7 Common Misconceptions About Using An Online Store Builder

With ecommerce technology taking great strides and revolutionizing the way we do business, brands have also changed the modus-operandi for doing business. From creating their own website to mobile apps, brands have found a new way to compete and stay ahead in the game. 

Going online has the potential to accelerate a brand’s growth. However, building an online store is not an overnight process. It involves consulting with the service provider and executing the plan until the product is delivered. 

This is where modern online store builders come to the rescue. These online store builders speed up the entire process of creating the store, and as a result, you can go to market in record time. You get everything ready-made, and yes, you can even go for extensive customisation as per your needs and choices.  

But what is an online shop builder and how do they work? Is it worth it to depend on these power-packed ecommerce solutions for the success of your B2C ecommerce business? 

Find answers to your queries one by one here. 

What Is An Online Store Builder? 

An online store builder is a software solution which allows B2B and D2C businesses to not only create but launch B2C ecommerce websites alongside online marketplaces. 

Ecommerce store builders enable brands to launch an eCommerce portal besides providing comprehensive solutions for product administration, order management, marketing, and fulfilling the order. Advanced ecommerce builders also come with a provision to create mobile apps for online brands.

Building an online store can help a brand not only operate efficiently but also grow the business to other channels. Moreover, online store builders  help brands to grow their reach beyond geographical boundaries, add omnichannel touchpoints, reach untapped customers segments with innovative marketing, experiment with different business models, introduce efficiency through automation, target customers better by showcasing the right products, and so on. 

Is It Worth It To Use Online Store Builders? 

The short answer to this question is Yes. 

It is totally worth it to use a store builder for brands whether it's for B2C ecommerce purposes or B2B, D2C or any other business model. Businesses that cannot wait any longer to scale their revenue and have limited time must rely on online store builders. 

Ecommerce website builders would not only help to manage the complete business from one admin but also enable brands to sell their products and services to different demographics. Just make sure that you are relying on easy to use yet cutting-edge solutions like StoreHippo that make it simple to launch any type of business in a smoother way. Not to mention, online store builders provide customization options as well. 

However, there are certain myths about using online store builders for brands.

These myths make it harder for businessmen to use online store builders as they create obstacles to the entire process.

So let's take a look at these myths and bust them up to make the way clear.

Myths About Online Store Builders That Do Not Have Real Existence

It's time to bust the myths that have prevented enterprise brands from relying on the advanced online store builders. So lets start busting these myths one by one:

1. You Need To Be A Professional Coder

One of the first myths states that you need to be a professional developer to use an online store builder. 

Often, brands think that to run a business online it is essential to have a huge IT team and coding knowledge to understand and use the features and functionalities of an online store builder. 

Fortunately, this assertion is completely false. With so many options available today, just relying on coding is not the solution. In order to run an online store, you can simply choose to use an online store builder like StoreHippo.

Low-code Ecommerce Platforms like StoreHippo offer easy development tools that even non-tech-savvy people can handle. The DIY platform can be used by anyone who has basic knowledge of operating computers. Also, the headless architecture gives proficient developers the creative control to easily tweak the platform to create out-of-box solutions for enterprise brands.

Thus, if you already have some professional knowledge, then consider yourself lucky as it would speed up the entire process. 

2. Customization Is A Challenge 

Some brands stay away from online store builders because they think that it does not allow regular customization. Enterprise brands looking for tailor-made solutions have a notion that website builders are rigid and not suitable for their unique requirements.

However, in reality, flexible online store builders designed for enterprise brands, come with extensive customization capabilities. Brand-specific changes can be made easily by tweaking the existing entities or creating entirely new ones using the customization capabilities of such ecommerce builders. Cutting edge ecommerce solution providers like StoreHippo not only enable you to make custom changes for your unique requirements, they also adapt and scale as your company grows and expands with time. 

StoreHippo not only allows a few basic alterations, you even get the flexibility to pivot your business model and design a hybrid business model by combining two or more popular business models. 

3. Creating A Beautiful Storefronts Is Not Possible

Another intimidating aspect of online store builders is its fixed and difficult to customize design templates. Usually, website builders come with fixed templates that do not fit the unique requirements of enterprise brands but are good to go for SMBs. 

However, creating beautiful design themes is easy with modern online store builders like StoreHippo. Even if you don’t have any design skills at all, creating beautiful storefronts using an out-of-the-box theme (or templates) is a snap. StoreHippo's drag and drop design tools and easily customizable design themes come with a host of features to build the storefront design aligned with your brand requirements.  The Website builder interface is so intuitive and easy to use that one can create beautiful storefronts within minutes! All you need to do is to choose a professional theme, modify it to suit your needs and then insert products into your pages.

Setting up payment gateways and payment options for products is also very simple – most of these plugins are already integrated with the site builder! You will quickly learn how everything works, and before you know it you will build complex online stores on your own. Having a beautiful website that contains interesting content or high-quality images is not always enough. Many believe that a store which is appealing to the eye is important as it attracts buyers.

There are marketing initiatives alongside content and publicity that demand to be planned and implemented with a professional approach, just as you get it through the online store builders.

Apart from managing your website content, the store builders allow you to integrate the products in appropriate places so that they become easily visible and accessible to the customers.

An online store builder helps add impactful navigations and showcase targeted products that bring better revenues. So the myth doesn't work in 2022 or in future.

4. Adding Other Sales Channels Is A Complete Rework

This is the age of omnichannel commerce. Selling through just an ecommerce website is not enough. Enterprise brands that plan to disrupt the market need to have an omnichannel presence and offer seamless buying to their customers on all the modern channels.

It's a common myth that online store builders enable you to create just an ecommerce website. Building mobile apps or adding new-age sales channels like IoT devices or wearables is a challenge and involves lots of time, effort and money. But with StoreHippo’s MACH architecture and headless component going omnichannel becomes a lot easier for brands. Brands can leverage the decoupled headless architecture and easily use the same backend logic and APIs to create new customer touchpoints. Also, isolating faults and integrating with the best-in-breed software and services becomes super-easy with the microservices and API components of MACH. 

5. It Is Difficult To Manage Sales 

Building an online store may seem like an easy task but managing sales may sound overwhelming. Especially when it comes to selling on different channels. The brands not only have to manage the sales on their B2C ecommerce stores, but also need to align and manage sales from all the different channels like mobile apps, mobile sites, marketplaces, social commerce, any new-age sales channels like wearables etc. 

Here is where brands need advanced online store builders like StoreHippo that come with inbuilt order and inventory management tools to help brands sell on multiple channels and manage their inventory and orders centrally from one common admin. 

Most people think it is difficult to manage an online brand selling through multiple channels as you need different teams to coordinate each sales channel. With StoreHippo's powerful admin panel, you can control every aspect of your sales from one place and define levels of user rights for team members without spending too much time.  With an easy-to-use interface and rich features, your teams and sellers can easily upload products and their information.  You can have a complete view of your inventory across channels, automate shipping for every channel and also set up different discounts for each channel.

StoreHippo also comes with inbuilt analytics and reporting tools that give you a snapshot of your business and also offer detailed analytics to make data-driven strategies for growth.  

6. No Access To Tools 

Another myth which comes around using online store builders is that you may not get access to the tools or features. But in reality, online store builders like StoreHippo make it all possible.

StoreHi[ppo comes with more than 300 inbuilt features, 120+ integrations that make it easy to build unique solutions.

Along with a gamut of tools the elastic scalability of the StoreHippo B2B and B2C ecommerce platform helps brands handle peak load seasons easily. Here is what StoreHippo offers:

• Built-in marketing tools that help build your brand with strategically planned marketing.

• SEO features that help in optimizing site for better SERP rankings and organic visits

• Inbuilt blog engine to build brand value through content marketing

• Built-in custom forms features and host of ready-to-use forms to gather additional inputs from customers

• Support for diverse business models like multi vendor marketplace, multiple storefronts, multilingual stores, hyperlocal ecommerce, custom hybrid business models and much more

• Pre-integrated 60+ secure national or international payment processors and a variety of payment options, including digital wallets, UPI online banking and more.

• Integrated logistics solutions with support for 30+ shipping partners and logistics aggregators

• Provide multi-currency invoices so that your customers avoid paying extra fees to convert currencies, etc.

• Inbuilt tax engine to set up multi-level taxes, full GST support

7. You Have No Support 

Ever wondered what you might do if your online store created from an online store builder stops working? Would you have to start over again? 

There are so many questions which may come to mind. However, it is important to know that not all online store-building solutions offer support to clients.

A few exceptions like StoreHippo focus on offering complete technical assistance even after the project gets completed.

At times of emergency, one can contact the customer care services through chat, call or email and get an immediate response to resolve the blocker issues. 

Time To Build Your Online Store Now!

It's time to build your B2C ecommerce store now with the help of a reliable and robust online store builder like StoreHippo.

This powerful SaaS-based store builder is designed to meet all your ecommerce needs. StoreHippo offers a variety of features to ensure that your online business never misses out on a growth opportunity.

Being the mobile-first platform with over 300 innovative features, it allows your brand to stay ahead of competition by offering engaging and conversion oriented sales channels for your customers. With its experience and expertise in powering diverse brands across the globe StoreHippo offers battle tested solutions for the most out-of-box business models.  StoreHi[ppo ensures flexibility, customization and scalability as the online business grows. 

Ready to take your brand online with StoreHippo? Why not, when you have free trials? Get started with our 14-day free trial offers here.