In the early stages of your business, using a marketplace like Etsy can be a sensible decision. But as your business grows and your confidence increases, you may decide that you’re ready to take the next step.
You’re ready for your own online store.
How to Make More Money With Your Own Online Store
When you operate on the Etsy platform, there is a lot of competition, even at the last step of the transaction. This creates a real risk that a lead that you nurtured could turn away at the last minute to buy from another store. It’s also difficult to differentiate yourself on a marketplace platform. Etsy stores show low sales volume, compete fiercely on price due to in-platform competition, and struggle to rank well on the SERP. The average Etsy store makes only $291 in profit each month.
Female entrepreneurs can make more money and keep control over their Ecommerce business with an online store. Here’s why:
- Transaction costs won’t take a bite out of your increasing profits
- You have full creative control to build your brand
- You can use your reputation to drive traffic to your brand instead of driving it to Etsy
- All the backlinks you get improve your own search engine ranking—on Etsy, backlinks only boost Etsy’s own SEO
- You’ll be free to sell whatever you’d like, without any product restrictions
- You can sync offline sales directly with your store
- You can access customer data to learn more about your market and run better marketing campaigns
The Best Ecommerce Site Builders for Female Entrepreneurs
If you’re feeling nervous about building your own online store, don’t worry. Today’s Ecommerce website builders give you step-by-step instructions, and an easy-to-use, intuitive drag-and-drop builder. They make it fast and simple to create your own site with an online store. Here are the 6 best Ecommerce site builders for female entrepreneurs.
1. Wix—Success Story: Bone Zappetit
Julie Catona went straight to Wix to build a website for her organic superfood dog treat business. She found it easy to create her site and match it to her creative vision. Her customers appreciate that her website is both unique and user-friendly, and she enjoys watching her business grow.
Advantages of Wix for Bone Zappetit:
- Easy-to-use, drag-and-drop website builder
- Integrations with social media, promotions, and tools to gather consumer feedback
- Ongoing updates
- Plenty of templates and themes to make your site look fabulous
- Lots of online customer support resources
“The thought of maintaining a website would have been impossible if not for Wix’s amazing ‘one click’ updates & fantastic Ecommerce,” says Julie.
Wix online store begins at $12.50/month.
2. Square—Success Story: Casey Nickole
Casey Nickole is the owner of 3 BANG hair salons in Seattle. In the beginning, roughly 95% of BANG clients paid by credit card, but the company’s old payment system wasn’t integrated with its POS. Nickole also felt like she was devoting too much time and reconciling two sets of books, and at the end of the day, she didn’t even have data or analytics to look at. She switched to Square, which frees up her time and allows her to focus on growing her business.
Advantages of Square for Casey Nickole:
- Basic plan with no monthly fee
- Online appointments
- Custom domains start at $12
- Accepts various payment methods
- Marketing features like selling on social media platforms & SEO
- Inventory management
“Square Dashboard is great to really quickly access all the information that you need to know about sales.” - Casey Nickole, BANG Owner
Square online stores begin at 2.9% + $.30 per transaction.
3. WooCommerce—Success Story: Tiny Tags
Melissa started her business selling keepsake jewelry after the birth of her first son. She wanted a keepsake to commemorate his birth, but couldn’t find anything she liked. So, she made it herself. 10 years later, Melissa uses WooCommerce to sell customized keepsake jewelry to mothers, and business is thriving.
Advantages of WooCommerce for Tiny Tags:
- Gravity forms integration allows for detailed personalization on items
- Advanced checkout process that enables customers to order items with the correct personalization
- Integrations for marketing automation, customer support, visitor analytics, and more
- 24/7 customer support and live chat
“We wanted options like conditional statements where if you say you want 2 tags and back engraving, the proper text fields appear. WooCommerce allowed us to do all of that,” says Melissa.
Online store begins at $6.95/month with BlueHost
4. Squarespace—Success Story: Adrienne Raquel
Adrienne Raquel is a photographer and art director. She chose to use Squarespace to present her portfolio. Adrienne wanted a website that reflects her unique style and vision and was able to customize Squarespace's templates to get the aesthetic she wanted. With her Squarespace site, Adrienne has been named as one of today’s top female creatives by TIME, Elle, and Refinery29.
Advantages of Squarespace for Adrienne Raquel:
- Customizable layouts that allow for unique color schemes, fonts, and formatting
- Easy drag-and-drop website builder that is user-friendly
- Fast tools that enable new projects, pages, and images to be added in minutes
- 24/7 customer support via Twitter and email, and live chat support 4am-8pm, Monday to Friday.
“You get a premium look on your website without struggling to create it,” says Adrienne Raquel.
Online store begins at $18/month
5. BigCommerce—Success Story: Lily Boutique
Chris and Tori Gerbig began their online fashion boutique selling clothing on Etsy and other online marketplaces. Sales were doing well, but the Gerbigs felt that they could scale faster with their own online store.
They opened Pink Lily Boutique on the BigCommerce platform in 2014, and never looked back. All their business metrics increased after they opened their BigCommerce store.
Advantages of BigCommerce for Pink Lily Boutique:
- Transparent pricing
- Flexible, intuitive, drag-and-drop design templates, including a code-free Ecommerce builder
- Dedicated account manager and 24/7 customer support via email, phone, and live chat
- Integrated apps and Ecommerce tools including ShipStation and InStockNotify
- Open API for integrating any other tool you need
“BigCommerce’s integrations with ShipStation and InStockNotify have made it possible for our team to perform functions that would have previously taken days or even weeks in a matter of minutes,” says Chris.
Online store begins at $29.95/month
6. GoDaddy—Success Story: Valentina Mussi
Valentina Mussi started her career taking picutres of food and posting to Instagram. Before long, her hobby had turned into a career. She became a food and content creator and influencer, but when she was initially starting out, she didn’t have a website. She reached out to GoDaddy and they created a website together that she’s thrilled with.
Advantages of GoDaddy for Valentina Mussi:
- Various themes and customization
- 99.9% uptime
- 24/7 support
- Various pricing plans
- Digital marketing suite
- Content creation & SEO
“I cannot be an influencer person without having a website, a portfolio, online.” - Valentina Mussi
GoDaddy websites begin at $2.99/month.
Choose an Ecommerce Web Builder to Grow Your Business
With one of these Ecommerce website builders, you can set up your own customized, branded online store in just a few hours. Easy drag-and-drop website builders, multiple integrations, and a full range of design options make it simple to boost your revenue way beyond Etsy with a personalized Ecommerce site.
For more information about Ecommerce site builders see our list of the best Ecommerce site builders.
