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Choosing the Right eCommerce Platform
Choosing the right eCommerce platform is a crucial decision for any business looking to establish or expand its online presence. With so many options available, we must address two of the most popular platforms: Shopify and WooCommerce.
While both have their strengths and weaknesses, the choice between them depends largely on your unique business needs, current setup, and future growth plans.
Key Takeaways
- Shopify’s main strength is its simplicity. It can help small businesses launch faster without getting bogged down in technical optimisation, theme customisation, tracking configuration and more. However, this simplicity often comes at the cost of needing many subscription-based add-ons to extend its very basic functionality, which can lead to bugs, compatibility, and maintenance issues when trying to bolt on third-party apps later.
- For larger businesses, such as established retail outlets, the deadly duo of WordPress and WooCommerce provides a powerful, fully customisable platform where every aspect of the website down to the URL structure can be optimised for search engines. This comes at the cost of requiring a skilled developer to work on and maintain.
- At Distl, we don’t prescribe one platform over another. We provide a comprehensive scoping from the outset to ensure that the platform is aligned with your business objectives and prevent future issues with your chosen platform.
In This Article, We Discuss…
- Balancing Ease of Use with Growth Limitations
- Unlocking Advanced Customisation and Control with WooCommerce
- How Shopify and WooCommerce Compare for marketing and SEO
- What Our Developers Think
- Deciding if WooCommerce or Shopify is Right for Your Business
- How Distl Guides to in Deciding Which Platform to Use
Balancing Ease of Use with Growth Limitations with Shopify
Shopify is known for its simplicity and ease of use. It’s a fully hosted platform, which means that all of the technical aspects, such as hosting and security, are managed for you. This makes Shopify an excellent choice for businesses that are just getting started or want a straightforward, no-fuss solution. Its intuitive drag-and-drop interface allows you to easily set up and manage an online store without any coding knowledge.
However, many businesses begin with a simple Shopify setup but later find themselves in a complicated situation due to a lack of proper functionality scoping. Adding numerous third-party apps over time can lead to a store that’s difficult to maintain, with an increased likelihood of incompatibilities, bugs, and integration issues. It can also become expensive as recurring monthly costs accumulate with each new app.
Unlocking Advanced Customisation and Control with WooCommerce
On the other hand, WooCommerce offers a level of customisation that Shopify cannot match. WooCommerce is an open-source plugin for WordPress, which means that it’s highly flexible and can be tailored to meet even the most complex requirements. This makes it ideal for businesses that need specific functionalities or want complete control over their store.
With WooCommerce, you have access to a vast range of plugins and themes that enable advanced customisation. This flexibility, however, comes at a cost—WooCommerce requires a higher level of technical knowledge and management.
Unlike Shopify, which is fully hosted, WooCommerce requires you to manage hosting, security, and other technical elements yourself. While this is not necessarily a drawback for businesses with in-house technical expertise or access to dedicated developers, it may be overwhelming for those looking for a more hands-off solution.
How Shopify and WooCommerce Compare for Marketing and SEO
Shopify’s Simplicity Makes Up For Its Rigidity
When it comes to integrating with marketing channels and implementing effective SEO strategies, both Shopify and WooCommerce have their strengths and limitations.
Shopify provides built-in marketing tools that allow you to easily connect with popular marketing channels such as social media platforms, Google Ads, and email marketing services. It also offers a range of plugins for additional marketing integrations.
However, Shopify’s SEO features, while good for beginners, can be somewhat limited compared to what WooCommerce offers. For instance, the level of control over meta tags, URL structures, and other important SEO elements is not as robust as what’s available with WooCommerce.
Woocommerce’s Customisability Comes With a Learning Curve
WooCommerce, being built on WordPress, offers extensive SEO capabilities right out of the box. WordPress is widely known for its SEO-friendliness, and WooCommerce benefits from this foundation. With the right plugins, such as Yoast SEO or Rank Math, WooCommerce allows for fine-tuned control over SEO settings, enabling businesses to optimise every aspect of their online store for search engines. This makes WooCommerce a powerful option for businesses where organic traffic is a significant priority.
This customisability does come at the cost of simplicity, and small businesses may be required to seek out professional assistance in setting up and maintaining a WooCommerce web store.
What our developers think
Our in-house developers particularly appreciate WooCommerce’s ability to fully customise your online store checkout process, allowing it to align perfectly with your products, pricing, and shipping tiers.
On the topic of picking the right e-commerce platform for your business, our super star web developer Roman said:
“Shopify is a quick and easy e-commerce platform for small business owners to DIY a basic online store with. It is usually a more cost-effective solution out of the box and works very well for startups. However as your business finds its feet, you’ll find yourself thinking about additional features, improvements and fine tuning. This is where WooCommerce excels in and we are here to guide you through that process.”
How do I Decide if Shopify or WooCommerce is Right for My Business?
Shopify is right for you if…
Picture a local skincare brand with three team members. They may find Shopify’s easy-to-use platform ideal, as it allows them to quickly set up an online store without requiring extensive technical skills or the need to hire developers.
If the brand is not trying to utilise the full power of SEO to drive sales, then there is no need for concern with extensive technical optimisation.
The fully hosted environment also means they don’t need to worry about the complexities of hosting, security, or frequent maintenance. There are comprehensive reports which break down the marketing channels that sales and traffic are coming through as well.
WooCommerce is right for you if…
We usually recommend WooCommerce for those looking for more flexibility and SEO benefits, even if it involves additional setup with hosting and management.
Consider an authorised power tool retailer with multiple physical locations. They may require a more robust eCommerce solution to integrate with their existing inventory systems, customise their store to reflect their brand identity, and manage a wide range of products.
Some areas of optimisation that could benefit our hypothetical power tool retailer would be greater control over site speed via code and image optimisation, advanced redirect management, structured data markup, custom URL structures, and Local SEO integration. All features that WordPress provides via out of the box or with fully supported plugins with active development teams.
WooCommerce, being an open-source platform, provides the customisation options they need to achieve these goals, albeit with the need for more technical management and development resources.
How Distl Guides You to the Right Platform
We take a consultative approach to platform selection. Rather than jumping straight into building an online store, we work with you to fully understand your business, including your goals, existing capabilities, and plans for growth. This ensures that the chosen eCommerce platform is not only suitable for your current needs but is also scalable and flexible enough to meet future requirements.
We prioritise comprehensive scoping from the outset to prevent future issues and ensure that the platform is aligned with your business objectives. Whether you’re looking for simplicity and ease of use or customisation and flexibility, we’ll help you make the right choice between Shopify and WooCommerce.
At Distl, we don’t push one solution over the other. As a non-prescriptive digital agency, we are here to provide you with impartial advice, considering factors like your business growth stage, team capabilities, marketing channel integration, and SEO requirements.
Take the Next Step with Distl
Ready to take the next step towards launching or optimising your eCommerce store? Contact us today for a personalised consultation and let us help you choose the best platform for your business needs.
Jakeb Munn
SEO Specialist