Today, two of the biggest players in the realm of e-commerce are Shopify and WooCommerce. Both have the capability to support a wide variety of different online businesses, but how exactly do they differ?
Overview
Overall, Shopify and WooCommerce are two completely different types of platforms. While both offer extensive e-commerce features, Shopify is a full hosted platform, whereas WooCommerce is a plug-in for WordPress. As a result, Shopify as a whole, is a more robust e-commerce solution than WooCommerce.
Now let’s get into the nitty-gritty of it all and really break down the two platforms.
Page Speed and Conversion Rates
One of the most important features of a website is the page speed. Page speed is how fast the material on a website loads. If a website has an extremely slow page speed, then it discourages users from staying on the website, thus increasing the bounce rate. According to Alex Nguyen from LiteExtension, WooCommerce homepages typically load in 0.99 seconds, while Shopify homepages typically load in 0.66 seconds. Although that difference in time seems menial, time is literally money in e-commerce. On average, the faster a website’s page speed, the higher the conversion rate.
Add-Ons
Although it’s possible to build a fully functioning e-commerce site using the baseline features of both Shopify and WooCommerce, downloading add-ons is often times inevitable. Shopify and WooCommerce both offer plug-ins or apps that are easy to integrate onto a site. Even though this is the case, there is a vast difference in the amount of e-commerce related add-ons each platform has to offer. Shopify offers nearly 6,000 apps dedicated to e-commerce advancements, whereas WooCommerce only has about 600 plug-ins dedicated to e-commerce. Looking at those numbers alone, it’s apparent that Shopify provides more opportunity for site improvements.
Payment Processing
Having reliable payment processing features is absolutely vital to the success of an e-commerce store. The more robust the gateway, the higher the conversion rate. Right off the bat, Shopify offers its own payment processing system called Shopify Payments. This system is quite robust, as it was developed by Stripe. It’s also incredibly secure as it’s Level 1 PCI compliant. Additionally, Shopify is compatible with over 100 different payment gateways that can be easily integrated onto a site. WooCommerce on the other hand, doesn’t have any platform specific gateways and all gateways that are compatible have to be downloaded as an add-on.
Security
When building trust and relationships with customers, it is imperative that an e-commerce site has top-notch security features. With Shopify, security is handled by a dedicated team since it’s a hosted platform. This team can tackle any security breaches that have threatened a store. Additionally, Shopify users get their own SSL certificate for free and their stores automatically run on a Level 1 PCI compliant server. WooCommerce is completely different in the sense that all security is handled by the store owner. WooCommerce users have to purchase their own SSL servers and manage security breaches. This can be quite risky and taxing when managing a business.
Choosing the right e-commerce platform to use can be one of the most difficult tasks when starting a new business. At the end of the day though, the decision is truly dependent on the goals of the business and one’s preference.
If you’re interested in building a Shopify store for your business, please feel free to contact us at support@hazil.studio.
Cheers!
The Hazil Studios Team
References:
Shopify vs WooCommerce – Which is the Better Platform? (Comparison)
WooCommerce vs Shopify: Who Comes Out On Top? (2022)
WooCommerce vs Shopify – A Head-To-Head Comparison (2022 Update)
Shopify vs WooCommerce: Which Is the Best Ecommerce Platform in 2021?
WooCommerce vs Shopify (Feb 2022): Which One Is the Absolute Best?