The Key Differences between WooCommerce and Magento

Online shopping is a growth industry. 198 million U.S. shoppers bought something online in the first quarter of 2014. That’s 78% of the population. The statistics are virtually the same in the UK. 75% of British consumers do their shopping online, 40% of them aged 65 and over. These figures are increasing year on year and experts predict UK online sales to pass the £52 billion mark in 2015. All this means that you can’t afford to ignore the benefits of creating an attractive, easy to use ecommerce platform to sell your products and services.

What is an Ecommerce Platform?

Ecommerce platforms are online store builders. With a bit of technical know-how, anyone can create a simple website and connect it to a shopping cart system in order to sell products. The trouble is, doing it this way is very labour intensive and the more your business grows, the bigger your workload will be. Ecommerce platforms offer scalability and allow you to create an attractive, personalised, online store straight out of the box. They come with a huge selection of add-on tools, also referred to as apps or extensions. You can pick and choose the ones you need to improve the shopping experience and help free up your time as the business grows.

WooCommerce and Magento are two of the more popular ecommerce platforms. Both have their pluses and minuses, and both have the support of vocal online communities. If you are setting up an online store, or you are unhappy with your current ecommerce platform, there are lots of reasons to choose WooCommerce or Magento, so to make your decision easier we will discuss the key differences between the two.

Woo Commerce

woo commerce

WooCommerce is a WordPress plug-in. It was launched in 2011 and by February last year, had hit 2.25 million downloads. WooCommerce is designed to turn a WordPress website into a fully functional online store. It is ideal for businesses that are already familiar with how WordPress works.

What are the Key Features of WooCommerce?

  • Easy to use WordPress interface
  • Clean and simple design – If you crave simplicity, the default storefront design will rock your world, but if you decide at a later date that you want a different theme, there are plenty to choose from
  • Shipping – WooCommerce lets you cater for many different types of shipping and distribution
  • Different payment options – WooCommerce offers a full range of payment gateway options, including PayPal, BACS and cash on delivery via a variety of different extensions
  • Store admin is easy thanks to intuitive WordPress backroom reporting tools
  • SEO friendly
  • WooCommerce stores look great on mobile devices, which is very important these days
  • Marketing – You can take advantage of lots of different marketing features, including discounts and free shipping
  • Unlimited products and categories
  • Excellent blog integration
  • Inventory management is easy thanks to a WordPress user interface

Magento

magento

Launched in 2008, Magento is one of the bigger players in the ecommerce marketplace. It recently overtook Blogger to be the fourth most popular content management system. It is currently has 2.9% of the market share and is exceeded only by Drupal, Joomla and WordPress.

What are the Key Features of Magento?

  • Magento is highly customisable and extremely flexible, so there are no limits on the type of store front you can have
  • Mobile friendly design
  • Multi currency support, which is ideal if you are marketing your products to a global marketplace
  • Excellent SEO functionality
  • Magento can handle an unlimited inventory
  • There are hundreds of Magento add-ons to choose from

WooCommerce Vs Magento

In terms of features, there is not a great deal of difference between the two platforms. Both can be customised to suit your business and both are used by businesses large and small to create attractive storefronts all over the world.

A WooCommerce store is also very easy to administer, even for people with very little website experience, so if you plan on delegating your store admin to junior employees, it won’t be too steep a learning curve.

Like WooCommerce, Magento works well with many businesses but the costs can be higher, particularly if your store needs a lot of custom features.

Conclusion

WooCommerce and Magento are both suitable for businesses of all sizes. Magento is often the preferred platform for businesses with a vast inventory of products, but if you are looking to create an attractive, scalable ecommerce store, WooCommerce is a better choice. Thanks to a simple WordPress user interface, WooCommerce is also a lot easier to use.

Our developers work with a variety of E-Commerce platforms including WooCommerce and Magento. If you would like more information about how we can help you to design and develop your e-commerce store get in touch with us today.

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