Shopify vs WooCommerce for Ecommerce Website Development

1. Shopify vs WooCommerce for Ecommerce Website Development Shopify and WooCommerce are two of the most popular and easy-to-use eCommerce platforms. Both of them have their strengths to power an e-store. Choosing one of them often poses a struggle as you have to weigh their merits. We are here to make things easier for you. Today, we will dig deeper into these two technologies and provide you with a complete overview. It will help you to make an informed decision. An Overview Before getting started, let’s address a major difference between Shopify and WooCommerce. Shopify is a hosted service - that means your website will be maintained by the provider. On the other hand, WooCommerce is self-hosted -

2. that means you have to take responsibility for domain, hosting and maintenance. Shopify is an all-in-one eCommerce platform that helps you to create an online store without worrying about the technical nitty-gritty of managing the site such as web hosting, security, etc. WooCommerce is an open-source eCommerce plugin developed for WordPress. Here, you can have the complete control over every aspect of your online store and build custom extensions. You can access the codes and make the necessary modifications. In the following sections, we will discuss 5 crucial aspects of eCommerce website development and explore how Shopify and WooCommerce take care of these. 1. Design For an eCommerce website, the design is everything for the visitors. Let’s see what WooCommerce and Shopify do about that. Shopify has more than 100 free and premium store templates. Each of the themes has a unique appearance. All of them are mobile responsive and have different colour options. They have a clean and sleek aesthetic - ideal for modern-age e-stores. You can also customize the themes by changing their styles and colours. Adept developers can even utilize the platform’s Liquid language to make some substantial changes. For your information, Liquid is a template language created by Shopify written in Ruby. You can also use the Theme editor for some instant customizations. For instance, you can hide various sections without removing them. It will allow you to start new sections for future releases. WooCommerce works with any WordPress theme so you get an overwhelming number of options. Further, there are several themes built with WooCommerce in mind. These are more eCommerce-centric. WooCommerce’s own default online store theme is known as Storefront. It puts the focus on the crucial elements of an eCommerce store.

3. Depending on the look you want in your e-store, you can check out the child themes for Storefront. You can also explore marketplaces like ThemeForest that has hundreds of WooCommerce-compatible themes. According to popular opinion, WooCommerce has an advantage over Shopify when it comes to selecting designs. Shopify has stunning themes but they can be limited to what Shopify Theme Store contains. On the other hand, as WooCommerce is open-source, developers can sell or give away wonderful WooCommerce themes for different industries and purposes. 2. Ease of Use Though Shopify and WooCommerce make it real easy to run an online store, let’s dive into more details. Shopify is a hosted eCommerce platform. Therefore, it takes care of the technical aspects including domain name, hosting and SSL certification. You don’t have to worry about installing, managing or updating any software. With WooCommerce, however, you have to put a little more effort into sourcing your web hosting and SSL certification. For instance, you can use Bluehost to power your WooCommerce based store. It has dedicated WooCommerce plans that come with useful features like WooCommerce auto- install, free domain name and SSL certificate. If you don’t want to get into any hassle, you can simply engage WooCommerce development services. 3. Pricing WooCommerce is an open-source plugin. Sure it is, but remember that you have to pay additional costs that go into building an online store. These include hosting, domain name, theme, additional extensions, and everything in between. Shopify seems to be more upfront about pricing packages. You sign up, select a package and get a feature-rich and functional eCommerce store. If you compare the final amount, you will see that both of them charge you for building an e-store. To streamline your thoughts, you can check the features in a specific Shopify package. Then compare how much it would cost to build a WooCommerce store with the same features.

4. 4. Features You saw this coming, isn’t it? An eCommerce store is not only about pricing but the features it has. In this section, we will outline some of the basic features of Shopify and WooCommerce. Of course, you can add more plugins to extend the functionalities of your store. Shopify offers you the following: Unlimited products Automatic fraud analysis Unlimited file storage Manual order creation Discount codes Editable HTML and CSS Blog module Free SSL certificate SEO-ready site structure Multiple languages Individual product reviews Credit card payments Mobile commerce optimization Dropshipping capabilities Adjustable shipping rates and taxes Daily backups Customer profiles Product importing via CSV files Social media integration Facebook selling module Site stats and product reports Inventory management Print orders Abandoned cart recovery Gift cards WooCommerce offers you the following: Unlimited number of products and product categories Payments via PayPal and Stripe built-in

5. Adjustable shipping rates and taxes Mobile-friendly structure Stock levels control Discount codes SEO-friendly e-store Control over the codes Compatible with your existing WordPress theme Free Facebook ad and Facebook stores extension Hundreds of plugins available for different features Built-in blogging File storage depends on your web host 5. SEO-Friendliness How can we possibly pass over the aspect of search engine optimization where the CMS giant WordPress is involved! Shopify may obtain the second rank if you look at the overall volume of SEO features available but you get all the crucial ones here. As long as you are producing high-quality and SEO-friendly content, you need not worry about getting great results. Also, Shopify is really fast. Since it’s a hosted platform built on a robust infrastructure, you need not worry about the site loading speed. And as you know, loading speed is an important ranking factor. WooComerce is highly SEO friendly as WordPress is primarily a content creation platform. WooCommerce takes advantage of everything that’s already there in WordPress and that’s available through third-party plugins. WooCommerce has a dedicated version of the Yoast plugin that helps to make the website highly optimized. Closing Thoughts The choice between Shopify and WooCommerce boils down to the technical expertise you have. If you are starting out as a beginner and don’t want to be bothered with things like web hosting or hosting provider details, Shopify can be a good choice. If you are looking for more freedom to experiment with your site, WooCommerce can be the right solution. However, you can always engage eCommerce website design services to steer clear of these hassles. The experts will help you to select the right platform and also take care of the details like web hosting, security, maintenance etc.

6. So, which one is your pick? Feel free to share with us. Resource: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/shopify-vs-woocommerce-ecommerce-website- development-raju-chakraborty ……………………………………………………………………………………………………… WebGuru Infosystems Y8, Block-EP, Sector V, Salt Lake Kolkata-700091, India Website: https://www.webguru-india.com/ Email: enquiry@webguru-india.com Phone: +91-8420197208 Follow us on: