WooCommerce vs Shopify: Comparison review
If you are considering building an online store or online ordering platform for your restaurant, and are unsure of which platform to use, then this is the article for you.
We will be comparing two popular e-commerce platforms: WooCommerce and Shopify. Both have their pros and cons – but only one can come out on top! Read on to see how we rank them in terms of popularity, cost, ease of use, features offered and more.
What is Woocommerce?
WooCommerce is an e-Commerce plugin that turns your WordPress site into a fully fledged online store. WooCommerce was founded in 2008, and has grown rapidly to become the most popular e-Commerce platform on the web today! It’s free to download and install for anyone with a self developed website.
More than that, WooCommerce is the most popular way to build an eCommerce store for successful sites. With one quarter of these stores powered by WooCommerce and a plurality of power websites in the top 1 million, it’s shown that this platform has become successful with its audience.
What makes WooCommerce different from other technologies is the features it offers. We’ll take a closer look at some of these features, and you’ll see for yourself just what the difference is.
WooCommerce Features
Seamless WordPress Integration
The major USP of WooCommerce is that it is built on WordPress, the world’s most popular CMS. With this integration, website owners find themselves able to use the same principles as with WordPress, while making life easier for themselves in a variety of ways.
Open source development platform
The whole platform is managed on GitHub, which means that if a developer wants to view, modify and contribute, they can. With open source code being available for anyone, it allows the e-Commerce sector to grow in size, as more builders collaborate and build robust platforms.
Incomparable Flexibility
There are many types of e-Commerce businesses on the internet. Some offer physical items, some sell virtual products, and some work with external/affiliate items. WooCommerce comes as a great option for all, because merchants can easily customize their store to sell any kind of product there. One of the best things about WooCommerce is that you can edit any part of your website, including the product or order confirmation pages.
Built-In Payment Processing
One of the most convenient things about WooCommerce is that it comes with pre-installed payment gateways for processing payments. Stripe, Paypal, credit cards, bank transfers, checks and even Cash on Delivery transactions can be processed with just a few clicks—making your life as an online retailer so much easier!
Huge list of extensions (plugins)
Building an online store from scratch is a daunting task, but WooCommerce comes with extensions that make every aspect of designing and running your website much more streamlined. The extension library consists of 400+ extensions and tutorials to help you get started.
Vast Theme Options
Have you ever seen two retail stores that were identical? You haven’t, right? The same way, there cannot be the same online store. To set your business apart from the rest, you need an online store that communicates what it is just by its design and feel. WooCommerce integrates seamlessly with WordPress themes all over the web.
Easy to Use & Robust
WooCommerce, a free online platform, can be used to set up a professional e-Commerce store. It comes with robust order tracking and customer engagement tools that allow you to do all sorts of things – like managing orders, updating delivery status, offering discounts and much more.
The SEO Advantage
No matter how far social media goes, search engine optimization is still one customer channel that gets the most attention. If you want to build a successful business online, you need an extremely effective SEO strategy. Building your storefront on WooCommerce means that you’re already well-positioned to rank for keywords in search engines via WordPress, a highly recognized platform for SEO.
Managing Orders is As Easy as Can Be
The interface for WooCommerce is intuitive and easy to use, which allows merchants to quickly keep stock current and efficiently fulfill orders. Mobile apps also allow them to track inventory, update items, or view sales data when on the go.
Smooth Integration with Your Marketing Tools
WooCommerce offers a seamless integration with many different marketing tools. For example, you can set up the abandoned cart feature so that if someone has placed items in their cart and left your site without purchasing, they get an email reminder to come back to complete their transaction. WooCommerce also integrates with various other platforms. One convenient benefit of this integration is that it allows you to track and report all of your campaigns more easily.
Built-in Blogging Feature
WooCommerce is not only a shopping cart for e-Commerce, but it also lets you publish your content and blogs to showcase your brand to the world. So, you don’t have to create an external blog to fulfill both purposes, as it’s all there in WordPress.
Comprehensive Documentation
With free documentation and resources, WooCommerce is fully tapped into the power of documentation for any task.
Local Customization
Many store owners will be targeting customers abroad. You need a store that caters to them by adding in regional differences like currency, language, and measurement units. With WooCommerce, you can customize your site to reflect specific regions with ease.
Product Sorting & Ratings
One of the great things about shopping online is how convenient it can be to sort out and filter the products you’re looking for. WooCommerce lets your customers sort and filter products by their popularity, size, rating, or price. In addition, product pages also display customer ratings and feedback.
List Unlimited Products
WooCommerce is the best choice for you if your product has a lot of variation or multiple images. As mentioned above, WooCommerce allows you to add as many products and product photos as you would like. WooCommerce also allows for custom product banners that can be used to show off products in a variety of ways.
Our Two Cents
In the face of recent events and worldwide occurrences, there are many small business owners that struggle to stay afloat. The eHopper POS integration with WooCommerce can provide you with a friction-less experience for your customers and assist you in running your operations smoothly across both, online and offline environments.
If you’re wondering “Should I choose Shopify over WooCommerce?”, then let’s find out more about Shopify below.
What is Shopify?
Shopify is a web application that allows you to design your own website to sell physical and digital items. Shopify is a web application that can be used to build your own eCommerce website, and provides a range of themes from which you can choose. You are able to customize these templates for a more personalized site, and offer both physical or digital products through the platform.
Shopify Features
Easy Set Up
Shopify simplifies the process of website development by taking care of all its technicalities on behalf of its users. This leads to a faster setup for your site, which means that you can have your store go live as quickly as possible. Shopify provides a variety of web design services, including the ability to choose from more than 70 different themes and over 50 languages. The pre-designed templates can be customized to reflect your preferences. With an intuitive setting, it’s web-based website builder allows you to design a custom online store.
Users also get the advantage of constructing a mobile app for their site to broaden their business platform. With Shopify, you can list multiple variations of your products based on their sizes and colors. You can also add images for each product to show customers what they’re looking at. There is no limit to the number of products that you have on your store for sale with Shopify. Apart from these, you also get to choose from over 100 payment gateways. Shopify provides its own payment gateway called Shopify Payments, which allows your customers to choose their specific currency to place payments, no matter what country they live in. The downside is the Shopify processing fees are a bit higher compared to other solutions.
Easy to Manage
You also have access to the HTML and CSS of your site, though not the core code. This lets you modify the appearance and functionality of your website, down to every last detail. Automated shipping charges can be calculated on factors such as location and priority of shipment.
You can also enable automated reminders to customers who added items to their carts without purchasing them. In addition, taxes are calculated automatically by Shopify based on the customer’s country or state. You can change or add product details, edit prices of items, and check order statuses anytime from your online store.
Shopify can be used as an app on mobile devices and tablets, allowing you to synchronize information about orders placed, your available products, order data and payments, and shipping details. The analytics tools allow you to get a detailed look at traffic and sales, as well as the trends of order volume.
Store Management Options
With Shopify, you can also add the option for customers to create their own profiles. Customer profiles allow you to reach out individually with promotional offers, notifications of new products, and more. This, in turn, will boost your sales.
You can choose to let Shopify handle the fulfillment of your orders. This includes the storing, packaging, and shipping. Partnering up with a third-party fulfillment service provider like Amazon is also an option. Shopify will also manage your products returns.
Finally, you don’t have to manage any inventory at all. Dropshipping can be used to place orders with a third-party supplier, following an order placed by the customer. The supplier will then send the product directly to your customer. This further enhances the user experience.
SEO to Boost Sales
Shopify provides some helpful marketing features and a SEO toolkit, including title tags, meta-descriptions and other helpful features to ensure your pages are visible in search. It also has a range of plugins like Plug in SEO, SEO Plus and SEO Booster that can help you to boost your sales by pointing out problems on your site and fixing them. Also, it automatically creates sitemaps for products and posts. Apart from this, Shopify has faster loading times. This can give your site an advantage over other sites, as Google prefers to list faster load times above the slower ones. Shopify offers integration with social media channels like Facebook and Twitter. You can also sell your products via social platforms like Facebook. Social media customers will be able to buy the listed products without being redirected to your site. Payments and product availability will automatically be synced with your Shopify account.
Security
Shopify offers multiple levels of security, ensuring your data is kept private and safe for both you and your customers. Shopify provides a 256-bit SSL certificate as part of its offering. This helps protect your site from hackers, encrypt all the data stored, and improve search rankings for your website. Google prefers that its customers’ data is safe and will rank websites with an SSL certificate higher in their search. In order to process credit or debit card payments, a site should be PCI-DSS compliant. Shopify is Level-1 PCI compliant, giving your customers the option to pay via credit card from day one.
Customer Support
Shopify offers overland support 24/7. You can call, e-mail, or chat with their team any time you choose. In addition to that, Shopify’s help center contains guides, tutorials and FAQs or Frequently Asked Questions. Apart from this, Shopify’s eCommerce blog and forums can help you connect with thousands of experienced people and leaders across the globe.
Conclusion: Is WooCommerce Better Than Shopify?
When deciding between Woocommerce and Shopify as an ecommerce or online ordering platform, it’s always important to take into account what features are most essential for your business. WooCommerce has a lot of features that Shopify doesn’t have, including a very sizable ecosystem of free plugins. If you’re looking to integrate with the eHopper POS system, sell different types of products, including food and drinks, or if your products are image-heavy with many variations, then WooCommerce may be the better fit for you than Shopify.
WooCommerce also comes in first on pricing, as the platform is free to use and most of the plugins are completely free. It can also be hosted on your own servers or hosting plan, for as low as $3-$15 a month, depending on your needs. Meanwhile, Shopify has fixed pricing plans with fewer features, and most apps you need to pay for.
On the other hand, if you’re just looking to focus on selling physical products in a more managed environment, then you may consider Shopify over WooCommerce in this case.
