E-commerce is growing strong as more people continue to shop online for convenience and getting better deals. In the e-commerce ecosystem, Magento and WordPress are the two most renowned web platforms – that have been incessantly making new upgrades to provide better online shopping experience to consumers.
WordPress popularity is not hidden! powering around 20% of websites from top 1 million sites, WordPress is touted to be the best platform among webmasters for website development. Although, WordPress was initially preferred to build blogging sites, but now it is being used for developing almost every type of website including e-commerce sites. Its functional ability has grown considerably in the last few years, with the use of plug-ins that add additional functionality to the site.
You can find lots of WordPress e-Commerce Plugins available today, which can be used to add a shopping cart to a WP powered site, and even allows coders to tweak the appearance of the site. Besides, it also works with several payment gateways. Thus, often choosing Magento or WordPress to build e-shops leaves online retailers in bewilderment.
Analyze Your Basic Requirements
Remember, picking the right platform depends on your project requirements. There are a few questions that you must ask yourself before choosing any e-commerce platform, such as:
- What will the size of your store – will it be big or small?
- In what time do you expect your site to scale?
- What is your development budget?
Now that you’ve got answers to these questions, it’s time to select one platform for constructing your online shopping site.
How Magento Outperforms WordPress?
Magento vs WordPress – Features.
WordPress can add e-commerce functionality with help of free or paid plugins available. However, Magento is an e-commerce application that was mainly designed for selling products online. If you’re running a WordPress site and want to add a couple of products, then it makes sense to stay with WordPress. But, if you want to add products in bulk, it’s better to consider Magento – as it has been built to scale up. Besides, adding more products help you get creditability and profitability.
Even though programmers can customize WordPress site, however, when it comes to adding complex elements your site may end up looking like a clutter. In case, you use any third party theme, chances are that some of your components might not work. For instance, the checkout button might not work on certain browsers. Also, maintaining a complicated e-commerce site in WP can cause problem in directing traffic.
Magento vs WordPress – As a Blogging Tool.
WordPress is the best platform for creating blogging sites. Many online retailers consider developing an e-store using this platform, as it not only help them build a visually appealing e-commerce site but also gives the power to create compelling blog posts. But, since Magento is an ecommerce platform it doesn’t mean you can’t add blogs to your Magento powered site. In every Magento site you can integrate a WordPress blog, and style it to match your brand image. You can even create link to your products from your blog posts.
Magento vs WordPress – The eCommerce Plugins.
Albeit, it’s easy to add products in the WP site via an e-commerce plugin. But, keep in mind that you’ll be able to add merely basic product information like product name, description etc. On the other hand, Magento lets you add more detailed information about products. In addition, it even allows product comparisons, reviews, invoicing and many other functionalities that you can’t embed using WordPress.
What’s the Conclusion?
Both WordPress and Magento are two great platforms that contains similar features. However, when it comes to constructing an e-commerce site choosing the right platform seems difficult to online businesses. Refer to the above discussed factors that will help you understand how Magento gives head-to-head competition to WordPress when it comes to developing an e-commerce website.
Magento comes packed with rich features compared to the WordPress e-Commerce plugins, when it comes to marketing your business. For instance, there are tons of options like cross-selling, up-selling, coupons and more – that comes built-in with Magento. Though, you may find a few of these features in the WordPress plug-in, but you may need to create custom plugins to add more complex options just like the ones offered by Magento.
This is my take on how Magento is a more viable alternative than WordPress, but make sure to analyze your requirements first before picking your web development platform.