The first time I heard the name WooCommerce in 2016, it intimated me thinking it’s one of those tools I would have to spend years learning to understand. However, after a couple of tutorials online and sample projects, I had a clear picture of what eCommerce is, and how I can use it to design an online store website. I have since built tens of eCommerce stores using WooCommerce under my agency Saglotech Web Design.
In 2018, however, a client requested that I build an online using Magento. I had no idea what Magento was at the time. It was a great task and a challenging one that forced me to go back to the drawing board and learn about this eCommerce building technology called Magento.
At this stage, I was a fully functional developer/designer who knew what an eCommerce store was, and what features make up a good online store.
Features that make up a professional online store.
If you have ever used online stores, you will agree with me that there were features that were there on all of those websites. Simply defined, Online shopping is a form of electronic commerce that allows consumers to directly buy goods or services from a seller over the Internet using a web browser or a mobile app.
By virtue of it being a self-service system, there are features that must be there to help to complete a simple transaction with no help.
- Products Listing – Online stores should have clear and visible products to choose from. It is recommended to use quality pictures, and where possible, multiple pictures to show a customer what item they are buying. Using the same size in all images will help you build a good-looking and organised store.
- User Account – A user should have their own secured account that needs some form of login to access. This will keep their purchase history, track delivery progress, and complete purchases in a secured environment.
- Built-in Email System – As the client checks out of your online store, they should know that YOU have received an order and that delivery is on the way. An email is the best way to do this. Sending invoices, delivery information, and order information will help your customers to know that their money didn’t just disappear from their bank accounts, but their orders successfully went through. An email is also used when users forgot their login details. They should be able to retrieve their login details automatically with the help of email.
- Filters & Categories – As you add more products to your online store, you will realise that your products are now hard to manage, and some cannot be found easily. Using categories, tags, and filters such as by-priced, by date, etc. can help organise your store and help your clients to get products despite how many they are on the website.
- Payment Gateway – Importantly, a payment gateway is needed on your online store. Especially if you intend to bill your clients before sending them the products. In South Africa, we have payment gateways such as PayFast, Ozow, Peach Payment, etc. These are third-party gateways that process payments securely.
- Loyalty & Reward System – As a marketing mechanism, loyalty programs and reward systems can help you keep clients and increase sales. Coupon codes, Gift Vouchers, and Special Offer helps a lot.
- Shipping Methods – Let your customers know how will they get their products delivered to them. In South Africa, Aramex, Ram, and Courier IT are some for the delivery partners that you can use. To encourage more sales, you can even add Cash on Delivery (COD) and Free Shipping for larger purchases.
While there are many features such as Online Chat, SMS updates, email marketing etc, the above features are quite essential and are needed for almost every successful online store.
WooCommerce vs Magento
WooCommerce and Magento.
By the time I started using Magento, I was already able to integrate all the features listed above and more for most of the eCommerce websites that I have built. Going t Magento, it was mostly a challenge of whether the new system (Magento) will be able to do what eCommerce was able to do.’
- I found Magento to be dragging and making features that are easily implementable in WooCommerce quite hard in Magento. Causing more development work that could have been completed in a few minutes.
- The web hosting needs that were needed by a Magento store were quite technical and only meant for developers and not designers. You would need to unlock your SSH and Cron Jobs to update changes.
- Plugins in Magento (referred to as Modules) are expensive as compared to WooCommerce.
- The Dev Community in Magento is less and support is not easily found as compared to WordPress.
- There are more themes and templates for WooCommerce than there are for Magento.
- Managing SEO in Magento is quite limited compared to the hundreds of SEO plugins readily made for WordPress websites, which are also free.
I’m sure by now you can see why I prefer WooCommerce online stores as compared to Magento. But here are some pros that I noted on Magento.
- Magento is a system fully built for eCommerce, and the whole system is all about selling products online, meanwhile, WooCommerce is an added eCommerce functionality inside a WordPress system, which was made originally to manage content, mostly blogs and general websites.
- Magento is developer-friendly and can be quite exciting to developers who are keen to code and run commands online.
- Magento may take time to update to a new version. In WooCommerce and WordPress, there are always new versions released almost every month. This can however serve as a disadvantage for Magento since updates address more issues and security loops that are discovered each day.
- Online Stores that have thousands of products may find Magento quite attractive for its speed and stability. In WooCommerce, you will need additional plugins to make the website lightweight.
In conclusion, I would recommend new users who are building and designing online stores start with WooCommerce for its cost-effectiveness and easy-to-implement features.
According to the Barn2 report, there are 3,876,748 websites that uses WooCommerce or 68,000 of the world’s top million websites. That’s 0.2% of all websites, or 6.8% of the top million!
If you are willing to hire a team of eCommerce developers for a large eCommerce store, Magento is good for you.
