Shopping online and selling stuff through the marketplace is already the norm of our everyday lives. From e-Bay, Amazon, to Facebook and Instagram. Selling and buying have never been easier. However, for brands that are looking to build their own branded online shop, choosing the right eCommerce platform for your business is critical. To help you with that, we have compared Shopify and SHOPLINE in a previous post, go check it out if you have not.
Like Shopify, Wix is also a web-builder platform that is simple to use and quick to set up, when debating which platform to settle down with, let’s check out some the difference between SHOPLINE and Wix and find out which one suits your business more.
Let’s recap the five questions before we get into the details of comparing platforms, this gives you a better idea of which web builder might suit you more.
Question #1 What are your business objectives?
Do you want to run your business long-term and develop a brand? If so, having your own brand website is great for you to strengthen brand image and create the tone and ambiance for your brand. In addition, to avoid competitors in the marketplace such as Amazon, or eBay.
However, If you are looking to sell products online for just a short period, and not investing too much, then the online marketplace might be enough.
Question #2 How much time could you invest in your online business?
Before getting an online store, make sure you have prepared yourself to deal with customer complaints because it going to be time-consuming, and one of the perks of using marketplace is they have in-house customer services to address your buyers question so you don’t. However, there’s a chance that the customer service is not familiar with your product and could cause confusion to your buyers. However, with an online marketplace, you still have to plan all the marketing, website design, and promotion. All of these could cost you a lot of time. With a website built from SHOPLINE or IT design companies could save you a lot of time from storefront designing and web structure planning, but you will have to spend time on doing customer service on your own.
Question #3 Do you know how to build or design a website?
If you have no experience in web design and don’t have time to learn, then open source free eCommerce platform is not for you, because it requires a lot of manual works such as storefront design, domain setup, online shop building system, and more. There are a lot of things to be considered if you want to build your website from scratch, like hackers, information leaks, online fraud. If you’re incapable of handling these, then the marketplace, subscription-based platform and IT design companies might suits you better.
Question #4 Do you have a budget?
This is a very important question to ask yourself. If you don’t have enough budget to start your business, there are economic choices like free web builders and online marketplace, these options allow you to start your business fast and inexpensive. Although some online marketplaces are free to post products but require you to pay transaction fees, monthly maintenance fees, and additional advertising costs. Once you add up these costs, it could be an impressive amount as well. So, instead of going after annual-based subscription platforms or IT design companies that charge you a lot of fee upfront, you can consider monthly-based subscription platforms, which doesn’t require a lot in the beginning and allows merchants to upgrade for advanced features.
Question #5 Who is your target audience?
Identify your target audience could also help you decide better which platform is best for you to build your business. For example, if your target audience is teen schoolgirls, starting from the Instagram shop might be a good idea. If you have a wider audience or selling a niche product, having a brand website might be a better choice to start your business. To get to know more about your customers, review your order and look for patterns of your customers.
After thinking through these questions. If you think annual and monthly online web store builders are a good choice to kick start your business, let’s move on to the comparison between SHOPLINE and Wix.
Wix V.S. SHOPLINE
Pricing
The most economic eCommerce plan from Wix is $17 USD per month while SHOPLINE is $29 USD. However, SHOPLINE offers more advanced marketing tools, the content and SEO optimization techniques are a bit behind the time; a disadvantage to those who are building a long-term website effort.
Storage
The largest storage space Wix offers is 50GB, which limits merchants who offer a large number of products. While all SHOPLINE plans offer unlimited storage, even for free-trial accounts. If you want to sell over 10 products or generally grow your e-commerce business, go with SHOPLINE.
Language
Wix is an Isreal company and a global enterprise, it’s service is provided in English with limited Chinese support. Although SHOPLINE is founded in Hong Kong, but with merchants operating across Asia, and the cross-border service we provide. SHOPLINE supports several languages like English, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, and Traditional Chinese.
Admin Panel and Service
Both SHOPLINE and Wix are template-based website builder. Wix’s users are mainly individuals who build their own websites for varies reasons. Therefore, e-commerce capabilities can be a bit basic. While SHOPLINE is a dedicated e-Commerce platform that focuses on merchant’s needs with more features tailored for business owners, such as cross-border, O2O solution, POS system, and more.
Marketing Tools
Marketing is critical for e-commerce businesses, online and offline marketing can have a great impact on sales performance, while both platforms offer discount tools such as free shipping, coupon code, store credits…etc, SHOPLINE provides additional features like Facebook Shop Integration, online ads delivering, Google Adwords and Google Analytics tracking, and more to step your marketing game.
Localization
The biggest difference between Wix and SHOPLINE lies in localization if you’re considering to broaden your business scope to other countries, SHOPLINE supports multi-language and currencies to support your business go global. On the other hand, Wix is rich in its web-building features, and the platform is simple to use and quick to set up with no coding skill required.
Conclusion
Hopefully, this guide has helped you in your decision. Yet, picking the right e-commerce platform is not an easy task. By knowing beforehand what your needs and requirements are, you’ll more likely to find a good fit.
Marketing Associate at SHOPLINE. A digital marketing nerd and a podcast fan. You can find her out in the woods once in a while but most of the times she’s glued to her laptop screen indoors.