shopify

With the rapid rise of online shops and stores in the internet environment, it was only a matter of time before the market became saturated with all sorts of eCommerce platforms, more or less reliable, created to enhance the experience of users and owners alike.

However, only a few such platforms are indeed ready to meet modern security and usability demands. As a matter of fact, WooCommerce, Magento and Shopify dominate the industry, accounting together for around 70% of the market share. Statistics show that Shopify registered a significant growth in the market share in 2016, while Magento and WooCommerce registered a slight decline. A closer look at the pros and cons of these three platforms will showcase the market’s fluctuation.

Shopify is more than a simple eCommerce software bundle. It is an all-in-one turn-key solution for starting and managing online commerce business generic lexapro. It can be used out of the box, or customized according to specific needs. Shopify is suited for businesses of all sizes, as it is very cost-effective and easy to manage, granting users total control over all buy and sell options.

Pros:

• Enhanced security
• Enhanced speed
• Easily integrates with various CMS platforms like Drupal, Joomla and more
• Various theme options
• Easily integrates with most payment gateways
• Provides physical and digital goods inventory management
• Intuitive inventory import and export options
• SEO friendly
• Intuitive administration panel
• Easily integrates with third party services (email services, site metrics and more)
• Offers mobile-ready commerce out of the box
• Analytics support
• Social media integration

Cons:

• Special customization requires development and coding skills
• Built-in blogging feature is not very well polished
• Initial setup can require a bit of tech knowledge
• Shopify integrated payment system works for a limited number of countries (US, Canada, Australia and UK), but this does not apply to the other payment options
• The Lite plan does not offer very rich online store features

Magento represents a suite of eCommerce platforms, solutions, and CMS software that can be used individually or as a bundle. It can be considered a CMS only to a certain extent, although not as widely used as Drupal, WordPress and Joomla, as it has a specific target audience. Written in PHP, it is strongly focused on e-commerce and used by retailers and online shops.

Pros:

• E-Commerce ready solutions
• Support for multiple stores, carts, languages and currencies
• Good SEO options
• Shipping and tax calculation options
• Flexible template options
• Easy administration panel management
• Easy product creation

Cons:

• Slower loading speeds
• Needs extra customization out of the box
• Paid Enterprise and Premium Enterprise versions
• Potential server hosting issues due to size and loading speed
• Rather difficult development work to enable specific features and options
• Potential update issues
• No default omni-channel option

WooCommerce is a customizable platform designed in form of a plugin. It is the most widely used solution mainly because it is free and it integrates seamlessly with WordPress based sites. WooCommerce offers various extensions and themes specifically built for WP, but it does not work with sites powered by other content management systems.

Pros:

• Free
• Flexible product configuration options
• Integrates perfectly with WordPress
• Various payment options
• Provides good control over taxes, inventory and user accounts
• User review and rating system
• Lots of themes available
• Great option for basic stores

Cons:

• Does not work outside of the WordPress framework
• Custom functionalities coding is costly
• Maintenance and security depend on the site/store administrator/owner
• Compatibility issues when updating site/plugin
• Visual editor is not extremely efficient
• Premium themes and extensions are costly
• No hosting options

Taking into consideration these facts, we believe Shopify to be the most balanced eCommerce solution in terms of scalability and cost efficiency. As WooCommerce is exclusively built for WordPress and Magento offers more expensive business plans, there’s no wonder that Shopify has gained consistent percentages in market share in 2016.

Shopify is the all-in-one solution designed to make e-commerce better for everyone, from merchants to customers. One of the most versatile features of Shopify is that it can be easily used in online environment, as well as in real retail locations lexapro 5mg. Shopify software is on the market for more than a decade and has been successfully implemented over a wide range of platforms. A huge number of retails stores and e-commerce portals use it to offer innovative and secure ways to sell and buy worldwide.

Some of Shopify’s powerful features include:

• Mobile commerce ready
• Secure shopping cart using 256-bit SSL certificate
• Compatibility with external payment gateways (70 gateways, including PayPal, Bitcoin and other popular ones)
• Shop integration with credit card payment: MasterCard, Discover, American Express and Visa
• Tax calculation based on client location
• Advanced store management, including customer profiles, refunds, dropshipping and more
• Advanced product management, including inventory management, import and export features, product variations, tracking and more
• Easy to use Marketing, Analytics and SEO options

VerticalWave Solutions experts have extensive experience in integrating Shopify with the Drupal CMS to create powerful and secure e-commerce and online store platforms. From setting up a store and organizing products and payments to enhanced customer experience, we offer complete, custom-tailored Shopify e-commerce solutions, fit for the modern market. We provide turn-key integration with all the necessary features to ensure a reliable, secure and robust functionality for your platform whether you want to build it from the scratch up or it’s already set up and needs tweaking.

VerticalWave Solutions is a Certified Shopify Partner with more than 8 years of experience developing e-commerce solutions.