WooCommerce vs Magento are both very successful platforms, especially in recent years. This is because they are platforms constantly focused on the development of their products so that they can be more and more usable for their customers.
That is why it is very difficult to choose between these two CMSs. Each has its strengths and disadvantages.
In this article, therefore, I will try to give you all the information that may be useful for you to understand which platform between the two is more suitable for you and your online business.
We already talked about a few articles ago, what Magento is, how to optimize it and much more. But let’s do a little review of this platform, so multifaceted.
Magento has steadily gained a high reputation so far. It was born on August 31, 2007, and has released multiple versions and product updates over the years. According to BuiltWith, 750,161 websites are Magento customers; 186,720 live websites using Magento; and 563,441 sites that have historically used Magento.
Built to develop an effective business, Magento comes with a wide range of strengths. These include ready-to-use features, customization capabilities, and seamless third-party integrations.
We also talked in previous Woocommerce articles, about how much e-commerce costs with this platform and much more that you can find in our blog.
WooCommerce is a powerful plugin built into WordPress, an open-source software system for creating beautiful websites and blogs. Launched in 2011, WooCommerce has made continuous progress. Currently, WooCommerce hosts over 4.7 million websites around the world.
Concerning websites that use e-commerce solutions, WooCommerce represents the highest share of distribution with 26% while Magento is in third place with 8%. Generally speaking, these two platforms are among the most popular websites.
Although Magento and WooCommerce both aim to provide a dynamic business environment, there are significant differences between them. With either CMS, you can connect to thousands of potential customers in major global markets like Amazon, eBay or Etsy. The process of managing all data can be well managed on a single dashboard. Why not give it a try?
But let’s see in detail the comparison between WooCommerce and Magento.
When it comes to website performance, loading time and availability are of great importance as they are factors that can make your online business successful or not. The slow loading times and the “impossible to reach” status will surely give an unpleasant experience. Unfortunately, it takes very little for a customer to decide to leave your site. This is why it becomes essential to have a site that responds well to user indications.
The higher the loading speed, the more likely customers are to leave your website and move on to other competitors. Therefore, it will significantly reduce the average page time of your website and negatively impact your website’s SEO ranking.
Although WooCommerce also possesses quite high availability like Magento, its response time is slow. The average page load time of all sites is 776 milliseconds, specifically the shopping cart page which takes 1.32 seconds to reach.
WooCommerce and Magento both may have some loading time issues. According to an analysis of the performance of the e-commerce website, the loading speed of these two platforms does not live up to expectations and this is due to the multiple features and customizations they can have.
The backend, or the time it takes the CMS to generate the HTML code and send it back to the browser, is where speed and availability are measured. This work is applied to every page of every website, from the home page to the shopping cart.
Magento was found to be quite stable with an average availability rate of up to 99.71% despite the high traffic (3000 visitors per day). However, the speed is not that high.
The graph shows that the average page load time is 665 milliseconds with high availability. Loading the online shopping cart takes a reasonable amount of time with 568 milliseconds. In correlation with its complex machine, this is understandable. This isn’t fast-paced but it doesn’t discourage users either.
Magento developers always expect to improve Magento performance and make extensive use of caching of page content and static resources on the server to speed up response times in Magento 2.0 and above. Therefore, the page loading speed is further improved.
Magento has a better loading speed than WooCommerce. As a result, users will find it more enjoyable while browsing Magento stores.
Extensions are features built into stores to improve and extend the functioning of websites. WooCommerce and Magento are both known to have a large number of add-ons that improve the functionality and appearance of the website.
WooCommerce gives you access to over 55,000 free WordPress plugins and themes. You can customize your E-Commerce store in terms of product type, store management, marketing, payments, shipping, enhancement and subscription. Plus, it’s easy to integrate them into WooCommerce stores.
Likewise, Magento boasts a huge range of free and non-free third-party extensions and this is thanks to Magento’s fabulous community of developers, agencies and freelancers.
At present, the Magento marketplace has nearly 6,000 extensions for various factors such as accounting and finance, marketing, sales, payment and security, content and personalization, site optimization, reporting and analytics, and customer support.
This platform is aimed at beginners and users who are inexperienced with E-Commerce, so WooCommerce developers always try to make it as beginner-friendly as possible for their users. Almost all WooCommerce users have stated that this website is pretty easy to use, especially when interacting with the WooCommerce interface.
The platform is highly customizable with the WP-Admin dashboard. You can easily customize your website with theme options that allow you to change the colour of your design, add different features to your store, and insert images or videos.
WooCommerce also allows you to add an unlimited number of products and customers to the store. To make it easier for users, WooCommerce comes with a setup wizard that will guide you through the initial setup such as creating pages, setting up payments, choosing currency, and setting shipping options and taxes. This platform offers a lot of help for almost everything.
Setting up and managing a new store from scratch without having any experience in eCommerce stores will become a lot easier with this WooCommerce development service.
On the contrary, Magento is tailor-made for web development professionals and medium and large-scale online stores. It requires that users have at least basic technical knowledge to use. Therefore, amateur users may find it difficult. When we need some Magento tweaks, experienced developers are usually involved.
The Magento store setup process can be tricky for new users even though multiple setup guidelines and tutorials are provided (most are written for developers and not DIY users). After installation, you still have to spend some time finding ways to set up extensions and customize themes as it’s not that simple.
Many online guides can give you support and this is because as I told you the community is very active. Among these, you will also find Magentiamo, a portal entirely dedicated to Magento, where you can find lots of information and tutorials for working with this CMS.
When it comes to website security, we have to be very careful. On websites especially e-commerce ones, there is a lot of sensitive data to protect. This precious data must therefore be protected in every way. Otherwise, you can ruin your website’s reputation and discourage visitors from returning. On the other hand, if your website is highly secured, you’ll keep your long-standing reputation and your customers as well.
WooCommerce remains fairly secure and there are no marked security issues in WordPress. The core of this system has come a long way in development, so it’s pretty safe. Problems can only occur when third parties are involved in creating extensions.
Magento prioritizes the security of your online store. It offers a comprehensive set of features and frequently releases dedicated security patches to address vulnerabilities.
Furthermore, many built-in security measures are accessible, to protect Magento installations and management. In particular, these measures could improve password management, improve the prevention of cross-site scripting attacks and clickjacking exploits, and adopt more flexible file system ownership and permissions.
To sum up, Magento and WooCommerce meet security standards. However, both could be vulnerable externally as well. In this case, Magento appears to be safer with its qualified security extensions.
WooCommerce and Magento are both really good E-commerce solutions.
Choosing the ultimate solution for your future online store will never be easy, as no single platform fits every user’s needs perfectly. However, you may find the one that works best by choosing the one that has the functionality you need for your store.
While WooCommerce is intuitive and quite low-cost, Magento has a higher cost but offers users high security and high performance. While WooCommerce is more efficient for small-scale stores, Magento works best with large companies.
WooCommerce is a great option for starting an online store, Magento offers a more robust platform for businesses with long-term growth plans. Magento’s comprehensive features and scalability empower you to build a successful online store that can adapt to your needs.
That’s it, folks! Check out our blog for more information.
Integrating WooCommerce into Facebook Shop is a great way to increase your sales. In fact, especially with the pandemic, the E-Commerce world has had an incredible surge and many companies have decided to also exploit electronic commerce.
So all those who have decided to open an E-Commerce often also link to social platforms, such as Facebook. With this tool, you can facilitate the purchase process by improving the user experience. Not to mention that this also generates more engagement, which helps you turn that buyer into a loyal customer. But that is not all.
Woocommerce as you know is a free plugin, with which you can transform your WordPress into an E-Commerce. In addition to creating an online store, however, as I told you, you can connect Facebook and exploit its potential to increase your sales.
In fact, many people spend their spare time on social networks and Facebook in particular collects a specific circle of potentially buyers. So let’s see we can integrate Facebook and Woocommerce quickly and easily.
The integration process makes use of 5 fundamental steps. Let’s see them in detail.
First you will need to have your site in Worpress and then you will need to install and activate the plugin in Woocommerce.
To do this you simply have to go to:
For more info, you can read our guide ” How to install and uninstall Woocommerce ”
After installing the plugin in Woocommerce and above all setting up your E-Commerce, having structured the catalog and the showcase of your stores, you can exploit the potential of Facebook to increase sales.
In fact, you can take advantage of your Facebook page not only to make your products known to the whole public, but you will give the opportunity to buy the products in your store window.
To do this you will need to:
After that you will have a new menu item called “Marketing” in your WordPress admin panel. Go to Marketing – »Facebook and then click on the“ Get Started ”button.
This will take you to a screen where you can link your Facebook page and WooCommerce store.
At this point you can create your product sheets in the Shop section of Facebook and thus take advantage of the great opportunities that this platform can give you. In fact, by taking advantage of the visibility of facebook, you can greatly increase your sales. You will be able to present your products, tag cards etc.
Then consider that this plugin also allows you to automatically load the product sheets that are on your site and put them directly in the Facebook Shop section. To do this you must:
And that’s it!
When it comes to E-Commerce platforms, WooCommerce is preferred for good reason – it’s easy enough to set up a WooCommerce store. Just buy a domain and add the WooCommerce plugin to your WordPress website.
Tools like personalization, real-time inventory, live chat go a long way in giving users what they want and keep them coming back. However, there is no feature or tool that can make up for one basic flaw: a slow website.
Here’s a scary statistic: 40% of shoppers won’t wait more than 3 seconds for a retail site to load. Thankfully, there are a few things WooCommerce developers, QAs, and merchants can do to take their website from slow to fast. In this article we will look at some of these steps.
By default, the WordPress memory is set to 32MB. At some point, this limit will be exceeded and the user will get an error message notifying him. Now, there are two ways to solve this problem: the user does it himself or contact the hosting company.
To configure WordPress memory themselves, users can use the following steps:
If the user does not have access to PHP.ini they can try adding the following line to an .htaccess file: php_value memory_limit 256M
Being visual creatures, people are drawn to visually appealing websites. Pictures are an important part of this look. However, using non-optimized images can adversely affect website performance by slowing it down. Image optimization is a simple and effective way to speed up WooCommerce sites.
Large image files create loading delays on the website UX. Slow WooCommerce sites can lead to website downranking in search engines in SERPs.
You can avoid this situation by using image compression plugins like WP-Smush.it, EWWW Image Optimizer or Hammy. These in fact reduce the size of the images and optimize them in WordPress, without negatively affecting the image quality.
A hosting service allows website owners to use a host server to store website content – media files and other relevant files. The hosting service is the foundation of the website as it handles all traffic and data. Therefore, a low-quality hosting service will hurt the performance of the WooCommerce website, especially the traffic, products or offers, as the number of web pages increases. Always choose a fast and robust hosting service with the following qualities:
AJAX Cart Fragments is a WooCommerce feature. It is a script that uses Admin-Ajax to automatically update the customer’s cart total without having to refresh the page. This is especially effective when it comes to generating instant feedback for shoppers so they know the right items have been added to their carts.
Despite its effectiveness, this feature can slow down the speed of the site. It might even stop caching on pages that don’t actually need cart details. If you are experiencing a large number of AJAX requests on a WooCommerce site, disabling AJAX Cart Fragments will help increase the speed and stability of the website.
Solve this problem with the following: wc-ajax = get_refreshed_fragments. You can also use the Disable Cart Fragments plugin which automatically disables the AJAX Cart Fragments feature in WooCommerce. However, as you do this, remember to redirect customers to the shopping cart page when they need to verify the information. Otherwise, deactivation will interrupt the user experience.
With caching, a version of the WooCommerce store asset is stored on the visitor’s device, thus allowing the site to load faster. This occurs because caching reduces the amount of data sent between the visitor’s browsers, the site database, and the server.
Pay attention to the following:
Keeping a site updated, especially Woocommerce, which is linked to an E-Commerce platform, becomes a fundamental step to keep it safe. However, when there are updates, site owners don’t have a uniform behavior.
In fact, there are those who do it seriously and those who take it a little lightly. However, the update is something very complex, which requires a series of procedures to be applied, in order to live it serenely. So let’s see how to carry out a Woocommerce update in a simple way.
The first thing to do when you decide to do an update is definitely to make a backup. This is because we don’t know how our site might respond to newly installed updates. So in order not to know how to read or write, it is good to make a backup.
It would also be advisable to test the new releases.
In this way we avoid having bad surprises!
Basically, you need to take some time, before clicking on “update”, to understand what kind of update you are talking about and what changes will be implemented. But above all, what impact will they have? To answer these questions, just see the description that explains which features will be applied.
To overcome this problem, you can also consult some Woocommerce support forums, because if there is a problem related to an update, surely it emerges from the forum.
Any WordPress and WooCommerce based store has two places where data and content are stored. One is your wp-content folder , where your themes, plugins and uploaded content are located. Another is the database that organizes and stores your product, order, post, page, etc…. data.
With this precious data and content stored in a few different places, how can you safeguard them all and keep them backed up?
You can choose between automatic and manual backups
The most efficient and reliable approach is to use an automated site backup service. In addition to not having to do anything manually, you can have:
To perform a manual backup, there are two parts to backing up your store:
Back up your database! There are several ways to do this, see the WordPress Codex for your options for backing up your content. There are both manual and plug-in options.
Using SFTP go to your wp-content folder to backup your theme and plugin files. We highly recommend that you make a backup of your theme files if you have made any customizations.
First, let’s look at some terms we’ll be using. Some may use other terms such as development environment, test environment, and live environments, but we’ll stick to the three fundamentals:
Keep in mind that this is a simplistic overview and there are many tools and ways to do it. There are no absolutes in how you test for updates, as long as you don’t generally check them out on a live site. If you have a developer working on your site, ask them about the steps for testing updates.
Most developers will start with a local installation. But what exactly does that mean?
It means WordPress is set up on their computer and acting as a server. Using a favorite code editor, you can then create, update and test updates on your computer. While working on a local installation, we highly recommend that you start using version control if you are not. Whether it’s Git, SVN, or something else, it’s useful in case you need to get something back up and running and can even make it easier for you to deploy a site for staging and production.
To test an update beyond a local site, it’s best to create a second WordPress installation with your host and restore a backup of your live site to this. It is therefore a replica of your production site and a safe place to test for updates. A staging site can also be shared with others for their help test. Make sure to test on different devices, loading time and so on.
If all goes well during the staging tests, then you can proceed with updating the site in live (production).
I recommend, when doing this type of operation, you put your site in maintenance mode to prevent people from checking out or making payments. If a transaction occurs during the upgrade, orders may be lost.
Of course, your backups are on standby to be restored in an instant if something unexpected happens. This way there is no downtime or lost revenue.
To receive updates on anything purchased from WooCommerce.com, go to WooCommerce> Extensions> WooCommerce.com Subscriptions and make sure your store is connected to your WooCommerce.com account.
By connecting your WooCommerce.com account to your WooCommerce site / store you can:
Plugins, extensions, payment gateways and themes not developed and maintained by the internal WooCommerce team come from third party developers. Third party developers who want to add version control to their product can see: Adding version control support to the plug-in . Store / site owners should contact the third party developer directly for support on updates and compatibility.
Update the WooCommerce database, initiate the database update process to match the version of the plugin you have installed or updated. The database organizes, contains and stores your products, orders, posts and pages.
A WooCommerce database update warning will appear when you have upgraded to a new version of WooCommerce and a database update is required:
Make sure you have a backup in place and click the ” Update WooCommerce Database ” button. The update process will start: selecting View progress will take you to the Scheduled Actions section and the actions pending for the update will be displayed.
Once completed, the next time you view an administration page you will see the banner that says the update is complete.
Why is WooCommerce for e-commerce a good option? As you surely know, the e-commerce world is growing increasingly, especially recently due to the pandemic crisis.
As a result, there are thousands of new e-commerce companies established annually, and new online retailers have access to numerous online marketplaces.
These include Shopware, PrestaShop, Magento and even Woocommerce.
Which platform, though, is the best option? That depends, on the response.
It depends on what your needs are and the capital to invest. With our guides, we will try to inform you as best as possible about the characteristics of each platform so that you can make an informed choice.
In today’s guide, we are talking about Woocommerce, a WordPress module for doing e-commerce.
Used in approximately 2.3 million e-commerce stores around the world, WooCommerce is particularly suited for new e-commerce merchants because it combines ease of use with incredible power, flexibility and functionality.
In 2011, two developers, Mike Jolley and James Koster, released WooCommerce, a replica of the e-commerce plugin JigoShop.
In 2015, Automattic, the parent company of WordPress, acquired both WooCommerce and its sister plugin, WooThemes.
When WordPress and WooCommerce became integral to each other, they made e-commerce grow more and more with these two tools. Woocommerce has thus become one of the most used tools for online sales.
WooCommerce is nothing more than a plugin for doing E-commerce with WordPress. In fact, with this extension, you can easily create and manage an online store.
You will have several key features available, such as inventory and tax management, secure payments, and shipping integration.
As mentioned before, you can manage your E-Commerce in a very simple way, through Woocommerce.
This module offers many useful features, such as order tracking, customer engagement, delivery status updates, inventory management and more.
WooCommerce is easy to use and very convenient. You can also include both great SEO value and e-commerce capabilities.
But let’s see some reasons why you might choose Woommerce as a platform for your online store.
All you need to install WooCommerce is:
Simple, isn’t it?
When considering starting an online sales business and selecting an e-commerce platform, the economic component is critical.
The cost of an e-commerce application ranges from zero to many thousands of dollars per year, but this price difference is not necessarily related to the capacity of the application.
Woocommerce is free and this is certainly one of the reasons for choosing it.
Not to mention that WooCommerce is competitive with the main E-Commerce applications. And since it is free, any company or entrepreneur can leverage its capabilities without having to commit to expensive support contracts or proprietary software licenses. This is an important element, especially for those who are at the beginning of the business, where the costs to be faced to have a successful business are many.
Even with this extension, there may be paid elements perhaps related to payments or other.
With the help of plugins, WooCommerce’s extensive feature set can be increased. Users of WooCommerce can thus take advantage of hundreds of e-commerce extensions created especially for WooCommerce, as well as thousands of WordPress plugins and themes.
With the right plugins, you can create a perfect WooCommerce store for your every need, just like WordPress did.
Plug-ins can expand the functionality of the e-commerce site, regarding shipping, payments, product management and more.
“But isn’t WooCommerce just WordPress?”
Many people believe that because WooCommerce is linked to WordPress, it may have limitations and is therefore not the best option for e-commerce.
This guideline linking WordPress and the WooCommerce plugin is a plus. Compatibility between existing WordPress themes and WooCommerce themes will allow for easy and smooth integration.
WooCommerce inherits all the strength and reliability of WordPress and uses it to make its E-Commerce safe and efficient.
WooCommerce as you have seen is very flexible and therefore can be adapted to the sale of any type of product.
You will be able to sell:
So why not choose this multifaceted platform?
Both WooCommerce and WordPress are open source, which means that the platforms can be modified and improved with new features. Many developers can work with WooCommerce, which may not be the case for other platforms. Having a good number of developers who can implement the functionality of the platform is a great thing. Not to mention that developers working with other platforms can often be very expensive.
If you need to make changes to your WooCommerce store, then it won’t be difficult for you to find someone who can help you with this. Furthermore, due to its widespread use and developer network, achieving optimal WooCommerce security is much easier.
Another advantage of WooCommerce is integrated analytics, which provides you with important data about your customers’ behaviour. This way, you can learn about their habits and how they interact with your store, allowing you to develop a targeted strategy.
WooCommerce offers a comprehensive suite of analytics presented in an easy-to-use interface. Plus, it’s easy to integrate WooCommerce with external analytics services like Google Analytics with extensions.
The choice of platform must be targeted. You need to choose a system that can be scalable and grow hand in hand with your business.
One of the benefits of WooCommerce is that it’s great for both small and large stores. It can scale from a few products to many thousands and from a handful of buyers per day to hundreds of buyers per second.
As your WooCommerce website grows, you can increase the functionality of your online store as well.
Content is an important component of e-commerce marketing; it helps to optimize sales and search engines.
WordPress and WooCommerce offer a wide variety of content management options, including blogging, landing pages, email marketing, and product descriptions.
WooCommerce-compatible SEO plugins like Yoast WooCommerce SEO allow retailers to easily optimize their content for search.
WordPress and WooCommerce can provide a fast and responsive e-commerce experience for online stores of all sizes.
You can also speed up your WooCommerce store by using performance-optimized hosting.
Another benefit of WooCommerce is that it is designed for sale. Inside, you will find everything you need to be operational.
In particular:
WooCommerce provides a complete and easy-to-use e-commerce solution, even for beginners. Solution that can adapt perfectly to the needs of your business.
Not to mention that it can be a great option for people running small to medium-sized businesses because it is free and has many free modules.
That’s it, folks! Check out our blog for more information.