Can WordPress Make Other E-commerce Platforms Obsolete?
WordPress may be new to the eCommerce arena, but quite an archaic platform known on the web for allowing beginners to set up a simple blog or website. WordPress was quite famous among bloggers and small to medium size business owners.
The eCommerce market was mainly ruled by Magento, BigCommerce, PrestaShop, and others that pioneered the technology of setting up online stores. WordPress, being limited to a CMS (Content Management System), took a swift turn when a small plugin did the wonder of transforming a simple website into a fully functional online store.
It was the moment that WordPress started capturing the major market share and still doing that with its massive collection of themes and plugins, and an extensively helpful community of developers, designers, agencies, and top-notch companies.
The ease of managing a webshop, beautifying product display, improving navigation, and appearing in top search engine results are some of the reasons that are keeping WordPress at the top and proving the rest of the eCommerce obsolete. This post further discusses as to how the platform can further beat its contenders in the coming years.
WordPress is not SaaS
WordPress is a free and open-source CMS platform that makes it one of the toughest contenders in the eCommerce industry. Users can download, install, and set up a complete online store with WordPress free of cost.
On the other hand, the eCommerce cloud platforms like Shopify, Ecwid, Zoey, Wix, or Volusion charges you monthly for setting up and maintaining an online store. Now that is an expensive deal for a newbie or startup to access and add such an operating cost to a business model without actually making a sale.
These platforms provide you with eCommerce software as a service (SaaS), but all it takes you to set up a store on WordPress is WooCommerce, which is again a free plugin.
It is Easy to Customize
As I already said that WordPress is an open source platform, what does that mean? It means that you have the code to edit, add, remove, modify, and personalize the whole website. Being a WordPress user, a massive community of developers, designs, and professional eCommerce web development companies surrounds you. Hire any one of them if you get stuck in technical documentation or advanced modifications, else answer to most of the basic issues are made available by the community members free of cost.
It has a Massive Collection of Plug-ins
WordPress started founded in 2003, which means many developers and companies are busy making websites, themes, and plug-ins in WordPress. As a result, you can have a variety to select from.
For example, you aim to set up an online handmade jewelry store and you are worried about the layout and appearance. You can search for ‘jewelry WooCommerce themes’ on the search engine you prefer or a marketplace such as CodeCanyon, and you will be surprised with the variety available within your micro-business niche.
In the same manner, if you need to extend the functionality of your WooCommerce store, you can simply install a plugin and have the additional features or options.
For example, you aim to sell antique products that worth to be sold at a higher price than known. You may need to install a plugin and replace the ‘Add to Cart’ button with ‘Bid’ button. The users will start bidding with a higher price to get the product, and you get the true value it deserves. You can find a quick to install a plugin for any functionality you want on your WordPress eCommerce website.
WordPress is Well Updated and Maintained
Automattic, the company that founded and made WordPress a success, continuously update the platform to deter the latest security threats. Any online store configured for this application shall update as soon as the company releases a new security patch or functionality change.
Hackers and the massive community of spammers innovate different ways of breaking into your eCommerce website. Installing WordPress is like shielding your business data, whereas you can improve the security further with SSL certificates, additional plug-ins, and modifying login URLs and credentials.
WordPress has a built-in Blog
Without search engine optimization, one cannot imagine getting noticed on the web. And, the content is considered the king of SEO that has to be published frequently on your blog. While doing an online business, you can never ignore the magnitude of a blog and SEO, which is often absent in most of the eCommerce platforms.
Contrary to those dedicated eCommerce software, WordPress comes with a feature-rich blog that allows you to start publishing valuable content on your webshop from day 1 for attracting the users. In fact, WordPress was developed for setting up a blog or simple website for small to medium size enterprises.
Conclusion
WordPress is a CMS platform of its own kind because of its immense flexibility and functionality in setting up websites. It offers you to start as small as a one-page website and extends it to multi-categories or multi-stores eCommerce website. Like, I have seen local ‘key locksmiths’ service providers and giant brands like ‘Ripley’s Believe it or not’ using Word and its eCommerce applications. Therefore, its unending scope and flexibility can eventually make other platforms obsolete.
Author Bio:Mirza Irfan is a Lead Writer at FME Dubai. He has a passion for helping people find innovative solutions in online marketing and has written numerous blogs on science, technology, digital marketing and business strategy.
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