WordPress Webshop – 17 Advantages and Disadvantages.
Update: 19 June 2018
It’s a much-debated topic. Which CMS should you use for a webshop. Some swear by Magento or a simple CMS instead, others think a webshop via WordPress is the best option. After reading this blog you’ll be able to make a good judgement as to whether a WordPress webshop is the best option for you.
It’ll take a while before you’re done reading (2500 words), but then you’ll have seen all the pros and cons of WordPress for a webshop, plus advice on what’s best for you to choose. You’re of course also welcome to skip sections.
What is WordPress?
WordPress is an open source CMS (Content Management System). It was originally developed for blogs but has grown in recent years into a fully-fledged system with many different extension options. Currently around 75 million WordPress websites are online, including a large number of WordPress webshops. Of the million most-visited websites worldwide, roughly half run on WordPress.
When you want to turn a WordPress website into a WordPress webshop, you need an e-commerce plugin. There are many plugins available, but the most widely used is called “WooCommerce” and is from WordPress itself. The basic options are free, and a small amount has to be paid for advanced options.
It seems that those 75 million WordPress users didn’t choose it for nothing. But a webshop is very different from a standard website. Time to look at the pros and cons of a webshop via WordPress.
The advantages of a WordPress Webshop
1. Managing your webshop
Because WordPress was originally a blogging system, creating pages and publishing content is very easy. Once the website is up, you have a great deal of freedom to add pages and keep your website up to date yourself, without technical knowledge. The admin environment is also fairly extensive, so you can do a lot yourself without knowledge of, say, HTML and CSS.
Because of the many options, some users do experience the admin as complex, but after fiddling with it for a while you find out that WordPress is put together reasonably logically, and you’ll be glad you’re not dependent on a programmer when you want changes to the webshop.
2. Themes in abundance
There’s a huge number of themes available for WordPress. However, only a limited number are actually suited to webshops. It’s also possible to have a custom WordPress webshop developed. Many web agencies can do this for you. At Webba, too, we have a lot of experience building WordPress websites.
Below you’ll see a few examples of themes that are free to use for WordPress.
Nowadays there are also more and more themes available where you can determine the entire look and layout yourself. Via page builders and drag ‘n drop options in these themes, you get a long way without needing any knowledge of HTML or CSS yourself. For instance, the theme Flatsome is a popular choice for webshops. There are, however, also a number of downsides to this kind of theme. Among other things, website speed suffers because a lot of unnecessary code gets loaded, and you run the risk of the website quickly becoming a mess because everything can be adjusted. In many cases, working from a fixed design is the best choice.
3. A truckload of plugins
Because WordPress has become such a large platform, countless plugins are available that extend the functions of your webshop and make managing it easier. Installing these plugins is easy, and there are some very useful ones among them. Some plugins are free, and a number of premium plugins are paid. In return, you often get a bit of support from the developer. When installing extra plugins, always research the quality and reviews of the plugins and check whether the plugin is actively maintained.
There’s no standard webshop functionality within WordPress. So you’ll need a plugin for this too. The most popular plugin for this is WooCommerce. This has a good free version, although with a paid version you can use many more handy features.
The most downloaded plugin is Akismet. This plugin makes sure your website isn’t bothered by spammers.
4. Easy connection with well-known tools
A big advantage of WordPress is that you can easily sync online tools such as MailChimp (email marketing platform). All you need to do is install a plugin, and within a few minutes all newsletter subscribers are automatically added to MailChimp’s mailing list.
Because WordPress is such a well-known system, almost all major platforms, such as MailChimp, Mailpoet and, for example, booking system providers, have a WordPress plugin available.
5. Perfect integration with WooCommerce
Because WordPress works perfectly together with the WooCommerce plugin, you can perfectly combine a content-rich website with a WordPress webshop. This way, you can easily add a sales option to an existing website.
6. Cheap
WordPress offers a free package, and many themes and plugins are also free. Only the hosting costs money, but with that you can already get set up from €10 a month.
There are also a number of paid templates available, or you can have a theme developed by a website builder. Even so, you’re still quite cheap off with a WordPress Webshop, because few extensive modules need to be written from scratch. There are, after all, often plugins for that.
7. Perfect for writing blogs and new pages
Do you want a webshop where you’re going to blog and regularly add new pages? Then a WordPress Webshop is perfect for this. You can very easily add new posts and even indicate when you want the posts to be published. This way you can prepare your posts well in advance and activate them at a pre-set time.
You can also easily create an AMP version for these blogs via a plugin. These are pages made specifically extra fast for mobile users and rewarded by Google with high positions.
8. Scoring higher on Google via SEO
With a webshop, you of course want to score well on Google and other search engines. For a WordPress webshop, plugins are available that give tips per page on what you can improve to score higher with your WordPress webshop. One of the most used plugins for this is the Yoast SEO plugin, and it’s a must-have for many website owners who find it important to score well on Google. But there are more plugins with this goal. Sourcewp.com has written a nice article comparing a number of these tools.
Below is an example of Yoast’s analysis. Per page it looks at a number of important SEO factors for a focus keyword.
9. More than just inserting text
What’s super handy with WordPress is that when creating new pages, you can also very easily add images, audio and video files. And if you want to place a YouTube video on your page, you can insert this very easily in WordPress.
10. Constantly under development
WordPress is still very much under development. New plugins and themes are added daily. So with a WordPress webshop, you don’t need to worry about whether you can keep the website up to date. There are plenty of possibilities, and if new developments come along in the website field, they’ll become available for WordPress in no time.
The disadvantages of a WordPress webshop
Sounds promising, doesn’t it? Unfortunately, a WordPress webshop also has a number of downsides. And it’s only fair to name all of these too. But don’t be alarmed, a number of downsides might not apply to you at all.
1. Without technical knowledge, you do need support
There are programs where you can start a webshop without any technical knowledge at all. You then choose a template and simply set up your website and add your products. This isn’t as simple with WordPress. You need to have a hosting package, download the software, purchase a template and then download relevant plugins before you can get started.
If you want to determine the design of the website yourself, in many cases you can’t avoid HTML and CSS. And you’ll need to bring in a developer.
2. All those updates…
It can sometimes drive you mad. WordPress, the template you use and your plugins regularly come out with new versions. There’s nothing for it but to update them again each time. This is often much less the case with other CMSes. If you get notifications about updates, you’d better install them right away. Such an update often comes after a security vulnerability has been found, meaning that if you don’t update, you run the risk of you and/or your customers falling victim to hackers.
With this in mind, you can imagine that there are also plugin and theme builders who are less diligent about keeping an eye on security issues. And that’s really annoying. So in any case, if you take on a WordPress webshop, make sure you check carefully whether the plugins are being properly kept up to date.
If you outsource the development of your WordPress webshop to a web agency, there’s a good chance they offer a maintenance subscription. This means they regularly check for updates and make sure the website theme and plugins always stay up to date.
3. Slower with a large number of products
Speed is an important point for a website. If your website is slow, your visitors become impatient, and Google also penalises you in the results for a slow website. WordPress webshops are generally reasonably fast. However, if you have a very complex webshop with several hundred different products, you’ll see that your webshop quickly becomes slower than, for example, with the CMS Magento.
4. It’s not built for webshops
Whereas other systems (both simple and complex) were specially developed for webshops, WordPress originally started as a blogging platform. In the meantime it has grown into a fully-fledged CMS, but you still need plugins to sell products with your website too. Those plugins often have a lot of options, and while it generally works well to turn WordPress into a webshop, you’ll still notice that the system is primarily geared towards content.
5. No technical support
If you use WordPress, you have (unlike various other systems) no technical support for issues. You might be handy with programming yourself, or know someone who can help you with technical problems, but otherwise it can be a considerable downside that you can’t fall back on anyone if, for example, your webshop suddenly goes down and you don’t know why. It’s therefore advisable to bring in a web agency that can step in in case of complications when you choose a WordPress webshop.
6. Hosting
With a WordPress webshop, you have to arrange the hosting yourself. In principle this isn’t a problem, and you’re often less out of pocket because you’re not obliged to use a particular provider, but you do run the risk that the hosting provider turns out not to be so good after all, making your website unstable and slow. This, however, depends very much on which hosting provider you choose. Usually, with a bit of research, you can find a reliable hosting provider. Bear in mind here that cheap is often expensive in the long run. So don’t go for the absolute cheapest, since these often cut corners on speed and how often backups are made.
7. Somewhat complicated dashboard
In the admin area, the dashboard can look a bit complicated. Because of the large number of features, you might spend quite a while in the first few days searching for certain settings. Experience shows, however, that most people get used to the system fairly quickly and then find their way around it just fine.
Bonus: The three different options for a webshop
It could be that after reading these pros and cons you still don’t know what to choose. So as a bonus I’ll now name the three best options you can choose when you want a webshop, which in my opinion are the most suitable.
- A simple webshop CMS
- A WordPress webshop
- A webshop via Magento
For each option, I’ll describe what it is and when it’s best to go for that option.
1. Simple webshop CMS
Do you have no technical knowledge at all and want a simple webshop with support? Then go for a simple webshop CMS. You choose a template, fill in the website, add your products, and your webshop is ready. If you run into problems, you can always fall back on a support department. Usually you pay a fixed amount per month, and you should budget for a few tens of euros a month. You can easily set up such a website with, for example, Shopify, but we also offer a service for this ourselves. We call that the Webba Basic Shop.
2. WordPress webshop
Do you still want a bit more choice yourself? Then go for a WordPress website with WooCommerce. This way you’re a bit more flexible and can choose from hundreds of templates or a custom-made website. If you also like to blog and have a lot of other content on the website, a WordPress webshop is also a very good choice. Do keep in mind, though, that if you have no technical knowledge at all yourself and also don’t know anyone who can help you with this, it can be difficult to set up the webshop and keep it up to date. If your webshop has very many and complex products, a WordPress webshop is usually not the best option.
3. Magento webshop
Do you want to start a large webshop with a lot of products? Then at the moment you can barely avoid Magento. This CMS is, however, a bit more complex and also pricier than WordPress. You also won’t manage this without technical knowledge or a company that does the development. However, if you have enough budget to bring in a web agency for the development of a Magento webshop, you can be sure you have an excellent system running behind your webshop that’s entirely built for selling products. You will, however, need support after your webshop has gone live. The admin dashboard is also complicated, although it is possible to do quite a lot in your webshop without knowledge of HTML or CSS.
Magento released Magento 2 in November 2017. This seems to be quite an improvement in terms of usability. However, there are still a large number of bugs in this new CMS, meaning you really need a Magento specialist who knows how to resolve all of this in order to set up a good webshop with Magento 2. The expectation is, however, that this CMS will gradually rise in popularity again, since it’s a far-developed open-source CMS purely geared towards webshops.
Need help?
Still not sure, or do you need help realising a webshop via one of the three methods mentioned above? We’re happy to help you further. We can build custom webshops via our own CMS and WordPress. We also provide further support and keep your webshop up to date. Get in touch for more information.
Good luck with your new webshop!