WordPress has a lot of popularity amongst individuals who do have any coding skills but still want a website that looks good & runs properly, its still the first choice for bloggers. There was a time when most of the websites were being built with this CMS platform only, some Corporates still have their websites based on WordPress. WordPress was introduced in the year 2003 since then it has been evolving itself the websites improved in appearance, in terms of functionality also there has been significant improvements, with the advent of E Commerce various Organizations, Start-ups & individuals chose this platform for selling their products online, WOO COMMERCE a plugin in WordPress provided users with all the functionality for uploading the products, displaying the products, managing the products inventory, shipping & delivery.
WordPress users were already facing various issues with websites made with it, security breach was very common in these kind of websites, also the themes used to break sometimes, & some plugins caused functional issues, E Commerce websites were not an exception. Shopify which was introduced in the year 2006 & it gained a lot of momentum amongst the E Commerce users, security wise Shopify was really good & also users had access to only those features they were in need of, the plugins were more stable and it’s website builder provided easy building of websites, Shopify as the very name suggests is basically developed for those users who wanted to set up an Online store without any coding skills.
Most of the E Commerce websites are nowadays being built with Shopify, but what about WordPress ? Has it become unpopular amongst the users belonging to E Commerce segment ?
& finally the million dollar question in 2021 can WordPress websites be still used for E Commerce ?
In short Yes, WordPress can still be used for building E Commerce website provided you keep the following things in mind :-
- WordPress Accelerated Hosting : – WordPress websites are being criticized for being excessively slow and this happens because while choosing the hosting plan mostly people choose any Hosting plan they come across from the Hosting provider, & this should not be the case, WordPress Accelerated Hosting is what you should be choosing to host your WordPress website so that the website loads faster & also gets a better security layer.
- SSL Certificate :- WordPress users have complained about websites getting easily hacked, this mostly happens because of the wrong choice of a Hosting plan & primarily because of the absence of a SSL certificate. SSL certificates prevents your website from being hacked, hence if your Hosting provider does not provide a SSL certificate you need to buy one and set it up for your website.
- Nulled Themes & Plugins : – I have seen people use nulled themes & plugins in WordPress this can not only result in your website getting hacked but also your theme can break from using this kind of nulled resources. Hence always use proper legit plugins and themes.
- Proper Mail Integration :- Without proper mail integration the mails are most likely going to end up in spam, hence use proper mail service providers like mail chimp to communicate with your customers.
Conclusion :-
WordPress websites is a good choice for those who are a little tight on the budget, Shopify is there but you cannot use its resources for free. Additionally Shopify provides a platform for opening an Online store at the moment but with WordPress you can make any website you want but Shopify for E Commerce would be a great choice for those who are not on a tight budget, but if you are someone who want to test out your E Commerce endeavor you can do that with the help of WordPress as its relatively cheaper than Shopify.