The Boom of e-Commerce

E-Commerce has been consistently growing as an industry year-over-year and it is projected to be at 6.54 trillion US dollars in 2022.

Retail e-commerce sales worldwide from 2014 to 2023

With the lockdown and social distancing rules, there has been an even higher growth in the number of online sales and stores. For example, in the US, e-commerce sales increased by 18% this year. Shopify, a popular e-commerce platform experienced a 62% jump in the creation of new stores on its website from March 13 to April 24 compared to 6 weeks before that.

I recently saw a meme on Linkedin about the “forced” digital transformation we are witnessing due to COVID-19.

All across the globe companies have been forced to create their e-commerce stores and create online digital platforms to be able to deliver their products to the customers without interruption.

Daniel Newman in this article for Forbes says that the companies that lagged and doubted the digital transformation will suffer losses, but those who invested in implementing a quick digital transformation will thrive.

There are multiple options out there in the market, but we have two preferred platforms that we would like to introduce to you. If you are planning to move your brick-and-mortar store online, or start a new e-commerce business, here is a short guide for you to decide what platform to choose to host your online store on.

WooCommerce and Shopify

WooCommerce and Shopify are amongst the top 3 e-commerce software platforms according to market share.

WooCommerce has the largest market share. 30% of all e-commerce websites out there are powered by WooCommerce. Meanwhile, Shopify is one of the fastest-growing SAAS (Software as a Service) e-Commerce platforms in terms of popularity as well as revenue.

Comparison of the number of google searches for different e-commerce platforms in the US. Source: Google Trends

For the most part, if you look at the online stores hosted on either platform, they might look the same on the front-end. That is, you wouldn’t be able to differentiate between both the platforms when you are shopping on one of these online platforms.

The main difference between these two favourite e-commerce platforms is that Woocommerce is open-source software with a massive community of developers contributing to it since years, and Shopify is a SAAS platform intended mainly for e-commerce. Wocommerce runs on top of WordPress, which is also one of the most used CMSs out there, that’s why you can also count with all the tools and functionalities WordPress plus the e-commerce extension that Woocommerce is.

This means both have completely different features and costs, and hence are best suited for different kinds of business.

Re-platforming or changing your platform after some years is a tedious process that costs companies a lot of money. Hence thinking long term is the key to deciding on which platform would provide you with the features you need, within the budget you have.

Why We Prefer WooCommerce

1. Why is WooCommerce better than Shopify for implementing your SEO and content marketing strategy?

The two platforms differ in their basic technology.  Shopify is a SAAS  e-commerce platform, which means it allows you to sell products online by using its software, but you won’t be able to use it as a proper CMS, while you can have your basic blog running on it. But a Blog is not a CMS, and that’s where WordPress adds more value to Woocommerce.

WooCommerce is a software that is built over another software called Content Management System or CMS. A CMS allows you to create and modify content online. WordPress, being a CMS, allows you to have other content as well on your website besides just the online store. This means you can use it as a blog, you can use it to create a system to manage your staff, your team members, your services, and even introduce advanced functionalities like E-learning or Booking appointments for a very low cost.

To go live with your new e-commerce store, using any of both platforms will require investment in Online Marketing on social media, a blogging,  content strategy and probably a strong PPC (Pay-Per-Click) campaign on Google Adwords.

At Curzon we have seen better organic SEO performance with Woocommerce stores, of course, this is due to the fact that as it runs on top of a fully-fledged CMS, developers have much more freedom to configure, manipulate routing, URLs, HTML formatting, XML sitemap generation, among other benefits.

2. The Importance of Ownership

When your shop runs with open source software it means that you will need to hire a Hosting service -a computer on the internet- to basically save all your files, databases and images. We already mentioned the good parts of having open-source, but keep in mind that as you have full ownership of everything it means that you are also responsible for how your business scales, and it’s security. That’s when we take care that your store is running smoothly by monitoring it and setting it up in the right way in order to take all the advantages of open source, without the complicated technical parts of it.

This means you as a business owner need to find a reliable agency that provides you with a responsive website developer that you’d hire to create and maintain your online store.

In this sense, using the Woocommerce-WordPress duo will also be cheaper in terms of the cost of developer hours, because they can rely on the open-source community to find solutions to common problems that appear when your business starts growing.

With both platforms, you can set up an e-commerce website without needing many technical skills, but that will end up with a website that looks just like everyone else, in these days differentiating from the competition is about offering the most attractive and pleasant to use User interface, that’s when software developers and designers add value to your business and make it stand out from the rest.

Probably it is easier to set a store on Shopify for a non-technical person, but keep in mind, that you will have to show your credit card often to get some functionality that is not part of the core of Shopify, while in Woocommerce you might find the same solution for half the price or even free.

But simply thinking about the present ease of implementing is not the right way to go about it. Think through what features and functionalities your business needs because the costs of running the online store would depend heavily on which platform you choose.

Examples of some of the features and functionalities e-Commerce stores in the process of scaling normally need:

• Integration with external software like

-ERP or Enterprise Resource Planning, a software that controls the stocks. For example, when a product leaves the factory, ERP would discount it from your inventory.

-CRM or customer relationship management to control all the sales flow from a centralized platform.

• A POS or point-of-sale software that provides features like billing, order processing, sale monitoring and reporting, returns, etc.

Examples of some of the more advanced features and functionalities that WooCommerce allows, and not Shopify, are:

• Learning Management System or LMS in case you want to sell online courses or classes that quiz students, grade them, and then provide a certificate.
• Booking Systems – allow clients to buy appointable products.

In Shopify to get a booking calendar to work with your store you would have to rely on another SAAS product that brings this functionality to your site, of course with extra costs, and also you lose ownership of this part of the flow.

While both Shopify and WordPress can provide the basic features, the cost of implementation is usually higher for Shopify even if you plan on doing it yourself without the help of a developer. It is because, besides the free access to modify code, WordPress also offers a universe of free as well as low-cost extensions to create some of these features. In case of integration with external software like ERP, the cost charged by Shopify is usually higher than that charged by WooCommerce.

3. What’s the Size of Your Business?

In a self-hosted e-commerce platform, you will need to be aware of the capabilities of the hosting platform our shop is running on top of. This just means that you will need to configure it right and buy the right hosting plan that can stand the demand of your clients.

The kind of server infrastructure you will need will depend on the kind of products you use and the traffic you are getting. For example, a shared hosting (that doesn’t cost more than £5) will get stressed and deliver a poor experience to your users, so you will need to upgrade to a hosting plan that has more capabilities, more memory, an SSD disk, your own server, and so on.

When scaling issues happen, normally the business is doing very well, so it is a matter of configuring your Woocommerce store to provide the best user experience and increase sales.

Large-scale corporations probably will invest and build their own e-commerce platforms, but small to medium-sized businesses have this dilemma — Which platform should I engage with? That’s when a web development agency will help you find the right answer.

In most cases, WooCommerce ends up being more cost-effective, given the high cost of running a Shopify store. 

Conclusion

There are examples of online stores that are thriving on Shopify and those that are thriving on WooCommerce. Clearly, one is not better than the other. It is simply a matter of which one is more suitable for your business needs, budget, scale, and long-term business and marketing goals.

Agustin has spent over 10 years in digital and his specialist expertise spans website development, UX/UI Design, SEO, and data-led online lead generation. For any help regarding website building for your e-commerce business, please contact Agustin Mouratoglou at [email protected]

Curzon PR is a London-based PR firm working with clients globally. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact our Business Development Team [email protected]