GSD 227: Which eCommerce Platform Is Best For Small Businesses

Welcome to today’s episode of GSD Daily, and we’re going to talk about which e-commerce platform is best for small businesses. Now, a lot of it depends, so there are a lot of different ways to answer that, but what I’m going to do is share with you the top platforms for the specific thing that you are starting or the thing that you’re growing. That way we can kind of jump off into some of the advantages and disadvantages of each.

The thing about e-commerce platforms is they’re not all built the same. Most of them are built for one particular type of business model, and because they are built that way, they have certain things that they do better than others. For example, something like ClickFunnels, which is a sales funnel builder, is a platform that powers e-commerce businesses. However, it is multiple pages. It is very much built for coaching, consulting, and the info product world. It can do physical products for sure, but not very well.

The antithesis of that is something like Shopify. Shopify does physical products extremely well. Fulfillment, shipping, and all of that are baked into the platform. And it can do digital downloads and digital products, but it doesn’t necessarily do upsells quite the same way that ClickFunnels does. So it’s just a different version. So we’re going to walk through some of that on the screen.

All right. So we’re going to get started with Shopify. Shopify is a brilliant platform for growing your digital business, for growing your physical product business most succinctly, I guess. If you are dropshipping products or importing and selling physical goods, Shopify is a really great place to start. Easy setup. You can have products pretty easily. The theming, they have a lot of themes that you can buy and some free themes that’ll look nice.

Also, you can get as complex as you want from a theming standpoint, shipping is baked into it, and taxes are baked into it. It has product availability. You can have different fulfillment locations. There’s lots of stuff inside Shopify that works well. We are working on a project now that has full digital downloads and stuff too. Shopify is the best place for them. A one-time digital single-use kind of download works out nicely for this particular project. It might not necessarily for the next digital download project, but for this one, it works nicely.

The next one is a WordPress plugin called WooCommerce. Now, WooCommerce is, if you don’t necessarily want to pay monthly Shopify fees, there are monthly Shopify fees, then WooCommerce is a good way to get around that. WordPress is a free content management system, and WooCommerce is a free plugin that adds those shopping cart pieces, that shopping cart functionality. Not as out of the box, or seamless as something like Shopify with shipping and taxes and all that other stuff. And to get true functionality, the fun, the whiz-bang stuff that you want your store to have eventually, you’re probably going to need to either buy a bunch of plugins or hire a developer for it. So it is free to start, not necessarily… It is free to start. You can grow without necessarily spending a bunch of money from a monthly standpoint, but out of the box, it is more of a complex setup.

The next one is Kajabi. So if you’re selling digital products, coaching courses, and podcast communities, Kajabi is the place that you want to go. That’s where you’re going to the best platform to get set up there. Kajabi is, a longtime favorite of ours, we use it a ton for our clients in setting up all of their digital stuff. Coaching programs, podcasts, courses, specifically accelerator programs, mentorship programs, all of that stuff. Again, works. It’s a knowledge management system first, meaning it has a lot of course architecture, and it still has funnels stuff. It has funnels and pipelines is what they call them, but it is a strong, strong learning management system and a good sales funnel system. WordPress pages, ClickFunnels pages, we can still out-convert Kajabi pages, but from a course, fulfillment standpoint is where it, really, really shines. So if you’re selling digital products, Kajabi is the place that you want to get set up here.

The e-commerce platform to get started for just digital downloads anything that isn’t necessarily courses is SamCart. Samcart.com gives you an easy way to start selling online. Now, this is software that was built around order forms. So if you have an order form that you need to collect money for, SamCart is going to be the software that will tie into some of those other platforms. So it’ll tie into Kajabi, it’ll tie into Teachable, it’ll tie into Zapier, and a bunch of other integrations. SamCart is the thing that takes the money though, the order form itself. They have since built on landing pages, they’ve built on courses, they’ve built on affiliate management, and some other things to become a more full-featured platform. But SamCart, from an order form standpoint, is a simple, simple way to collect money and is solid.

And then the last is ClickFunnels. Now, ClickFunnels is the software of choice for a lot of info-marketers. For, I would say, probably half of the clients who come to us, have a ClickFunnels account, and they want us to build in ClickFunnels, although none of them are pleased with ClickFunnels for one reason or another. Slow low times, weird integrations. It’s good for what it does. It’s good for setting up sales funnels quickly and succinctly. But there are other opportunities out there, which is one of the reasons why we’ve kind of added this. This is like number five in this pick, this lineup. Even internally, we very much rather build using WordPress and a plug-in called OptimizePress. It’s a little bit more complicated thematically to set up, but it’s a way to build shopping carts and software and sales funnels and has complete control over everything in the sales funnel. ClickFunnels has a little less, so it has some tricky integrations here and there.

With that being said, ClickFunnels is the standard funnel builder. So you probably have a ClickFunnels login. There are a lot of businesses, a lot of more traditional businesses that are even getting into funnels now because of ClickFunnels. So it has done well letting the world know about funnels, but it isn’t necessarily the easiest or best e-commerce platform to set up your digital, online business right away.

So those are some of the biggest e-commerce platforms you can pick and when to use them. As I said, they each have their advantages and disadvantages. It just depends on what you’re selling, who you’re selling to, what price points you are, and how you will be fulfilling it. But please, click the button below this video. But if you have any questions at all, ask the comment below this video and I’ll make sure to get it answered. If you have questions about setting up your inbound marketing funnel, your sales funnels, and paid traffic, go to DoneForYou.com/start, book a call with me and I’ll make sure to go through, do a little bit of research before we get on and answer those questions. And if you’ve learned anything from this video, make sure to like it, share it, and wherever you are, wherever you’re watching it, and I will talk to you soon. All right, thanks. Bye.