Shopify vs WordPress

WordPress

WordPress is an example of a CMS. It holds the largest market share of all websites with a share of 35%, which equates to more than a third of the entire web. When approaching an e-commerce built it is wise to choose one well used around the world for a number of reasons. This can ensure that is has been thoroughly tested by the millions of people that use these sites every day. The last thing you want is to stumble across an issue with the website that may have been overlooked by the development team, these issues are the most difficult to resolve. Another benefit of using WordPress is the support forum that they offer. They don’t have a dedicated support service (which is available but for a monthly fee) but because WordPress has such a strong following, their support forum is very responsive. Questions are usually answered within a day – usually by the general public but also by WordPress Staff.

To stand out from the crowd and from your competitors it is important ensure your website is different from the rest. This could be by introducing new features to your e-commerce site such as an in-depth menu displaying product categories or contemporary animation on the home page to reduce the bounce rate. Many themes do provide such pre-built features, but they will never be unique as they will have been used on another site elsewhere. The great thing about WordPress is that is fully customisable and allows developers to write into the CMS theme or even develop their own theme.

If you are reading this and are a little unsure of what I have just said, then setting up an e-commerce website may feel slightly complicated. There are a fair few steps between deciding to build an e-commerce site in WordPress to it actually being deployed to the internet. So, if you have very little experience with web design or even computer skills, WordPress may not be the best solution for you.

Shopify

Shopfiy is another CMS web application specifically designed to allow merchants to build and launch their own online store. Shopify provides a large range of templates for a user to apply to their online store. What is most advantageous to a user is that no technical or design skill is required to get your own professional website up and running in little time at all compared to a custom website build.

When dealing with an e-commerce website it is obvious payments will be an important factor with the day to day management of the website. What you don’t want is any security issues when dealing with payments. Shopify is a much more secure system straight out of the box, minimal set up is required to ensure your payments are protected to a very high standard.

Unlike WordPress, Shopify does have its own dedicated support team who are available 24hours a day to answer your technical queries. Any downtime on your website could potentially be very costly to your business, therefore it is essential to eliminate as much of this as possible. Having a responsive support team would help massively with this.

Shopify flourishes with its easy to set up installation and requiring minimal skill to produce a professional looking but scalability can become problematic. As your business grows your products size may increase. Shopify is not well built for a high number of products. It would then be best to look for a system that allow for a more customizable approach.

Final thought

There are clear benefits using either WordPress or Shopify but choosing the CMS will completely depend on the scope of your e-commerce store and your own ability to set up a website. It may also be useful to do some research of your competitors to find out how their online shops have been built. If you have any queries based what you’ve read in this article, give Blue Whale Media a call on 01925 552 050 and we can steer you in the right direction.