Shopify vs WordPress: Which one is the best for E-commerce?

Presently, beginning an E-commerce business is an undemanding task. All you need is two things: An E-commerce website and customers who need your products. But sometimes people will find themselves in a confused state to settle on the apt E-commerce website platform. Before proceeding further on the platform required, let’s turn our attention to a few statistics on the E-commerce market.

According to Statista, retail e-commerce sale is expected to reach 6.54 trillion US dollars in 2022, and if asked for a most popular online activity on a global basis, then online shopping will be the answer. It’s understood that around 95% of the purchase will be made through e-commerce since customers have more inclination to online shopping. The graph beneath will give you a glimpse of the future e-commerce sales growth rate.

By 2025, the global online retail market is estimated to reach up to $7.385 trillion, demonstrating that online businesses are starting to make a profit with borderless e-commerce.

Now that you know what lies ahead in future, it’s time for detailed know-how on E-commerce platforms best for your website. By chance, if you happen to hear on the E-commerce platform, we will suddenly turn our attention to both Shopify and WordPress. Small and Medium-sized Enterprises and startups mostly prefer both Shopify and WordPress. Both of these platforms have pros and cons. But it’s high time that we check some of its aspects.

Before anything else what is E-commerce?

Through E-commerce, a product can be sold or purchased, mainly through an online medium. The very idea of e-commerce came into existence two decades ago, but only became a reality with the Internet, in 1991. E-commerce is far better than other buying options, since you can purchase at your own comfort and e-commerce grew rapidly in a couple of years.

Charles M. Stack in 1992 created the first-ever online bookstore named

Book Stacks Unlimited. Books Stacks Unlimited began as a dial-up bulletin board.

Followed by it, Amazon initiated a first-ever online e-commerce website. Soon amazon became a leading e-commerce website among many. From this first venture to some of the new E-commerce websites such as Anotah, these E-commerce websites have evolved a lot.

Let’s direct our gaze towards some e-commerce websites.

1. Consumer-to-Consumer: Here, the transaction of goods and services is done between customers.

2. Business-to-Business: Here, the transaction takes place between two companies.

3. Business-to-Consumer: Here, the transaction of a particular product will be among a consumer and a company.

4. Consumer-to-Business: Where to companies individuals give products.

5. Consumer-to-Government: Here, the transaction of services and products occurs between a consumer and government organization.

6. Business-to-Government: Here, products and services are transacted among companies and government organizations.

E-commerce platforms

As a person springing up with an e-commerce firm, all you have to do is start the website and make it functioning. But even before that decision is made, you should make the final decision on the e-commerce platform. A lot of e-commerce platforms are up for grabs, but without a clear-cut idea on which platform you should use for your website, you can’t choose the best. Ones with common usage are both Shopify and WordPress. But the question is how to make the right decision.

What is Shopify?

What exactly is Shopify? Here merchants or store owners can build an online e-commerce website. In other words, it’s an e-commerce platform that enables you to create a store either online or offline. Shopify can fulfil the need for a beginner to masters in e-commerce. Anyone can easily customize the website with respect to your business needs using templates available.

Shopify stands out from the rest only because of one reason: people who lack technical knowledge can easily build an e-commerce website. Editing HTML and CSS of your website can be done through Shopify. To make the most of services, what a user needs to do is simply log in which makes it a hosted solution.

Just pay $9 each month and you are good to go. This is the case of the basic lite plan. Shopify Basic, Shopify plus are other plans that you can try out. The plan is determined by the business that you are engaged in.

A built-in certificate is common in Shopify websites. Shopify handles security of your website. So why worry? Moreover, customer service of Shopify is open around the clock.

A complete list of reports and analytics of your e-commerce store is available in its backend. Here you can find the present uses, pages with most views and so on.

What is WordPress?

WordPress is a content management system. While shopify is especially for the purpose of e-commerce, WordPress isn’t like that. You can change the code by downloading the self-hosted version of WordPress. Unlike Shopify, only by relying on WordPress, you can’t meet your e-commerce site requirements. It’s possible with a plugin named WooCommerce through which you can quickly sell.

Self-hosted solutions and hosted solutions are provided by WordPress. You can customize the website to its great extent with a self-hosted WordPress.

Website security holds responsibility for the owner. All you need to do is for your website to purchase an SSL certificate. What lies in you is the responsibility of maintaining the website on your own. One-third of existing websites are powered by WordPress, but those websites lack an e-commerce aspect.

When compared to Shopify, WordPress lacks a pre-fixed package.

CMS software is free of cost but pays for everything like templates and the rest.

It isn’t an easy task to proceed with WordPress and you have to rely on developers for building your website.

The Difference between both Shopify and WordPress

1. WordPress powers 43,1% of the web and 4% of online stores use Shopify on a Global basis.

2. As mentioned before Shopify has a quick and easy setup and doesn’t demand any technical skill to use it. But WordPress requires developers and is not easy like Shopify.

3. In Shopify you aren’t required to pay for hosting and security and WordPress is just the opposite. You have to take care of the website security in this case.

4. To use WordPress means you should surely have a great deal of expertise since it’s open to change and much powerful.

5. Considering the fact that a lot of websites are powered by WordPress, one can rest assured that more developers and user forums lend their support. Moreover, you can get hold of many useful online WordPress resources.

6. When compared to WordPress, Shopify is on a cloud-network and therefore there will be less probability on your website going down.

7. Since Shopify is for e-commerce, you can get hold of various SEO tools and sales tools and much more for your website.

8. Shopify contains about 70 templates, while WordPress contains over 1000 themes, wherein you can choose one apt for your e-commerce website. But even though Shopify faces this limitation, they are greatly responsive.

9. The Shopify platform offers a lot of features which makes it stand ahead. One feature is such that emails are sent to users when they abandon the cart altogether without completing the payment, which is further known as abandoned cart recovery. Another great feature is where you can sell through different social media platforms. But, WordPress lacks all these features but still possible for you to avail these features with third-party plugins.

Which Platform Best Suits Your E-commerce Business?

The platform on which you make the final decisions is dependent upon your business requirements. But ensure that before jumping into a decision, you should better consider some facts. 

Budget

You have to spend only a fixed amount every month for Shopify, and you get hold of all the features. On the other hand, you have to manage costs separately and if a developer is involved, their cost should be taken care of too.

Ease of Use

If a website which is fully customised is in your mind, then it’s wise to choose WordPress. Shopify must be your choice if you lack the skills needed in designing and coding.

Growth in Future

Considering the fact that if there is a chance in future that the website traffic or products increase, then it’s better to opt a platform that supports your website.

Security

A platform must be chosen while keeping in mind security matters. You have to protect information related to credit cards and so on. Therefore always opt for a platform which gives no compromise to security.

User-friendly

User-friendliness is something that you should take care of while choosing a platform. Always choose a platform wherein you can add products easily.

Which platform should you pick for your e-commerce business?

Shopify is a tailor made solution wherein any person without any knowledge in coding yet plans for a great online store will be a blessing. One great thing with Shopify is you can quickly commence and serve customers. With Shopify, you can evade every aspect that you feel boring in business since with Shopify, you can set shipping settings and many more. Moreover, Shopify is much more economical since all you need is 9$ per month wherein there are more and more site designs to you.

Go for Shopify if there isn’t an existing website and if you have plans to begin a store as soon as possible. If you don’t have plans to choose a person to build an e-commerce store and at the same time lacks skills required to create a website. Shopify can manage everything, even the quantity of products doesn’t matter.

When to Prefer WordPress Over Shopify?

WordPress is more fit for savvy personas but sadly it’s a blogging platform. In WordPress, you can obtain the e-commerce feature only through plugins. To handle SEO and social media, you require another group of plugins. If asked the question the reason to choose WordPress for e-commerce, is when you have a WordPress site and know the interface. If you have plans for reducing costs and do not expect funds in future, then choosing WordPress is better. If you are content while experimenting with source code, seldom WordPress is a better option. Moreover, the last thing that qualifies WordPress is if you are able to cope free of fast-reacting customer assistance.

But some feel that customer assistance isn’t a big thing. For instance, if a disruption occurs wherein your site goes down and not having the site live will bring down your income. This is the time when you realise the worth of customer support.

Build Time of Shopify and WordPress

Easiness in usage is linked to build time. If the platform is easy to use then, you can set it up quickly. While creating an online store, the best quicker option is obviously Shopify. If you don’t have plans to sell online, Shopify isn’t suitable. Even Wix or Squarespace can be an ideal option if all you require is a normal personal or business website.

With WordPress, you can build both e-commerce related and non-e-commerce websites. But there are two main reasons for setting up time getting longer- Chiefly, WordPress is technical and complex. If you want to build an online store, all you need to do is install additional ecommerce plugins. Besides, web hosting and domain name have to be separately set.

If asked which is Better for SEO- Shopify or WordPress, Shopify allows increasing your website’s visibility through various ways    like including certain titles in search results for each web page along with URL customisation. External plugins are used for WordPress SEO, wherein the common SEO WordPress plugin is Yoast. With Yoast, you can either use it for free or by paying for advanced options.

Summing Up

Both Shopify and WordPress are apt to be the platform that you are looking for. As mentioned earlier, your final decision is completely dependent on your business requirements. Shopify will be best if you like to get a lot of features for the website. Since WordPress allows customisation, and you feel like making the website attractive, then it’s better to choose WordPress. The choice is yours.

Merely possessing an E-commerce website doesn’t make things work no matter which platform you opt for. With a burgeoning demand for e-commerce, a lot of people spring up with new e-commerce businesses. Marketing is equally important since only with that, you get some earning from the e-commerce website.

Watch this space for updates in the Technology category on Running Wolf’s Rant.

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