged customers, so they have a lead capture form. Here your customers are subtly asked to input their phone numbers, email addresses, names, job titles, or age range. This information can help you to tailor customized offers, ads, and email marketing campaigns.
2. Click through pages with CTA buttons that guide your visitors to a page where they can complete the desired action. You will find this type of landing page more on a Magento e-commerce site or any other site with a sales bent.

How to use the Magento 2 page builder

Magento 2.3 has a robust page builder that you can use to create and edit your Magento e-commerce store dynamic blocks, blocks, and CMS pages. The tool has a visual drag and drop builder as well as some beneficial content management features.

It will make it easy for you to create and configure the design and layout of your categories and product pages as well as any dynamic elements you might want to add to them. You need Magento Commerce 2.3.1 to access this useful feature. If you have not upgraded your Magento Commerce version, now would be a good time to do so.

Unfortunately, the other Magento variants, Open Source 2.3.1does not have this feature. If you are using open-source Magento, you will need to install third-party page builder extensions. They work perfectly, too, and will display your page’s front-end interface inside your website’s backend, making it very easy for you to drag and drop elements as desired.

Inside the Magento Page Builder

The Page Builder offers a clear field to give ample space to drag and drop your page elements as you deem fit. It has several tool sets on your left t hand side, which include;

• Layout sets that place rows and columns on your pages. It can also build tabs.
• Elements set that adds buttons, headings, and text
• Media set that will add maps, videos or pictures onto your page
• Content set that adds dynamic or static content blocks

Landing page design on Magento page builder

The Page Builder makes it especially easy for you to create a fantastic landing page from the admin panel. You do not need to procure expensive Magento developer services for regular landing pages creation. To create a landing page using this useful tool, simply follow the instructions below;

1. Log into your Magento admin, then go to the Content tab, choose Elements, then Pages. Press the Add New Page link, and name your page. Enable it to make it active.
2. To view more design options, expand the Content tab then add the landing page’s heading into its field. Drag and drop all the landing page elements you would prefer on the clear canvas, via the Media, Elements, Layout, and Content toolsets. To edit your chosen components, expand the little gear sign to access their settings.
3. When the landing page is set, you now need to work on SEO for Magento landing pages. Move to the Search Engine Optimization tab and infill the Meta Title, URL Key, Meta Description, and Meta Keywords fields.
4. Now, your page is almost ready to go live on your Magento shop, but you need to define its view on the Websites tab. In the Hierarchy section, specify the ranking of your landing page.
5. If you have any new landing page templates or themes that you would like to set up, do so in the Design tab and input the Layout Update XML. Save the page, and you are ready to start marketing with your new landing page.

Third-party Magento 2 landing page templates

If you are using Magento Open Source, or are unsure of your Magento web design expertise, you can download a third-party landing page template for use. Below are two of the best models available for Magento landing pages.

Shogun Page Builder

The Shogun Page Builder App is perfect for extra Magento Page Builder customizations. You can use it to control the features of your content, elements, and page layout. With the Shogun page builder, you do not need to edit any Magento code. Simply use its intuitive drag and drop builder, which integrates perfectly with Magento 2 to create a stellar landing page in minutes.

Start by installing the Shogun extension into your Magento shop through the admin panel. Create your new page or use its pre-made templates. From the Shogun editor, access a variety of creatively designed email capture forms, sliders, countdown times, social icons, and other useful elements that will make your page as effective as possible.

Users love this extension all over the world because it does build not only great SEO landing pages but also has analytics reporting features to help you gauge your landing page’s performance. It also allows the running of A/B tests to assist in page optimization.

The Shogun landing page builder has a variety of SEO tools that include a responsive design, automatic image compression, and easy editing of image ALT, Meta titles, and Meta descriptions. It is used by thousands of businesses around the world, including MVMT Watches, K-Swiss, Chubbies, and Leesa Mattresses

MageWorx Landing Pages

MageWorx is perfect for the fast creation of SEO friendly and customizable landing pages for your Magento e-commerce shop. This Magento extension will help you to add copy, images, videos, and content blocks at the top or bottom of your landing pages.

You can also use the extension to specify page metadata and URLs for all your website’s Store Views. MageWorx is compatible with the Magento 2 and integrates with the platform’s SEO extension to create user and search engine friendly landing pages.

6 Benefits of good landing pages

They will give your website an SEO boost

While landing pages are meant for conversions, functional landing page design calls for SEO optimized landing pages. If your Magento landing page is SEO optimized, it will rank higher in Google. This page will, therefore, attract more visitors to your website. An SEO friendly landing page will not only enhance your visitor’s user experience but will also make your website rank higher on Google since the search engine favors organic content.

They increase conversion rates

Since landing pages are optimized for conversions, they make the purchase process easier for visitors, increasing your sales. They also increase the engagement rates for advertising campaigns because they are tailored to address your buyer’s needs.

They will enhance your online credibility

Since a landing page is designed for a specific task and has a clear course of action, your visitors will recognize that you do understand what it is that they need. They also will see that beyond you understanding their problems, you have even thought about the best way to fix them. Besides, you can use testimonials on them as social proof.

They will increase brand awareness

Some of the most crucial elements of a landing page, such as its feel, style, copy, and content, are creatively crafted to ensure maximum effectiveness. As a result, landing pages are lovely and can go a long way in increasing your brand’s recognition amongst customers.

The strong brand identity of landing pages can make you memorable to users meaning that they will visit your Magento website more often or recommend you to other users.

They attract new website users

Landing pages will attract new visitors to your website from search engines and social networks. They can, however, do much more by collecting demographic data via capture or contact forms. Your marketing team can access this information, segment it, and use it to target these new leads.

They provide fantastic analytics data

Your Magento shop can use your landing pages to track and analyze the actual and wholesome data that they are capable of collecting. You can, for instance, collect data that informs you about the success of your marketing strategy. Use the information gleaned from these pages to optimize and improve your e-commerce marketing strategy.

Elements of an effective Magento landing page

Having an attractive landing page templates is one thing while having an effective lead page is quite another. There is no manual out there that can detail the creation of a high converting landing page. Why? Every e-commerce platform has a unique selling point.

Nevertheless, there are some core elements or building blocks that can guide you in crafting the perfect Magento marketplace landing page.

Main headline

A lot of thought should go into your landing page’s headline. Perhaps you have not heard about it, but there is a 15-second span that dictates whether a visitor will stick on and read more from your webpage, or leave in a huff. Online visitors generally stay on one webpage for less than 15 seconds.

If your landing page has not caught their attention within that time, you will lose them to your competitor. To reduce your Magento website’s bounce rates, you need to ensure that your visitors find what it is that they are looking for in a glance.

A fantastic page header should, therefore, capture the attention, interest of a user and should be easy to comprehend. Your visitor should understand what it is that you are selling in a single phrase. A good headline should not have more than 20 words, and the shorter and sweeter, the better.

Supporting headers

A good headline might capture the attention of its audience, but it needs a persuasive subheading to engage them. The subtitle should be under the main header and should be more detailed than its predecessor should.

The basic rule of thumb with your subheadings also is the shorter, the better. There are Magento templates that break these rules by flipping the subheads with the headline. They, of course, will give the main heading a differentiating attribute such as large fonts or central positioning.

Reinforcing statements

These are optional, but you can use them to strengthen your unique product or service-selling proposition. They will give your visitors additional chances to convert. There should, therefore, offer any other information amiss from the main headers and inject a level of urgency of the call to action in place.

The hero image or video

In the war between text and images, images win out most of the time. Why? The human brain loves pictures. Did you know that the brain can process an entire image in less than 13 seconds? It loves this information mode so much that people will only remember 10% of what they read three days later.

They will, however, recall 65% of what they saw after three days. Your landing page users will be influenced faster and more effectively by the images on the page. For this reason, use high quality, relevant and large images to make the best impression.

A unique selling proposition (USP)

What is it that sets your service or product apart from your competitors? You should, at a glance, ensure that your visitors understand what it is that makes the offer on your Magento landing page unique. Let your explanation be benefit-oriented and transparent. This unique selling proposition will satiate the curiosity raised by your compelling headlines.

The explanation can target human psychology by working on the avoidance of pain or the pursuance of pleasure. Humans subconsciously seek to alleviate or to avoid loss or pain, and every product or service is meant to meet this purpose. You should, for instance, mention that your visitor would lose something of value if they resist your offer.

The theory of loss aversion supports this selling point meaning that your visitor will be willing to pay to avoid loss. You can also use genuine pain references as testimonials to prove your offering’s ability to alleviate this discomfort. You can moreover pursue pleasure in your explanation by showing how your product induces pleasure or how it could meet an emotional need.

Social proof

To increase your Magento e-commerce store’s conversion rates, use social proof to influence your buyer’s decision positively. You can use case studies, logos of your buyer’s businesses, reviews from major e-commerce platforms, video testimonials, or interviews, and genuine quotes from your clients.

Contact details

To strengthen trust, place multiple contact points on your landing page or contact form to reassure your buyers that you are a legitimate trader.

A promise

People love to feel reassured, so use this attribute on your landing page to improve conversion rates. Coin a pledge that works for service or product and position it close to your CTA.

A call to action

The call to action feature is the most critical part of landing page design. Every other element on your page is there to ensure that your buyers pay attention to your CTA. Some of the best practices of CTA design include a large CTA with persuasive, explosive, and exciting compelling copy.

Online buyers are also very used to CTA buttons so, use them too. Use a color that contrasts your webpage’s background color to attract the eye.

Negative space

Your landing page should not be cluttered to ensure that your page elements and their relationship to each other are evident. Leave a significant amount of negative space to guide your visitors to your call to action. Exclude additional navigation or exit link that might cause your users to abandon the landing page.

FAQs: Frequently Asked Questions

Conclusion

This tutorial on how to create landing pages in Magento is crucial to your e-commerce marketing strategy. Use it to build phenomenal Magento e-commerce landing pages and watch your business scale to new heights. Use the Magento Page Builder feature or the third party extensions featured, and landing pages creation will be a breeze for you.

Further read:

• How to Create Product Pages in Magento
• How to Build a Blog in Magento
• 10 of the Best Magento Extensions to Boost Sales
• Clickfunnels vs WordPress: Two Approaches. Which One is Best? 
• Shopify vs WordPress: How to Decide Which Ecommerce Platform is Best for You

One area that some people feel Shopify lacks is the page customization – luckily, there are many great apps out there that allow you to fully customize each page in your Shopify store, or even create brand-new pages from scratch. In our GemPages vs Shogun comparison, we’ll be looking at two of the most popular page building apps for Shopify.

On the surface of it, both apps are similar – they both have beautiful templates and an intuitive, user-friendly drag-and-drop editor. How can you tell which one is the best? We’ll be directly comparing the two, so you can see how they stack up against each other.

Main Differences Between GemPages vs Shogun

The main differences between GemPages and Shogun are:

• Shogun has extra features like split testing and analytics, whereas GemPages does not have any extra features
• Shogun has an in-depth knowledge base, whereas GemPages knowledge base is missing some information
• Shogun only has two price plans which could be a bit expensive for some smaller businesses, whereas GemPages has three price plans and a slightly lower price point

What is GemPages?

GemPages has an intuitive drag-and-drop page editor, and enables you to make landing pages, home pages, product pages, collection pages, and blog posts. It also offers a range of stylish templates to choose from and has some built-in SEO tools.

The Main Features of GemPages

Here are the main features of GemPages:

• Drag-and-drop editor allows you to build a variety of pages
• Syncing with Facebook Pixel and Google Shopping catalog
• Built in SEO tools makes it simple to improve your SEO as you create new pages
• Fast loading times for your pages
• Keep the pages you’ve created even if you uninstall GemPages
• Great range of templates

Dashboard/Navigation

Making your way around GemPages is pretty simple. You can see an overview of your pages on the home page, and the toolbar along the left is simple to use. There’s also a chatbot in the corner if you need help on a particular subject.

The whole interface is nicely designed and feels intuitive.

Page Editor

You can create a variety of pages with GemPages. Clicking on ‘Create New Pages’ will bring up a variety of subpage templates for you to choose from, including About pages, Product pages, and more:

The templates look very clean and professional. According to the GemPages website, they are based on designs by successful eCommerce businesses, and are designed to give you more sales – user reviews do seem to suggest that their product pages perform well.

Once you’ve chosen one, you’ll be asked to give it a name, and then you’ll be taken to the page editor:

You can then edit each section to suit you. Here, we’re editing a promotional page – this brings up a list of each product you have on sale, including how long the sale is going to last for. It’s really simple to play around with the layout – simply grab the element that you want from the toolbar along the left, and then drop it onto the page.

There are a variety of page elements to choose from:

• Basic page elements – including rows, headings, text blocks, images, icons, buttons, and separators
• Custom Liquid code elements
• Banners – including parallax and hero banners
• Stacks – including tabs, carousels, carousels, and accordions
• Icon Lists
• Integrations – including Google Maps, Instagram, and MailChimp elements
• Videos – including popup videos, YouTube videos, and Vimeo videos
• Booster elements – including social media share buttons, countdown timers, and counters
• Form Fields – including text fields, email fields, check boxes, and submit buttons
• Articles – including excerpts, title, and content
• Collections – including collection banner, title, description, and toolbar

As you can see, there are a lot of interesting page elements to choose from. You can also search for a page element using the search bar at the top of the bar on the left-hand side.

There are also the Product page elements, which relate directly to the products you want to sell on your Shopify store. These include:

• Product
• Product List
• Related Products
• Title
• Description
• Price
• Quantity
• Image
• Image List
• Variants
• Swatches
• Cart Button
• View More
• Stock Counter
• Meta

Once you’ve chosen an element to drag and drop into your page, you can edit it, again using the bar along the left-hand side:

There’s a good amount of customization here. For example, you can pick which effect you would like your product images to have (‘zoom’ or ‘hover’), change the image size and alignment, and more. It’s great to have so many options for your product pages, especially when compared to the product pages that Shopify automatically creates for you.

You can also create a blog for your online store:

This works in the exact same way as the other pages – just drag and drop the elements you want onto the page.

You can also create a new home page for your store. Again, this works in the exact same way as the other pages – you can either choose from a template or create one from scratch. You can then click which page you would like to make your default home page:

Simply click ‘make default’ to switch your homepage to the version you like the best.

SEO

When it comes to SEO, there are a few things you can take advantage of here. When you click ‘Publish’, you’ll be given a few options:

You can set a custom URL and meta description here. You can also enable Lazy Loading. This is a technique that loads images as you scroll down the page, instead of during the first page load – this speeds up loading times significantly, which can help to improve your SEO, as loading time can impact your page ranking on Google.

Analytics

GemPages does not offer any extra analytics – so if you want deeper analytics for your pages, you’ll need to install another app.

Pricing

There are three price plans available for GemPages:

Starter – $15 per month

This includes the page builder, landing pages, home pages, SEO tools, mobile editing, and fast CDN loading. It also includes email support.

Professional – $29 per month

This gives you everything in the Starter plan, plus some extras, including product pages, collection pages, blog posts, and premium templates. You’ll also get Speed PLUS+ (for fast loading times), sales-booster elements, and priority support.

Advanced – $59 per month

This includes everything in the previous two plans, plus 3 store installations. It also enables you to copy pages between GemPages accounts, and you get VIP support, too.

GemPages offers a free 10-day trial. Click here to find out more.

Integrations

GemPages offers the following integrations:

• Google Analytics
• Facebook Ads
• MailChimp
• Klaviyo
• Oberlo
• Reviews Importer Apps

Support/Knowledge Base

We found the knowledge base to be a little sparse – there are some useful video tutorials, but we tried a few search terms that didn’t bring up any results. (For example, we tried to look up how GemPages can help with SEO – typing ‘SEO’ didn’t return any results. It would be useful to have a guideline about how to optimize your pages effectively using GemPages).

If you need extra support, you can leave a message for a representative to contact you using the chatbot in the lower right-hand corner.

The Pros of GemPages

• Well-designed templates: the dynamic templates, based on successful eCommerce stores, are a great way to potentially increase sales of your products
• Drag-and-drop editor: the editor is straightforward to use, and it contains a ton of great elements. There is a high amount of customization too.
• Interface: the interface of the platform itself is easy to navigate.

The Cons of GemPages

• Pricing: although the plans are reasonably priced, it seems a shame to lock away product pages in the ‘professional’ price plan
• Knowledge Base: We wanted to find out more about some of the features GemPages has to offer, but a search of the knowledge base didn’t bring up the results we were looking for.
• Lack of Features: There is a lack of extra features here, like page analytics.

What is Shogun?

Shogun is a page building app for Shopify, Magento, and BigCommerce. It allows you to build landing pages, product pages, home pages, and more – and it also offers some extra features, too.

The Main Features of Shogun

• Drag-and-drop page editor allows you to build a variety of pages
• Range of professional and stylish templates to choose from
• Analytics Suite allows you to closely track the performance of your pages
• Split testing enables you to test two pages to see how they perform against each other

Dashboard/Navigation

Shogun’s interface looks very clean and minimal – it’s easy to find your way around using the icons along the left-hand side. The homepage gives you an overview of the pages you have already created.

Page Editor

You can create a variety of page types in Shogun.

You can either start with a blank page or pick a template. The templates look very attractive, and there’s a wide variety of them, so you should be able to find one to suit your business.

The page editor itself, like GemPages, works in a drag-and-drop style. Just click the element you want (these are displayed on the right-hand side), then drag and drop them onto the page.

It’s all very user-friendly and simple to understand, with clear iconography.

There’s a huge amount of page elements to choose from. Firstly, you have structural elements – these give your page a basic ‘shape’, and include sections, columns, slides, tables, tabs, and accordions. Playing around with these will enable you to build your page exactly the way you want it.

Then you have a few different types of page elements to choose from.

Content

These will make up the basic content of your page. You can choose to include the following:

• Images
• Videos
• Headings
• Text
• Icons
• Buttons
• Separators
• Countdowns
• Maps
• Forms
• Custom HTML

Social

This allows you to add social sharing buttons. You can also add an Instagram widget to your page.

Shopify

Shopify blocks allow you to add content from your Shopify store. These include:

• Product Box
• Collection
• Product Title
• Product Image
• Product Image Gallery
• Product Price
• Product Variant
• Product Quantity
• Product Add to Cart
• Product Reviews

You also have ‘Structural Blocks’. These are blocks of pre-arranged content that you can customize – for example, you can add a heading and a button in one block.

Each element can be customized simply by clicking on them. For example, editing a background image looks like this:

You can adjust the positioning of the image, the dimensions, the overlay settings, and more.

SEO

Like GemPages, there are a few built-in options here to help improve your SEO. You can set a custom page title and meta description for each page, and you can add alt-tags to each of your images. Like GemPages, Shogun improves the loading time for your pages – it does this by compressing images, and by using semantic HTML.

Analytics

One huge advantage of Shogun is the Analytics Suite. You can check the analytics for each individual page:

You can check the analytics for one page, or even compare two pages at the same time.

You can check analytics for all devices or narrow it down to different device types (for example, you might want to check how a page performs on mobile devices).

You can look at the following:

• Sales Conversion – the total amount of placed orders from add to carts on the page
• Add to Cart – the percentage of users who added the product to the cart from anywhere on the page
• Total Sessions – total number of visitors to the page
• Bounce Rate – the percentage of users who leave the page with no further activity
• Top Clickthrough Destinations – where users are going from the page
• Top Outside Referrers – how users are getting to the page

This is a huge bonus, as the analytics are clear and easy to understand, and it saves you having to add another app – everything is in one place.

Split Testing

Shogun also offer split testing on the higher price plan. A/B tests are proven to be effective at improving the performance of pages – it allows you to create two slightly different versions of the same page, and then run tests to see which page performs better (for example, which page ends in more sales). This is straightforward to set up.

In the page editor, you can easily swap between ‘Original’ and ‘Variant A’ using the different coloured tabs along the top of the page. This allows you to make small edits to each one, so you can track which one your customers like the most. You can choose an objective – Clickthrough, Sales, or Add to Cart – and choose when you want the test to start and finish.

If you have a test running, you will be able to see this clearly on the home page, as it will have the status ‘Currently Running Test’. Once the test has finished, you can view the results for yourself, or just have Shogun pick the winner for you.

Unfortunately, this is only available on the most expensive price plan. If you’re a smaller business and you’re on a tight budget, this might be out of reach for you. If you can afford it, however, it could be a great way to ensure your pages are reaching their optimal performance.

Pricing

There are two price plans to choose from:

Build – $39 per month

This includes the page builder, all page types, page templates, SEO controls, design by screen size, email support, and 2 user seats.

Optimize – $199 per month

This includes everything in the ‘Build’ plan, plus multi-site content syncing, AB testing, analytics, dev tools, content scheduling, premium support, and 6 user seats.

Shogun offer a free 10-day trial – click here to find out more.

Integrations

Shogun offers integration with Google Analytics, Adobe Typekit, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and Pinterest.

Support/Knowledge Base

Like GemPages, Shogun has a knowledge base that you can search through. It includes tutorials and videos to help you to make the most of the platform. We were able to find everything we were looking for, too, which was great.

You can also click the ‘Need Help?’ button in the lower right-hand corner when you’re using Shogun, which is helpful. This brings up the FAQ section and gives you an email address to contact Shogun if you need extra support.

The Pros of Shogun

• Interface: the Shogun interface is very clean and minimal, and it’s easy to navigate
• Page Editor: the page editor is user-friendly and offers a variety of page elements
• Extra Features: if you’re willing to pay for them, split testing and analytics are useful features that could make a tangible difference to your sales

The Cons of Shogun

• Pricing: it’s more expensive than some of the other page builders out there, plus the ‘Optimize’ plan may be out of reach of some smaller businesses
• Feature Lock: split testing and analytics are locked behind the higher price plan, which is a shame

Frequently Asked Questions

If you have more questions about Shogun or Gempages, we might have the answer:

GemPages vs Shogun – Which One is the Best?

Now that we’ve seen each platform in detail, let’s directly compare each feature to see how they stack up against each other. Starting with the most obvious:

Page Editor

This is a very difficult one to call. Both platforms are very similar, with the same drag-and-drop functionality. Both offer a wide variety of page elements to choose from, and both are pretty user-friendly. We’re going to have to call this one a draw.

Templates

Both have a wide variety of beautiful, professional-looking templates. We’re going to call this a draw too.

Overall Design/Ease of Use

Both platforms are straightforward to use. However, the design of Shogun is a little cleaner and easier to navigate than GemPages, so we’ll give this one to Shogun.

SEO

Another draw here – both offer similar features, including custom URLs, page names, and meta descriptions. Both platforms try to improve page loading speed, too.

Extra Features

Shogun is the obvious winner here – although they’re locked behind the higher price plan, having analytics and split-testing available is such a great way to improve the performance of your pages. It could make a difference to your sales, and it means you don’t have to have multiple apps doing different jobs in Shopify.

Pricing

GemPages is the winner here. Although Shogun does have some great features, the jump between ‘Build’ and ‘Optimize’ is huge, making it out of reach for some smaller business owners.

Knowledge Base and Support

Shogun had more to offer in their knowledge base, with every search term we tried returning useful results – so it’s the clear choice here.

Conclusion: Our Decision

This is a pretty close call! Ultimately, if you want to create beautiful pages for your Shopify store, either app is going to work well. Both have an easy to use editor, both give you tons of page elements to work with, both have well-designed templates – and both open up a lot more customization than Shopify alone has to offer.

However, if you do have the money to invest in your business, we would recommend Shogun. Although the split testing and analytics are on the pricey side, they are valuable tools that will enable you to optimize the performance of your pages – which could lead to more sales in the long run. Plus, although GemPages has some great features and is very simple to use, Shogun felt a little smoother and more user-friendly – so it’s our overall winner today.

Further read:

• The Best Ecommerce Tools and Apps
• WooCommerce vs Magento – Which eCommerce Platform is Better? 
• How to Create a Shopify Landing Page without Coding
• How to Build a Landing Page for 5 Popular Ecommerce Tools
• OptimizePress vs LeadPages: Which Landing Page Builder is Best?

Have you ever given much thought to your shopping cart platform? 

The truth is most of us rarely stop to think about it.  We integrate a PayPal “Buy Now” button, cross our fingers, and hope it all works out! 

But did you know that your shopping cart integration can drastically impact your business in terms of profits, consumer retargeting and customer experience?

In this write-up, I’m going to review ThriveCart; one of the most popular shopping cart platforms. You’ll get to see how it compares to other options and how it affects your business. 

This won’t be your run-of-the-mill review though, I’ll let you have a personal experience by taking you through the process of creating the product and checkout page, so you can get a “firsthand” encounter with it! 

ThriveCart in a Nutshell 

ThriveCart is a tool that helps you to promote, and receive payments for digital products, physical products, subscriptions, and services. 

But it does a lot more than just receiving payments. 

It’s a brilliant software for designing checkout pages that have high click-to-sales conversions and can dramatically boost your sales with down-sells,  up-sells, and bumps (we’ll see more on this in a bit!) 

One of ThriveCart’s biggest strengths is how clever the team has been in ensuring that the tool integrates with many payment processors, webinar platforms, email marketing software, and any tool that you’ll probably be using with your store. 

Regardless of whether you promote your products on social media or via emails, ThriveCart links to the most used apps, providers and software in those sectors. 

5 ThriveCart Features That Impact Your Business 

Wondering how ThriveCart could impact to your bottom line? 

Here are 5 ways the tool affects your profits and conversions. 

1. One-Click Upsells and Bump Offers 

This feature separates ThriveCart from most of its alternatives as not all shopping carts offer the ability to include bump offers on your checkout page. 

Here’s how it works: 

When a user is on your checkout page and wants to complete the purchase, they’ll see a small box that offers them the option to upgrade their purchase, with just one click. 

This simple addition is proven to boost sales, and it takes just 30 seconds to set it up on the checkout page! 

Another amazing feature of ThriveCart like the bump offers is the ability to include upsells to your sales funnel. When customers go to buy a product, you can automatically direct them to a page that offers an upgrade of that product.  

 

2. Retargeting Customers with Abandoned Carts 

Isn’t it annoying when people come to your website, stock up their cart, and then disappear before sealing up the order? 

ThriveCart provides a feature that enables you to retarget these people by adding them to your email autoresponder. This means they’ll get an automated email from you in a few minutes after cart abandonment. 

The beauty of this is that you can “juice up” the deal and offer free shipping, discounts or just remind them of the abandoned cart. 

3.  Product Affiliate Program 

This one’s my favorite! ThriveCart makes it so easy to set up an affiliate program for your products with just a few clicks. 

And a great thing about this feature is that you can put up unique affiliate arrangements for each product. So the commission rates for each product will differ. 

It even allows you to put up “affiliate guidelines” and automatically adjust commission rates for underperforming affiliates. The whole process is automated, so you may not need to be fully involved in managing the affiliate program. 

4. A/B Testing 

Sometimes simple tweaks like adding testimonials, changing page texts or design elements on your checkout page can increase sales. 

ThriveCart allows you to see the effects of these changes with the “A/B test” feature. You can set up a split-test of two versions of the checkout page and as soon as one has better conversion rates, ThriveCart automatically picks the winner and uses it for all checkouts. 

5.  Countdown Timers 

Introducing scarcity and urgency to your sales process is an excellent way to increase conversions. Most times, consumers need that extra nudge to make a purchase. 

The brand Experian proved this as they experienced a 16% boost in their transaction rates by simply adding urgency to their promotional emails. 

ThriveCart makes it easy to create urgency with the countdown timer. When creating your cart, you can include a timer and as soon as the timer expires, the offer becomes unavailable.  

It also lets you redirect customers to another page or notify them on when the offer will run again. 

ThriveCart Walkthrough 

I promised you a walk through at the start of the post, so here it is! 

This is how to create a checkout page with ThriveCart. I included screenshots so you can get a feel of the experience! 

1. Sign in 

After signing in, you’ll be redirected to your dashboard that shows you a summary of your daily revenue

Here’s how it looks: 

2. Add a Product

To add a new product, scroll to the top of the dashboard and click on this icon: 

 

Next, click the create product button: 

Once you’ve done this, a pop up will come up requesting your product type. You have the option of adding a physical product or digital product. 

Choose the relevant option and click on create a new product: 

The next page you’ll see will show you 4 tabs: Product, Fulfilment, Checkout, and Behavior. 

Click the product tab and several sub-tabs will show up: Pricing, Processors, Bump and Affiliates.  

Each of these sub-tabs are vital to properly identifying your products, let’s see them one by one. The sub-tabs allow you to add or edit your product name, label, status, pricing and checkout page URL.  

Let’s see more on each of the options. 

Pricing 

The pricing tab is where you can add your product price. It also lets you add varying pricing options, like if you want your customers to have the option of paying monthly or yearly. With pricing, you can also set automatic tax calculation and create personalized payment invoices as well. 

Bump 

Remember the bump offer feature I talked about at the start of the article? This is where you can set it up, just simply check it and input your offer details. 

Payment Processors

With this sub-tab, you can choose the processor you want to use.  Click set up processors and pick your choice. 

Affiliate Program

To enable the affiliate program feature, tap on the affiliates sub-tab, input details like commission rates and save. 

3. Put up Fulfillment Preferences

The fulfillment tab is where you can add what will happen immediately a customer purchases your products. There’s just one sub-tab under it tagged “After Purchase”. Click on it and input what you want to happen after a purchase. 

4. Create the Checkout Page 

There are 4 sub-tabs under the checkout tab; Template, Success page, Tracking and Customize. 

Template

The template tab, allows you to pick from 4 different templates: 

• A tall 

• One-step Checkout 

• Embeddable Checkout 

• Popup Checkout 

Customize 

This is where you can personalize the template you chose and you’ll have a lot of customization options! Some of them include adding testimonials, including a guarantee seal and adding a thumbnail image of your product. 

Success Page 

The success page allows you to personalize what buyers will see after making a purchase. You can add a simple thank you message or video. 

Tracking 

If you’ve got a tracking service you love, you can set it up in this tab. 

5. Create Behavior Actions 

The 5th tab permits you to initiate actions based on visitor behavior. For instance, you can include a buyer in your CRM or automate follow-up emails for customers with abandoned carts. 

Here are some of the trigger actions ThriveCart offers: 

• Expired Credit Card 

• Declined payment 

• Product purchase 

• Due Payment 

Once you’re done tap save and you’re good to go! 

ThriveCart vs Alternatives 

There are so many shopping cart tools and making the right choice can be a bit confusing so ill point out what makes ThriveCart unique. 

1. More Integrations 

All shopping cart platforms integrate with other tools but ThriveCart offers more options. For instance, ThriveCart integrates with Zapier, which means you can add in almost any tool! 

2. Automatic Tax Collection 

ThriveCart allows you automatically collect sales tax. This is dependent on the customer’s location. Although other cart platforms offer this, they usually do so with third-party tools, which incur an extra cost on monthly payments.

3. Automation 

This is one of ThriveCarts major advantages over its competitors. Few shopping carts offer its kind of automation. A great example is the automatic email autoresponder series addition of customers after a purchase, or retargeting emails to people with abandoned carts. 

These amazing automations set it apart. 

ThriveCart Alternatives 

SamCart 

SamCart is one of the most popular ThriveCart alternatives and rightly so. It offers similar basic features such as different payment plans, 1-click upsells, checkout template pages, 1-click bump offers, etc. 

However, SamCart’s affiliate program offers different features and pricing. For instance, ThriveCart’s affiliate program provides affiliate tracking IDs but with the SamCart affiliate platform, your affiliates would be unable to track their best traffic sources. 

There is also an increase in price on your SamCart monthly payment if you decide to use the affiliate program.  

ClickFunnels 

ClickFunnels offers certain features you can find in ThriveCart like 1-click upsells, bump offers and down sells. It also allows you to customize your shopping cart with a drag and drop builder. 

Just like SamCart a major difference between ThriveCart and ClickFunnels is the affiliate platform. To run the affiliate program you’ll need to upgrade in your monthly payment. 

Zaxxa 

.

Zaxxa is a great shopping cart with a lot to offer like detailed analytics and tracking and unique customization options that impact on user experience but when compared to ThriveCart it has some major limitations. 

If you are new to the eCommerce world, you may find it a bit difficult to use. Zaxxa also does not support physical products and has less integration options than ThriveCart.  

Common Questions and Answers

Here are some common questions about ThriveCart and I’ve got the answers right here for you! 

Is ThriveCart Worth it? 

Absolutely! For a tool with such amazing features, multiple integrations, and a one-time payment option, it’s worth every dime. 

With that said, ThriveCart isn’t a magic bullet, if your products aren’t what your customers are looking for, it may not help as much. But, if you’ve got the right products for your audience, ThriveCart is designed to help boost your sales. 

Who Is ThriveCart For? 

With so many developers getting in on the “sales funnel” and “shopping cart” game, the options you’ve got are staggering. 

But if you are looking for a professional type shopping cart capable of handling six-figure transactions yearly without a recurring fee and you want to be able to create bump offers, upsell funnels, down-sell funnels and a lot more then ThriveCart is for you. 

What Does ThriveCart Integrate With? 

Just as with most shopping cart platforms ThriveCart integrates with multiple payment processors, email marketing software, and membership software, however, it isn’t limited in integrations like other tools of its kind. 

ThriveCart offers integration with Zapier, which means you can integrate with just about any tool that comes to mind. Here is an excellent resource on ThriveCart integrations. 

Does ThriveCart integrate with WordPress? 

Yes, ThriveCart works excellently with WordPress. You can integrate it in two ways. The first involves creating a ThriveCart order for the page and then hosting it via the ThriveCart server. 

After doing that you can simply link to the page from your website just like you’d do for any other link. When someone clicks the link (most likely on your sales page), they’ll be redirected to your shopping cart. 

The second option and the most popular is to copy the embed code from ThriveCart after creating a shopping cart and then paste it into your WordPress HTML editor. Your shopping cart will then show up on your website page where it was inserted.

Does ThriveCart Integrate with Woocommerce? 

ThriveCart and WooCommerce are two very different types of checkout platforms. WooCommerce is an eCommerce “add-to-cart” system, whilst ThriveCart is a conversion-focused funnel based checkout. Whilst they both process your customer’s orders, they’re both very different types of platforms.

As such, there isn’t a logical ‘integration’ as ThriveCart wouldn’t act a replacement for your WooCommerce checkout because the tool does not support and is not designed for adding items to a cart. ThriveCart is designed for selling a specific product or offer, then using bumps and upsells to maximize the revenue from the customer.

With that said, you can use WooCommerce to ‘host’ your products and the style of your site, the buttons in WooCommerce under each product would link directly to the checkout (you’d set your product to be a 3rd party/affiliate link, then use the cart URL from ThriveCart there).

Finally: Is ThriveCart for You?

Overall, ThriveCart is a powerful tool that will help you boost sales and offer stellar user experience. It offers features beyond the regular shopping cart and lets you integrate with just about any other software. 

If you have questions or comments about your experiences with ThriveCart feel free to comment below! 

Magento was launched in 2008 and is used by big brands across the globe. In our Magento review, we’ll consider if it is the right choice for your business.

If you run an eCommerce business and you’re thinking of switching to a new platform, you may have considered Magento. It has a lot of great features, including powerful marketing and shopping cart tools, and in-depth inventory management which will save you time on repetitive tasks. However, it’s not that well suited for beginners, as it has quite a steep learning curve – but it does offer a free community edition, so you might be tempted to give it a shot.

In our review, we’ll have a look at the key features of Magento, before looking at the platform in detail. We’ll look at pricing and pros and cons, before giving our opinion on who Magento is best suited for – so you can decide whether it’s right for you.

Key Features of Magento

• Two versions available – Community Edition (free to download) and Enterprise Edition
• Secure cart with automatic tax and sales calculations
• In-depth inventory management, including management of stock in various locations
• Order management and customer account management
• Secure cart with multiple payment options, including Google Checkout, debit or credit card, and PayPal
• Integration with Google Analytics
• Customizable storefront using free or paid themes
• Built-in blogging platform
• Built-in search engine optimization
• Powerful marketing tools
• Hundreds of extensions available

Ease of Use

Magento is not a beginner-friendly platform.

If you’re a newbie looking to enter the world of eCommerce for the first time, with no technical experience and no money to hire a developer – Magento is not going to be the best choice for you. It has a steep learning curve, so if you’re looking for an eCommerce platform that will allow you to get going quickly and easily, you’re better off looking at another service like Shopify.

If you are a developer, or you have one on your team, you should find navigating Magento quite simple. The interface is pretty easy to use once you’re up and running, but as we said, it won’t be suitable for total beginners. Set up can take quite a bit of time, however, and installing extensions can sometimes be a laborious process depending on the extension itself.

Inventory and Order Management

Magento has a range of inventory management tools – it’s a real strength of this platform.

Uploading products is a simple process – it’s very quick to upload photos, videos, and descriptions of products. You can offer virtual or downloadable/digital products. You can also allow personalization of products (like monogramming).

It’s simple to keep your inventory organised, even if your stock is stored in different locations. Magento also helps to speed up certain processes when it comes to managing stock – for example, you can mass-assign a value to multiple products, create product templates to quickly upload new items, and automatically assign products to certain categories. You can also choose to automatically resize images and batch-import and export catalog information at set times. These processes, although seemingly small, can drastically reduce the amount of time you may otherwise spend doing repetitive tasks.

If you do want more control, though, the admin area has a lot to offer. You can moderate reviews and product tags manually, create or edit orders, and even assign customer service reps to create customer accounts or place orders manually if necessary.

The admin area allows you to control multiple websites and one stores from one account, but you can also create multiple user accounts with permissions depending on the roles of your team members. You can also review all users’ admin activities, if you like.

Storefront

Magneto has a blank base theme, or a free theme called Luma. These can be customized using a drag-and-drop editor – this does make things easier if you don’t have any experience coding. You can buy themes from the official Magento extension store or go for a theme from a third-party website (these vary a lot in price – from $80 right through to $500, as you can see in the example above). Theme Forest has a lot of great Magento themes:

For $83 at the time of writing, this is a pretty dynamic theme from Theme Forest. So, if you’re willing to shop around, you can find one to suit your business.

There are a lot of options within Magento, if you can learn how to use the platform. You can create and edit content blocks, combine text with videos and images, blend content (like a blog post) and commerce by adding products to content pages, organize content with menus and page hierarchy, and use stock photos from Adobe Stock.

There are many companies using Magento to create attractive websites. This example from Graze (a snack company based in the UK) shows how your website could look:

You may want to consider a page builder extension, however – these can offer a bit more flexibility than Magento on its own can give and make page building and content creation really simple.

Magento also has a built-in blogging platform – this is great for creating ongoing content to keep potential customers coming back again and again.

You can show multiple images for each product page and allow customers to zoom in on product images. You can include color and fabric swatches, too. Products can be viewed individually or grouped together – for example, you can set related products, up-sells, or cross-sells, so that customers can see recommended products. You can add social media sharing buttons to each product, and customers can set up a wishlist or even a gift registry. There are a lot of features here to utilize.

Shopping Cart

Magento offers a secure shopping cart with a ton of features. We could talk about them all day, so here’s a quick list of the features included:

• Customers can pay using credit or debit card, authorize.net, PayPal, BACS, or payment on collection
• Can include mini cart on store pages
• Tax and shipping estimates are estimated in shopping cart
• Order summary includes product images during checkout
• Instant Purchase option allows your customers to checkout time, thus boosting conversion rates
• Customers can create accounts, wish lists, and save shopping carts for later
• Gift wrapping and gift messages can be included

There is a lot here to unpack, but essentially, Magento offers a ton of features to make the shopping experience as simple as possible for your customers – a quick and easy checkout process will improve conversion rates, so this is important. Plus, having customer accounts means that they’re more likely to come back again – especially if you draw them in with vouchers or coupons.

Marketing/SEO Tools

Magento’s stores are mobile optimized, so they should perform well on different devices. SEO is taken care of, with Magento automatically generating sitemaps for Google, and creating search-engine friendly URLs without you having to lift a finger.

When it comes to marketing, there’s quite a lot to offer without having to rely on extensions. Integration with Amazon means you can sync your inventory easily, opening up more options for customers. Google Smart Shopping campaigns and Google Ads are integrated, meaning you can manage ads easily. Plus, the upsells and cross-sells that we mentioned earlier, along with promotions, sales, and coupons, adds up to a lot of options when it comes to inviting customers to make a purchase.

You can set up special flash sale pages, for a limited time – or you can set up private sales for select customers. This is a great way to reward customer loyalty, by offering exclusive products or discounts.

Extensions

There are a lot of extensions available for Magento – at the time of writing, almost 6,000 of them. They’re organised into the following categories:

• Customer support
• Marketing
• Payment and security
• Accounting and finance
• Site optimization
• Shipping and fulfilment

With the right extensions, you can really enhance your experience using Magento – and they will allow you to manage everything in one place.

Reporting

Magento has an easy to use dashboard, which will allow you to see at a quick glance the key information that you need, including best-selling products, total sales, website traffic, and more. The integration with Google Analytics allows you to create visually appealing in-depth reports – therefore giving you access to easy-to-understand data. You do have to sync up Google Analytics before you can get going.

Support

Magento does have a steep learning curve, but their Knowledge Base is packed with documentation to help. Like the rest of the platform, this can appear (at least initially) quite overwhelming – they don’t have an easy to access section for beginners, for example. If you need support, they have a helpline and an online chat function. Plus, they have a busy chat forum if you want to connect with other users.

Thankfully, as we’ve mentioned already, there are plenty of free resources on other websites that you can use to get going with Magento.

Pricing

Magento has two basic plans.

Community Edition/Magento Open Source

This is a free-to-download version of Magento. Anyone can go online and get the software – completely free.

This does require technical knowledge. You have to upload it to your own server, which obviously requires a bit of previous experience (or you can follow a tutorial online to help – YouTube is a good place to look for a visual guide on how to do it). If you have experience or you can afford to hire a developer – this is a great choice. However, for most small businesses or eCommerce stores run by individuals, it’s a mammoth task to get going, and therefore may be out of reach.

Although the software itself is free, there are costs involved – including hosting, your own domain, and possibly paying for themes and extensions. This can vary, so we can’t give you an approximate cost.

Enterprise Edition/Magento Commerce

This is a package individually designed for bigger companies. This can be very expensive – we’re talking potentially thousands, or even tens of thousands, of dollars per year. You have to call and request a quote from Magento, and they will come up with a package for you based on the scale of your business and which features you require.

Obviously, this will be way out of the price range of many smaller companies. But some big brands – including Ford, Coca Cola, Olympus, and Christian Louboutin – use Magento with great success.

You can request a free demo of Magento – click here to find out more.

The Pros of Magento

• Free edition available – perfect for developers
• Used by big brands across the globe
• Inventory management is excellent
• Comes with a variety of marketing tools
• Themes can be customized
• SEO is automatically taken care of
• Range of extensions to choose from

The Cons of Magento

• Free edition requires you to host it on your own server
• Steep learning curve – not suitable for beginners
• Can take some time to get going
• Some extensions and themes are expensive
• Knowledge Base isn’t that suited for beginners – you may need to look further afield for tutorials and support

Frequently Asked Questions

If you’ve still got questions regarding Magento, we may have the answer for you.

Conclusion – is Magento Worth Using?

Magento is a powerful eCommerce platform.

It has a range of admin tools. From detailed inventory management, to built-in marketing and shopping cart tools, to powerful reporting using Google Analytics, there is a lot to like about Magento. Several processes are made simple – being able to perform certain actions in batches and having SEO tools built-in, for example.

You may have a lot of ‘threads’ in your business – for example, if you’re selling on multiple platforms and you keep stock in different places – and Magento ties everything together, allowing you to manage everything in one place. It’s designed with larger companies in mind, with the ability to create admin accounts and monitor user activity.

It’s also very customizable. Using extensions and the built-in drag-and-drop tools, you’ll have the ability to build a dynamic, fast-loading store with Magento. If you go for a page building extension, you’ll have even more options available to you when it comes to store design and content.

The downside is – unless you’ve got experience as a developer, or you’re in the position to hire a developer, it won’t be suitable for you. (Unless you want to learn an entirely new skill, which is always a good thing, but can be very time-consuming.) Beginners to eCommerce will find Magento overwhelming, and there are other platforms out there that allow you to get up and running really quickly, with plenty of useful features.

When it comes down to it, we think that Magento is an excellent platform – if you’re a larger, established business with specific knowledge and expertise. If you’re a bigger brand, then you’ll have access to the Enterprise Edition/Magento Commerce, which could be the perfect solution – at a high price tag, of course.

So, whether you should go for it depends on your situation. If you’ve got a developer on board who can dedicate a lot of time to get your store up and running, then yes – absolutely go for it, and enjoy Magento’s powerful tools and features (and the fact that the software itself is free). If you’re a beginner, we’d suggest looking elsewhere.

If you want to set up an eCommerce business, you need to choose a good platform – our Magento vs Shopify comparison will show you the features of two of the most popular ones out there.

A decent eCommerce platform does more than host a storefront. It gives you an array of marketing tools that will make the customer experience as smooth as possible (which will encourage them to come back again and again). It will also help you to clearly and simply upload products and run your business, with clear analytics and support if needed.

Magento and Shopify are two well-loved eCommerce platforms. In this article, we’ll show you the main differences between the two platforms, before going into each one in detail. Then we’ll compare them directly to see which one comes out on top.

Main Differences between Magento vs Shopify

In a nutshell, here are the main differences between Magento vs Shopify:

• Magento offers a free plan in the form of their community edition, whereas Shopify doesn’t
• Magento requires more technical experience, whereas Shopify doesn’t
• Magento offers a personalized service on their Enterprise edition, whereas Shopify doesn’t
• Magento offers a free demo, whereas Shopify offers a full 90-day trial
• Magento’s themes are mostly paid, whereas Shopify has more of a range of free themes

Magento

Magento was launched in 2008. They have over 250,000 users worldwide, so it’s a popular platform, used by big businesses worldwide.

Let’s check out the main features of Magento:

• Inventory management, with multiple images for products and user reviews
• Batch import products
• Automatic tax calculations
• Integration with Google analytics
• Create customer accounts
• Order management
• Secure cart with the option to pay by credit card, PayPal, authorize.net, Google Checkout, and more
• SEO tools with Google SiteMap support
• Blogging platform
• Marketing tools including discounts and coupons
• Customizable storefront with premade layouts
• Two versions of Magento available – Community Edition, which is free to download (to install on your own server) or a hosted service called Enterprise Edition

Product Management

Magento allows users to manage inventory even in multiple locations. You can assign products to multiple sources and track inventory at each individual location – great for larger businesses that may have stock in different places.

You can also have full control over your orders – you can view, edit, fulfil, and create new orders in the admin area. They enable you to offer great customer service, too, by allowing representatives to create orders and customer accounts, to update individual customer’s carts, and update wish lists.

They also offer some advanced indexing methods, which will allow you to update your catalog quickly and easily.

Although the initial setup (if you’re going for the community version of Magento) is a little tricky, once you’ve got it up and running, entering product information is pretty intuitive.

Storefront

Magento comes with a blank base theme, or a free theme from the store (Luma). If you want more choice, they have some for sale on their own Marketplace, or you can buy them from separate websites.

Magento does offer a ton of flexibility. If you have the skills, you can build a theme from scratch. You can also customize your storefront to your heart’s content, but it’s not as straightforward as Shopify. (Again, page-builder extensions are a good call here, as they allow you to build your pages in a much simpler way).

They offer some powerful tools for merchandising. You can organize product category pages, either using their drag-and-drop interface, or by setting rules that sort products into a certain order (for example, you could have them ordered by best seller, or newest products).

You have lots of options when it comes to presenting product pages to customers – you can zoom in on product images, display product videos, show color swatches, show multiple products, and more.

Shopping Cart

Magento offers a secure shopping cart with a ton of extra features. Customers can see tax and shipping estimates automatically, and they are automatically recognized when they enter their email address – making their shopping experience super convenient. Customers can create wish lists and save their shopping cart for later.

Like the rest of the platform, there’s a lot to offer here, but it takes a little time to learn Magento’s full potential.

Marketing/SEO Tools

As you might expect, there’s tons to offer here, too. You can encourage customers to shop again by offering reward points for certain actions (like leaving reviews, for instance). You can enable gift registries and allow customers to purchase gift cards (both physical and virtual). You can even set up private sale sites or flash sale sites – a great way to reward loyal customers.

It automatically generates a sitemap for Google, creates search-engine-friendly URLs, and allows you to take control of URLs using rewrites – so they’ve thought about SEO too, with Magento 2 improving their SEO tools.

Analytics

Magento has an intuitive interface, with a dashboard that allows you to quickly see data, including total sales, best-selling products, and more. It syncs with Google Analytics, giving you a wide range of data to work with. This includes insights on website traffic and visitor data. It does involve setting up a Google Analytics account and syncing it, but there are tutorials online that go through this step-by-step.

Integrations

Magento has a huge amount of extensions available on their Marketplace. Some are free and some are paid, and there’s plenty to choose from, including:

• Customer Support
• Payment and Security
• Marketing
• Accounting and Finance
• Shipping and Fulfilment
• Site Optimization

Well-chosen extensions can make your life a lot easier when it comes to using Magento – check out our guide to some of the best ones here for some ideas.

Support

There’s a steep learning curve when it comes to using Magento, but they do offer a lot of support and guidance – but it can feel a bit overwhelming for beginners, as the user guides are quite technical.

It has a variety of tech resources, how-to guides, and troubleshooting solutions. There’s also a forum of users.

You can call their helpline if you need further support or start an online chat.

Pricing

Magento has two basic plans, as we mentioned earlier:

Community Edition

This is completely free and allows you access to tons of interesting and useful features. You will have to download and install Magento on your own server – this is a bit tricky and has several steps to follow (but there are plenty of online tutorials to walk you through it. The process is a lot easier if you have a person on your team that has some technical experience).

The real cost lies in buying themes and extensions, which vary in price.

Enterprise Edition

This is a hosted service, set up by Magento themselves. It’s expensive – they don’t advertise the price as you have to get a quote depending on the size of your company and what you want to achieve.

Frequently Asked Questions about Magento

Is Magento good for dropshippers?

It can be using the right extension – there are several Magento extensions aimed at dropshippers.

How many sites use Magento?

Magento has over 250,000 users – including Coca Cola and Ford, and many other big businesses.

How can I learn how Magento works?

There are many free resources out there to help you learn how to use Magento’s community edition – YouTube has tons of video tutorials. They do require a bit of time and patience though!

What’s the difference between Magento 1 and 2?

Essentially, Magento 2 offers a much faster experience, improving load times for both you and your customers. Magento 2 has an improved dashboard and user interface and meta tags for better SEO.

We Think Magento is Suited for …

Larger businesses who require a customized, and perhaps more complex, eCommerce solution, or those with a lot of technical experience already.

You can request a demo for Magento here.

Shopify

Shopify was launched in 2004. It’s one of the biggest eCommerce platforms out there – coming in at over 1.2 million users, many people are using it to build and run eCommerce stores.

Here’s a quick look at the main features of Shopify:

• 70+ storefront themes
• Mobile-commerce ready
• Full blogging platform
• Customize stores with logos and branding
• Cloud-based website builder
• Secure shopping cart
• Take payments from most credit cards, PayPal, and Stripe
• Create customer profiles and customer accounts
• Manage inventory
• Manage order fulfillment
• Offer refunds
• Compatible with drop shipping
• Send customizable emails to customers
• In-built marketing and SEO tools
• Detailed analytics dashboard

Product Management

The product management system is well-organized on Shopify. Adding a product is straightforward – you can easily add a title, description, images, videos, set product availability, set the pricing, add an SKU, and assign tags to each product.

Shopify doesn’t set a limit on products, so you can have as many as you want. Plus, you can add SEO product tags at this stage, which is useful.

You can also organize products into collections. This allows your customers to search for items by category, and will appear on your website as a gallery of products – this is a great way to encourage customers to browse, and depending on the theme you choose, it showcases your products beautifully.

Storefront

There are a handful of free templates for your storefront – they’re all customizable to a certain extent, and they’re well-designed.

There’s also a collection of paid themes. These vary in price but tend to be around the $160-$180 mark.

You can play around with each page on your website – you can add images with text, text columns, collections, testimonials, and galleries. You can also edit the theme settings, including altering the color scheme and typography. It’s not as highly customizable as other platforms, but there’s a decent amount to work with, and if you want, there are a range of page building apps for Shopify (like Shogun) that can help.

Shopping Cart

Shopify has a secure shopping cart, with a free 256-bit SSL certificate (the same level of security used by banks). Customers can pay using Visa, Mastercard, Discover, and American Express. It also partners with over 100 payment gateways, including Bitcoin and PayPal.

Shopify automatically calculates shipping rates from some shipping carriers – notably UPS, USPS, and FedEx. It also deals with tax automatically, saving users time and effort.

Users on all price plans have access to abandoned cart recovery – customers who abandon their cart will be automatically sent an email reminder to complete the purchase.

Marketing/SEO Tools

Shopify offer some SEO tools. You can easily customize H1, title, and meta tags, for example.

You can also encourage customers to make a purchase by offering discounts and gift cards.

In terms of advertising, there are a few options: social media integration is included, so you can run ads on Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr, and you will receive a $100 credit for Google Adwords if you spend $25.

Facebook integration allows you to sell products directly on Facebook, too, so users won’t have to leave the platform to make a purchase.

Analytics

Shopify offers a decent amount of data to work with, including an overview of sales, orders and traffic.

You can create product reports, which allow you to analyse the growth of your store. These reports can be exported to send to other team members. Shopify offers integration with Google Analytics, too.

Integrations

Shopify has a huge Appstore, which is a great bonus. The categories include:

• Store design
• Sales and conversion
• Marketing
• Orders and shipping
• Inventory management
• Customer support
• Reporting
• Finding products
• Productivity
• Finances
• Places to sell
• Trust and security

App prices vary, but there’s a good number of free apps and integrations to enjoy.

Support

Shopify’s Help Centre is a good resource, with articles and videos on how to make the most of the platform – they’ve created some very detailed guides, with specific guidance for dropshippers. They also offer online chat, email, phone, and Twitter support.

Pricing

There are three price plans:

Basic Shopify – $29 per month

This allows you two staff accounts and a good range of basic features.

Shopify – $79 per month

This gives you access to 5 staff accounts, and most of Shopify’s features.

Advanced Shopify – $299 per month

If you want to scale up your business, this plan allows you to have 15 staff accounts, and all the features Shopify has to offer.

Frequently Asked Questions about Shopify

We Think Shopify is Suited for …

Small-to-medium sized businesses who want a simple platform that can be used even by beginners. It’s also great for dropshippers.

You can try a free 90-day trial of Shopify by clicking here.

Magento vs Shopify – Which is Better?

This is a really difficult one to call as the platforms are actually very different.

Product Management

Both platforms offer great product management and make it simple to upload products. Magento has a few more features in terms of catalogue organisation, so we think it wins this category.

Storefront

The possibilities of both platforms are endless when it comes to store themes and content, but we have chosen Shopify, because it’s a much easier platform to learn, and it has a range of free themes.

Shopping Cart

We’ll call this one a draw – both offer a secure shopping cart with tons of features.

Marketing/SEO Tools

We’ll give this one to Shopify, too, as it’s easier to access and use marketing features like abandoned cart recovery, and creating ads is really simple. They both have a lot to offer in terms of marketing, however.

Analytics

Again, Shopify has to win this one, purely because it’s a lot easier to access analytics straight away.

Integrations

Both have a huge amount to offer here, but we’ll give this one to Magento – the catalog of extensions is huge, and they make a big difference to your user experience.

Support

Shopify wins this one again – the tutorials are in-depth and very useful. They both offer a lot in terms of support though, which is great.

In Conclusion …

Which platform is the best depends on your individual requirements.

Magento is a very powerful platform. The option to use it for free is generous and allows developers to create customized eCommerce stores with a wide array of features. The built-in tools are excellent, including the marketing and product catalog tools. It’s used and enjoyed by some very big companies, which is a great endorsement. If you’re a larger business and you have tech support, it could be the best choice. (If you have a big budget, their Enterprise edition is fantastic, too.)

However, it does have a learning curve. It’s not particularly suited for beginners – even navigating their features can be difficult if you’re not technically-minded – and it requires a bit of setup to use the Community version. If you want something that’s simple to use right from the start, it’s not going to be the choice for you.

Shopify, meanwhile, is better suited for small-to-medium businesses, dropshippers, and beginners. The process of setting up a Shopify store is simple – it just takes a few moments to get going. Plus, you have 90 days to test out the platform fully before committing to a plan, which is generous. With extensions and paid themes, you can create a store that looks and runs exactly the way you want it to, even if you don’t have a lot of experience.

For that reason, we’ve chosen Shopify as our winner today – but they’re both excellent platforms for eCommerce depending on your needs.

Our WooCommerce vs Magento comparison will show you the similarities and differences between these two popular eCommerce platforms, so if you’re trying to decide between them, we may be able to help.

What you look for in an eCommerce platform depends upon the scale of your business, the features you want, and the technical support you require. On the face of it, WooCommerce and Magento are similar: both are technically free to use, both allow you to create an online store, both have a range of extensions available. However, they’re quite different in terms of features and learning curves.

In this article, we’ll take a quick look at the main differences between the two platforms, and then focus on each one in turn, looking at their features in-depth. Then we’ll compare them at the end in each category, to see which one is best.

The Main Differences between WooCommerce vs Magento

Here are the main differences between the WooCommerce and Magento:

• WooCommerce is built for WordPress, whereas Magento isn’t
• WooCommerce is fairly simple to use for beginners, whereas Magento requires more work
• WooCommerce requires extensions for marketing tools, whereas Magento has some built-in
• WooCommerce has an easy-to-understand knowledge base, whereas Magento is a bit more difficult
• WooCommerce has a mobile app, whereas Magento doesn’t
• WooCommerce has basic inventory management, whereas Magento is more powerful

WooCommerce – In Depth

WooCommerce is an eCommerce platform designed for WordPress. It was launched in 2011 and is very popular among WordPress users.

Let’s take a look at the main features of WooCommerce:

• Secure cart with a variety of payment methods (including PayPal and Stripe)
• Uses custom theme for WordPress (Storefront) designed to create an easy-to-navigate store
• Tax automatically calculated
• Easy stock management
• Includes mobile app for on-the-go store management
• Many extensions available

Inventory Management

Uploading a product to WooCommerce is a simple process – it feels a little like creating a blog post. You can add text, images, and adjust the formatting. It’s very simple to add the price, manage stock levels, and add shipping information.

Products are sorted into categories, like Simple (single products that are shipped), Grouped (products that are related to each other), Virtual, Downloadable, External (listed on your website but sold somewhere else), Variable (products with variations, and Subscriptions. This distinction helps to keep products organised.

You can organise products further by placing them into categories. You can also add upsells or cross-sells easily, which is useful – with an upsell, your customer will see ‘You may also like …’ with a range of items underneath the product they’re interested in, whereas a cross-sell will allow you to link products that specifically go together (like items that are part of a set).

Order management is also made simple. You can see a list of all orders, clicking on each one to see order information or to complete an action. Orders are color coded so you can check their status quickly.

Storefront

Installing Storefront to your WordPress account allows you access to a variety of paid or free themes. The free themes are not particularly exciting, but they are clear and easy to navigate. There is a wide range of paid themes which are well-designed. This is a live demo of one of the paid themes available:

WooCommerce pages are built using blocks, which can then be edited (you can change the images, titles, and content). It’s very customizable, but you do need to have a bit of technical knowledge if you want to do anything other than basic customizing.

Shopping Cart

WooCommerce offers a safe, secure shopping cart with a variety of payment methods, including:

• Debit and credit cards
• payPal
• Check Payments
• BACS
• Stripe
• Cash on Delivery
• Klarna
• PayPal Pro

One great feature of WooCommerce is how easy it is to offer different types of payments, like subscriptions.

Marketing/SEO Tools

WooCommerce does not have much in terms of SEO and marketing tools straight away. Instead, you have to rely on the huge amount of plugins available for WordPress. This is great as it allows you to customize your user experience depending on your own needs, but it can potentially push the costs up. There are a lot of marketing tools available, including:

• Marketing automation
• Email marketing
• Social media marketing
• Coupons and discounts
• Marketing analysis

Analytics

WooCommerce offers good reporting – you can see orders, customers, stock, and taxes at a quick glance. You can also view your best-selling products, total number of coupons used, and stock levels quickly and easily. It’s not the most in-depth reporting out there, but it gives you enough information to get going. Plus, there are plugins that can offer more detailed reporting.

Integrations

If you want to customize your WooCommerce experience, extensions are the way to go. There are a variety to choose from, including extensions developed by WooCommerce, as well as third-party extensions. The categories include:

• Product Type
• Store Management
• Marketing
• Payments
• Enhancements
• Shipping
• Subscriptions

You can also view all the free extensions together, which is helpful. They offer integration with some social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest.

We also need to mention the mobile app here. Having a mobile app is useful, and the WooCommerce app allows you to check orders and track your store’s performance on the go – the app itself is free, but obviously requires a WooCommerce account to use it.

Support

WooCommerce has a very clear, easy-to-navigate knowledge base, full of tutorials, how-to guides, and tips. They also have a support request form, and a busy user forum if you need extra help.

Pricing

WooCommerce is free to use. On the surface of it, this is obviously a big bonus. But you do have to pay to have a WordPress account (including a domain), plus you’ll probably want to splash out on a Storefront theme, as well as a few extensions to give you access to extra marketing platforms.

This makes it tricky to compare to other platforms – it’s hard to estimate the cost, because it will depend on your individual requirements.

Frequently Asked Questions

What’s the difference between a WordPress plugin and a WooCommerce extension?

Plugins can be used by anyone with a WordPress account. Extensions require a base plugin in order to work. WooCommerce extensions have been designed for eCommerce businesses, making it easier and simpler to find the features they need quickly.

Is there a limit to how many products I can upload to WooCommerce?

No – there’s no limit to the number of products you can upload.

Does WooCommerce charge fees per transaction?

No – there is no fee per transaction on WooCommerce.

Can I trial a WooCommerce extension?

No – they don’t offer free trials for extensions or plugins.

We Think WooCommerce is Suited For …

eCommerce businesses who like the functionality of WordPress, and those who want to be able to customize their user experience using plugins and extensions.

You can find out more about WooCommerce here.

Magneto

Magento was launched in 2008. It’s a powerful platform, used by big companies like Coca Cola and Ford. It has a lot of features, including:

• Two main versions – Community Edition (free to download) and Enterprise Edition
• Powerful inventory management
• Automatic tax and sales calculation
• Order management
• Secure cart with multiple payment options including Google Checkout, debit or credit card, PayPal, and authorize.net
• SEO tools using Google Analytics
• Customizable storefront
• Built-in blogging platform

Inventory Management

One strength of Magento is the inventory management tools. It offers advanced indexing methods, including mass import of products. You can manage inventory even if it is stored in different locations.

You also have a lot of control over orders – the admin area allows you to edit or even create new orders. You can assign representatives to create customer accounts and place orders manually, which is good for customer service.

Storefront

Magento has a blank base theme, or a theme from the store (called Luma). There are more choices available, either through their Marketplace, or from a third-party website. These vary in price from around $80 right through to $500.

If you have a bit of technical knowledge, you can build a theme from scratch. If that goes beyond your skill set, you could go for a page-builder extension instead, which will open up much more customization without requiring any coding skills.

You can organise products into category pages, allowing your customers to browse similar products. This is done using a drag-and-drop interface. Customers can see color swatches, zoom in on product images, and watch product videos.

Shopping Cart

Magento’s shopping cart is secure. It comes with a range of extra features – like automatic tax and shipping calculations for customers, wish lists, and the ability to save shopping carts to checkout later.

Payment options include:

• Credit or debit card
• PayPal
• BACS
• Cash on delivery
• Authorize.net

Marketing/SEO Tools

Magento has a range of powerful tools for marketing. You can offer customers reward points for leaving reviews or creating accounts. Customers can create gift registries, and they can buy gift cards. You can set up separate sites for flash sales, or even private sales for select customers.

There’s also a range of options to improve SEO. Magento automatically generates a sitemap for Google and creates URLs that are search-engine friendly.

Analytics

Magento’s dashboard allows you to see data at a quick glance, including best-selling products and total sales. It uses Google Analytics, giving you access to in-depth reporting, which is great. You can track website traffic, access visitor data, and more. However, it does require a bit of work to sync up with Google Analytics.

Integrations

Magento’s Extension Marketplace has a wide variety of extensions, in the following categories:

• Customer support
• Marketing
• Payment and security
• Accounting and finance
• Site optimization
• Shipping and fulfilment

There are a lot of extensions to choose from – in the above screenshot you can see there are nearly 800 marketing extensions alone.

Support

Magento has a pretty steep learning curve if you’re new. The Knowledge Base has a lot of documentation, but it can be overwhelming if you’ve had no previous experience. If you need further assistance, they have a helpline or online chat function.

Pricing

Magneto has two plans.

Community Edition

The community edition is free to download, but you must upload it onto your own server. This involves several steps (there are tutorials online to walk you through this process). If you go for the Community Edition, you have to be prepared to put a bit of effort into installing it. However, this combined with extensions will allow you to build a great eCommerce store.

Enterprise Edition

If you want Magento to host your store, you’ll have to pay for the Enterprise edition. Unfortunately, we can’t tell you how much this is, because potential users must get a quote from Magento depending on the size of the business and the features they want.

Frequently Asked Questions

We Think Magento is Suited For …

Larger businesses, or businesses wanting a personalized eCommerce solution with more complex features.

You can try a demo for Magento here.

WooCommerce vs Magento – Which is Better?

We’ll take a look at each category to see how they stack up against each other.

Inventory Management

Magento has this one – advanced inventory management makes it simple to manage a lot of stock, even if it’s in different locations.

Storefront

They’re about even, we think – with the right themes and extensions, you can create beautiful storefronts on both platforms.

Shopping Cart

Magento wins this one, as they offer a lot of payment options, with built-in tools to make the customer’s shopping experience as quick and smooth as possible.

Marketing/SEO Tools

Magento wins this one again, as it has some tools built into the platform. While WooCommerce has a lot of great marketing tools, you’ll have to download extensions to get to them.

Analytics

Both platforms offer a decent analytics dashboard, however, it’s easier to use the analytics provided by WooCommerce.

Integrations

Again, they’re both about the same here – there are so many extensions available for both platforms, which is great.

Support

We’ll give this one to WooCommerce, as their knowledge base is a bit easier to navigate.

Our Verdict: WooCommerce vs Magento

So which platform is best?

We don’t think there is a clear winner here. WooCommerce is more suited for beginners. It has enough features for any sized business, especially with the use of extensions. It’s simple to use, with lots of support for beginners, and the free themes, although basic, can be customized further using extensions. The mobile app is great too. Ultimately, WooCommerce may be the better choice if you’re looking to start an eCommerce business from scratch with no prior experience. It’s also great if you have some experience with blogging, as the WordPress platform is built for that.

However, Magento is the more powerful of the two. If you have in-house tech support or a team member who specialises in web development, you may find that it’s the better choice for your business. Although it takes a bit of effort to learn, the possibilities with Magento are endless. It has the advantage of having built in shopping cart and marketing tools, and the range of extensions available make the user experience highly customizable. Extensions can make the experience easier (especially when it comes to page building, for example), but you still need that initial setup before you can begin installing extensions (and extensions can take a long time to install, too). Of course, if you have the budget for it, you can go for the Enterprise Edition – but this is prohibitively expensive for most people.

The long and the short of it? If you want something that is user-friendly, go for WooCommerce. If you’re willing to go through more of a learning curve in order to access powerful features, pick Magento.

Want to build a great looking page for your eCommerce store? Our guide to the best Magento page builders can help.

Having a visually appealing website can make a big difference to your conversion rates. A great-looking page not only showcases your products, it also encourages customers to stay for longer – and can drive your visitors along the path you want them to take.

You might think that creating pages is complicated, or that you need to know HTML or CSS to do it. Thankfully, there are Magento extensions out there that turn what could be a headache into an easy, smooth process – with no coding knowledge whatsoever.

Today, we’ll be looking at three page builders for Magento, looking at their features, user reviews, and pricing, to help find the right 3rd party extension for you.

First, let’s take a quick look at some of the features you should look for when choosing a page builder.

What to Look for in a Page Builder

There are a few things to keep an eye out for:

The Page Builder

How does the page builder work? A drag-and-drop builder is best for those with no coding knowledge – it’s such a simple way to build a page. What content can you create using their page builder? Can you add images and videos easily? How easy is it to add product information?

Templates

If you don’t want to build a page from scratch, check that your chosen Magento extension has premade templates that you like the look of.

User-Friendliness

Building pages can take a long time. You want to try and find an extension that is easy to navigate and intuitive to use, to save frustration and headaches.

SEO

It’s important that your pages are optimized for SEO. How can the extension you’re looking that support you in this? Do they offer built-in SEO tools? Do their pages have fast loading times?

Extra Features

Some extensions have extra features, like scheduled posting or integration with other platforms. The more features you have, the higher the cost tends to be, however.

Real-Life Examples

Finally, you might want to see if a page builder is any good, check out some websites that have been built using that platform (you can usually find links to examples on the extensions’ own website). If you like what you see, you will probably be able to create something similar using that extension for your own pages.

3 Best Page Builders – an Overview

Name of Feature	DragDropr	Shogun	Page Builder by Magezon
Page Editor	Drag and Drop	Drag and Drop	Drag and Drop
Pre-made templates	No	Yes	Yes
SEO tools	No	Yes	Yes
Custom page elements	Yes	Yes	Yes
Fast page loading	Yes	Yes	Yes
Extra features	None	Split testing, page scheduling, analytics suite	Built-in color palettes     Logo gallery with over 900 logos
Pricing	From $14.90 per month for single use, up to $198 for multiple clients	From $49 per month	$199 one-time payment, plus optional $79/$129 service agreement for extra support

DragDropr Visual Page Builder

DragDropr is a great example of how an extension can help you to build a page, even without any coding or technical knowledge. It has a drag-and-drop interface, so all you have to do is point and click – it’s super easy to use.

It has a bunch of great features that will make your website both attractive and easy to use. The ‘add to cart button’ widget is really useful, plus you can add new products simply by dragging and dropping it onto the page. It has over 200 content blocks to choose from, so you should be able to create the page you have envisioned.

You can even enable or disable product elements including images, names, and descriptions – all within the DragDropr interface.

You can create Magento landing pages, articles, and blog pages.

Antoher great feature is the ability to save your content as a HTML file. This allows you to edit your page at a HTML level if you’re that way inclined, and you can also import a new theme with just one click.

Plus, the page you are editing shows changes to your page in real time – so you’ll be able to see exactly what your page looks like as you go.

In terms of mobile and tablet devices, DragDropr generates content that automatically adjusts to the screen size of the person browsing. You can also check to see what it looks like on different devices, to make sure it looks great on every screen size.

You can create great looking pages with DragDropr – however, it doesn’t seem to have pre-made templates to choose from. If you’re happy to work with the layout your current Magento template provides, this might not be a problem, but it’s something to be aware of.

One of the aims of DragDropr is to be ‘efficient’ – which it certainly is. If you’re looking for a drag-and-drop editor and nothing else, it could be a really great choice for you. However, it does lack some features that other page editors have, like analytics, for example. It also doesn’t give you much guidance in terms of making the most of your pages, so if you want to find out how to improve your SEO or conversion rates, it’s not going to walk you through it.

However, that being said, it comes at a low price point – so if you’re on a tight budget, and you’re willing to forgo some of the extra features another page builder might offer, it could be a decent option for you.

There isn’t a huge amount of information on the DragDropr Magento FAQ page, which is a shame. This could be a great resource on how to use the platform to your advantage if it had more articles and guides. However, the DragDropr staff are knowledgable and users say they are extremely helpful (but more on that in a moment).

Main Features

• Intuitive drag-and-drop editor
• Over 200 content blocks to choose from, including videos, text, images, buttons, and dynamic content
• Easily add products from your Magento store
• Enable and disable product elements
• Create an ecommerce website that looks good on every device
• Live preview allows you to see how it looks as you go along

User Reviews

Users enjoy how easy the DragDropr interface is to use, even for those who have never built a website before. They also report that the team offer great support for when things do go wrong. They even reported that the team were able to provide them with CSS that allowed them to add drop-down content to their page, which is helpful.

It has an average rating of 4.8 out of 5 stars.

Pricing

The extension itself is free to download in the Magento extension store. However, you need to have a DragDropr account to use it. There are three price plans:

• Single Account – $14.90 per month paid annually

This is great for users who only have one online store.

• Agency – $118 per month paid annually

This is a good plan for those who have clients they want to build websites for – it allows for up to 30 clients.

• White Label – $198 per month paid annually

This is for bigger brands and gives you up to 50 clients and unlimited custom domains.

You can find DragDropr on the Magento extension store here. 

Frequently Asked Questions

Is DragDropr compatible with Magento 2.3?

According to their page on the Magento extension store, it is not currently compatible with 2.3 – but they’re working on it.

Can I add custom fonts to my pages?

You can – this involves tweaking the CSS a little, but they have a tutorial on their knowledge base.

Will my pages load quickly?

According to DragDropr, pages should load quickly as they use pure HTML code.

What happens if DragDropr goes down – will my content still be live?

Yes – your content will still be live as it is saved in your own Magento system.

Shogun

Shogun is another great example of an extension that can help you to build websites with no technical knowledge – again, with a simple to use drag-and-drop page editor, you can simply choose from a range of page elements, drop them onto the page, and then fill them with the content you require.

Shogun is a very visually pleasing platform, which is helpful if you’re spending hours at a time working on your website. You can add a range of content to your pages, including:

• Text blocks
• Images
• Videos
• Headings
• Buttons
• Sliders
• Social media buttons

It also has a range of content options for your Magento products. You can add a buy now button, product description, product images and videos, and more. All of this can be dragged and dropped where you would like it to go. This makes it really easy to build product pages that look exactly the wat you want them to.

You can also create custom HTML elements, if you have the skills to do so. At any time, you can view how your page will look on different devices, and the templates are responsive, meaning they work well on any device.

The pre-made templates are great – there’s quite a lot of them to choose from, and they all look stylish and easy to navigate. If you don’t want to use a template, you can create a page from scratch, building the basic shape using page elements and then adding content afterwards.

But what makes Shogun stand out is the extra features. As well as offering SEO tools like the ability to edit meta titles and descriptions for each page, and lazy loading/image compression for faster loading times, it also has more tools to help you to make the most of your pages.

You can schedule page uploads as part of a marketing campaign, allowing you to measure their performance using the Analytics Suite. This will give you detailed analytics in a range of categories including clickthrough rates, bounce rates, and abandoned cart rates. You can even compare two pages to see which one is performing better in any of the given categories. This is a great feature – the more knowledge you have about how a page is doing, the better chance you have of creating pages that work really well.

It also has A/B testing. This is a great way to optimize your pages to reach their full potential – simply create two different versions of the same page, and Shogun will run the test, automatically choosing a winner after a certain period of time has passed (or you can choose to review the results yourself). Creating two versions of the same page is very simple.

All in all, it’s an excellent platform with plenty of extra features to use.

However, like DragDropr, the FAQ page is quite sparse – it would be good to see more tutorials and videos, although the main Shogun FAQ does have a bit more to offer in that respect.

Main Features

• Drag-and-drop editor allows you to add blocks of content
• Stylish premade templates
• Page scheduling
• Analytics Suite
• Split Testing
• Built-in SEO tools

User Reviews

There weren’t any reviews to look at on the Magento extension marketplace. However, looking at other reviews online, users seem to enjoy using the Shogun interface, finding it very user-friendly and intuitive. They also found the support to be good, with Shogun representatives quick to respond to queries.

Pricing

The Shogun app is free on the Magento marketplace, but you will need a subscription to Shogun. Prices start at $49 per month, but the price does rise if you want some of the extra features, like AB testing. 

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I save a page as a template if I want to use it again?

Yes – you can easily save a page you like as a template using Shogun.

What is a page status?

The page status is a quick way to show you what each page is doing. ‘Published’ means the page is live, ‘Draft’ means you haven’t published it yet, and ‘Outdated’ means you have made edits that haven’t been published to the page yet. If a page says ‘running test’ it means you are currently running an A/B test on it.

Can I add my own page elements to Shogun?

Yes, you can add custom elements and HTML elements using Shogun.

Page Builder by Magezon

If you want to create great-looking pages, Page Builder by Magezon could work really well for you. Again, no coding skills are required – just time and creativity. There are more than 50 elements available in this drag-and-drop editor, all of which can be customized to create the exact look you want. It works well with all common Magento themes including Porto and Ultimo.

However, there’s one thing to note right at the start – there are actually two page building extensions by Magezon. One is the Single Product Page builder. This allows you to change the structure of a product page for your Magento store – it does not allow you to add content. It works in a different way than the Magezon Page Builder extension, even though they look similar – just something to keep an eye on when you’re browsing the extension marketplace.

When it comes to elements, you have a lot of choice, including text blocks, images, videos, product sliders, and buttons – all of which can be tweaked. You can set borders, padding, margins, and background colors – plus, it comes with color palettes, which help you to stick to the theme of your website. It also comes with access to a library of over 900 icons – so you should be able to find icons that match your theme perfectly.

Like the other platforms, at any time, you can view and edit how your page will look on different types of devices. The templates are responsive and load quickly on any device.

If you like, you can choose from a range of beautiful templates – or you can create one from scratch. You can even save pages as templates – meaning you can use them again and again.

The pages are SEO friendly, too – fast loading speeds are emphasised here, and it states that every line of code created is SEO optimized – this means you don’t have to worry too much about SEO to start with.

It’s a really intuitive interface, simple to use – but it also allows you a great deal of control and customization, including being able to use your own custom CSS. The pages you can create have the potential to look stunning:

As with any platform, it does take some time to learn, but the interface is pretty easy to use.

It’s compatible with some useful plugins – including some email marketing services like MailChimp, social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and more.

In terms of features, it’s kind of in the middle of DragDropr and Shogun. It doesn’t have the excellent split testing or analytics offered by Shogun, but it does have more features than DragDropr provides. The standout points for us are the SEO optimization and emphasis on fast loading speeds.

It also has the advantage of having great user guidance. There is a user guide that covers every (and we mean every) detail of the platform – but if the idea of reading through it doesn’t thrill you, they also have a YouTube channel offering video tutorials.

Ideally, we’d like to see more guides about how to create high-converting pages, but still, it’s a useful feature.

Main Features

• Drag and drop editor allows you to choose from over 50 elements
• Beautiful templates
• Built-in SEO optimization
• Integration with other plugins
• Creates fast, responsive pages
• Useful knowledge base

User Reviews

User reviews are great, with users happily reporting that the platform is very simple to use, and that they were able to create amazing pages with it. They also said that the customer support is great, and that the support combined with the ease of the drag-and-drop editor means that even with little-to-know website building experience, you can still build a great page.

It has an average rating of 5 out of 5 stars.

Pricing

Page Builder by Magezon costs $199 (this is a one-off payment). You can choose to add a service agreement, however, which gives you extra support – you can get six months for $79 or twelve months for $129.

Frequently Asked Questions

In Conclusion – Which is the Best Page Builder for Magento?

All three options are great. However, you do get what you pay for. Although DragDropr is a great budget option, it does lack some of the features that Shogun and Magezon have to offer. It is brilliant for businesses with a small budget, however.

Magezon represents a good middle-ground. You can create amazing looking pages with Magezon, and it has the advantage of a one-off payment – although if you don’t have $200 to pay upfront, it may put you off.

Shogun is our top choice for a few reasons. Although the price can add up if you want the extra features, they are appealing. Split testing and access to detailed analytics can have a real impact on your business if used wisely. Plus, it’s easy to use, the templates are beautiful, and the built-in SEO tools can make a big difference to the visibility of your pages. Although it does cost more than DragDropr, we think the tools it provides makes it worth the investment.

Further read:

• How To Build A Landing Page for 5 Popular Ecommerce Tools

Sugar. Spice. And everything nice. These are the ingredients the following online stores choose to create some of the best Shopify stores. There’s no shortage of top ecommerce website examples and strategies to attract, engage, and convert online buyers from what we saw scouring through hundreds of Shopify sites for this guide.

Now, consider this: The Shopify ecommerce platform now runs 800,000+ ecommerce stores worldwide, powers 430,000+ websites, and is the third-largest ecommerce platform on the planet.

It is clear why you need to create a unique ecommerce store to attract and keep interested customers and wade out the competition in 2020 (and beyond).

Like a high-converting physical store, you’ll want to create online experiences that highlight your brand personality and make your online store memorable. The reward: Buyers can find you by name again and again.

The best converting Shopify stores of 2020 will almost certainly take up the largest piece of the retail sales cake.

And that cake is predicted to grow to about $3.9 trillion in 2020 and 17% of all U.S. retail sales by 2022.

That’s one cake party you don’t want to miss.

Also, keep in mind that more and more customers are willing and able to buy stuff from overseas. So, you can target those markets as well instead of worrying-sick that your local market share could be charmed off your Shopify cart and checkout page.

From stunning UX design to on-point copy to bold branding to seizing storytelling, these Shopify online stores will inspire your new store or next ecommerce website redesign.

And that can mean attracting and keeping a community of loyal buyers that rally even more highly qualified prospects with sweet referrals to you.

Sounds like something you’d rather do right now?

Here are the best Shopify store examples to inspire action, creative success, and the competitive gene in you.

1. Not Pot

When you know your target audience may have some reservations about trying new hemp gummies, what do you do?

Joke about it and assure them it is not what it looks like. That’s what.

Tell them you sell lab-tested CBD gummies, the kind they can enjoy stress-free, knowing they’d pass any drug test after chewing a boatload of those.

Go as far as naming yourself accordingly. And adopt an unmistakable slogan.

Then design your vegan CBD gummies to look like harmless polar bears, complete with strawberry and apple pectin in them.

And square it all off by revealing why CBD gummies are everything they’ve been missing in their life.

It is no wonder Not Pot is a top Shopify store to take cues from.

2. So Worth Loving

What better way to instantly connect emotionally with visitors than to instill that sense right from the homepage?

But it can feel like So Worth Loving is trying too hard to some. So, the big “sincerely” in the middle works well to assure the visitor that they mean it.

It’s a simple, every-day design that feels like a personal friend recommending the best rather than a profit-churning machine out to get your cash.

To top it all off, each product has its own short story followed by a clear call-to-action. And look at how they capture emails:

So worth loving!

3. Beardbrand

Grooming facial hair can be a pain.

Beardbrand knows so and chooses to offer value upfront.

By offering a quiz to find out the best beard style for their visitors, right on the homepage, Beardbrand smoothly grooms the visitor to the recommended style and products with a clear call-to-action button to view beard products.

And then tons of beard grooming wisdom:

The navigation buttons drop down to reveal neat categories and insights on kits, tools, and products.

You get the vibe they know their stuff, and that’s the kind of place to buy.

4. Haus

Home goods seller, haus, blends clear navigation tabs with a clean, modern look to match the contemporary look and feel of their products.

Shoppers can go straight to a category, such as brand, from the menu on the left, and even search a favorite product from there — no complicated paths to nurturing visitors here.

It helps that the furniture and accessories show out in big, beautiful photography—some in their ideal setting.

5. Kylie Cosmetics

Super-influencer, Kylie Jenner, knows her strongest suit, her lips.

Kylie makes it vivid how good the eye, face, and lip colors would look and feel by displaying stunning pictures of herself wearing the different colors available. Just hover on a product, and it flips to reveal Kylie wearing it.

The gorgeous colors, easy-to-browse, and candy-like illustrations make it all the easier to buy and keep coming back to check what’s new.

And which fan won’t want to email with Kylie Jenner?

6. Studio Proper

There’s a quote on their site by one Mark Parker; “Everything starts with design.” That is exactly what Steve Jobs would say.

And boy, doesn’t it fit for a store that’s designed with simplicity and elegance cues from Apple’s store and website. So, when Apple die-hards get here, the store feels extremely familiar.

They feel at home.

From the sleek, aluminum-finish iPad mounts to the iPhone cases to its wireless charging hubs, they all look Apple-ish.

Add to that Studio Proper’s 12-month warranty, free delivery, ability to “pre-order”, and clean layout and it’s hard not to convert.

7. Ksubi

Apparel store, Ksubi, keeps it minimal and clean. No endless categories to distract visitors. Just a clear call to click on either Shop Mens or Shop Womens.

Instead of displaying a grid of apparel photos, the store uses high-quality photos of models donning Ksubi’s collection, making you imagine how the outfit would look on you, too. That’s a good start.

At the very top of the homepage, Ksubi declares they do offer free global shipping—so anyone anywhere can buy on Ksubi. A huge market right there.

8. Tluxe

Unlike Ksubi, Tluxe adds a lead generation twist by offering a bunch of benefits right when visitors land on the homepage:

• Clean, easy-to-navigate store
• Free shipping on international orders over $300
• 20% off your first order over $200
• And they give the impression you’ll get all that plus timely updates on new arrivals when you submit your email address

Now that’s how you build an email list to nurture casual browsers into repeat customers.

9. Quad Lock

It doesn’t take four seconds before you know what the store is all about. There’s a GIF video background to demonstrate how to fix their smartphone mounting gear to your cash dash, motorbike, bike, and limbs.

Immediately after, Quad Lock manages to sneak in some high-quality use-case photos right above the fold so visitors know exactly what to do next before they can even scroll down.

Scroll down once, and the store convinces you they know their stuff with social—the top publications they’ve featured in, including Engadget, Mashable, The New York Times, and Forbes.

That’s when FOMO strikes hard if you don’t hit that “Get 10% off” tab.

10. Chaos

Chaos manages the chaos many stores find themselves in when they attempt to use splashes of color and big, bold fonts while exuding unmistakable individuality—all on one page.

It’s playful, unique, and creative, which rhymes perfectly with its personalized accessories theme.

Talking of playful…

11. The Candi Factory

The Candy Factory homepage lets you know they don’t take themselves too seriously as they sell custom leggings and underwear.

Well, and perhaps their patriotism to Canada, which we think is a nod to selling high-quality products.

The store is clean and exudes a fun aura to boost.

Every click leads visitors deeper and deeper into the sales funnel. It’s tough to recover and bounce away after a few.

12. Tessemae’s All Natural

Tessemae’s All Natural is top Shopify store for 2020 for a bunch of delightful reasons:

• Stunning food photos that’ll make anyone drool—and reach for the Buy Now button
• Offers value upfront by providing weekly, monthly, and keto meal plans
• 15% off for joining the Tessemae’s email list
• Featured recipes mean fans keep coming back for more—and buy recommended products while at it
• The five slides plus the vivid drop-down menu tabs make it easy to navigate the store from the homepage
• Maintains a variety of products that feel exciting instead of overwhelming
• Tessemae’s All Natural publishes fan photos, which helps make the community feel recognized and develop loyalty

We love the entire structure, color scheme, and fan engagement going on here. Definitely one of the best food stores on the Shopify app.

13. Biko

Biko takes the noble cause route right on the front page by letting visitors know 20% of each pair sold is donated to fight breast cancer through RETHINK.

It feels like joining a movement against a life-threatening, common enemy of Biko’s target audience; women.

And right below the fold, Biko lets visitors know it’s not all gloom and doom by showcasing “Trending Now” jewelry they can spoil themselves to right away.

To boost engagement, Biko suggests featuring customers who tag them on Instagram.

Then it lets you know how chic you’d also look in your new pair by displaying quality photos of models sporting the goods. You just have to click “Shop Now”.

14. Hiut Denim Co.

The store’s homepage doesn’t feel even a bit salesy. Rather, it gives off a classic, print magazine vibe.

Close shots display the brand’s denim in three different use scenarios, so you know they are made to complement your preferred life and style.

Scroll under the fold to meet this:

“Denim Fit for A Duchess”.

The bold statement subsides to reveal a 4-minute video, showing you how Hiut Denim Co. turns materials into denim masterpieces.

Click the “shop” buttons on the menu bar, and you are off to catch lots of photos with models stunting different styles.

That helps show how a pair would fit, so buyers that are uncomfortable with making returns are more likely to shun their inhibitions and click “Buy Now”.

15. WP+Standard

Why make noise when you can make a statement, huh?

The WP Standard landing page exudes dignity and sophistication, wrapped up in a clean, minimalist, and succinct charm.

Buttons are limited to just five with lots of free space all over to ensure the main focus is on clicking that centered “Shop Now” button.

The brand engages fans and secret admirers alike by integrating their Instagram feed at the bottom.

16. Hardgraft

The personality-filled statement declares Hardgraft is the place to be for contemporary, luxurious accessories that don’t go over-the-top.

And no matter where you are, the brand says you’ll receive your order as if it came from the town down the road.

The colors marry the down to Earth mantra. Products are displayed right on the homepage so you can get to what you want in a click or two.

Hover your mouse on an item, and more details will show out.

Simple does it on this top fashion Shopify store in 2020.

Yet, a clever mind knew how to ask you to sign up to their mailing list while assuring everyone Hardgraft doesn’t do spam.

17. Happiness Abscissa

Ha gives visitors the sense they are on a cheerful page that’s easily contagious.

Happy Abscissa doesn’t play it safe with straight lines and conventional image placement on the front page. And still, it works to jolt curiosity among visitors.

There are no more than four clickable buttons to distract, with lots of white space. This is one minimalist approach to conveying a cheery vibe. It works to make Ha one of the best Shopify stores for perfume lovers.

18. Tattly Temporary Tattoos

Permanent tattoos are forever. Fun, except you don’t get to see how a tattoo will look on a real person in advance.

Tattly’s approach to tattooing gets some crucial conversion killers right:

• Click on a product to see how it looks on a real person before risking the purchase
• Video tutorials show you how to apply the tattoo on yourself like a pro even if you are a complete beginner
• Temp tattoos mean you can Themefy an event or party and still get rid of the “ink” look hassle-free (especially convenient for kids)
• Email signup form encourages repeat purchases with a “20% off next purchase” promise

Just click the drop-down icon next to the Shop tab and access everything right from the homepage.

19. Frank Body

Frank Body wins a podium finish in the best cosmetics Shopify store contest for its delightful, personal, and “for ordinary-people” vibe.

It is written in first-person, building rapport between the brand and potential customers.

The beautiful pink color scheme, cute packaging, and tongue-in-cheek marketing convey a charming feminine feel that’s sure to keep the target audience looking in all the right places.

There’s more:

• Beautiful photos of next-door women happy to use Frank Body coffee scrubs encourage the hesitant browser
• A loyalty program to encourage repeat customers
• A limited-time “Win-a-Bedroom” contest to boost conversion goals

No doubting that Frank Body goes all the way!

20. Chubbies

Chubbies lets you know what they are about in an 8-word statement on top of a pile of colorful, reversible fleece jackets.

And you’ll know the trunks and bathing suits they sell are meant for men because they say so right above the fold—and in their interesting mantra below the fold:

It also manages to keep the menu lean enough not to overwhelm, considering the boatload of products they have on there.

Last but not least, Chubbies manages to charm with high-quality photos of their shorts and outerwear, which flip into pics of models wearing them when you hover on each.

21. Revival

Instead of a typical hero shot, Revival Rugs shows you a video background, taking you on a Moroccan journey to reveal the dedicated process each rug has to pass through to get to your doorstep.

Each piece is hand-crafted.

Revival is also so confident you’ll love their rugs that it supports free returns—the 700+ positive customer reviews notwithstanding.

Visitors just need to hover on the drop-down navigational buttons to see everything and get to what they want in a click or two.

We also love how Revival demonstrates rug sizes and how it’ll look in a room with illustrations and real photos, so buyers have fewer objections to converting.

22. Destination Towels

What happens when a professional photographer decides to help people take their destinations to their favorite destinations?

Destination Towels happens.

Choose among 61 destinations and have your favorites infused into your custom, sand-repellant, quick-drying beach towel.

Each piece has its destination’s unique coordinates printed on it.

Plus, the towel ships internationally, complete with a lightweight backpack to carry it with you wherever you go.

To emphasize the personalized experience, Anthony Glick, the Shopify owner and photographer, replies to queries himself.

Now that’s how to do personal touch in 2020.

23. Veestro

This health-conscious meal subscription service uses stunning organic food photography and visual language to get you hungry.

“Imagine devouring delicious, healthy meals daily without as much as lifting a pot”.

That’s a yummy proposal a whole lot of people are ready to make happen in real life. And especially so when the meals are chef-prepped, restaurant-quality, and come in at under $10 a pack.

Veestro then goes ahead to offer a selection of three meal plans, in case you are not sure what to pick right away.

Or, in case you are the adventurous type, want to try something different for a change.

24. Boon Supply

Boon Supply has a fresh take on fundraising.

Instead of laying out your palm for donations, the brand takes on a sustainable ecommerce approach to giving or raising funds for a worthy cause. That’s up to 40% off all merch purchases sent to your choicest course.

The CTA on the homepage makes it crisp clear where you are, what the brand does, and why it does it.

They explain how the process works right below the fold, followed by acres of white and pink space. Not sure whether that’s intentional or if it’s because there isn’t much else to show out.

But the store looks and feels and clean, easy-to-navigate, and to take the right action—whether you are a fundraiser or shopping to help.

25. Twelve Saturdays

Twelve Saturdays is a clothing Shopify store that dresses college football fans for the big days.

Instead of sporting the ole shirts and all, the brand’s copywriters cheerfully encourage fans to spot custom apparel to support their favorite teams in style.

It also employs a gray background, which they overlay with gorgeous, colored photos of models in their products. The result is a simple yet beautiful play on texture.

Shots of cheery young fellows in pairs, supposedly headed to a game, soothe the message in with precision.

And to find out the size of a cloth item, zoom in and out, as well as see back-shots of the same, just hover your mouse on a model’s picture, and the site will do its thing.

Fast. Fluid. Easy.

26. Pipcorn

Pipcorn recently rebranded.

So, their current USP reassures loyal and potential customers who’ve heard about them that they are the same crunchy, munchy snacks store they love and trust.

It adds high-res photos of their different flavors, happy people enjoying Pipcorn, and social proof about how five celebrities swear by Pipcorn snacks.

You’d think the product is not made out of normal corn.

Well, it’s actually non-GMO, gluten-free, vegan, and whole-grain popcorn. Only Pipcorn chose to prioritize how it tastes, a conversion prompt that works for them.

27. Cuppow

Fresh and clean like the food they carry, canning jar brand, Cuppow, goes all out to redefine the meaning of full-package.

That, while striking a clean and minimalist store, so buyers only see what matters: the sustainable canning jars.

You can turn the glass travel mug into a lunch box, clean it up, and refill with fresh juice on the go.

When you receive your order, you’ll get a brochure letting you know just how important your purchase was in the fight against environmental destruction.

That and more makes Cuppow canning jars undeniably memorable and rallies environmental conservation buffs onto the repeat customers log.

28. Litter

Litter knows a photo speaks a thousand words. So, they’ve dedicated the entire homepage to close-up shots of models wearing the store’s custom accessories.

It gets other things right, too:

• Just three menu items guide potential customers to the right pages to boost chances of a conversion
• Lots and lots of stunning photos of models sporting the jewelry so you can see yourself wearing the goodies as well
• Hover on a model’s photo to see the name and price of the worn accessory. Click for more details and to purchase.
• Gift cards and exclusive deals for subscribed fans

29. Sugarfina

Sugarfina comes through as playful, thoughtful, and sweet—just like you’d imagine a candy store to be. And all without overdoing it given their serve an adults’ market, too.

It also uses thematic selling, including offering a special discount, free shipping, and special flavors for your theme if you order by their recommended time.

See?

The store also earns points for engaging potential buyers by offering the option to create a custom candy box and see how it’ll look when it ships and the option to visit their physical store for that Chocolate Factory feel.

30. Henkaa

If you sell convertible dresses online, Henkaa is a top fashion store on Shopify to learn the tricks of the trade from.

Here are some things that work in its favor:

• Gallery of elegant model shoots bring out the best in the dresses and make it easy to see how a dress style, color, and accessories can fit you too
• A “Mystery Bag” tab nurtures curiosity among first-time and repeat visitors
• The shop gifts “Under $100” CTA can help boost multiple item purchases
• Elegant store design blends perfectly with the content

Henkaa is determined to grow an engaged community of loyal customers, too. The “Try It On” menu button lets visitors find a local store to try the dresses on.

Potential customers can even find events they can attend that are ideal for the Henkaa brand of sophisticated dresses.

Henkaa also goes full-throttle on content marketing, updating its blog with posts their target audience loves, such as the Henkaa 2020 Wedding Trend Report.

That’s going the extra mile right there.

31. BioLite

At first glance, BioLite does three things right:

• The USP, “Try A Campfire Without the Smoke”, is spot-on—for people who prefer a more modern campfire solution than the classic wood, smoke, and ash experience.
• Highlights the BioLite Mission, complete with photos of power projects they run in sub-Saharan Africa. A worthy course.
• All products are accessible from the drop-down menu
• BioLite manages to include its “Shop…” CTA buttons above the store’s fold. So, visitors don’t have to scroll down, unsure where to click to buy an item they love.

Well, maybe that’s four things that BioLite gets right.

32. Socco Designs

Witty copy. That readily available reviews tab inspires trust. And the powerful call-to-action in the form of the help popup on the bottom-right corner pulls visitors in with a 10% off promo code for new customers.

The site’s colors look and feel soothing and exotic, a smart design that blends beautifully with its products.

Also, you’ve got to love the crisp photos of the leather products; it makes them look so real that you can see yourself having one, a powerful buying motivator.

33. Spacing

The minimalist space above the fold says all you need to know about Spacing.

It chooses clarity over everything; to make a statement by stating the basics.

We love the drop-down style navigational buttons. Just hit the icon and choose which category you want to shop.

Or, if you prefer to shop at the physical store, scroll down. There’s a map you can use to find your way to the nearest Spacing store. Open and close times are displayed on the right.

Notice how Spacing uses the store’s header to announce new products as they come out. You can grab that idea and implement it on your Shopify store by updating your community about new arrivals, what’s restocked, and so on.

34. Nectar Bath Treats

This creative brand makes bathroom products that it packages to look and feel like sweet treats.

From almond oil bath bombs to milkshake bath soak to cupcake soaps, everything looks yummy except that it is supposed to go into the bathtub—not in a mouth.

It doesn’t help that the bath treats come in edibles form and flavors, too. So, you can grab a Donut soap or Herbal Bath Tea. Macaron soap, anyone?

There’s more:

• Products are hand-made with plant-based ingredients
• All bath treats are sulfate-free and paraben-free
• Stunning visuals that’ll make any grown human drool

The brand’s Instagram feed, which you can view at the bottom of the page, rivals that of the best cupcakes store on Shopify.

From the store colors to product packaging, Nectar Bath Treats is a wonder of the Shopify stores world.

What’s not to like!

35. Wine Wholesales

It is not hard to see why Wine Wholesales has won a bunch of awards in its category.

It does manage to get a couple of things right and offer an immersive wine buying experience.

Those include:

• The wine-red color scheme adds to the immersive feel of the store
• A beautiful background showcasing stacks of classic wooden crates decorated with respected names from the 19^th century
• Responsive menu tabs that help visitors get what they want in a click
• Despite stocking over 1,500 wine selections, complete with quality photos, the store loads fast, which ensures potential customers have fluid experiences and reduce instances of cart abandonment
• Latest Products section highlights the newest selection for experimenters
• Best Sellers of 2019, Wines Under $30, Trending Now, and Most Popular Searches sections let fans keep up with the latest and greatest in the wine industry right from the homepage.

Wine Wholesales does offer free shipping on purchases over $600, which you can pay for securely on the site.

36. BlackHairandSkinCare.com

The organic haircare store may not seem to have the slickest Shopify store design on this guide.

But what it doesn’t make in site design it more than compensates with conversion-focused widgets and a good understanding of its target customers.

It is a simple store with easy-to-figure-out navigation cues.

Three organic haircare products prominently show out at the center of attention.

It might not immediately seem like it but, that’s not a static hero shot. You can slide to the left to view before and after photos of customers who have used the product to regrow and rejuvenate their hair and scalp.

Another genius touch is the nudging progress bar that popups at the bottom of the screen to encourage you to “Spend $99 to get free shipping”. Neat.

37. Triangl

Swimwear store, Triangl, does a bunch of things right:

• A slideshow of vibrant photos right on the homepage grabs and keeps browsers’ attention
• Using crisp, real-world photos makes it natural to see yourself enjoying their swimwear with friends
• Adding social media handles of their models adds a personal touch that feels authentic and easy to attain—by buying their products
• Handy size guide helps visitors get just what they want for their ideal look

The clean interface and close-ups help direct attention where it matters most: the swimwear.

38.The Home Shoppe

The Home Shoppe treats you to indoor and outdoor home furniture and accessories with eye-candy-good photography. It’s hard not to envision the furniture in your own pad or yard vividly.

The “Month’s Specials” and “New Arrivals” tabs help keep customers coming back to find the latest and trendiest. Add to that the uncluttered navigational tabs—for a store with loads of items—and it clear why it’s a top Shopify store to learn from.

39.Norwegian Rain

This fashion brand makes it on this guide for its stunning visuals combined with fast-loading speed, and the promise of top-quality cloth items for the rainy day. Literally.

Like other neat online stores featured here, Norwegian Rain presents an uncluttered homepage with just five navigational tabs.

Its aesthetics and copy appeal to the sophisticated customer, which is what it intends to do. You can tell this is a place to meet high-end tailoring. And the full, pixel-perfect sloths and waterproof shoes’ photos don’t disappoint.

The models range in age, to illustrate Norwegian Rain’s target customers as well, which helps demystify who the brand is looking to serve.

40. Act and Acre

The haircare Shopify store sets itself apart in several ways we couldn’t miss for the world:

• The header lets every visitor know there’s free consulting, free returns, and free shipping to take advantage of.
• Instead of adding a typical USP, the brand showcases positive mentions in big, respected publications such as Vogue to instantly build credibility
• It centers “Our Method” so you can click through to find out what’s so special about their hair care and scalp health products
• Each content page ends with a selection of items you can click on to buy, increasing the store’s chances of making a sale without being intrusive

Interested store visitors can click the “Press” tab to learn what’s new and why it matters.

It may also be a good thing that the site doesn’t stock a ton of products. The products’ page looks neat and loads fast, which is great for a page with high-quality photos.

So, what goes into building the best Shopify stores in 2020?

Secrets of the Best Shopify Stores for 2020

Now, you’ve probably noticed how all the top sellers on this inspiring guide have unique ways to attract, engage, enchant, and convert their browsers.

Different target audience tastes and needs mean diverse ways to build your online store with Shopify.

Yet, four factors are consistently based on the top Shopify sites samples featured here:

Shopify store design

 Think simple to bold to outrageous ecommerce store designs and elements to having just a few, fast-loading pages to make the buying process less arduous.

Also remember to apply classic and latest online sales tactics such as countdown timers, retargeting, niche-branding, and discount coupons.

Shopify ecommerce Strategy

Some took the influencer route, engaging their active and loyal fans on social media to buy direct from their branded Shopify store.

Others used captivating storytelling to counter the rising cost of ecommerce ads, create relatable brands, and attract customers organically.

Some of the bestselling Shopify stores rally their visitors towards a noble course, such as feeding a hungry child for every item you purchase. Who says charitable can’t make bank?

Copy and Content

You do not want to be forgotten. The best climax witty copy and funny demeanor to build a relatable, memorable, and attention-keeping brand personality.

Yet, others are always updating their inventory with custom, hand-made items, so customers are always visiting to see what’s new.

Lots of white spaces. Less text and more stunning and relevant images. Decluttered product pages.

Best Shopify Store Structure

The pros make navigating their online store so easy that knowing the next step to take and purchase a favorite item is a no-brainer.

Frequently Asked Questions

How to Find the Most Visited Shopify Stores in 2020

We promised to pump the competitive gene at the start of this guide, and we plan on keeping that word so you can create one of the most successful Shopify stores

Here’s a nifty little secret to finding the top Shopify stores to give you ideas for your own store in under 3 minutes:

To create a stunning Shopify store, you can use top page builders such as Shogun – this will make the design work easy for you, even if you’re a beginner.

Now, over to you.

Which top Shopify store examples appeal to you the most? And when are you going to take action and make your ecommerce platform shine and convert better?

Further read:

• The best Shopify Alternatives for your Online Store
• How to Create a Great Landing Page on Shopify

If you run an eCommerce business using Magento, you’ve probably seen the huge amount of extensions available to you. With thousands to choose from, it’s easy to think you need all of them – and looking at the Marketplace can be pretty overwhelming.

In our guide to the best Magento extensions, we’ll show you some of the best extensions you can get, covering some important areas that need attention – like language translation, fraud prevention, delivery management, page design, payment, and advertising. Each extension has features that may improve your Magento experience for you and your customers – hopefully landing you more sales!

For each extension, we’ll show you their main features. We’ll also give you the price of each one, as we know that buying extensions for Magento can quickly add up.

Let’s take a look at some of the best extensions out there.

Best for Translation – Language Translator

If you want to increase your sales, you could consider a language translator. Language Translator uses Google Translate, making your store more accessible to a wider range of customers. With over 100 languages, the great thing about this extension is that it can translate products, CMS page data, static blocks, and product reviews using the Mass Translation feature.

Although it’s on the higher side when it comes to pricing, if you think you can make more sales by offering translation into different languages, it’s definitely worth the investment – especially if you own a bigger store and you want to make more sales worldwide.

Main Features

• Backend admin control – you can decide which parts of your store you want to translate
• Translate product information like name and description, meta details, page title and content, and reviews
• Search string – you can search for a specific string and translate it to any language you wish
• Mass translate – you can choose to translate everything into your preferred language in a few clicks

Pricing

To use this extension, you will require a Google API Key, so you’ll need to bear that in mind when working out the cost. At the time of writing, the price of a basic translation API is around $20 per million characters.

The extension itself costs $149. You can also choose to have a 6-month service agreement at $59 and an installation service at $39, but these are optional.

To find out more about Language Translator, click here.

Best for SEO – MageWorx SEO Suite Ultimate

We all know the importance of a good SEO strategy, and you can find extensions for Magento that make managing SEO a lot easier. SEO Suite Ultimate will give you a range of tools, including tools for optimizing categories, product reviews and navigation pages, tools to help you avoid duplicate content issues, and tools to help you improve internal and external cross-linking. It can also help you to create redirects for deleted products.

One of the best things about this extension is that it allows you to create SEO templates for various categories (for example, products), which helps you to streamline your work processes, saving you time.

You also get comprehensive reports, so you can see the difference your SEO strategy is making in a very real, easy-to-understand way. SEO Suite Ultimate has a lot of features to offer – it’s well worth checking out if you don’t know where to start with SEO, or you just help to manage your efforts more effectively.

Main Features

• Advanced SEO Templates – cut down on time spent on manually managing meta data – instead, create SEO templates that automate the process, saving you tons of time. You can create templates for products, categories, and pages
• Optimize SEO for Product Reviews – create custom URLs for product reviews and set canonical tags
• Improve Layered Navigation – using dynamic titles and meta descriptions
• Set Indexation for Search Engines – control this on the backend using Robots.txt editor
• Improve Cross-Links – set up a well thought-out internal linking structure
• SEO Redirects – redirect customers to desired pages when they encounter deleted products
• SEO Reports – receive detailed reports so you know if your SEO strategy is working

Pricing

SEO Suite Ultimate costs $249, with an optional installation service at $49. To find out more, click here.

Best for Page Creation – Shogun

If you want to easily create and manage the look and feel of your Magento storefront, Shogun is a great extension (they also offer apps for Shopify and BigCommerce, too). Using a drag-and-drop editor, you can create beautiful landing pages, blog posts, product pages, and ‘about’ pages.

It’s a really intuitive platform, and it gives you full creative control of how your store will appear to customers without the hassle of coding. It also allows you to create an easy, memorable shopping experience for your customers.

It has slick, professional pre-designed templates to choose from, or you can build your own pages from scratch simply by dragging and dropping the elements you want to include on each page. The page builder is really easy to use, so you don’t have to worry about a big learning curve when it comes to learning a new platform.

It also has some great extra features, including the Analytics Suite, which allows you to directly compare your pages to see how well they are performing. It also has split testing, which will help you to optimize your pages to their fullest potential – you can easily create two slightly different versions of the same page to test how they perform against each other.

Main Features

• Easy to use drag-and-drop page builder
• Beautiful pre-made templates
• Analytics Suite gives you detailed information about clickthrough rates, add-to-cart rates, and more, and even allows you to compare one page against another
• A/B testing allows you to publish two slightly different versions of the same page to see which one performs the best

Pricing

To get Shogun, you’ll need to subscribe. Prices start from $49 per month, but you have to pay more to unlock some of the features like split testing. To find out more, click here.

Best for Managing Deliveries – FedEx Shipping Manager

If you use FedEx, the FedEx Shipping Manager is the obvious solution to your shipping problems. You can create and print FedEx shipping and return labels, either automatically, in bulk, or manually. The system then inserts tracking numbers into shopping information, and sends it to the customer by email so they can track their delivery (saving you a lot of time and effort).

One great thing about this extension is the ability to automatically calculate packages based on the product dimensions – again, saving you time and effort. You also have the option to manage international options and print International Paperless invoices.

If you want to keep on top of your shipping and manage everything in one place, automating some of the more annoying and time-consuming tasks that come with running an online store, this extension is a good choice for you. It may not be the most exciting extension out there – but it has the potential to make your life much easier!

Main Features

• Create and print shipping and returns labels automatically, manually, or in bulk
• Send tracking numbers to your customers so they can track their deliveries
• Manage international shipment including taxes and invoices
• Automatically calculate packages based on product dimensions

Pricing

FedEx Shipping Manager costs $199 with an optional $150 installation service. You will need a FedEx account and have FedEx credentials in order to use it. To find out more, click here.

Best for Custom Product Creation – AppJetty Product Designer Tool

There are a lot of product designing extensions out there for Magento, but we think this is one of the best. If you have a printer you would like to use to create customized products, this could be a great business idea that your customers will love. This clever tool allows your customers to create their own products, including mugs, t-shirts, pen drives, stationery, skins for gadgets like mobile phones, and more.

The Product Designer Tool will give your customers an array of high-quality clipart images to choose from, as well as text editing, backgrounds, images and templates. (Some product designing extensions look a little basic or dated – that’s not the case with Product Designer).

This means they can create the exact product they desire, including customizing each element, through your own store. Once a customer has completed their design, the tool will present you with a high-quality, ready-to-print file, exactly the way the customer would like it.

Main Features

• Designer tool gives your customers access to high-quality clipart, text, images (including the option to upload their own images), backgrounds, and more
• Items can be printed onto mugs, t-shirts, phone cases, and more
• Customers can save and re-use their designs
• Dynamic pricing allows you to set the pricing of different elements, so the price can be calculated for your customers in real-time
• Creates a high-quality file ready for printing

Pricing

This extension costs $1,499. It’s a pricey one, but if you want to run a customizable product business, it’s definitely one of the best ones out there. Click here to find out more.

Best for Social Media Marketing – Instagram Integration

Instagram has over 1 billion users, making it an incredibly important platform when it comes to social media marketing. This extension helps you to make the most of your Instagram account in a unique and useful way.

You can create dynamic galleries for your pages, featuring pictures from your Instagram feed, which will not only create a beautiful display of products, but will also help your customers to easily identify them – hopefully making the shopping process much more simple for them.

You can include call-to-action buttons whilst hovering (for example, a ‘shop now’ button). Using a ‘pinning’ system, if you have a picture that includes more than one item for sale, you can drag and drop call to action buttons to show your customers which item is which. You can do this for up to 5 products in a single Instagram post.

You can also show your customers more details, including links to product pages, likes, comments, and social sharing buttons – this can all be fully customized.

Once you post a picture to Instagram, the extension collects the information of the photo and displays it in your store – saving you the legwork of uploading photos multiple times.

The extension also includes reporting, so you can see how customers are interacting with your Instagram posts.

Features

• Create beautiful, eye-catching photo galleries using images automatically pulled from your Instagram account
• Add details to each picture, including product links, descriptions, social sharing buttons, and more
• Reporting allows you to see which of your Instagram posts are performing the best

Pricing

You’ll need an Instagram account to use this extension (free at the time of writing). The extension itself costs $149. Click here to find out more.

Best for Advertising – AdRoll

AdRoll is an advertising platform used by businesses to create advertising campaigns. With the Magento extension, you can easily create high-performing ad campaigns for your store. Once you install the extension, your store will be tagged with the AdRoll pixel – this allows you to collect site visitors to serve ads to. A product feed is automatically generated, too – this allows you to run dynamic product ads to catch your customer’s attention.

You can also segment your audience, which allows you to specifically target certain types of customers with ads based on how those customers interact with your store. It tracks customer purchases, too, enabling ROI tracking across your campaigns. You have to set up an AdRoll account to get started, and there’s a bit of a learning curve if you’ve never created an advertising campaign before, but you could see a big difference in visits to your store (and hopefully sales!) if you try it out.

Features

• Create dynamic ad campaigns for products in your Magento store
• Segment customers so you can target them with specific campaigns
• Track customer purchases

Pricing

Signing up for an AdRoll account is free, and installing the extension is free. However, you have to pay for each ad campaign, which can vary depending on which type you choose. You can set a budget for each day for each campaign – for example, if you want to launch an introduction campaign on social media, they suggest a budget of $55 a day.

Essentially, you can spend as much as you want to. To find out more, click here.

Best for Payments – Stripe Extension

If you want to offer more payment options for your customers, Stripe integration is key. Stripe is a global payment gateway, allowing you to accept payments from customers using their debit and credit cards, Apple Pay, Android Pay, and more.

There are a lot of advantages to using Stripe. It improves abandoned cart rates, as customers will be able to use their preferred payment method. It enhances conversion rates, as it allows customers to stay on the page to checkout rather than go to a separate page. It also allows you to personalize payment methods, including setting up a Credit Card Vault function – this saves customer card information for future purchases, hopefully encouraging them to return again in the future. Although you have to pay a small transaction fee, it’s worth having Stripe to make the shopping experience easier for your customers.

Features

• Integrate Stripe payments with your Magento store
• Improves card abandonment rates
• Allows your customers to save credit card details for future purchases

Pricing

You’ll need to set up a Stripe account to use this extension. To see Stripe’s pricing, click here (they take a small percentage of each sale using Stripe). The extension itself costs around £249. To find out more, click here.

Best for Security – Fraud Prevention

As an eCommerce business owner, you may be at risk of malicious customers – for example, customers who won’t pay, or customers who fraudulently claim that their orders haven’t arrived to get a refund. It’s uncommon, but not unheard of – and it’s important to take steps to protect yourself and your business.

Fraud Prevention has a ton of features for your Magento store, allowing you to mark orders that haven’t been paid as ‘suspicious’ to create a Fraud Suspicion Record. This helps the extension to automatically detect and block future orders that may be fraudulent.

It also allows you to create custom blacklisting rules – this allows you to blacklist customers based on attributes like name, address, zip code, or IP address. This prevents fraudulent customers from being able to make future orders. You can prevent the extension from blacklisting customers after one fraud suspicion – so if it turns out they are a genuine customer you can whitelist them again.

Main Features:

• Create custom blacklisting rules
• Manage and track suspicious orders
• Block fraudulent orders before payments can process
• Prevent credit card chargebacks to save money and time

Pricing

Fraud Prevention doesn’t have any additional monthly fees. It costs $115, making it one of the cheapest extensions on our list. To find out more, click here.

Best for Reporting – AheadWorks Advanced Reports

If you want detailed reporting about the performance of your store, this is the place to get it. Advanced Reports creates visual charts and data tables, so you can quickly see how each product is doing. You can get a general sales overview, track each product’s performance, split sales by categories, look at sales in more detail, and track sales by coupon code, payment type, manufacturer, and product attributes.

You can also check abandoned cart rates, track sales by location, segment customers, and look at traffic and conversions. Having this information could help you to grow your business, so it’s really worth investing in an extension like this.

Features

• Presents data in a visually appealing way
• Check each product’s performance
• Check sales by coupon code, manufacturer, and more
• Keep an eye on cart abandonment rates and traffic

Pricing

This extension costs $499. To find out more, click here.

Frequently Asked Questions

Want to know more about Magento extensions? We might have the answer you’re looking for.

Conclusion

We hope this has helped you to narrow down your choices when it comes to buying Magento extensions. Magento is a powerful platform, loved by many – but it can definitely be improved using the right extensions.

You can use extensions to optimize the shopping experience for the customer at every stage of the process – from finding you on social media or through advertising, to navigating the layout of your store, to safe payment, to shipment – creating a shopping experience that will, hopefully, keep them coming back for more.

Of course, there are many more Magento extensions out there – but these are some of the best. Hopefully, they can help to improve your online store, and make your life a little easier in the process.

Further read:

• How to Create Product Pages in Magento
• How to Create Landing Pages in Magento
• How to Build a Blog in Magento

Product pages make up the main content of your Shopify store. A product page has to work hard – after all, it needs to entice potential customers into buying. With crisp images, a clear layout, and a bit of personality, you can create a page that will make customers fall in love with your product.

The question is, how do you do this in Shopify? In our guide on how to build a Shopify product page, we’ll show you how much customization Shopify gives you and how to find the code for your product pages. We’ll also take a look at some Shopify page building apps, giving you an example of how apps can help you to build the product page of your dreams – and to (hopefully) grow your eCommerce business in the future.

First, let’s take a look at how you can build a product page without apps.

How to Build a Page Without Apps

You don’t necessarily need an app to customize your Shopify product pages. Shopify do have a selection of themes to choose from that look great, and they allow a certain amount of customization – let’s take a look at how much we can achieve using Shopify’s basic settings.

Step One: Upload a Product

Firstly, make sure you have a product uploaded.

This sounds obvious, but it’s easier to see how the product pages will look when it has your own products on it, as opposed to example products.

The information you input here will make up the content of your product page. So, if you want videos, images, or detailed descriptions of your product, this is the time to do it. Shopify gives you a bit of customization here, with a choice of fonts. Clear images and a well-written product description will make a huge difference here, so it’s worth putting time and effort into this stage.

Once you’ve added your first product, it’s time to look at themes.

Step Two: Pick a Theme

Next, head over to Online Store > Themes > Theme Library. You can choose a free theme or pay to unlock a paid theme.

Your theme will determine how your entire store looks, not just the product pages. Whether you want to pay for a theme is up to you. Here’s a quick idea of the types you can get:

Free Themes

Paid Themes

You should be able to get a good idea of which theme will best fit your brand, based on the demo stores that Shopify provide for you to look at.

Step Three: Basic Customization

Go to Online Store > Themes > Current Theme.

Click ‘Customize’ to bring up basic theme customization. At the top you should see a button that says ‘Home Page’. Click on that to bring up a drop-down menu of pages for your store and choose ‘Product Pages’.

Our product page looks like this:

The bar on the left represents the amount of customization you can get at this stage. You can play around with a few things here.

Header

This section allows you to customize the header which will appear on each page, including your product pages. You can upload a logo, customize the menu, add an announcement bar, and add social media links to your page.

Product Pages

This is where you can play around with your product pages. As you can see, the changes you make will apply to all your product pages, and there’s not a huge amount you can do here:

You can change the image size and customize a few small things, like whether you want to enable zoom on your images or show variant labels. There’s not a lot more you can do here.

Product Recommendations

This allows you to turn ‘dynamic recommendations’ on and off (dynamic recommendations will automatically show your customer similar products that they might be interested in).

Footer

This will appear on the bottom of every page in your store. Here, you can add payment method icons, add quick links, add some text, insert a newsletter sign-up form, and add social media buttons.

It’s worth noting here that you cannot edit each product page individually – any changes you make apply to every product that you upload to your store (unless you get a page building app – but more on that later).

As you can see, there’s not a huge amount you can do here – unless you know how to code.

Step Four: Further Customization with Code

Returning to the Theme page, clicking on ‘edit code’ will bring up this screen:

Shopify uses Liquid, HTML, CSS and JavaScript – so you do need to be at least a little familiar with some of these coding languages before you begin.

Scroll down through the templates on the left to find product.liquid, which is the file you will need to work on:

This will bring up the code for your product pages:

You can click here to find out more information about how to customize your product pages using Liquid. You can play around with the ‘add to cart’ button, variants, and add product page features.

Always remember to make a back-up copy of your theme before you begin to edit. You can do that by going back to ‘Themes’, clicking ‘Actions’ and then ‘Duplicate Theme’:

Of course, if you don’t know Liquid, you might be feeling stuck at this point (although there are some tutorials online if you want to learn, it’s a pretty time-consuming process).

The other option you have is to use Shopify apps to customize your product pages – this is a great way of unlocking further customization without having to have in-depth technical knowledge.

How to Build a Page Using a Shopify App

Shopify has many great apps which will allow you greater control and customization of your ecommerce store. There are a few page building apps to choose from with a variety of pricing options, so you should be able to find one that suits your budget.

We’ll give you a few recommendations and give you a look at how one of the apps, Shogun, can help you to customize your product pages.

Step One: Pick an App

In the main menu on the left of Shopify, click ‘Apps’, then ‘Visit the Shopify Appstore’:

In the Appstore, you click ‘Categories’, ‘Store Design’, and ‘Page Builder’:

This will bring up all the page building apps.

Here are a few we can recommend:

• Shogun – from $39 – $199 per month
• PageFly – from $0 – $29.95 per month
• GemPages – from $15 – £59 per month
• Page Studio – $14.95 per month
• HyperVisual – from $9.95 – $49 per month

All of these are good options, offering you much more page customization than Shopify alone can give. (If you want more details about them, try our guide to the Best Shopify Page Builders, or our PageFly vs Shogun comparison.)

Take a look at the features each one can offer – you might want a basic page builder, or you might want to take advantage of extra features, like detailed analytics or SEO optimization. Many of them offer free trials, so you can play around with them before making a decision.

To install the app, click the ‘add app’ button. You’ll see this:

Click ‘install app’, and you’re ready to start customizing!

We’ll be using Shogun as an example here. Each app functions differently, so the following steps will only be applicable to Shogun. However, it should give you a general idea of how apps can give you more possibilities when it comes to customization of product pages.

Step Two: Create Your Product Page

You should be able to choose which type of page you want to create. Usually, these include standard pages (like ‘about’ pages), blog posts, product pages, or collection pages. Obviously, we’re looking to create a product page.

You can search for the product you want to build a page for:

With Shogun, you can create a new layout for your product page or choose the existing layout to further customize it.

Creating a Page from Scratch

Shogun will import your product – this will take a few moments.

You will then see this:

It looks a little daunting, but thanks to the drag-and-drop system (PageFly and GemPages also have similar drag-and-drop editors) it’s easy to use. Just grab a page element and drop it onto the page where you want it. For example, ‘Product Box’ will bring up the following:

Find the product you want, and then click ‘confirm’.

You can then drag a Product Field Element onto the page (for example, a product image). You can add:

• Product Title
• Product Image
• Product Price
• Product Variant
• Product Quantity
• Product Add to Cart
• Product Reviews

Each section is fully customizable – for example, you can change the font and size of the product title, adjust the size and alignment of the product image, etc. It allows for so much more customization than you can get with Shopify alone. You can also add more elements to your page:

• Images
• Videos
• Headings
• Text
• Buttons
• Icons
• Countdowns
• Separators
• Forms
• Maps
• HTML

You can play around with the structure of the page using structural blocks. For example, if you wanted to add a carousel of images and text, you can pick ‘Slider’ and drag it onto the page, then edit each ‘slide’:

This will create a rotating carousel to which you can add images and text.

However, if all this seems too daunting, you do have the option of just editing the product page you already created using Shopify.

Customizing Shopify Product Page

Back on the Shogun homepage, click ‘import’ to find your product. You can pick from two options.

Use Existing Layout imports a product page that you already created on Shopify and keeps the content exactly the same. It does allow you to add new page elements above or below the content you already created.

Use Custom Layout allows you to start again from scratch with your existing product page.

Shogun shows you exactly how your page will look on different types of devices – you can switch between device type using the options in the middle of the purple bar at the top of the screen.

Step Three: Publish Your Page

Clicking the three dots next to ‘Publish’ on the right-hand side will bring up a small menu:

On the higher price plan, Shogun allows you to schedule the publication of your pages, duplicate pages and run split tests. As we’re testing out the basic plan, we don’t have access to those. You can see, however, where you can find page settings, which brings up this menu:

Here you can edit basic information about your page, including page name, page path, and meta description. These basic steps will improve your product page’s visibility on search engines, so it’s important to spend a little time here.

Once you’re done with this, you’re ready to go!

Click ‘Publish’, and your product page will go live.

Going to Shogun’s dashboard will give you an overview of your pages:

Clicking the three dots next to your product page will bring up a few options:

Clicking ‘preview’ will bring up your product page, so you can see how it looks to a potential customer. If you’re not completely happy with it, you can go back and edit it at any time.

Other page building apps work similarly – it’s worth checking them out if you want to be able to customize each product page individually.

Frequently Asked Questions

Conclusion

As you can see, much of the work that goes into creating a product page begins at the ‘add product’ stage. The images and words you use to sell the product to your customer will make a big difference. Shopify have a great range of free themes to choose from, and the product pages included in these themes are great – crisp, clean, and well-designed, they’re simple to navigate and allow the product to speak for itself.

However, if you do want to be able to fully customize your pages, but you don’t know code, a third-party app is a great idea. Being able to drag and drop page elements wherever you like allows you total control over each product – which Shopify alone doesn’t give you. So, if you want to have more customization, paying a little extra each month for an app like Shogun could be a great choice for you.

Either way, it’s pretty simple to set up a product page using Shopify. Good luck!

Further read:

• The Best Ecommerce Tools and Apps
• How to Create a Landing Page on Shopify No Coding
• Kajabi vs Clickfunnels: Best Sales Funnel Software?

Running an e-commerce business is a dream come true: You’re able to work from home doing what you love, and you’re selling products online that are making you decent money. It’s amazing having your workshop out of your home — but do you want to be there forever? If you’re content to stay put and keep doing what you’re doing, then keep at it. If, however, you have dreams of scaling up and making your e-commerce business even bigger, what are some of the best tips to follow?

1. Advertise And Spread The Word

A curious thing happens when you don’t advertise your business: Nothing! How can anybody know you exist if you’re not doing anything to get noticed? Start with a bang-up marketing strategy to help more people find you. Sure, your friends and family know that you do what you do, but does anyone else? Remember the golden rule when you’re starting out in e-comm: Just because you build it, that doesn’t mean that they will come.

If you have no idea how to advertise your business, think about hiring a marketing specialist to help you. These professionals are well-versed in the ways of the hottest online marketing tactics including:

• Webpage and logo design, especially if they are also handy with graphic design languages like CSS and HTML.
• Social media management, including methods for finding the most-searched-for keywords and trending topics/hashtags.
• Expertise and skill in the best uses of SEO, especially in places like your website and on your blog.

The more places that you get the word out, the busier you will become. Don’t underestimate the power of a well-built website as well as social media and tagging!

2. Make Amazing Customer Service Part Of Your Culture

Everybody knows how frustrating it can be to work with a company that doesn’t appear to know their feet from their hands. Even if you’re a one-person operation, taking care of your customers should be one of your top priorities. Remember that going above and beyond goes a lot farther with most people than being harsh and difficult. Think about things like:

Returns and exchanges. What’s your policy, and how rigidly do you follow it? Do you have a zero-tolerance policy for clients who try to exchange a product after the allotted amount of time, or do you hear everyone out and go case-by-case? 

Complaints and negative online reviews. The truth is that no matter what, there are people who refuse to accept defeat. When you work in a public-facing job you tend to come into contact with those people more often than not, so have a good strategy in how you deal with it. Do you get aggressive and snap back when someone is being difficult, or do you take a breath and work through the problem together? 

Questions and custom orders. Make sure that you are prompt and efficient if someone emails you directly; try to make it a personal goal to respond to all company emails in 24 hours or less. If someone has a question about a custom order, decide how you will handle it. Are custom orders something you do or have you never considered it before?

3. Think About How You Accept Payment

Clunky check-out processes are a pain to get through when you’re trying to order something online. Make yours as streamlined as possible for your clients. Cloud security should be important to you since security breaches are bad for business, but also because you want to protect your clients and keep their information safe. However you accept payment, it is recommended that you use a third-party system like Paypal. This way, in case there does happen to be a data breach, the information is not stored on your cloud and your hands are clean. 

Remember though: What you think is most convenient might not be everyone’s favorite. Although Paypal is one of the most common third-party sites to pay for things, think about the other popular ones that might appeal to different audiences:

• Other transfer sites like Venmo and Zelle
• Apple Pay/Apple Wallet
• Debit/credit cards

4. Remember Office Needs As Well

Staying organized in your business is a phenomenal thing. It helps you to easily see what’s happening, any paperwork that needs approval or a signature and other day-to-day office functionalities. Streamline your office so that it helps you to manage everything quickly and professionally.

Invoices and bills. Sending an invoice is vital: It ensures that you will get paid by the client. Do you already have a template that you use, or do you need to custom-create one from scratch?

PR and customer relations. Even tiny businesses consisting of one person need to care about their image. How can you ensure that you are Johnny on the spot when something happens with your company? Are you on call at all times in case of an emergency and ready to jump in and help? Prove to customers that you care and want to be the one that they come to in case there’s a question or concern.

Business taxes. You already give your money to Uncle Sam at the end of the year for your home and life, but a small business carries plenty of its own taxes too. Understand what will be expected of you come April 15th, and consider hiring an accountant in case you’re worried you will miss something. Sometimes a second pair of eyes can help you out.

5. Show And Tell

You already have a website that showcases your products, but how are the pictures? Customers are looking for good-quality, detailed pictures that help them get a visual of your items and see all specs. If you have junky, pixely cell phone pictures that you snapped in bad lighting, it shows on your website and consumers will notices. Similarly, are your product descriptions well-written and informative? Will customers know what they are getting when they look at your website? 

An e-comm business runs differently from a brick-and-mortar company, but business principles are much the same between the two. Understand the best ways to grow your e-commerce business to move up and move on.

Shopify is an excellent platform, used and enjoyed by many people around the world. As an eCommerce platform, it works brilliantly, but if you really want to grow your online stores, there comes a time when you need more than just the page builders that Shopify offers, which is why I wanted to discuss the best Shopify page builders I’ve found with you here today.

However, you may want a more ‘complete’ website – something that shows your customers exactly what your brand is about, something that gives them extra content and that gives them a good first impression. For that, you may need to consider installing a page builder app. Shopify offers a range of different apps, and page builders are a great tool for those who want to make beautiful landing pages, blog posts, and more.

In this article, we’ll be looking at the best Shopify page builders, testing out how they work and exploring their pros and cons, to see which is the best one for you.

Why Do I Need a Page Builder for Shopify?

Although Shopify is a great platform for your eCommerce business, you might find their templates a bit limiting. You want a website that will capture the interest of your potential customers; you want something that looks professional, interesting and is easy for them to navigate. A page builder could be the thing you’re looking for: it will work with your Shopify products, enabling you to design a page that looks exactly the way you want it to.

You may also want to make different pages for your website. You might want a detailed About page that will explain the story of your business to your customers. You may want to run a blog, perhaps showing them a glimpse of what your business looks like behind the scenes, or to inform your customers of upcoming products. Or, you may want to create a page from scratch that doesn’t fit into any of those categories.

Some page builders also include extra features, like split testing, or analytics. This is great if you want to further understand how your business is doing, or if you want to improve the performance of your pages.

Finally, a good page builder will work with other platforms – for example, you may be able to create custom social media buttons to give your customers more ways to connect with you, or you may be able to insert a form for email marketing platform. These things may seem small, but they could make a big difference to your business overall.

Interested? Let’s take a look at five of the best page building apps there are for Shopify right now.

Shogun

Shogun (full review here!) is a great platform for Shopify (and is also available on Magento and BigCommerce), with tons of attractive templates to choose from. You can build the following types of pages:

• Standard pages
• Blog posts
• Product pages
• Collections

Page Builder

There are a lot of beautiful templates to choose from with Shogun.

They look easy to navigate and professional, and you can choose to view how they will look on different types of platforms before you decide.

The page builder itself is a real highlight of Shogun – it’s really easy to use and nice to look at, too.

At any time, you can switch between types of devices and keep editing – so if you want to check it looks okay on a mobile device, you can do that, and then choose to keep working on the page in mobile view.

The menu on the right-hand side allows you to build your page. You can choose from basic structural blocks, like sections, columns, sliders, tables, tabs, and accordions – and simply drag your chosen block onto the page. Once you’ve arranged things the way you like, you add content, which includes:

• Images (you can upload these or choose them from another platform, like Facebook or Google Drive)
• Videos
• Text, including headings, paragraphs and bullet-point lists
• Icons
• Countdowns
• Separators
• Maps
• Forms
• Custom HTML

You can also add products from your Shopify store – you can choose a product image, title, and description, for example, and drag them around where you want them on the page. You can also add product reviews, which is great, as well as an add to cart button.

Another great feature is the social media icons section – you can create icons for your main social media accounts in any size and color.

Structural blocks allow you to add pre-made blocks of content to your page. Again, this is great if you’re building a page from scratch and you’re not sure where to start.

Split Testing

Using the highest-priced plan, you can split test your pages. This is a really great tool to improve the performance of your pages over time, and Shogun has gone out of their way to make this a really simple process for you. You can choose from three objectives: clickthrough rates, sales, and add-to-cart. Shogun will then create a duplicate version of your page, allowing you to make slight adjustments (you can swap between them easily in the page builder). 

Shogun will then run the split test for as long as you want it to. You can choose to allow Shogun to pick the most likely winner, or you can view the results and choose which version you’d like to use.

This is a really great feature – and could make a big difference to your sales over time.

SEO

Shogun helps you to optimize your SEO in the following ways:

• Set page title and meta description easily when you make a page
• Add alt-tags to your images
• Images will be compressed, making the load time faster
• Uses semantic HTML, resulting in SEO-friendly pages

Analytics

On the two highest price tiers, Shogun has an Analytics Suite.

You can see how well your pages are performing in the following areas:

• Sales Conversion
• Add to Cart
• Total Sessions
• Bounce Rate
• Top Clickthrough Destinations
• Top Outside Referrers

You can also see how each page performs on different types of devices. The great thing is you can compare your pages – this gives you a great visualisation of how each type of page is doing.

You can also view your split test results here. All in all, it’s a great analytics package, and it’s so helpful to have it ready for you without having to worry about signing up to another platform.

Extra Features

There are a few more things we need to say about Shogun, too:

• Syncing

This allows you to copy content between your stores – whether that is a whole page, a blog post, or snippets of pages that you’ve created. As long as you have two or more stores on a paid plan with the same verified email address, you’ll be able to sync your content right away.

• Advanced Settings

If you know Liquid, CSS, or JavaScript, you can create custom elements for your Shogun pages. You can also add extras, like a MailChimp form, custom fonts, an anchor for your pages, and even embed third-party forms.

Support

Shogun has a pretty good knowledge base, with videos, tutorials, and FAQs. You can also leave a message for a Shogun representative to get back to you if you have any issues, or if you’re a higher price plan, you can access a live chat feature to speak to someone straight away.

Pricing

Here’s the lowdown on Shogun’s pricing plans:

Build

Build costs $39 per month and includes the following:

• Drag and drop page builder
• All page types
• 30 + page templates
• Design by screen size
• SEO controls
• Email support
• 2 user seats

Measure

Measure costs $99 per month and includes the following:

• Everything in the ‘Build’ plan
• Analytics Suite
• Multi Site CMS/page syncing
• Content scheduling
• Dev tools
• Email and live chat support
• 4 user seats

Optimize

Optimize costs $149 per month and includes the following:

• Everything in the ‘Measure’ plan
• AB testing
• 6 user seats

Click here to find out about Shogun’s 10-day free trial!

Pros and Cons of Shogun

Here are the pros and cons of the platform:

Pros

• Platform is super easy to use and looks great
• Templates are beautiful and professional
• The editor is very easy to use
• The extra features (like split testing and analytics) are great

Cons

• It’s a shame that split testing is only available on the most expensive plan
• Not many integrations yet (although there may be more on the way according to the developers)

PageFly

PageFly is a great app that will allow you to make a variety of pages, including:

• Regular page
• Home page
• Collection page
• Product page
• Password page
• Blog post

Page Builder

The templates are attractive, and there are quite a few to choose from. You can also choose to switch between widescreen, desktop, tablet, and mobile view to see what they will look like on each type of device.

The page builder itself is pretty straightforward to use. You can create the structure of your page using the ‘layout’ section, which will allow you to drag and drop structural elements onto the page. You can then fill those blocks with content, which can include:

• Text, including headings, paragraphs, and bullet point lists
• Buttons, icons, and QR codes
• Images
• Media, including YouTube videos and SoundCloud clips
• Social media, including Instagram, Facebook Like, Facebook Page, and Twitter
• Extra ecommerce features, like MailChimp sign up forms, tables, tabs, accordions, slideshows, Google Maps, and a countdown timer
• Custom HTML

You can also insert items from your Shopify store – including product details, images, and descriptions. You can easily add an ‘add to cart’ button, too.

If you’d prefer to start from scratch, you can:

You may want to use pre-made sections: only available on the Pro plan, these are design elements that you can drag onto your page (for example, an image with a text overlay and a button). You may find it easier to build your page using these pre-made sections.

At any time, you can view how your page will look on different types of devices using the button at the top of the page.

If you create a section of a page that you really like, you can choose to save it, and then quickly add it to other pages. This is great if you’re trying to keep your pages consistent.

SEO

PageFly will help you to improve your SEO in the following ways:

• Page URL
• Meta Description
• Page Title

You can easily edit these as you go along, and PageFly will remind you to set these when you create a new page.

Analytics

PageFly do not have their own analytics – you have to integrate with another platform, like Google Analytics, to see how your pages are performing.

Support

In terms of support, PageFly has an in-depth knowledge base:

This includes videos, tutorials, and articles to help you make the most of the platform. You can also submit a query using a ticket system, and someone will get back to you. There’s also a Facebook group for PageFly users, which you may find useful.

Pricing

PageFly is available at a reasonable price – there’s even a free plan, which is great if you only want to create a couple of pages. Here’s a quick rundown of the pricing:

Free

The free plan will cost you nothing, but is missing some of the key features in the paid plans. Here’s what you get:

• 15+ templates
• Basic page elements
• 1 saved section
• 3 page limit
• New regular page
• Page outline

Pro

Pro is $9.95 per month (or $8.25 per month if you choose to pay for a year in one go). It offers:

• Everything in the ‘Free’ plan
• 40+ templates
• Advanced page elements
• 5 saved sections
• No page limit
• Product page add-on
• New Home page
• Autosave

Premium Plan

Premium plan is $29.95 per month (or $24.96 per month if you choose to pay for a year in one go). It offers:

• Everything in the ‘Pro’ plan
• 20 saved sections
• Collection page add-on
• New Coming Soon page
• New blog post
• Import/export page
• Slideshow element
• Version history

You can find out more about PageFly here.

The Pros and Cons of PageFly

Here’s what you need to know about the platform:

Pros

• Reasonable price plans, with a free plan for those who just want to build a couple of pages
• Pretty easy to use
• Good support

Cons

• No extra features
• The platform doesn’t look as attractive as others that we’ve tried

GemPages

GemPages Page Builder and Funnel is an app that allows you to create the following:

• Home pages
• Product pages
• Collection pages
• Blog posts

Shopify Page Builder

There are quite a few templates to choose from – they look clean and easy to navigate.

One of the first things that GemPages will draw your attention to is the Library. 

This will bring up a collection of pre-designed blocks to choose from – from FAQs to product lists to content. These blocks look sleek and well-designed, and they’re easy to simply insert into your page wherever you want them.

When it comes to content, you have a lot to choose from.

The area on the left (where the arrow is pointing) is where you need to go to add content. You can add:

• Text, including headings and text blocks
• Images
• Buttons
• Icons
• Separators
• Custom sections (using Liquid)
• Icon lists
• Modules (including Google Maps and Instagram)
• Popups (custom popups or video popups)
• Videos (including Vimeo and YouTube)
• Form fields (this allows you to create a custom form)

You can also add ‘Banners’ and ‘Stacks’. This allows you to quickly arrange a group of products on your page.

It’s really straightforward to create beautiful pages for your products just by dragging and dropping these elements where you want them.

You can also add special elements for Collection and Article pages.

At any time, you can switch between device types to see what your website will look like on different types of devices (and you can edit them in those modes, too).

The whole platform feels very clean, simple, and user-friendly – it’s really easy to get your head around how it all works.

You can also choose to save your templates in the Library – this is great if you wish to create several similar-looking pages to keep things consistent.

The good thing about GemPages is what they call ‘mini apps’ that are built into the platform. These include video pop-ups, countdown timers, and other great features which could make a huge difference to the way your customers interact with your business.

SEO

When it comes to improving your SEO, GemPages has this to offer:

• Add alt-tags to images
• Set page title and meta description
• Uses ‘lazy loading’ – this makes your pages load much faster

Analytics

GemPages do not offer their own analytics – you’ll have to work with a third-party analytics platform instead.

Support

GemPages has a great live-chat support feature, so if you need help, you’ll be able to get it quickly. They’ve also got an FAQ page, but it doesn’t have a huge amount on it yet, and we weren’t able to find all the information we were looking for.

It also has a ‘tips for sellers’ page with video tutorials on how to use the platform. These are really useful.

Pricing

There are three price plans for GemPages:

Starter – $15 per month

• Intuitive page builder
• 30+ templates
• Landing pages
• Home pages
• SEO optimized
• Fastest CDN loading
• Mobile editing
• Email support

Professional – $29 per month

• Everything in the Starter plan
• Product pages
• Collection pages
• Blog posts
• Premium templates
• Speed Plus +
• Boost sale add-ons
• Priority live chat

Advanced – $59 per month

• Everything in Pro
• 03 Store Installations
• Sales funnel builder (up and downsell)
• Copy between GemPages accounts
• Enterprise support

GemPages offers a free trial – click here to find out more.

The Pros and Cons of GemPages

Here are the pros and cons of the platform:

Pros

• Platform is easy to use and looks good
• Templates look clean and professional 

Cons

• Knowledge Base isn’t that useful
• Some of the features advertised were difficult to find on the platform itself

Page Studio

Page Studio is another great app. It allows you to build:

• Landing pages
• Home pages
• About pages
• Contact pages
• FAQs
• Story pages

Page Builder

There are a lot of great templates to choose from with Page Studio:

They look very professional and easy to use. 

Once you click on a template, it immediately opens up the page builder. Unlike the other platforms we’ve reviewed, Page Studio doesn’t open in a separate window. This is slightly annoying as it means you have a bit less space to work with.

You can view how your page will look on mobile, desktop, or full size at any time.

Sections are pre-built design elements that you can insert into your page. By clicking on one, it pops into the page for you. These look great and are very easy to customize.

In the area shown by the arrow, you can add content. This includes:

• Text, including headlines and images next to text
• Images, including collections of images
• Separators
• Buttons
• Forms
• Videos
• Maps
• Cards (these are short paragraphs of text with an image at the top – great for creating bios)
• Social media buttons
• Call to action sections
• Testimonials
• Pricing
• Contact sections
• Buy Now buttons
• Countdown clocks
• Custom HTML 

The whole platform isn’t as user-friendly as the others on this list – the elements in the pre-built templates aren’t able to be dragged around, although you can drag and drop new elements onto the page – and it’s a lot more basic. However, for the price, it’s still a decent page builder and should allow you to build some great landing pages.

You can also duplicate pages, which is really handy.

SEO

In terms of improving your SEO, Page Studio can offer the following:

• Set SEO title
• Set meta description
• Set URL
• Add alt-text to images

Analytics

Unfortunately, Page Studio do not offer their own analytics – you’ll have to use a separate platform for that.

Support

Page Builder has an FAQ section on its website:

There’s also a Getting Started guide, which is really helpful if you want to make the most of the platform. There is support available Monday-Friday, 9am to 5pm PT, and you can email them a question at any time.

Pricing

In terms of pricing, ShopPad is pretty straightforward:

There’s only one pricing plan, and this obviously includes everything the platform has to offer. It’s a pretty decent price point considering the types of pages you can make, and if you’re looking for something simple, it could be a great choice. They also offer a free trial – click here to find out more.

The Pros and Cons of Page Studio

Here are the best and worst parts of the platform:

Pros

• Simple pricing plan
• Great templates

Cons

• FAQ section could be more detailed
• Whole thing runs within the Shopify platform itself, giving you less room to manoeuvre
• Page builder isn’t as easy to use as some of the others we’ve tried

Hypervisual

Hypervisual is another page builder for Shopify. It will allow you to build any page that you can think of – it says that it can help ‘create the world’s most beautiful eCommerce pages’.

Page Builder

As you can see, like Page Studio, Hypervisual runs within the Shopify platform itself.

To get started, you are presented with a blank page. (It gives you some inspiration in the form of templates if you find this overwhelming).

You can choose to add the following:

• Headers
• Images
• Text
• Videos
• Custom HTML
• Products
• Collections
• Spacers
• Two Columns
• 2,3, or 4 Columns With Image and Text
• 3 or 4 Columns of Products
• Email Opt-Ins
• Image Sliders
• Vertical Images and Text

You can also add ‘Hero Banners’ – this is a large banner comprising of an image with text overlay.

Rather than clicking and dragging, you simply add sections using the ‘+’ button, installing them where you want them. 

It’s not the easiest page builder around – it feels quite fiddly and not as intuitive as some of the others we’ve tried – but you can create some good-looking pages using Hypervisual.

The platform is pretty easy to navigate though, with each of your pages easy to find and edit:

It also has a few great features, including an in-built email sign-up form, and add to cart buttons – so you can create pages for your products that your customers will enjoy using.

Message Match

One great feature that Hypervisual has to offer is Message Match. This clever tool allows you to create slightly different versions of the same page, with different URLs, to show different customers. This is a great way to test out different types of pages and see what clicks with your customers. 

You can see from the area shown by the arrow that this is easy to set up – you simply click ‘New Version’ and it opens up the same page again, which you can edit slightly. You can also view the links for each version so you can share it to the right people. This is a really interesting idea.

SEO

With Hypervisual, all of your page content is indexed by Google and is made to be SEO-friendly – and is designed to have a super-fast loading time.

You can also click ‘Edit Website SEO’ to change the web address for your page, if you want to.

Analytics

Hypervisual does not have its own analytics suite. It does, however, offer automatic integration with Google Analytics and Facebook Pixel, which is useful.

Support

Hypervisual has a live chat feature, which is great if you want help instantly.

It also has an FAQ section, although at the time of writing it didn’t have much on it – there were a few things we wanted to know that didn’t come up when we searched for it, which is a shame.

Pricing

Hypervisual has three pricing plans:

• Merchant – $9.95 per month

Up to 12 active pages and unlimited blog posts

• Pro – $24 per month

13 to 36 active pages plus unlimited blog posts

• Ultimate – $49 per month

Unlimited pages and unlimited blog posts

• Hypervisual offers a 14-day free trial: click here to find out more.

The Pros and Cons of Hypervisual

Here are the best and worst parts of the platform:

Pros

• Pretty straightforward to use
• Message Match is an interesting feature
• Pricing plans are very simple

Cons

• A bit fiddly and not as intuitive as the others
• FAQ section isn’t that helpful

Frequently Asked Question

Conclusion: Which is the Best Page Builder for Shopify?

As you can see, there are many best Shopify page builders. Any of these platforms could help you to create great-looking pages for your eCommerce site, and all of them are pretty easy to use.

However, there are variations in terms of user-friendliness and price. If you want to create a few basic pages for your website, PageFly’s free plan could be a great option (although keep in mind some of the page elements are missing from the free plan – make sure you check first). Page Studio is a simple platform and could be great if that’s what you’re looking for – it has a pretty low price point, too.

In terms of features and design, however, we’ll have to go with Shogun as our favorite. The templates are beautiful, the platform itself is great to look at and easy to navigate, and the extra ecommerce features, like the analytics suite and split testing, make it a really great choice.

We hope this has helped you to choose which app is right for your Shopify store!

You might also enjoy:

• How to create a landing page on Shopify
• Shopify vs WordPress 
• Clickfunnels vs Shopify
• Yahoo Ecommerce Solutions vs Shopify
• Shopify vs Neto
• Vend POS vs Shopify
• How to Choose the Best Business Tools: A Change Creator Guide
• How to Make Money in Ecommerce: 7 Solid Tips from the Pros
• OptimizePress vs Leadpages: Which Landing Page Builder is Best?

The challenging and evolving economic environment has spurred on what is known as the gig economy. Today, people are approaching work differently. The purchase of goods and services is also transforming and thriving with the great strides in technology circles.

There are well-known large businesses behind this trend. Shopify, in contrast, is not as famed but the once tiny Canadian company has done its share in uplifting the e-commerce environment.  Based in Ontario, Canada, the highly successful startup has seen its shares climb by 136% in 2019. 

Its overall market cap now stands at the $36.6 billion mark. The business started out as an online store for Snowdevil, its founder’s snowboarding equipment shop. Tobias Lütke, its founder and CEO, utilized his computer programming skills to cobble up what today is a force to reckon with in e-commerce.

The platform is now a darling of venture capitalist investments, netting over $122 million in such funding. By 2014, it had over 100,000 retailers selling on it from over 150 countries. In 2017, Shopify set up an Amazon Sales Channel. This avenue would assist its merchants to list their products on Amazon.com simultaneously. Today, Shopify has over 800,000 stores on it and over a million active users.

What is Shopify?

It is a cloud-based e-commerce platform, with various channels. On it, you can monitor your online shop, as well as mobile, social media and brick and mortar sales as well. You can also access your product inventory, process all your orders, and ship them out. Shopify also makes it very easy for its users to build relationships with their customers.

To guide its merchants and help them improve, innovate, and grow, the platform also has a robust data analytics feature. Through it, you can access data and reporting functions. Should you be in need of financing, Shopify features will also hold your hand. 

In June 2019, the platform added 11 new languages and a fulfillment network. Amongst its other updates, is enhanced customer-facing software features. There are also easier to use software developer kits that will help users to build and embed deployable apps.

On Shopify, you will find a wide range of templates that are easy to customize. The platform has a low learning curve.  Consequently, you do not need enhanced coding or design skills to build a stellar store. A little knowledge of CSS and HTML will, however, be very handy for ease of control.  

As mentioned, it is a cloud-based platform and therefore, a hosted solution. This means that you will not need to pay for web hosting or software installations elsewhere. All you need to start out happens ‘out of the box.’

A platform is a software as a service (‘Saas’) tool. It has a monthly subscription, which ranges from lows of $9 to highs of $2000 for Shopify Plus.

Shopify Pricing Plans

Shopify Lite, the cheapest of the Shopify plans do not come with a functional store. It allows you to market products through a Facebook page. Additionally, you can use it to manage inventory in a brick and mortar store. You can alternatively use Shopify’s ‘Buy Button’ to sell products on your blog.

Key Differentiators Between the Shopify Plans:

• Reporting: only accessible from the $79 and above plans.

• Advanced report builder: only available on the $299 and $2000 plans.

• Gift cards: can be accessed on the $79 and above plans.

• Real-time carrier shipping: only on $299 plan.

• Point of sale functionality: available on $79 and higher plans.

Shopify Pros

1. Ease of use

Users love this platform because they do not have to worry about anything else but their sales. You do not have to spend your precious time fussing over technology or other time-wasting administrative tasks. The platform has a clean, easy to use interface and offers excellent assistance well in-store management.

Your customers, for instance, can access your store from various platforms with a simple click. A self-hosted online shop would require a lot of coding to give the same ease of access. On Shopify, your products are accessible from Facebook, WordPress, Pinterest, Tumblr, or Instagram.

2. Customer support

Most Shopify diehards love its quality customer care features. If you start your online store on WooCommerce or WordPress, you will have no one holding your hands, should you encounter a technical hitch. You can access developers, but they do not come cheap.

At times, your query in the forums could go unnoticed, leaving you high and dry. Shopify has a ton of FAQs, as well as phone, email and chats support. The safety net of knowing that you have help on your side at all times is worth the plan’s price alone.

3. Security

A fast and attractive website is excellent, but all that effort does not amount to much if there is little or no protection from malware and hacks. This is especially true if you have a credit card using the clientele. Shopify websites are not only fast but also very secure.  

The security of the platform deters hackers and enforces compliance. The platform also has enhanced caching, which is excellent for online stores. To ensure that their security features are constantly tested, Shopify pays experts to hack-proof their features.

4. Storefront Themes

The platform has built a name for itself due to its professional and modern themes. The websites they create have a dash of elegance, which not only attracts but retains customers as well. There are templates for all types of themes for businesses.These include; art and photography, jewelry and accessories, Food and beverage, furniture and technology. Each theme is designed with the end customer in mind. 

5. The Shopify app store

If you love access to tons of features, you are more for a Shopify person. You, nevertheless, need to know how to use them, because some do come at a cost. Various plugins can assist you in building a personalized store that caters to your business’s unique needs. Some of Shopify’s most popular features include:

• OptinMaster that increases sales and generates leads.

• Referral Candy, which is a marketing application with top-notch sales tools.

• Plugin SEO, for search engine, optimized online stores.

• Printfful for designing store merchandise on the go.

• Chimpify for business marketing.

Shopify Cons

1. They have a unique PHP language

Shopify uses Liquid as a coding language for its themes. This could make it hard for you to customize the themes if you are not versed with the programming language.

2. High price for advanced features

The basic plans are very bare of features. There are no reports, gift cards, or fraud analysis features.  

3. Costly apps

Most useful apps on the Shopify app store come at a price. 

Nevertheless, there are other e-commerce platforms that have become Shopify rivals in terms of performance and use. The best Shopify alternative so far is BigCommerce. Here are two Shopify alternatives for you, starting with my first pick, BigCommerce

Below is an in-depth review of this fantastic platform.

BigCommerce

BigCommerce is Shopify’s closest competitor.  The Texas-based startup claims that it has more than 95,000 businesses running on it. The platform is excellent for high volume businesses and has fantastic features. It has great retailers on it as well, such as Travelpro, Toyota and Gibson guitars. 

The Saas product has a monthly charge, and in matters pricing, it does lie in the same range as Shopify. It is also a hosted solution, meaning that you do not have to pay for further web hosting fees.

You can build an online store on BigCommerce using its various customizable templates or use it for your physical store. The platform also has marketing tools for your store. The software is easy to use, so you do not need to be tech-savvy to build a stellar store.

However, with some CSS and HTML, you can tweak your online store for some much-needed personality. If you are not up to the hassle of running your very own website, then BigCommerce is a good way to go. 

BigCommerce Plans: What Do They Cost?

Users that pay for the plus and pro packages annually receive a 10% discount. 

The Main Differences Between the BigCommerce Plans

Bigcommerce Standard

This is the cheapest of the platform’s plans, and it goes for $29.95. Its price equals that of Basic Shopify plan, the comprehensive starter kit in the Shopify platform. The plan is pretty much the bang for your buck offer with all key ingredients needed to get you started. 

It, however, does not have an abandoned cart saving feature, which notifies you when shoppers leave their purchases midway through the process. It is this feature that also sends them a reminder encouraging them to complete the purchase process.  The basic Shopify plan has this feature.

The plan’s other features include:

• A functional e-commerce store.

• Unlimited storage for files as well as bandwidth.

• Gift cards.

• Reporting.

• Reviews and rating functionality.

• Automated image optimization.

BigCommerce Plus

This plan has some significant perks that include:

• Abandoned cart saver feature.

• Credit cards storage.

• Persistent cart feature that saves carts irrespective of devices used to shop.

• Shopper segmentation and grouping, to assist in the design of reward or loyalty programs.

BigCommerce Pro

The significant difference between the Pro and Plus packages is their online sales limits. While it has a $400,000 threshold, you can increase it by $200,000 for an extra $150 per month. It also has a Google Customer Reviews feature that collects and displays user feedback on your e-commerce store.  

Other additional features include:

• Advanced product filters.

• Third-party custom SSL.

• BigCommerce Enterprise.

There is no designated charge for this plan. The costs will reflect the needs and size of your business. This plan is designed for large companies with a high turnover of over $1,000,000. It has features unique to it, which includes:

• Advanced product filters that work through custom field searches.

• Varied price lists for different customer groups.

• API support and priority management support.

• Limitless API calls.

BigCommerce core features common to all its plans:

• A minimum of 10 free design templates.

• Paypal integration and other payment gateways.

• SEO and full CMS functionality.

• Akamai Image Manger’s automatic image optimization for improved rankings.

• Integration with various email marketing solutions such as MailChimp, iContact, and Constant Contact.

• Gift vouchers and discount coupons.

• HTML and CSS tweaking.

• Ability to do product reviews.

• Professional data reporting.

Notable BigCommerce features

Availability of a payment gateway. Third-party payment gateways integrated on a website can add additional charges that will eat into your bottom-line. Some take a percentage of your payments or charge a monthly fee. Some apply both charges. Other payment gateways are not also easy to integrate. They can take some effort when it comes to configurations. 

BigCommerce, fortunately, has a working Paypal and Braintree powered payment gateway integrated. This feature also gives you a preferential rate for card transactions from Paypal. Nevertheless, the platform can work with 40 other payment gateways. Shopify, in contrast, integrates with over 100 different payment gateways.

Templates

The platform has ten free templates and 130 other paid themes, with variant features. The price range for paid themes ranges from $145 to $235. The major complaint there is about BigCommerce’s free themes is that they are quite alike in design. Their major differentiator is their colors. Shopify also has ten free that have the advantage of having two or three variants each. Some other platforms, like Squarespace, provide up to 100 free themes.

Abandoned cart feature

BigCommerce’s abandoned cart feature is awe-inspiring. With it, you can design three emails that automatically go to visitors who leave the purchase funnel midway.  The feature, unlike that of other e-commerce platforms, allows three autoresponders, while Shopify limits theirs to one. It, however, is not available on BigCommerce’s cheapest plan while it is available on Basic Shopify.

Product categories

Shopify allows you to present your shoppers with three product variants. You will need third-party apps or workarounds to have a wider product presentation choice. BigCommerce, on the other hand, allows up to 250 product options. This makes the platform perfect for merchants with products that have a wide range of formats. The platform, however, does not automatically categorize products as Shopify does. Nevertheless, it has a bulk edit feature that speeds the manual product categorization.

Interface

BigCommerce has a reasonably easy to use and intuitive interface. It is in many ways similar to Shopify’s. All the critical features required to build your online store are placed on a vertical menu on your left-hand side. These features will help you to edit the store once selected.  

BigCommerce SEO

Their SEO game is also solid, and the necessary tools are very easy to edit. The platform also allows you to easily edit product-specific URLs, unlike Shopify. You can build short URLs, which are great for SEO. The platform’s mobile website is very fast on Google, which gives it a Google indexing advantage. 

BigCommerce also leads in Accelerated Mobile Pages features, which increase your SEO advantage. With this feature, fewer users will leave your mobile site due to slow loading pages. The search engines algorithms could reward a low drop off rate. 

Automatic image optimization

Appropriately, sized images do load faster, which increases page speeds. Google will, therefore, accord these pages five-star treatments. BigCommerce uses the Akamai Image Manager. The feature will optimize all images, and as per BigCommerce data, the image optimization could increase load times by up to 70%. The useful tool is available in all of the platform’s plans, unlike other e-commerce builders that require a third-party app for this feature. 

App integrations

BigCommerce offers integrations with over 650 apps, which is less than what Shopify has. However, the combinations required for significant uses such as marketing shipping, accounting, or CRM are available. They’re also useful Saas apps you can pay for such as Zendesk, Salesforce, or MailChimp. If you have to use MailChimp, you will need to work with BigCommerce instead of Shopify. Shopify has had a fallout with MailChimp over data protection problems. 

Android and iOS apps

Many e-commerce platforms today have mobile apps that assist merchants with in-store management. BigCommerce seems to be missing this functionality; however, you can acquire third-party apps if you wish to. These, nonetheless, are not supported by the platform perchance there is a technical hitch. Shopify, on the other hand, does have this functionality.

Support

The platform does have a lot of useful handholding for all its plans. It is, therefore, easy to set up an online store. There is a 24 hour, live agent customer support for plans, though they are not clear if that support involves phone calls.

Analytics

You will have access to a wide range of standard reports such as marketing, customer, search data, abandoned carts, and finance reports. If you want further insights, you will need to pay an additional charge.

However, it is noteworthy that the reporting bulk comes free with all plans. What you might need to pay for is detailed data on products, customers, and abandoned carts. In contrast, Shopify avails these reports to its $79 plan and above users.  

BigCommerce Pros

• Lack of transaction fees:
  BigCommerce has an integrated, Paypal powered payment gateway. The platform also does not charge any extra costs for transactions. You can, nevertheless, integrate third party payment gateways from 65 other providers. These gateways will, however, charge a premium for their services. 

• Unlimited staff accounts:
  BigCommerce is very generous with its staff accounts. It allows for unlimited staff accounts on all its plans while Shopify for two on its cheaper package and a maximum of 15 on its most expensive plan. 

• Reporting and gift cards:
  If you want to access professional reports and the gift card features affordably, you will need to use BigCommerce. With Shopify, you will need to pay for its higher tire plans to access these tools. BigCommerce has these feature integrated free in all its plans.

• Easy checkout:
  A single page checkout feature is excellent at hindering cart abandonment. BigCommerce has this feature in all its packages. To enjoy this feature on Shopify, you will need to acquire an add-on. 

BigCommerce Cons

• Abandoned cart saver:
  Unlike Shopify, the platform does not have this recovery tool in its more affordable plans. Shopify has inbuilt it in every package.

• Sales limits:
  BigCommerce and 3dcart have set sales limits for their plans. Shopify does not have this limit, meaning that it is easy to scale your online shop on their platform without much worry.

• Integration options:
  There is a wide range of apps available in their app store. Shopify, however, has a more extensive selection in comparison. 

Shopify vs. BigCommerce

Costs

The price range of the plans for the two platforms does not have much of a difference. The cheapest Shopify plan with a fully functional CMS costs $29, which equals the BigCommerce Standard plan.

 Shopify and BigCommerce plan price comparison:

Ease of use

Shopify has been made very easy to use and is perfect for all beginner merchants. BigCommerce has features that have a steeper learning curve.

Features

Bigcommerce has free reporting features in all its plans. These tools are however available in Shopify’s more expensive plans. Shopify nonetheless has the abandoned cart retriever tool in all its plans, unlike BigCommerce. Shopify also has a more extensive app store, which is a useful feature to advanced sellers.

Design

Shopify has over a large selection of paid themes as well as ten free themes. Their design is professional and modern and allow for a great deal of customization. They are also responsive and look great in every device. BigCommerce has seven free layouts and a large selection of paid themes. They, nonetheless, look a bit dated unlike that of Shopify. 

3dcart: Another Shopify Alternative

Founded in 1997, the well-known online shop builder had more than 17,500 merchants globally by 2014. 3dcart has very competitive packages segmented according to an online shop’s traffic. The platform is not optimized for merchants with high traffic, but it is a fantastic solution for startups.  

It has enough functionality and features to get you moving, especially with your mobile shoppers. 3dcart’s features, however, are not as comprehensive as those of Shopify or BigCommerce. It is also an affordable hosted Saas platform, which does not charge transaction fees for its features and services. 

The platform offers access to newsletters, a blog, email, and its CRM and has social media selling tools. Its backend is not complicated, and its dashboard is responsive, making it easy to update your online shop on the go. Of greater value is the robust API that makes it very easy to integrate third-party tools and apps onto your online shop. You can also connect your store to Shopzilla, Amazon, or eBay quite easily.

3dcart Platform Plans at a Glance

 The platform has a 15-day free trial if you would like to test drive it. All its plans enjoy features such as:

• Zero transaction fees.

• A shopping cart.

• 24/7 technical support.

• Access to a Facebook store.

• Unlimited bandwidth.

• Zero transaction fees.

• Built-in blog.

• Over 100 payment gateways.

• Unlimited orders.

• Product reviews.

• API access.

• POS support.

• Over 50 responsive themes.

Key Differences Between the 3dcart Plans

The significant differences in the 3dcart plan’s features are most significant at the $79.99 and the $229.00 plans. The lower packages, for instance, do not have an abandoned cart saver feature or access to the reward loyalty tool or a gift registry. 

You also cannot send email-marketing newsletters on the package.  The Plus Store package also allows for customer groups and segmentation as well as leads generation. The Pro Store package at $229.00 has additional features such as 3dcart’s email marketing autoresponder feature. This tool sends personalized emails to shoppers that place orders.

These emails can also be customized to, for instance, thank the shopper or to ask them to review their shopping experience with you. The package also has a back in stock and waiting list notification feature. The sales rep commission tracker available on this package will keep you up to date with your reps earnings. 

With it, you can create a list of your sales reps that shows their commissions. You can also use the feature to assign orders to a specific salesperson in your shop. At the end of the sales period, you can also use the feature to create reports that highlight sales from an individual sales rep or a comprehensive report for all sales done.

3dcart Features Review

Templates

3dcart has over 100 free optimized templates available that look good on mobile devices. Unlike Shopify’s or BigCommerce’s, the 3dcart’s templates vary in design and color pallets. They also have specific models for different industries.   

Marketing and SEO

3dcart has all its tools placed in its marketing tab for ease of access. The SEO settings will, however, be a bit daunting for the uninitiated. Yet, the platform has most of the required checkboxes checked off. You therefore only need to change the settings you are most sure about. To learn more on what’s most needful for your online shop, research on shopping cart SEO software dos and don’ts.

Payments

The 3dcart payment systems accept split payments, money orders, credit cards, checks, or cash. You can also integrate the system into your brick and mortar store. You, still, have access to over 160 other payment gateways if you wish to pay for them. The platform is Paypal payments integrated.

3dcart Pros

• Unlimited storage:
  No matter the size of your online shop’s catalog, 3dcart will not charge you extra storage fees. With unlimited storage space, you can scale as necessary, which is perfect for small startups with exponential growth patterns.

• Access to multiple payment gateways:
  You can give your users flexibility during checkout by availing different payment options. 

• Fantastic support:
  If you are frustrated with 3dcart’s somewhat steep learning curve, you can access their support features easily. All 3dcart plans have access to 24/7 online support, while all but the Start-Up Store have 24×7 phone support.

3dcart Cons

• Steep learning curve for merchants:
  The 3dcart back-office interface is clunkier and not as intuitive as Shopify’s or BigCommerce’s. The front end, however, is easy to use for the shopper, which should increase your sales and conversions.

• CSS/ HTML editing:
  With 3dcart, you might need to learn a few basic HTML or CSS moves to edit the themes. This could keep away merchants who are less tech-savvy or those with no extra money to pay to developers.

• Theme designs:
  While they have a wide range of themes, they are not as modern or as professional as those on Shopify.

• Advanced features and Add-ons:
  While 3dcart has one of the most robust feature sets, it also puts its abandoned cart, email newsletters, and loyalty programs from its more affordable package plans. It also does not have as many integration options as Shopify.  

Shopify vs. 3DCart

Pricing

Both platforms have very similar pricing plans. However, the more affordable Start Up Store $19 plan is more affordable than the Basic Shopify equivalent as $29. The other more expensive packages are on the same price range.

Inventory management

3dcart will allow you to sell more products on its Start up Store plan while the Basic Shopify plan limits your inventory to 25 products. 

Coupons and discount codes

3dcart will allow you to create and calculate promo/discount codes, on all its packages. In contrast, Shopify does not have this option on its cheaper Lite package. 

Payment gateways

3dcart has over 200 payment gateways while Shopify is limited to 70.

Templates and themes

Shopify has fewer free themes but hundreds of paid themes. 3dcart has lots of free themes, but they are not as modern looking as Shopify’s.

SEO capabilities

Both 3dcart and Shopify have a robust arsenal of SEO tools. These will go a long way in directing traffic to your store. Shopify’s tools are, nonetheless, vouched as the best of all its alternatives.

Transaction fees

3dcart does not charge any transaction fees on any of its packages. If you go for other payment gateways, you will pay them their charges as required. Shopify also does not have a transaction charge, but it has a transparent fee structure for third party payment gateway charges. 

The Final Word: Which Shopify Alternative is for You?

Shopify is awesome and you can use it as it is. It has some fantastic pros. Not everyone is okay with the cons, though. And that’s why you’re reading this. You’re looking for reputable alternatives. 

3dcart and BigCommerce are amazing alternatives. Each platform has its strong points as well as drawbacks. And that’s the good thing with options, you can easily spot which one works for your unique situation. Use the in-depth research in this post to make an informed choice.

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