To create an online store, various engines can be used, yet technically, all of them will perform their function. When selecting the engine, keep in mind the format of your website.
1. Landing is a one-pager, which is usually intended for selling one product and is fully optimized for search queries for one specific product. Such solutions are great when you need to sell a specialized product to a small target audience. Main objectives of such a website: sell the product here and now, collect contact information on the buyer and attract the buyer to a larger project (the main online store with a wider range of products, social media page, if main business activities are conducted there, an invitation to an educational course, etc.).
Here, we can recommend Adobe Muse as a simple solution. It results in an HTML page with an order form. Pros: the page is easy to create, maintain and loads fast. Cons: if you need additional functionality, you will have to move the entire website to a more complex engine.
You can also find online website builders which have similar functionalities. With such website builder, you will create your website fast and easy, no programming skills are required. The problem with such website builders is that they are linked to one specific hosting provider. If you don’t like your plan or need additional features, be ready that you will not be able to take away your website as it is. You will have to create its copy on the public engine, having all the required files.
Popular engines, like WordPress and Joomla, are used quite often too, as they have countless templates for one-pagers.
2. Business card website. This is a small website consisting of several pages. It is usually used for offline businesses and its main purpose is to describe what the company is doing, where its offices are located and how to contact its representatives. There are also pages with answers to frequent questions, order and delivery descriptions, guarantees, and payment details. Such websites are often targeted at a certain local area, such as one specific city.
Such website can be created even by a person with no development skills using a publicly accessible engine like WordPress, Modx, Joomla, and Drupal.
3. Online stores have multiple sections and products to choose from. Beginners should rather use OpenCart, as it is the easiest to master among other similar engines.
4. Personal or corporate blog. Such projects are better and easiest to implement using WordPress, Joomla and Drupal.
It is hard to cover all types of websites in one article, so only the most basic ones are shown here. If no solution fits you and your website differs by its type, contact our support team and we will try to advise an engine based on your needs.