With a majority (I’m assuming) of the UK stuck at home more than usual over the last few months, no doubt quite a few have thought up the idea of selling products online. Either homemade crafts, perhaps confectionary or maybe even buying goods from a third-party adding a little twist and value then selling them on again.

Whatever your product you’ll be wanting to sell it online (Now isn’t the best time to set up shop on the high street!). You’ll be wanting a low risk (and therefore low cost) venture so if your store struggles to make money then you haven’t lost too much, and if your store does make money then it gives you a home for however long is needed to get you the state of the art website that your heart (and customers) may desire.

Shopify vs WooCommerce

Shopify

Shopify is a ‘Software as a Service’ provider where you pay a subscription fee (and transaction fee) in return for your own online store (with offline POS options). As long as you’re not after some very bespoke design requirements, functionality or unusual integration then Shopify can quickly give you a fairly good and easy to use starting point for your store.

As Shopify is developed and hosted by a third party so you don’t have to worry about security and gives you an array of choices for how you take payment or ship your items all you really need to worry about is picking one of the many available themes, adding your logo, adding your stock and launching your business. Another aspect to consider is that included in that monthly cost is access to the Shopify dedicated support team should you ever get stuck (there are plenty of third-parties offering this service at a higher level as well!).

Similar to WordPress, Shopify has a wide range of ever-growing third-party plugins that are easily installed mostly requiring no coding knowledge and adding even more (often free) features to your store such as;

• Analytics Tracking
• Integrations with Dropshippers
• Email Marketing services like Mailchimp
• Product Feeds for Google, Facebook and Instagram.
• SEO and readability plugins
• Wishlists and Bundles
• Subscription and Digital Services
• Referral and Marketing automation plugins.

Costs start from $29 a month (With a 14-day free trial) – Plus 2% +20p for each online sale made

For a store that’s just starting this is a very quick and cheap way to get going. It’s important to remember that whatever platform you choose to operate your website from – All payment providers charge for their services on top of whatever the cost to build and host your website may be.

The negatives of Shopify are of course that it doesn’t have the same level of customizability or possible features as other platforms like WordPress or the more bespoke site space. Should you choose not to use Shopifys built-in payment provider and want to use another then you’ll end up paying another 2% on top of the listed features. The costs as well build up, Shopifys main package at $80 a month means that in just a few years you’ll have potentially paid as much as you would for someone to build you a shop on another platform (which you would get to own).

WordPress WooCommerce

WooCommerce is in itself a plugin for WordPress which adds products, categories, customers, shipping, discount and many other basic (and advanced) features. Given that WordPress powers a majority of CMS powered websites on the internet then you know you’re in the hands of a fairly advanced platform that offers a lot of customizability or at least one that’s certainly under a lot of pressure to ‘keep up’ with the competition. woocommerce itself has some very healthy stats supporting its popularity and figures.

Unlike Shopify, WordPress and WooCommerce the software is free to use without any sort of fee (Although some of the plugins you can get for it do come with their own licencing agreements) but you need to find your own website hosting service, on top of which you’re likely to have to pay for additional technical support to help you should you need it. While there are now many hosts (Such as 34sp.com, wpengine.com, siteground.com, bluehost.com) and providers that specialise in WordPress and Woocommerce hosting you will likely be very hands-on in installing, updating plugins. Altering the theme and generally customising your shop to meet your needs – This isn’t because it’s complicated to use but because compared to the other solutions available (like Shopify) it simply offers more options and more support.

WooCommerce can be more difficult to initially setup compared to dedicated solutions like Shopify, Etsy or Ebay stores, but left in a fairly vanilla state for your everyday product sales it’s still fairly easy to set up and there are plenty of guides around to help you get started.

There are quite literally, tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of plugins/themes for WordPress and WooCommerce as well as a thriving developer community who can bend the platform to their will and meet your needs.

Some of the most popular plugins are;

• OptinMonster –  A Powerful conversion optimization tool designed to help improve your shop and convert more customers
• MonsterInsights – A WooComerce Google Analytics Plugin to help you see best-performing products, page and other stats as provided by Analytics.
• ConstantContact – A Marketing Plugin allowing you to send automated emails to your customers and signups.
• Advanced Coupons – Create some fairly fun and advanced Discount codes and loyalty offers for your customers
• WholeSale Suite – Looking to create a wholesale store to sell directly to other businesses, Wholesale suite allows you to streamline your site for different pricing plans, and bulk orders.
• Livechat – Providing you with a portal to live chat with your potential customers and existing customers.
• WooCommerce Multilingual – If you’re setting up in the UK then English is going to be your go-to but remember that your goods could easily sell on a European or international level – Multilingual adds the ability to Woo for different translated languages depending on where your visitor is from.
• Giftcards – As your store gets more popular and especially if you sell ‘kits’. popular items like makeup, crafts or collectables that you start to get requests for Giftcards so the buyer can pass on alone a present without buying the wrong thing.

There are plenty of great themes as well such as Avada which comes with many built-in starting templates all of which are very different.

Costs for hosting can start from around £10 per month, It’s possible to both cheaper and far more expensive but remembers you get what you pay for.  Premium Plugins and themes as well often come with an upfront price and you should expect to pay around $60 for a theme (such as Avada) and anywhere up to $100 for some of the more premium featured plugins (Most of which come with a free ‘lite’ version). Most hosts include SSLs and Domains as part of hosting agreements but these too could cost you at around £10 per year for a .co.uk while you should be able to get an SSL for free under the LetsEncrypt program if your provider supports it.

The negatives for WordPress and Woo are of course it’s technical overhead compared to the likes of Shopify but with that overhead comes to power and there are hundreds of agencies around the UK that specialise in WordPress and Woo that will be able to help and guide your shop as it grows.

Historically WordPress had a bad reputation around its security, with it being the most popular CMS (content management system) site platform there’s no surprise that it came under attack from malicious sources – More so as not every WordPress and WooCommerce installation is up-to-date or has an owner who practises good security (such as complex passwords). WordPress and Woo are incredibly strong and secure platforms but they’re only as strong as the person who maintains it so make sure that you keep it up to date and be wary of any third-party code or services you join with.

So What’s the best for you?

Both Shopify and WooCommerce power a huge number of shops and businesses many of which sell millions of pounds worth of products every year (with just as many customers). Your first store needs to be something that you feel comfortable with and isn’t going to give you immediate confusion and remorse.

If you’re unsure about how to get started then send our team a message. We will be more than happy to talk through these options as well as many others (Such as Etsy Stores, Ebay Stores, Magento Stores or even if bespoke builds) are best for you and how to get started.