Khaled Khan 2 years ago
Millions of bloggers utilize the self-hosting platform WordPress today. This platform, which originally served as a blogging tool, has grown into one of the most widely used content management systems (CMS) in the world, meeting the demands of not only bloggers but also of companies of all sizes and e-commerce websites.
As an online store owner, you might be wondering if WordPress is good for ecommerce websites. The fact is — even without any prior knowledge or expertise, you can create SEO-optimized, flexible, and expert-looking websites using WordPress as your perfect Ecommerce partner. Your ability to tweak and customize your content in a variety of imaginative ways will help you establish a distinctive online brand presence. Being unique in today’s oversaturated environment is essential for success.
When launching something online, security is one of the top issues on everyone’s mind. Both ease and vulnerability come with using the internet. And the topic of safety is more crucial than ever when discussing business. Many individuals begin to question the safety of using WordPress for an e-commerce website.
There is some justification for their bewilderment. On the internet, there are more than 60 million websites that use WordPress. When it comes to the total number of websites using a content management system, it has a sizable proportion. Despite its immense popularity, WordPress is free to use. Because it is open-source, anyone who wants to can access and modify all of its codes.
You want to build an internet store and sell goods there. and it appears that WordPress is the most widely used platform for starting an eCommerce business. This is the question that people who wish to start their own eCommerce business frequently ask us. WordPress: Is it suitable for e-commerce? Should I combine Woocommerce and WordPress? Is it powerful and flexible enough? You might be wondering at this point whether WordPress is suitable for e-commerce. We’ll learn the response in this article.
E-commerce functionality is not built into WordPress out of the box, but it is readily implemented using a plugin (plugins are available in both free and premium versions and allow you to extend WordPress’s original capabilities). WooCommerce, the most well-known e-commerce plugin for WordPress, is now owned by the organisation behind WordPress.com. The storefront, payment gateway, shipping, inventory management, automatic transactional emails, and other necessary capabilities are all handled by plugins like WooCommerce. To further increase functionality, there are even plugins for the plugins themselves. The benefits of adopting WordPress for your e-commerce website are directly related to this amount of customization.
Popular businesses including Bloomberg Professional, BBC America, Sony Music, and MTV News also use WordPress. While some well-known websites use different e-commerce platforms, they nevertheless rely on the WordPress platform to manage their blogs. When compared to alternative platforms, it makes WordPress stand out as being superior.
WordPress was not previously thought of as a reliable tool for creating internet enterprises. Because of this, things are extremely different now, and this blogging and content management system (CMS) is frequently employed to build effective internet enterprises.
At first look, it can appear that the WordPress platform does not support the development of e-commerce capabilities. After all, WordPress was created as a website builder mostly geared toward written material. It’s the ideal setting for crafting articles or including news tidbits. But since WordPress is the most widely used platform for creating websites on the planet, it seems sense that if the internet world is moving toward e-commerce product sales, WordPress should follow suit.
WordPress still lacks an integrated e-commerce feature despite this. Of course, that doesn’t exclude you from using the platform to create an online store. It’s just not a feature that’s included by default.
Approaching them with quick, accessible, and tailored online experiences is essential to gaining and keeping their business as more people choose to purchase online. Online stores that were created with flexible options are well equipped to handle these demands. While the number of SaaS products geared toward owners of ecommerce stores appears to be growing daily, open source WordPress is also utilized as a quick, flexible, and affordable solution for creating new online websites or updating outdated ones.
WordPress is a fine option for e-commerce websites, but it’s not the greatest one. The needs of your company and how you want to sell goods online will determine whether WordPress is a good fit for your ecommerce store. It makes sense to look into WordPress alternatives like Shopify for this reason.
Popular eCommerce website platforms include WordPress. It is simple to use and offers a large selection of plugins and themes. Additionally, WordPress has a large support network, so you may seek assistance if necessary. Millions of small businesses utilize the popular CMS WordPress. It is simple to use, reasonably priced, and adaptable to your company’s needs.
For companies searching for a reliable content management system, WordPress is a fantastic option. It supports a wide range of functionality, and you can use plugins to increase its usefulness. As a result, your company can make sure that its website has all the features it requires.
A WordPress website is slightly more complex than websites made with website builders like Squarespace, Weebly, or Wix, so if you aren’t extremely technical you might need help from a specialist, at least with the setup. You may install WordPress with the aid of numerous hosting companies.
WordPress is a desirable alternative for ecommerce companies since it gives users complete control over their online presence. No matter how much money you invest in launching an e-commerce site on a non open source platform, you will never truly be the owner of that store or the data it generates.
Instead, you’re using a third party app to store your data from a vendor who reserves the right to change all of its functionality, data sharing policies, and features, and even how you’re billed at any time.
Additionally, WordPress exempts online shops using the “success tax” that many proprietary systems suffer from. Unlike systems like Shopify, WooCommerce, the top WordPress e-commerce plugin, doesn’t cost the users a portion of sales—only an extra 2%.
This benefit includes avoiding commissions and vendor lock-in as well as escaping the restrictions that come with cookie-cutter website builders and locked, proprietary ecommerce platforms. The below are few of the frequently mentioned advantages of utilizing WordPress, in addition to the ones already mentioned.
One of WordPress’ most significant benefits is the wide variety of templates it offers for building websites. WordPress offers an ecommerce site design that reflects your brand’s unique aesthetic. With over 1,200 ecommerce-focused templates available, WordPress has over 8,000 themes from which to choose for your website.
With so many options accessible, you might design a special website that satisfies the needs of your business. Visitors will enjoy themselves on your site regardless of the device they use because these themes are responsive as well.
The cornerstone for building a WordPress website is plugins. With the help of plugins, you may build a website with all the features your company needs. WordPress has a tonne of ecommerce-specific plugins that can help you sell goods on your site if you wish to have one.
To help you convert a WordPress website into an online store, this ecommerce plugin provides a tonne of fantastic features. You may customize your online store by using dozens of other plugins. You can pick and select the capabilities you require for your site by using plugins. It might help your company because it makes the process of creating your website simpler.
One of the best things you can do for your website is to make your WordPress e-commerce site SEO-friendly. If you want people to discover your items when they conduct a search for them, you need a website that is optimized to rank well in search engines like Google.
WordPress plugins can help your website perform better in search engine rankings. To assist you in building an SEO-friendly website for your e-commerce store, utilize a plugin like YoastSEO. You can optimize your website’s pages for search engines and focus on results by using this plugin.
One of the biggest obstacles in using WordPress is getting all the plugins to work properly. When trying to design your website, several plugins can not be compatible with one another, which might be problematic.
It’s possible that you won’t be able to resolve these problems if you’ve never constructed a website before. You could have to give up some functionality or use plugins of lower quality, which could hurt your business.
WordPress is not an ecommerce site builder, despite the fact that it does provide plugins to make your site ecommerce-friendly. WordPress makes it possible to build many different sorts of websites. You can overlook some essential features for your ecommerce site because WordPress isn’t ecommerce-focused.
You could be missing out on these features just because you don’t think about them or aren’t aware that a plugin is available to have them. As an illustration, if you neglected to install a plugin for cart abandonment, you will be completely without that feature.
Since WordPress is the best website builder, creating an eCommerce site with it is simple. With more than 40% of the web running on it and a tonne of pre-made WordPress themes, you can get set up without any effort or extra costs in no time at all. WordPress also provides a broad selection of eCommerce alternatives, such as Page Builders and various plugins, which, as was already said, provide your site full eCommerce capabilities.
For instance, the most potent and standard WordPress plugin is WooCommerce. Everything from showing products on particular pages to adding them to your shopping basket and checking out is simple to control.
WordPress is a platform that is open-source and cost-free. Before you can begin, you must cover the cost of hosting and purchase a name. WooCommerce, the most well-known eCommerce plugin, is partially free. The ability to use WordPress to create a variety of websites is its best feature. However, platforms focused solely on eCommerce do not have this problem.
Running blogs or other content initiatives for SEO is challenging. WordPress is a wonderful choice if you’re considering opening a small online store. However, a dedicated eCommerce platform can be a wiser course of action if you intend to manage a large eCommerce firm.
A WordPress site can be effective for a variety of reasons, including good content, keyword research, backlinks, on-page SEO, and more. However, the decision you make about your website’s theme has the biggest direct impact. In the end, the theme is what ties everything together. The front of your website is it.
A web user is developing a positive opinion of you as a business owner if they spend more than a few seconds on your website. The best content management system is WordPress. The best SEO features will be provided for your eCommerce firm, and it will complement your content marketing plan. It assists you in managing the enormous amount of content on your WordPress website as your site’s traffic increases.
The WordPress Plugin Search Page returns around 1,000 items when you type “e-commerce.” There is a lot of data to sort through. Unless you are quite certain of what you want, you will probably spend some time reading reviews, perusing screenshots, and comparing notes. WooCommerce and BigCommerce are the top two ecommerce plugins for WordPress. They are the most well-known players in the industry, and for good reason.
Typically, WooCommerce comes up when people discuss e-commerce using WordPress. This is due to WooCommerce being the most authentic e-commerce platform WordPress has to offer. Launched in 2011, WooCommerce was eventually purchased by Automattic, the parent company of WordPress, in 2015. Because it was created exclusively for the WordPress platform, WooCommerce is well-known. Store functionality is available directly from the WordPress dashboard.
99% of WordPress e-commerce sites based in the US, Canada, and the UK are managed using WooCommerce. More than 27 million people have downloaded it, and there are more than 5 million active installations. WordPress users can choose from among hundreds of e-commerce themes and extensions that WooCommerce offers in order to customize their stores. WooCommerce works with any WordPress Theme, giving you a wide range of options for the appearance and feel of your store. You’ll need to conduct some research to get the best theme for you because some themes are trickier to set up using WooCommerce than others.
If you’ve used WooCommerce before, you’ll be at ease using WP Ecommerce because it has a similar appearance, feel, and premium extension setup to the more well-known WordPress ecommerce plugin. What WooCommerce offers for free versus as a premium extension, and how WP eCommerce handles these same features in terms of free and paid choices, differ significantly from one another. WP Ecommerce is accessible for free with a marketplace of premium add-ons to supplement its core features.
In blog pieces like these, you don’t often read about WordPress ecommerce plugins like the WP EasyCart Shopping Cart and eCommerce Store. It is, however, beginning to attract notice, and for good cause. Sometimes it feels that even the most basic plugins, like Easy Digital Downloads, Cart66, or WooCommerce, are still too advanced for small business owners. Most likely, they are knowledgeable enough to learn about those e-commerce building technologies, but whether or not they have the time to do so is another matter. WP EasyCart is designed for small business owners that wish to easily build a stunning online store without any prior experience. WordPress would still be used to power the business, but it offers an incredibly quick configuration process and easy-to-use features.
Similar to Squarespace or Wix, WP EasyCart functions more like a SaaS e-commerce platform. All the fundamental tools are available to you. The main distinction is that with WordPress and your own hosting, you have total control over your website. With support for infinite products, realtime shipping calculators, and complex product variants, the free version’s features are surprisingly advanced. The $69 annual plan is therefore an option if you want to stay away from the transaction fees that come with the Free package. The most expensive package, which costs $99 annually, comes with great tools for selling subscriptions and integrating with Quickbooks, Stamps.com, AffiliateWP, and other services.
Because it lets you keep your website’s e-commerce engine distinct from the rest of it, BigCommerce has become very popular thanks to WordPress. Many users discover that it is now simpler to independently manage the store and the rest of the website as a result. BigCommerce also boasts enterprise-grade security and guarantees great performance and little downtime, all of which are major issues in the current online retail environment. Additionally, you won’t be assessed any transaction fees if you sell a goods. BigCommerce’s lack of a mobile app seems to be the main criticism that users have of it. For entrepreneurs who wish to run their internet store while on the go, it is a major drawback.
A WordPress plugin called MemberPress enables users to create websites with a subscription model. Although it differs from the other eCommerce plugins on this list, it’s excellent for using a membership business model to offer digital material, courses, or downloads. You can use whatever payment method that works best for you because the plugin allows a variety of price levels for the membership programme. Additionally, you may set up unlimited access rules to restrict access to certain pages, articles, and pieces of material based on the membership level.
The plugin generates a pricing page using a custom post type. The pricing table comes with many built-in page layouts, but you may use custom CSS to adapt it to the overall layout of the website. PayPal and Stripe connectivity are built into the plugin. Authorize.net, Paystack, and the China Payments Plugin are just a few of the additional possibilities that may be found in the add-ons library. Your membership site can also be improved by other add-ons. Customers who wish to cancel their membership, for instance, are redirected to a specific landing page using Cancel Override. You can provide special deals or risk-free trials here.
With the help of the web application Shopify, you may build an online store without knowing any programming or hosting languages. With this service, all of your data will be stored on their servers, so there are no costs involved in maintaining it. Conversely, WordPress also aids in developing an online store, but for installation and upkeep, you must acquire server space from independent vendors who have higher associated costs. You may quickly register on the website and begin adding products to your Shopify store. In order to keep things simple, you can also personalise the theme of your website and buy a domain name through Shopify without using additional web hosting services from outside companies.
The all-in-one solution from Shopify offers resources for businesses to expand and thrive. This features a tool for managing inventories online, as well as integrations with Facebook, Instagram, and Amazon. Shopify makes it easier for many types of businesses to sell products online. The platform has integrations with Facebook and Instagram as well as an eCommerce website builder and an inventory management tool.
Shopify’s user-friendliness is one of its strongest points. The objective when deciding to move your business online is to get it up and running as soon as feasible. The goal has been unsuccessful if you need to learn a new talent only to start your business online. Using any kind of technology almost always results in hitting the rock. Shopify is aware of this. In order to assist its users, they have assembled a team of trustworthy individuals. Therefore, assistance is always available if you run into trouble. On Shopify, getting paid is no longer a challenge. Presently, Shopify offers a variety of payment methods, including third-party platforms.
The appearance of your online store is governed by themes. Your chances of keeping more customers are higher the more attractive your store is. Your lead conversion rate rises the more visitors you get. The success of an e-commerce firm is influenced by a variety of aspects, including shipping, inventory control, themes, marketing, customer relationships, and so forth.
It can be more expensive than you anticipated to host your online business on Shopify. Shopify offers three premium options, priced at $29, $79, and $299 monthly. The platform’s free trial period is only 14 days long. As vital as beginning your business is marketing it. And a good way to promote is through content marketing. Content marketing includes social media, SEO, and blogging.
As we mentioned earlier, Shopify may be customized. Unfortunately, there are certain restrictions on this functionality. Shopify employs its Liquid system to customize themes, as opposed to competing platforms that use PHP. Email hosting is not supported by Shopify. As a result, you can only open your online store using the web hosting option. The good news is that there is a solution.
When it comes to leaving its platform, Shopify is not exactly accommodating. You are prevented from moving your store elsewhere by the lock-in feature. Keep in mind that the only thing you can take with you if you ever decide to quit Shopify is your CSV report. Therefore, think carefully about your plans for the platform before opening your online store on Shopify.
You could have to choose between WooCommerce and Shopify, two of the most well-liked solutions while deciding which eCommerce platform to utilize. Although the two platforms do share several characteristics, there is one key difference between them. In contrast to WooCommerce, which is an external platform, Shopify can be fully integrated with WordPress. You can take care of all of your website’s requirements in one location if you decide to use WordPress and WooCommerce. On the other hand, if you use Shopify, you’ll be managing your store on one platform and your blog or website on a different one (WordPress). Because of this, WooCommerce is a popular option among users.
You must keep in mind that WordPress and Shopify are comparable to apples and oranges. To begin with, unlike WordPress, Shopify is not designed for content. Instead, Shopify is a web application made especially for online shopping. WordPress is standalone application. It can be applied to create numerous site versions. WordPress can create a blog for you if you desire one. WordPress can create a portfolio for you. Additionally, you can integrate an e-commerce website onto your WordPress site if you so choose. But Shopify can be a good choice if all you need is a store.
If you don’t have a website and need to launch an e-commerce store quickly, Shopify is a great platform. However, that e-commerce business model might be quite ineffective. If your business has a comprehensive website, search engine optimization becomes much simpler. You should use WordPress for that.
The platform Shopify is not the most SEO friendly one available. When you have a complete website with a blog and other sections aside from your store, WordPress works better. A more comprehensive experience is produced than by a straightforward Shopify platform. Some folks now have a Shopify store that they’ve connected to their pre-existing website on an alternate website builder like Wix.
You might believe that Shopify is a superior choice for business owners because it prioritises convenience. Without a doubt, Shopify and WordPress are both excellent! However, WordPress is the best option if you want more features and extreme customisation.
To be fair, WordPress is a respectable content management system (CMS) that can be used to create an online store leveraging WooCommerce. However, this is cumbersome, and if you want to create a new website, there are far better options. Therefore, make wise selections. Keep an eye on all the metrics before deciding which eCommerce platform is suitable for you.
Instead, pick an eCommerce-only platform if you want everything handled for you or if you require numerous payment and third-party connectors. In conclusion, before choosing the best eCommerce website solution, we advise you to take your company’s needs, your level of development experience, potential traffic, and your scaling objectives into account.
Khaled Khan is a WordPress developer who has been working in the industry for over six years now. He's currently employed as a Senior Engineer at Sizmic Labs, where he helps build a WordPress community of both developers and site owners. When Khaled isn't busy with work you can find him watching survival shows (the crazier ones are always better) cooking up something new in his kitchen -- or out exploring new places to eat in and around Hyderabad.
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