Shopify vs BigCommerce vs Lemonstand vs Yahoo
-
Have any of you moz folks recently had experience deciding where to build a small ecommerce site and had considered the following:
- Shopify
- Big Commerce
- Lemonstand
- Yahoo
Our site has been on Yahoo for 12 years. And I've seen designers the last several really complain about the limitations of customizing Yahoo stores and the checkout pages. Going to be creating a new ecommerce site for jewelry and thinking we should consider another platform.
Things like built in responsive design, ability to customize checkout, customize store easily without RTML (Yahoo proprietary language - not many developers use it), ability to scale up if needed, but affordable for entry, conversion optimization best practices built in, ability for good seo built in without having to use 3rd party. (Another crappy limitation of Yahoo stores is that they do NOT support a blog as part of the domain, ie, www.domain.com/blog.html which is much better for seo than their way - blog.domain.com)
I read on Rich Page's blog that he likes BigCommerce. I've spoken with Lemonstand and they have a lot of fashion sites using their new platform, and I'm seeing lots of new sites spring up using Shopify.
Any feedback would be greatly appreciated! I'm sure there are a bunch of folks like me that have similar decisions to make now.
Thanks!
Ron
-
No problem, I am one of their community moderators for their forum, so if you have any questions like if something can be done with it; you can send me at http://dh42.com/contact/ ( I hope this is ok, I don't want to put my main email address out to get scraped). I can let you know if something is a stock feature or not. Because with the hosted platforms like Shopify, Lemonstand, and BigCommerce the features are limited because you do not have access to the core application. With something like Prestashop or Magento for that matter since you have access, you can really do anything your budget allows.
-
Thanks Leslie. I'll check out Prestashop, I am not familiar with them. I'll reach out to you for more info on this.
Appreciate your help!
-
This falls out of the bound of which platforms you mentioned, but you should give Prestashop a shake. It is on the level with the other platforms you mentioned and more than likely ahead of them. It is OSS so it is free, all you have to pay for is your hosting.
I have a couple of jewelry store clients running Prestashop and it does very well with them. One of them has features such as 3d product rotation and where you can design pieces with what ever stone you choose and metal.
As far as SEO most all newer platforms are on the same level, which means the SEO of the platform means little to nothing. You have to do the SEO yourself with every platform.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
HELP: Analysing data to make decisions, SEO vs PPC
Hi mozers! I have recently been seeing good results in the serps lately for my main keywords in my country NZ, now I'm seeing good results in Australia for these keywords and our USA domain is not far behind and making good progress... However, our NZ results show that we may get around 1 conversion every 3 days from our organic search. I read other places that click share for ppc was much higher, but there is no way we can match our competitors budgets from 3k - 300k per month. So our option was to focus on SEO. To me, the SEO results seem quiet low, however I'm not really sure how to go about diving deep into the analytics of it all to find out where I need to improve or focus on, which keywords are bringing these conversions. Maybe I need to go for long tail keywords etc... It seems my rankings are coming from general keywords which are still highly competitive, but even so, we are not performing to what I know we should be. Our competitors are mostly paying ppc, however I was told my ROI would be better spent via SEO. Any suggestions perhaps what I might be missing or doing wrong in this case. (I have recently done a new design overhaul with a new registration process) I have 3 top level domains you can see the site here http://bit.ly/1yhz96v
Conversion Rate Optimization | | edward-may0 -
Bounce rate vs main domain and subdomain
So there is a website www.domainname.com that is based on wordpress. Basically this site has 8-10 pages but it is not a blog. And it has a subdomain mystore.domainname.com which is based on magento. While developing the site the circumstances were such that we had to use a subdomain for ecommerce based on magento. So the wp site is ranking and people are landing on that site. It makes sense when it has a bounce rate of around 72% because people are actually going to the subdomain ( store ) after they land on the wp site. Because they are actually looking to buy. My question is will this bounce rate affect in ranking of the wp site ? Because for now only the wp site is ranking for most of the terms. Should i consider removing the wp site and have the whole site based on magento ? I appreciate any kind of feedback and suggestion 🙂
Conversion Rate Optimization | | MindlessWizard0 -
Browser-based redirect vs. dynamic content
Hey everyone, We have a free browser extension for Chrome and a paid web product for all other browsers. Given the differences in product and pricing (free vs. paid) I'd like visitors to see a different landing page based on their browser. Visitors using Chrome should see a landing page with content about the free browser extension, while visitors from every other browser should see a landing page with content about the paid, premium web product. I'm trying to decide between these two options: a) 302 redirect visitors from one static HTML landing page to another if their user agent suggests they're using Chrome b) Use javascript to make parts of the landing page dynamic and show a different CTA and different copy for visits from Chrome Does anyone have any experience with having to make this choice? What are some things I should take into consideration for optimal "crawlability" and page-load-speed? Thanks in advance!
Conversion Rate Optimization | | ipancake0 -
Modified broad match vs phrase match strategy - Google Adwords
Hi All, I am looking through a client account that is very mature (10+ years running) on Google AdWords. As soon as it became available, this client adopted a modified broad match (MBM) strategy and has removed all phrase match and exact match keyword types. The account has hundreds of thousands of active keywords. Over the past few years, the CPCs have been rising. While I know that market values of keywords in general have risen consistently year after year, I speculate that this client is actually causing their own prices to go up faster than they should. I have a couple of questions regarding strategy that I am considering that I want to know if anyone else has any experience with... by having many MBM versions of the same keyword, is it possible for cannibalization to occur for most of the variations? Example query: new red running shoes
Conversion Rate Optimization | | dsinger
variations Ad group 1: +red running shoes, +red +running shoes, red +running +shoes, red running +shoes
variations ad group 2: +blue running shoes, +blue +running shoes, blue +running +shoes, blue running +shoes based on the logic of MBM, the possible matches to this query from the available variations are +red running shoes, +red +running shoes, red +running +shoes, red running +shoes, blue +running +shoes, blue running +shoes. So, if the performance of those blue variations trump the more closely related red variations, this searcher may actually see an ad about blue running shoes, even though they have indicated they are more interested in red. in terms of cost, I would anticipate that MBM keywords are more expensive than their phrase match counterparts. can anyone confirm or deny this? My thoughts are that with several years of actual search terms being collected, this client should be able to do a great job of covering almost every variation of keyword that customers have used and create a strong list of phrase match keywords to satisfy all relevant queries. MBM keywords seem like they are a lazy way of getting traffic at a higher cost that can actually cannibalize close variations that exist in the account, causing the wrong ad to be shown based on matching/relevancy and a higher price CPC in the long run. Thoughts?1 -
Checkout abandonment fix w/ Shopify?
Hey everybody. I run a digital product site on Shopify. Just wondering if anyone has any experience with on page fixes for checkout abandonment? On my site... 31% of people add to cart & never get to checkout. 66% of people reaching checkout abandon their checkouts. Obviously a lot of sales are flying out the window. Any advice would be greatly appreciated!
Conversion Rate Optimization | | PedroAndJobu0 -
A very pertinent .me TLD vs. a longer, less pertinent .com domain?
Hey folks, John here, first-time poster. I have a dilemma I suspect you folks have already have an opinion on, but I'm a bit stuck. I think i have two basic options for choosing a domain name with the format of : 1. I can nab a .me with a very smooth, brandable, and pertinent/convertible and memorable domain name; 2. I can get a more obtuse sounding, less pertinent, lengthy, and less memorable .com domain. This issue is getting the click in the SERP. Assuming the same ranking and meta description, will the smooth .me suffer worse than the rather awkward and long .com? Is it your opinion that all other things remaining equal, will a .me suffer demonstrably over a .com Also, I'm not terribly concerned with folks remembering its a .me or a .com for search purposes, but should i be concerned for email purposes? Many thanks for your input!!
Conversion Rate Optimization | | juanzo0070 -
How accurate is the Geo-Targeting of Google and Bing/Yahoo PPC ads?
I have a client who serves a local market and who has had trouble in the past with people out of her service area clicking on ads. She asked how accurate the geo-targeting option is. I know it's not possible to be completely accurate resolving the location of IP addresses, but was wondering if there are any recent statistics out there regarding how accurate or inaccurate geo-targeting is. I did some quick searches but did not see any current numbers. Many Thanks!
Conversion Rate Optimization | | JKuly0 -
Page Title Tags - SEO vs CRO ?
Hi everyone, Thanks to what seems to be a recent(ish) algo change in Google, some of our more targeted deeper pages are ranking for search terms where before only our homepage would rank. This is of course great however I am a little worried that some of the page titles of our internal pages are a little short, for example our main departments (we are an ecommerce store) are titles 'Department Name | Liberty Games' so for example 'Pool Tables | Liberty Games'. I have heard varying reports on what to do with the title tag, I have heard to keep the most relevant keywords to the left of the tag, which we have done, I have also heard that shorter is better. I am just a bit concerned that our tags are looking a little stumpy in the serps alongside other results which are longer (although admittedly a bit keyword stuffed). So (eventually) my question is, will short titles harm my click-through rate ? but are shorter titles better for SEO ? If longer is better are there any recommendations about what I could add to these titles that could potentially help click-throughs and natural rankings ? Many thanks, Stuart
Conversion Rate Optimization | | stukerr1