Building an online store has become as easy as online shopping itself. Thanks to tools such as Shopify and WordPress, you can create an online store from scratch and manage it from there. If you are wondering which among these two is better, we will compare both so that you can make an informed decision. Please note that if you already have a WordPress website, you should proceed with WordPress ecommerce, popularly known as WooCommerce. If you still don’t have a website for your business, Shopify is a much better choice.
WordPress and Shopify have been competitors for years. WordPress is a free online resource that allows users to create and publish websites. This platform provides you with a wide range of functionalities. And, it’s easy to use even if you lack the technical knowledge of how ecommerce stores work.
On the other hand, Shopify is a subscription-based ecommerce platform that enables its subscribers to create virtual shops and sell their products on the web. Shopify is well known for being a powerful ecommerce website builder and offers impressive customer support.
WordPress (WooCommerce) Advantages
Excellent Cybersecurity
WordPress uses one of the best encryption strategies in the market today. Over the years, it has been credited to protect and preserve users’ right to privacy without bias. Running an online business in an era where cyber insecurity is at an all-time high, you can confidently use WooCommerce knowing that your business is safe.
Affordability
WordPress is an open-source platform that offers free web-hosting. It costs close to nothing to set up and is easily accessible to any user. The only charges applicable are from installing and utilizing the WooCommerce plugins.
User friendly
This platform offers many tools and extensions, such as the WooCommerce plugin. It allows one to convert a normal website to a fully functional virtual shop front and perform tasks such as inventory management and selling of products at your convenience. It also has responsive themes and templates, enabling users to design and change the outlook of their websites easily. It offers SEO tools such as WooCommerce Google Analytics to assess web performance.
Flexibility
WordPress offers you two things; an ecommerce store and a website. To utilize this platform, it is imperative that one first set up a website. Merchants looking to do online business via WooCommerce get a virtual shopfront and a website for free. This makes it convenient to sell their products and provides an avenue to explore personal interests and platforms to speak out and interact, on different capabilities, with an international audience through articles and web publications.
Convenience
WordPress platform is easily accessible across all devices, from computers to handheld devices. We live in a world ruled by smartphones. A mobile-friendly interface allows a hassle-free and effective connection between a merchant, consumers, and other market players. The platform provides geolocation capabilities and facilitates interaction and cross-transactions across most currencies, cultures, and languages.
Limitations of WordPress
- Ineffective provision of maintenance support presents a big challenge for novice users without prior know-how of web development.
- WooCommerce seems to lack crucial up-to-date features meant to allow easier inventory management.
- The need for many extensions and plugins to enhance the best outcome greatly affects uploads and downloads speeds, resulting in sluggish performance and occurrences of redundant glitches.
- Time-consuming due to frequent updates and data backup procedures.
- Most of the available themes and features to enhance interaction from the consumer’s vocal point are chargeable. Hence, this means an increase in transactional costs, accruing from incurred overhead costs.
Shopify
Mobile Friendly
Provides attractive yet professional themes that are easily navigable and compatible with the small displays of most mobile phones. This greatly enhances the consumer experience.
Faster Performance
Shopify systems utilize SSL (Secure Sockets Layer), a web encryption protocol linking servers and access point devices, ensuring fast and secure web page loading.
Great Cybersecurity
Shopify hires the very best tech professionals to ensure highly effective preservation and protection of user rights to privacy.
Provides a Domain Name
Right after you subscribe to Shopify, they offer you a customizable web address that goes a long way to indicate your brand identity and marketing strategy.
Versatile
As one of the most popular ecommerce platforms, Shopify strives to be all-around accommodative. This is by facilitating the interaction of people from different countries worldwide, such as; providing multiple payment methods and integrating the most popular money transfer providers.
Analytics Features
Shopify offers inbuilt features that simplify the data collection, decoding and detailed reports generation regarding online store performance. These tools go a long way in optimization and progressively enhancing performance for best results.
Effective Customer Care Services
Shopify strives to provide 24/7 customer support services despite serving millions of users worldwide. Further, they also provide elaborate databases full of guides, FAQs, and helpful information. This ensures effective customer satisfaction, which is one of the greatest selling points for the platform.
Great Room for Expansion
Shopify accommodates scalability. This is thanks to their systems which are strong enough to handle high traffic at all times.
Limitations of Shopify
- Customization is a bit complicated. This is because the only way to make desired amendments to your virtual shop requires coding knowledge.
- Mastering the platform’s utilities is time-consuming and considerably hard for newbies and general users.
- It has a complex product categorization. This Shopify interface confuses many customers making it not very user-friendly.
Conclusion
Between these two ecommerce builders, it isn’t easy to point out which one is better. The reason being both have advantages and disadvantages. Your online venture can succeed with both WooCommerce and Shopify. You have to figure out which one suits your preferences the most. If you are still unsure, contact Marvel Marketing web designers via 1-800-427-7113. We can analyze your business and give you a professional opinion on which website builder is right for your business
