Shopify vs. WordPress. Which is Better for eCommerce Site?

The popularity curve of both of these web development platforms, i.e., Shopify and WordPress are almost the same. With their mind-blowing features, reputation, flexibility, and benefits, both are shining in the eCommerce website development space.

If you already have a WordPress website ready for your online store, then it could be a great idea to move forward with this CMS. On top of that, optimizing WordPress for eCommerce is relatively less time-consuming.

On the other hand, Shopify is outstanding for those who don’t have an eCommerce website yet and are looking for a dedicated solution. It comes with a tonne of advanced features to make your life easier.

Let’s dive deep into the details.

Overview of Shopify vs. WordPress

Both are the best platforms in their own parameters irrespective of features, pros, cons, and advantages. But to make the most of any of these platforms, you have to analyze and consider many factors like the scale of the application and technical complexity.

Both Shopify and WordPress are big players in the CMS world. Let’s explore more.

Shopify

More than just an easy eCommerce store builder, Shopify is a closed source with an amazing range of features and hosted approach that is simple and has a distinctive way of designing an e-commerce website. It handles and manages everything for you to run your store hassle-free. All you need to do is set up your account with signup formalities, and then you’re all set to add or sell products.

One interesting fact that makes Shopify a perfect choice for eCommerce websites is its full customization ability by which you can edit your website’s HTML and CSS code. With brief coding skills, you can customize your stores more extensively per your needs.

WordPress

WordPress is one of the popular website-building software that you can install into your web server. It is an extremely flexible platform that’s easy to use if you have coding skills. Many of us believe that WordPress is free of cost; yes, it’s true. But it’s a half-truth!

There are some additional costs for hosting solutions and other features or plugins that you cannot ever overlook.

One interesting thing about WordPress is it comes with access to amazing WordPress plugins and tools that make your eCommerce site or store’s checkout process or storefront easily navigable and accessible.

Shopify Features

Mobile-Responsive Themes

Shopify has mobile-responsive themes, ten free themes, and 64 premium themes. The benefit of themes is you can automatically design your site according to screen preferences and other prerequisites. In addition, different themes will make your eCommerce store look spectacular and professionally designed.

Best Analytics

Shopify offers an abundance of built-in analytics features that can help you to keep track of your eCommerce site. You can track customer behavior, total sales, average order value, stock levels, and conversion tracking. This way, you’ll have a complete understanding of how your business is running and whether it needs any optimizations for better results or not!

Robust and scalable

Shopify will take care of the e-commerce site owner’s realistic needs to take the business to the next level. Built with security in mind, this platform will effectively handle sudden traffic spurts or increasing traffic over time.

In-House App Store

Shopify has an in-house app that contains over 1200 plugins. It simply means you can use these apps and plugins to automate and streamline your site to make it run faster while also enhancing the efficiency of other processes of your business management like accounting and shipping.

PROS

CONS

Better Security

Shopify understands that customers no longer want to wait to complete a transaction or load a site’s page. Therefore, it provides 100% SSL to make eCommerce sites work fast and securely. Also, as customers pay via different payment gateways such as credit cards, it takes responsibility to keep their data safe. It hires cybersecurity experts to keep its website hack-proof so that it can keep checkouts fast and secure customer’s confidential information.

WordPress Features

Free and Open Source

WordPress is a free and open-source platform. It has become a perfect choice for startups and small businesses to create an online selling platform. Only a few of its extensions for site management are payable. Rest, with brief knowledge about the programming, you can easily set it up and use it.

100% Customizable

The freedom to choose your favorable design and theme is what makes it a 100% customizable and professional choice for an eCommerce site. WordPress is filled with tons of features and a choice of Millions of website owners. Based on your choice and preference, you can design a header, footer, checkout page, product page, and much more.

Flexible Inventory Management

The highly rich and intuitive user interface will help you create, add, and manage your product and inventory in real time. You can manage inventory quite well by regularly keeping track of what products your eCommerce store needs and what is under stock.

Uncompromised Cybersecurity

With the number of cyber threats increasing day by day, hackers are coming up with more sophisticated methods to steal the valuable data of your and your valuable users. WordPress prioritizes privacy and protection in users’ activities after visiting a site. It creates a secure environment for them to help your eCommerce site stay ahead of security issues.

The WordPress security team, in collaboration with the WordPress Core Leadership Team and backed by the WordPress global community, works to identify and resolve security issues in the core software available for distribution and installation at WordPress.org.

Loads of Extensions

To boost customer experience, you may require additional features and functionalities to satisfy them with their purchase. WordPress has many beautiful extensions, paid or free, that you can choose to give your eCommerce site a new look and your potential users a great customer experience.

SEO Capabilities

SEO is very important for an eCommerce site to help it achieve the top spot in the SERPs. A big thanks to WordPress’s useful SEO capabilities that are not challenging anymore and can perform well in optimizing your site speed and boosting traffic. With amazing plugins and extensions such as Yoast, you can boost your site speed and make SEO a simple yet easy job.

PROS

CONS

Which is Better?

After reading the article, you may conclude which is better for your eCommerce website. Though it’s quite difficult to say which one is best over another, if you have outlined your eCommerce site’s goals for what you want to create and achieve from it, you may quickly make a wise decision. We hope this article has given you a clearer view of each platform, and you can quickly design your eCommerce site in no time.

Rest, if you need help with Shopify or WordPress designing, you can consult the best website developers. With their knowledge and understanding, they’ll enlighten your on the way to choose the best platform and help you design a stunning and scalable website.