Designing an ecommerce site with Shopify

• Shopify is probably the best ecommerce platform when it comes to design. It offers loads of different website templates, all of which are mobile optimised and can be edited and changed to your liking with remarkable depth.
• Don't underestimate just how simple it can be to create your own online store – paying for a website designer is no small undertaking, with costs spiralling into thousands of dollars. A website builder, however, can be far cheaper, and surprisingly easy, even for novices. 
• Thanks to Shopify's great templates and intuitive setup, you could create a functioning online store in a matter of hours.

Wix

The perfect website builder for smaller online stores

• Wix is brilliant for smaller online stores. It makes creating an online shop incredibly easy, even for first timers, and the results will look slick and professional thanks to some brilliant templates.
• Wix doesn’t offer all of the features necessary for managing larger stores (such as supporting multiple sales channels, which Shopify can do). However, Wix has been working hard to improve its ecommerce functionality in recent months, with a host of new features and improvements, including its new Ascend all-in-one business solution and mass product imports.

Is Wix good for ecommerce?

• Wix is great for ecommerce if you're running a smaller online store, and if you're keen to design your own site. When you sign up for a Wix ecommerce site, you get the same excellent design options as the regular website builder, as well as great help and support options. What’s more, in our user testing, Wix scored well for ease of use — particularly for having an easy to understand interface.
• Ascend allows you to centrally control and automate a range of business functions, from promoting your business with marketing emails to giving customers help and support with chatbots. 
• You can also easily create multilingual sites with Wix — ideal for users in countries with one or more major languages.

BigCommerce

A close runner-up to Shopify for creating a large ecommerce store

• While it can’t quite match Shopify, BigCommerce is still an excellent ecommerce platform. The main drawbacks to BigCommerce are its slightly limited customization options, and that its help and support options can’t match Shopify.
• However, when it comes to its core function as a sales platform, BigCommerce can match Shopify stride-for-stride.

How Did We Choose the Best Website Builders for Ecommerce?

Our recommendations aren't based on random guesswork – we put every website builder on this page through extensive testing. As well as assessing the features and value for money of the various price plans, we put each website past a panel of testers of completely mixed abilities, from experienced web developers to novices. That way, we can ascertain real world ease-of-use for each online store platform.

How we test and rate ecommerce website builders

• The scoring above is based on in-depth, independent assessments of each of the ecommerce website builders. So you can know which system is right for you, we put each brand through a series of tests and user feedback assessments.
• For an ambitious online store, you'll need excellent features and access to a range of apps – all of this goes into our features assessment. But, it's no use having these options if they're too complex to use. That's why we also do real-life user testing, getting users with a range of skill levels to try out the website builders and feed-back on how approachable they found them.
• We rate the variety and quality of templates you can use to create an online store, plus we rate the Help & Support on offer when you need assistance.
• Finally, we give an all-important value for money rating, based on the variety of plans available and what you get in return for your investment.
• Shopify came out top in our tests. It's a market-leader when it comes to creating an online store, and for good reason. It has fantastic features and, crucially, it's a great brand to choose if you're building a large-scale online store.
• If you're looking to make a smaller, more boutique store, then we'd recommend choosing Wix – it has some fantastic ecommerce functions and competitive price plans that will be more appealing than the Shopify top tiers for larger stores.

Shopify and Wix are the two easiest ecommerce website builders we've tested, and both should prove simple and approachable when you're creating your own online store. 

•  Wix just has the edge for first timers, thanks to its top-of-class Help & Support options. Both sites have excellent setup processes, where you're guided through creating a site with some simple questions and easy-to-follow templates to get you started – this can help any beginner feel confident with their first steps.
• To determine how easy each website builder is, we put each website builder we tested past a panel of users of mixed experience with creating websites. This included complete first-timers who had never made a website before, let alone an online store.