Woocommerce versus Shopify

 

The shift to digital and advanced technology in commerce has changed the way we do business, online stores are sustainably replacing brick and mortar stores, creating resources and opportunities for business doers.

E-commerce, also known as electronic commerce, internet commerce, and online commerce, has become the basic means through which online stores carry out their business transactions on the internet.

Let’s take a look at these two eCommerce platforms in this write-up, woo-commerce and Shopify, their operations, features, and importance to brands.

TABLE OF CONTENT

• What are eCommerce platforms
• Benefits of a good eCommerce platform
• Woocommerce; operations and features
• Shopify; operations and features
• Why Shopify?
• Why woocommerce

WHAT ARE E-COMMERCE PLATFORMS

Basically, an eCommerce platform is the backbone of an online retailer. It is used by businesses to launch, host, and manage their online stores. It provides features that allow traders to build a branded online storefront to locate and sell their products and services.

BENEFITS OF A GOOD E-COMMERCE PLATFORMS

An eCommerce platform supports and enables the growth of an online store. It creates values by making it easy for exchange to be done between producers and consumers.

Some benefits of a good eCommerce store include;

1) Provides a  platform that supports eCommerce, accounting, POS, inventory, and order management, marketing, customer service, financial, and merchandising on a cloud-based platform.

2) A good eCommerce platform should deliver consistent experiences, targeted marketing, and excellent customer service. All customer interactions and transactions should be in a single view across all the touchpoints and channels.

3)  It provides a convenient way for customers to purchase, fulfill, and return the products.

4) It supports endless expansion- in the area of multiple business models, brands, channels, locations, currencies, and languages all on the same platforms.

5) It centralizes order management to maximize profitability.

WOOCOMMERCE PLATFORM

 

OPERATIONS

WooCommerce is developer-friendly- It is scalable and can integrate with virtually any service. you can decide to design a complex store from scratch, extend a store for a client, or simply add a single product to a WordPress site — your store, your way.

WooCommerce adds all the necessary features for setting up an online store. You can manage your business on the go with the WooCommerce Mobile App. Create products, process orders, and keep an eye on key stats in real-time. In other words, your WooCommerce store can grow as your business grows. You can add new features whenever you need to.

FEATURES
– woocommerce enables the sale of physical products, services, and digital products or downloadable products- It supports various payment options, such as PayPal, Stripe, credit cards, or bank transfers
– It enables the act of tracking the location, amount, pricing, and mix of inventory available from your business.
– Currency and shipping settings calculators are made available for all countries, making it easy to convert currencies
– Analytics for all product types, that is, the data collected and analyzed about your products, to understand how they perform across your webshop conversion funnel and to build a holistic picture of the who, what, where, and how of your products.
– There is room for unlimited product image uploads and product pages
– Full shopping cart and checkout setup is available

 

SHOPIFY PLATFORM

OPERATION
Shopify is a complete commerce platform that lets you start, grow, and manage a business. Shopify unifies all of your commerce onto a single platform.
With Shopify merchants can build and customize an online store and sell in multiple places, including web, mobile, in-person, brick-and-mortar locations, and pop-up shops and across multiple channels from social media to online marketplaces.

Shopify is completely cloud-based and hosted, which means you can access it from any connected compatible device and we’ll handle software and server upgrades and maintenance for you. This gives you the flexibility to access and run your business from anywhere with an internet connection.

FEATURES
– As soon as you buy any Shopify plan, you get everything you need to turn your idea into a business and start selling: templates for the look and feel of your store, tools to sell in multiple places online and in-person, integrated payment processing, the best-converting checkout on the internet, SEO and marketing tools—these are all part of Shopify’s core product. This is the foundation upon which our other products and applications are built.

And for those who want to fine-tune their store and experience, you get access to Shopify APIs and development tools to customize your store’s capabilities even further.

– Shopify offers customers powerful upgrades to help them grow their business on the platform and evolve accordingly, From easier access to capital to accelerated payment options, these products and services are exclusive to Shopify customers and are designed to help independent business owners have a leg up in the market.

– Shopify has thousands of apps and features built by third-party developers to customize your store without ever once touching the code.

WHY SHOPIFY?

1. Shopify supports the entire eCommerce community. Online, offline, and everywhere in between. We are home to the largest, most diverse set of entrepreneurs, merchants, developers, and partners.
2. Shopify is global. They empower entrepreneurs around the world to create, connect, and innovate their businesses. With merchants spanning more than 175 countries, we provide entrepreneurs everywhere with the platform, building blocks, and tools needed to win in commerce.
3. Shopify empowers creative expression. We believe there should be more unique voices, stories, and experiences, not fewer, and that’s why we design our product with the greatest amount of extensibility, flexibility, and expression.
4. Shopify is the most integrated commerce platform out of the box. Shopify not only centralizes entire commerce businesses but also offers access to the broadest set of commerce ecosystem integrations built using a shared technical framework. This deep integration and access ensure we have breadth and depth of themes, apps, channels, surfaces, products, and experiences.
5. Shopify absorbs unnecessary complexity. We know the world isn’t designed for independent businesses to start, scale and succeed. That’s why we make it as simple and accessible as possible to maximize entrepreneurs’ access to growth tools.
6. Shopify is built to scale with you. No matter your technical maturity, growth, size, complexity, or location—you will never lack access to technology and features to build your business, and you will never outgrow Shopify as your needs change, scale, or evolve.

 

WHY E-COMMERCE?

1. WooCommerce is competitive with leading enterprise eCommerce applications, but because it’s free, any business or entrepreneur can take advantage of its capabilities without having to commit to expensive support contracts or proprietary software licenses
2. WooCommerce includes a rich set of features that can be extended with the addition of plugins. Retailers who use WooCommerce benefit twice from this modularity: they have access to thousands of WordPress plugins and themes as well as hundreds of eCommerce-specific extensions built just for WooCommerce.The genius of a modular system is that it helps to cultivate a community of developers who build extensions to add specific WooCommerce and WordPress functionality, something that isn’t possible with monolithic applications. With the right plugins, WooCommerce can be the perfect open source eCommerce platform for every retailer. Those plugins can expand functionality in regards to shipping, payments, how products are handled, and more. WooCommerce developers themselves have developed and recommended several additional plugins when using their store.
3. In reality, the link between WordPress and WooCommerce plugin is actually a benefit of WooCommerce. WordPress is hugely popular because it’s so flexible and functional. Millions of businesses choose to use WordPress because it provides the best foundation for their sites. It’s fast, secure, and easy to use. The compatibility between your existing WordPress themes and WooCommerce themes will make for very smooth integration. WooCommerce inherits all of the strength and reliability of WordPress and uses it to build a world-class eCommerce experience for retailers and their customers.
4. WooCommerce is incredibly flexible. The reality is that you can make a website to sell products — and that means just about everything. If you want to sell something, whether via WooCommerce dropshipping or by creating digital products to sell, you can do it with WooCommerce.
5. The WooCommerce advantage here is that retailers benefit from a large pool of developers and WooCommerce professionals. If you need to make changes to your WooCommerce store, it won’t be hard to find someone to do the work for you. And further, its widespread use and network of developers make achieving optimal WooCommerce security much easier.
6. Built-in analytics is another WooCommerce advantage because the more you know about your customers and the way they interact with your store and its products, the better.
7. Another WooCommerce advantage is that it’s designed for selling. It includes everything a new eCommerce retailer needs to get up and running, which are;

 

• Over 100 payment gateways that can be easily integrated with your store.
• Multiple WooCommerce shipping methods with configurable shipping zones and shipping classes.
• An intuitive backend for stock management, refunds, order management, email management, and everything else you need to efficiently manage your eCommerce store.
• Choose from thousands of configurable and mobile-friendly free and premium WooCommerce themes or build a custom theme to give your store a unique look.