Do I choose Magento (2) or WooCommerce for my online store?

Magento and WooCommerce are both open-source packages that help develop an online store. Despite the fact that both platforms allow consumers to order their products online, numerous differences can also be found between the packages. So what is the best choice for your shop?

Webshop features

In a web shop, a distinction can be made between the following (important) features:

Installation and basic functionality

For starters, Magento 2 is really an e-commerce platform, or ecosystem as Magento itself calls it. WooCommerce, on the other hand, is a plugin for
WordPress
, where it hooks into the WordPress structure and adds webshop functionality to it. This creates some limitations, especially for larger Web shops.

Important in installation and basic functionality:

• Free installation of e-commerce software
• The convenience of configuring the software on your own hosting
• Implementation of own preference for customer (group) settings, discounts and products

Difference Magento & WooCommerce:

Both platforms can be easily installed through SQR.NL, with WordPress hosting being important for WooCommerce. For WooCommerce, the installation is slightly less technical, this also applies to the hosting configuration. However, to set your own preferences for settings, discounts and products, Magento offers many more options (by default).

Usability (consumer and administrator)

User-friendliness for the consumer and administrator is important. From the consumer’s point of view, this is what determines whether or not to make a purchase in the online store. For the administrator, it is also decisive whether or not he is motivated to work on the webshop on a daily basis and build it into a success.

Important consumer-friendliness requirements:

• Web shop load time
• Responsive display
• Clear catalog and product page
• Personalization
• Logical check-out

Important user-friendliness requirements for the administrator:

• 
  Loading time webshop
  and management panel
• Clear and responsive interface for management
• Understandable and quick to learn

Difference Magento & WooCommerce:

Basically, the speed (optimization) of WooCommerce is better. WooCommerce is a much lighter package, Magento’s file size is many times larger. However, when a Magento specialist uses his expertise to optimize the webshop, both platforms have enough options to run equally fast.

For responsive display, both platforms offer plenty of options. There are also numerous themes available for both platforms, most of which are responsive.

Both Magento and WooCommerce offer an organized catalog and product page. You do notice that the catalog and especially the checkout works a lot more efficiently in Magento.

To apply personalization, there are more options in Magento than in WooCommerce.

Findability (SEO)

Without traffic, an online store will not generate orders. It is therefore important that the web shop is optimally findable on the Internet, and especially in the search engines.

Some SEO requirements for marketers:

• Load time and responsive display
• Flexible and SEO-friendly navigation structure
• Flexible and SEO-friendly URL structure
• Flexible and SEO-friendly page titles for CMS pages, categories and products
• Flexible and SEO-friendly options for branded pages
• Flexible and SEO-friendly options for custom landing pages
• Comprehensive blog options to exploit content marketing
• Rich snippets formatting for best snippets
• Open Graph (social sharing) markup for Facebook
• Integration
  Google Analytics
  with internal search
• Alt tag management options for all image types
• 
  301 redirect options
  for individual pages
• Canonical tag options for individual pages

Furthermore, it is important to have a user-friendly option to customize the descriptions of CMS pages, categories and products (meta description). This does not affect
SEO
, but is very important for the CTR (click-through-rate) of a web page.

Difference Magento & WooCommerce:

Both platforms offer a good solution for speed and responsive display. The same is true for the navigation structure. For the URL structure, on the other hand, WooCommerce has some limitations. Because it integrates with WordPress, it is also tied to WordPress’ permalink structure. This makes the URL structure /shop/ or /product/. This is not optimal for Google.

Optimizing categories, products, CMS pages, brand pages and landing pages is possible in both platforms. No weighty difference can be detected here.

WooCommerce, of course, has many blogging options due to its integration with WordPress. But Magento can also be integrated with WordPress. Furthermore, it is also possible to set up your own blog within Magento.

Formatting for Schema.org, Open Graph and integration with
Google Analytics
is not a challenge for either platform. Managing alt tag, beautifying category pages, 301 redirects, canonical tags, no-index options and robots.txt management is also possible in both systems. For generating XML sitemaps, Magento has a powerful solution by default. For WooCommerce, a plugin needs to be installed for this purpose.

Scalability

Many webshops start simple and work toward a webshop system that offers more features, is more efficient, can be better automated and can handle more data. Whenever possible within the same system.

It is wise to outline growth and revenue expectations in advance. These sales and associated customers, orders and traffic, can be linked to a timeline and possible requests for new features. Based on this, it is possible to estimate how complex and strong the system should be. Changing the backbone of a webshop can be very difficult and will have risks regarding traffic, sales, SEO and business logic. It is therefore wise to plan this well.

Important scalability for webshop owners:

• Free (open-source) solution to get started
• Easily expandable with new modules and functionality
• Multiple shopviews and/or languages option
• Customization options for display and operation
• Ability to grow to large quantity of products
• Integrations with ERP systems for purchasing, sales, inventory and relationship management and warehouse automation
• Integrations with all major sales channels (Facebook, Amazon, etc.)
• Efficient API to connect to external platforms
• Bulk options for catalog and inventory Automation capabilities

As for scalability, Magento is now a one-time more comprehensive e-commerce package that allows for more. With a small shop, this will be less noticeable. But in the case of multiple shop views, languages, custom functionality, large amount of products, integrations with ERP systems, bulk options and automation capabilities, WooCommerce will require a huge number of additional plugins and may run into its ceiling in terms of performance.

Security

Nowadays, thousands of web shops are hacked every day. With the current speed at which technology is developing and hackers getting smarter and smarter, it is incredibly important to keep your online store safe and protected from these intruders. Considering that your shop will contain a lot of personal information, security is essential.

Magento provides security patches, which keep Magento web shops safe. This is a nice service that WooCommerce does not provide. Although with
SSL
can encrypt your WooCommerce webshop.

Budget

For smaller webshops, WooCommerce is a perfect solution. WooCommerce is quick to set up, often at relatively low cost. Also, WooCommerce requires less optimization and configuration to get the shop running. For larger web shops, Magento is by far the better solution. Magento has virtually no limitations and offers much more scalability. Naturally, this also comes with a price tag.

If you have further questions about Magento 2 hosting or installing WooCommerce on a WordPress hosting package, please feel free to contact us without obligation
contact
with the service desk of SQR.NL.