Woo Commerce website advice/audit

[kevin.doran]

The wife's site has been going just over 4 years now.

She went with Woo at the outset based on cost and how relatively easy it was to run with. It's 99% DIY with a tiny bit of input from a friend occasionally if anything tricky crops up.

However, as the business has grown, we now wonder whether Woo's right for her anymore. Cost wise it's still great of course but we have constant niggles and don't feel like we're getting the best out of it.

A switch to Shopify could be on the cards, it seems a bit more robust, but it'd be great to seek a bit of professional advice first before taking such drastic measures.

Any recommendations out there?

 

[nish]

I have seen many successful high traffic sites working smoothly with WooCommerce. Not sure what exactly are the issues you are having. May be worth investigating them first and fix it permanently. If you can describe some of the problems you are having may be useful ?

 

[kevin.doran]

Completely agree hence why we'd like to engage somebody to look at it all properly.

 

[nish]

Happy to have a look and advise, I got good expereince with WooCommerce and built many successful shops over the last 16 years

 

[WebshopMechanic]

Hi Kevin,

I work with many e-commerce businesses and I've never had any complaints about Shopify. From my experience, sites on the platform convert better than most other platforms, partly because it's mobile-friendly (not just responsive) and the checkout seamlessly integrates with mobile-focused payment methods.

Shopify is certainly a great option, mainly because;

• The speed is lightning quick
• It's been built with a mobile-first approach (this is hugely important)
• It integrates with many leading systems fairly easily
• The interface is also very simple and intuitive
• The platform runs many global businesses so it's proven to work

A negative of Shopify is that you lose some control if you are looking to integrate uncommon systems or create custom functionality, but there are usually ways around that. It really depends on what you want the system to do.

Cost is also another thing you need to think about. If your store is growing at a rapid pace and you just want to focus on the marketing side then investing in a platform like Shopify is worthwhile. Yes, the monthly app subscriptions can be a little pricey but that also means you can be ruthless with the ones you go with (i.e you only run with apps you truly need, not the 70+ plugins I see on most Woocommerce stores).

From an SEO perspective, Shopify also works great. You obviously need to know what you're doing on the SEO front to gain the best out of it but the platform is capable of achieving awesome results.

I guess the only major downside with Shopify is that you are somewhat beholden to them because it runs on a software-as-a-service model. If you move to Shopify Plus then you are looking at £2k a month. But, I don't see this as an issue if you are doing the numbers to justify it. Like I said, I've not heard many complaints.

There are many platforms out there which are much cheaper and provide far more control but Shopify just works. You can add the majority of the functionality you need.

Happy to have a chat if that would help.

Best regards

Matt

 

[Paul Carmen]

@kevin.doran the devil is in the detail with all online and ecommerce solutions. Essentially, unless we know what the site needs to do and what the problems are, its hard to say what is the best solution for you.

There is no reason why a WooCommerce site cant be scaled and also very quick for customers, plus its great for SEO. Having said that, many people struggle with this as they have a site built and then are left to get on with it by the developers or hosting company.

In reality, if you pick the right theme, design the site for a mobile first journey, setup the hosting properly, optimise the site for speed and stock management, then WooCommerce is good even for large scale sites. It's also easy to add custom functionality and development, as there are so many plugins and people working on it.

We work on several WordPress/WooCommerce sites for a number of clients and what it does need is a little TLC and maintenance, plus updates to WordPress/WooCommerce and any plugins as required. This is usually the key to keeping the site running well and avoiding problems.

From your latest post it sounds like you need some help with evaluating the setup and options, this sound like a whole new post, or potentially even a request for Tender to follow the UKBF rules...

 

[Alan]

but it'd be great to seek a bit of professional advice first

Paid for? -> https://www.ukbusinessforums.co.uk/forums/tenders.88/

Free professional advice? You get what you pay for ( which would probably be a sales pitch )

 

[Simon-TP]

If you are considering a move to Shopify just bear in mind that if you don't use Shopify payments (i.e. you want to continue using your existing payment provider) Shopify will charge you additional % fees on top even though they aren't doing the processing.

 

[fainagarcia]

Hi Kevin,

From my experience, sites on the platform convert better than most other platforms, partly because it's mobile-friendly (not just responsive) and the checkout seamlessly integrates with mobile-focused payment methods.

Here I am listing some of the unique features of Shopify which makes it different from other E-commerce platform:

-Shopify offers beautiful themes that are easily customizable and responsive.
-Shopify offers low pricing. You can start your business at just $29 per month.
-Shopify E-commerce platform is trusted by over 1,000,000 Business.
-Shopify offers a variety of sales channels like online store, Facebook shop and Pinterest to sell products.
-In Shopify, you will get a built-in fraud analysis feature.
-Using Shopify, you can manually create your orders by adding the new orders and payment details.
-Shopify also supports the discount code features.
-Shopify supports Abandoned cart recovery features. It sends automatic emails to customers who are leaving your store without completing the checkout process.

Also, WooCommerce is good even for large scale sites. It's also easy to add custom functionality and development, as there are so many plugins and people working on it.

I hope this answer will helpful for you!!

Thanks

Faina Garcia

 

[makeusvisible]

I'm coming at this from an agency perspective, and we specialise in Woo/Wordpress, although for larger builds also us Magento.

I suppose the aspect I picked from your post was "we have constant niggles ".

As your wife's site is self-built it is highly likely you are running an off-the-shelf template website. As with any platform, the site is only as good as the content, and standard of code. So my first piece of advice would be to consider if these are fundamental problems with WooCommerce, or specific to your site/configuration.

WooCommerce is hugely flexible, and if developed properly is well capable of handling 100k SKUs plus, and can be developed to achieve pretty much any front end functionality you need to achieve.

There are many many articles out there which compare Shopify to WooCommerce, and it's fairly simple to quickly identify what the pros and cons are.

But to underline the above, I would look at comparing a properly developed Shopify store, to a properly developed Woo store. I'd also think about hosting, as this is becoming more and more important in a slick user experience. Put your website on a stack-em-high sell-em-cheap hosting package with the likes of SiteGround, and you're probably going to hinder speed, and not going to gain great levels of user retention, conversions, or possibly rank.

Hope that helps.

 

[mit74]

I moved from woo after investing hundreds because it's terrible quite frankly. I've put all sites on CS Cart now and it's without question the best ecommerce solution out there for small businesses in my opinion. I've tried them all (except shopify) and developed plugins on all of them.

I have heard though they've put the prices up considerably recently so may not be the bargain it used to be but you do get more or less everything out the box. Woo takes about 20 plugins on annual subscriptions for that.

 

[sarahosmond066]

all the guys above have shared their best experiences and advice. One more thing that I wanted to add is, no doubt a Woo-commerce is a perfect plugin for an online store, One can easily manage a heavy traffic volume, and it is super easy to manage and track the stats. But,
I have experienced some issues when my business is developed the first thing is the hidden add-on which I felt to buy later like Woo-Commerce is not truly providing a tracking facility.
Many of our customers were complaining that "where their ordered product has arrived", and some were asking "on what step our product is currently lying" and so on.
So to resolve my concern I bought a paid plugin that could track my order. similarly, @kevin.doran you could face hidden charges for ad-on services.
While on the other hand, Shopify is my better choice as compared to Woo Commerce.

 

[NEF]

all the guys above have shared their best experiences and advice. One more thing that I wanted to add is, no doubt a Woo-commerce is a perfect plugin for an online store, One can easily manage a heavy traffic volume, and it is super easy to manage and track the stats. But,
I have experienced some issues when my business is developed the first thing is the hidden add-on which I felt to buy later like Woo-Commerce is not truly providing a tracking facility.
Many of our customers were complaining that "where their ordered product has arrived", and some were asking "on what step our product is currently lying" and so on.
So to resolve my concern I bought a paid plugin that could track my order. similarly, @kevin.doran you could face hidden charges for ad-on services.
While on the other hand, Shopify is my better choice as compared to Woo Commerce.

Advanced Shipment Tracking for WooCommerce

FREE works great

 

[Roman Tonkyi]

I would recommend considering OpenCart. This is a free and universal solution for an online store, it is very easy to manage, but at the same time very flexible and easily expandable.
Of course, Shopify is one of the popular CMS that has proven itself well, but there are some points to consider:
1. Unlike Opencart
- Shopify Paid CMS, development under CMS Shopify is more expensive.

2. Everything works there exclusively through the API and you need to separately use any new functionality or select modules

3. The front end on Shopify is built more complicated (Next.js, Gatsby JS, etc.) - it follows that the development and maintenance of such a project becomes somewhat more expensive. (Same as on Magento for example).

 

[UKOnlineServices]

Having worked with customers running theirs stores on Shopify or 5 years, I hear these three complaints most often:

1. The checkout can't be customised (which might become a hidden advantage, as customers might potentially start recognising the distinct Shopify checkout and gain trust)

2. Shopify doesn't give you any freedom regarding url structure - there is a stiff structure to which you are forced to adhere. You can't have a product category page with such url: shop.co.uk/cotton-shirts,
it will be forced to: shop.co.uk/collections/cotton-shirts

3. Product filtering is poor (applies to shops with 50+ products)

As for people arguing in this thread about shopify being fast and mobile friendly - it all boils down to the theme you use.
As a specialist in Shopify stores performance optimisation I can say most "out of the box" themes have poor performance.