The ongoing pandemic has made every business ‘go online or go home’. One of the most budding industries right now is the e-commerce platform as people are widely dependent on online shopping due to lockdown curbs. Ecommerce industry is a booming platform that refers to the buying and selling of goods or services using the internet. In a nutshell, it refers to the sale of physical products online. It’s necessary for a business to go online in order to attract a larger market for high website traffic and gain more opportunities to sell the product. However in digital marketing it is important to understand that e-business refers to all aspects of operating an online business whereas e-commerce refers specifically to the transaction of goods and services.
Two of the best e-commerce platforms in 2020 could easily be Shopify and Woocommerce for integrating seamless user-experience. Both platforms have their own merits which makes them equally competing in the e-commerce market. As a digital marketing agency we help you choose the best platform suited for your e-commerce business through in-depth and analytical comparison to target your market to the accurate audience.
Cost
Shopify offers a pricing method including three basic plans and a custom enterprise option. The four plans are priced at $9, $29, $79, and $299 with Lite, Basic, Pro, and Unlimited respectively. The main difference between each lies on the fees it charges for every sale that is made ranging from 2.4% – 2.9% depending on your chosen plan. For its advanced plans, Shopify also offers features like gift cards, reporting, and multiple shipping options.
Web hosting on Woocommerce costs just around $7.99 / month. The best thing about WooCommerce is that basic installation is completely free. However, you will most likely need to pay for a few features like additional payment gateways, shipping options, and product add-ons.
All things considered, $79/year is still relatively cheap for an ecommerce store that accepts credit card payments.
Store launch easibility
When you start creating a store on WooCommerce, you kind of have to do things which are a little cumbersome to be precise.
– Install wordpress and learn the interface if you’re new to it.
– Install WooCommerce and learn the interface too.
Overall you need to find a host, install wordpress, install and configure WooCommerce, select a theme and configure all the details like payment gateways, tax calculations and many more.
However in Shopify, there’s hardly anything stopping you from creating a store and starting to sell your product online.
All you need to is,
- Create a shopify account
- Select your domain and purchase it/Sync your existing domain
- Choose theme
Payment methods
Shopify offers a plethora of payment options that you can use to receive payments from customers. It has its own payments solution called Shopify Payments along with popular third-party payment gateways but it charges an extra 2% fees on each transaction made through third party payment gateways.
WooCommerce even supports many regional and less popular payment services. As there is no entry barrier, any payments company can create add-ons for WooCommerce and provide support for it.
If your opting for a merchant account and using a third-party gateway is a priority for you, then you will save A LOT of money by using WooCommerce. But if you’re a small enterprise and willing to use Shopify Payments that has the same credit card rates as Stripe/Paypal, then you choose whatever you want since it makes no difference.
Integrations and Add-ons
Shopify comes with a powerful API and an App Store with hundreds of apps in the store covering every feature you’ll want to add to your store.
Woo-commerce gives you access to more than 55,000 free WordPress plugins and many more paid plugins. There are a lot more integrations and add-ons available for WooCommerce than Shopify because of low barrier entry. Almost all third-party tools and service providers have their own plugins to seamlessly integrate with your WooCommerce store. But it’s important to keep in mind that WooCommerce is a lot easier to customize than Shopify.
Dropshipping
When a store sells a product using the dropshipping model, it purchases the item from a third party and has it shipped directly to the customer. As a result, the seller doesn’t have to handle the product directly.
Shopify has various integration apps for popular dropshipping marketplaces like AliExpress, Oberlo, Printify, and more. However, each of these product marketplaces has its own membership fees, shipping, and other charges that you need to keep in mind when building your dropshipping website with Shopify. WooCommerce is a popular choice among dropshipping businesses because you can easily find extensions that instantly import products, fulfill orders from your website, and more.
Support Options
Shopify is renowned for its high quality in customer care. For users who want to fix things on their own, Shopify offers an extensive knowledge base on how-to guides, video tutorials, and forums. WooCommerce is a self-hosted platform, which means your hosting provider is responsible for providing support for issues with your server. For your WooCommerce theme and extensions, those developers are responsible for answering support questions regarding their products. Hence when it comes to customer support, nothing beats 24/7 access to a support person provided by Shopify.
If you are looking for a cost-effective solution, and you want to have full ownership of your online store, then WooCommerce can be termed as the best e-commerce platform in 2020 but if you want something that’s completely user-friendly, flexible, and has infinite scalability, then Shopify is the better platform. So, in a nutshell, it all depends on your precise needs.
We help you choose and integrate the best e-commerce platform according to your business needs. As an outcome-driven and new-age digital marketing agency, we provide 360-degree services in search engine optimization, email marketing, branding, social media marketing, and e-commerce website development. Going social is the need of the hour and our team of strategic and analytical experts are here to drive your business towards successful ventures. Reach out to us at IN: +91 9087706000 | SG: +65 8008526877 and our media professionals will get back to you soon!
