ShopifyHousehold name, white people can also move their fingers to quickly build their own e-commerce site. Many domestic cross-border e-commerce companies choose it to build 2C e-commerce site, set up is 2B foreign trade independent station. There is also a large part of the people are amenable to the charm of WordPress to build a website, do not know which one to choose.
Cross-border e-commerce independent station building choose Shopify or WordPress good? Too many people ask this question, so write this article to share Di's opinion to help you judge. There is no absolute good or bad, only suitable or not, according to their own situation to choose.
First of all, the conclusion: Diamo think Shopify is a very chicken ribs of existence, although building a store is very easy, but the success rate of the store to do up is not as high as WordPress, fees and so on is too high and the need for the vast majority of people need to hire outsourcing to repair the store and so on. Many e-merchants full of enthusiasm rushed into Shopify gold, and finally found that they turned out to be a leek and dusty face to WordPress.
It exists for a reason, and there must be advantages to it being so famous.The biggest benefit of Shopify is that it allows sellers to set up a standalone site extremely quickly and get their business up and running quickly, with very low upfront costs. If you want to quickly test products, markets or build your sales channel quickly at low cost, theShopify is the preferred choice.
What is Shopify?
It is a self-service Saas e-commerce website build for a Canadian companyflat-roofed buildingShopify can easily register to open a store to sell products, customize the decoration, etc. To put it bluntly, Shopify is a website building tool. But it does not have traffic itself, moreover, it will not allocate any traffic to merchants.
What is WordPress?
It is a powerful and scalable website builderTools/SoftwareWordPress is the most popular CMS in the world, with more than 40% (including the official website of the White House of the United States) of all the websites in the world using it to build, its popularity can be imagined.
The biggest benefit of WordPress is that it is completely open source, free, without any limitations, continuously updated, with countless technicians and companies contributing behind the scenes.WordPress has become a complete and powerful website building ecosystem, and many website building companies have started to use it as a basis for building websites.
Cross-border e-commerce independent website building choose Shopify or WordPress is good?
Let's first look at the July 2022 globalWebsite Buildermarket share, with WordPress accounting for 64.3%, Shopify for 6.2%, and Wix for 3.4%. all online retailers globallyE-commerce websiteThere are 281 TP3T built by the Woocommerce plugin for WordPress, and the share will be even higher if you count the other plugins built. the popularity of WordPress is evident.
However, not many people know WordPress, because it is just a website builder, the vast majority of people simply can not use it and will not use. Only those of us who build websites will use it and know its charm.
Shopify is a listed company platform, specializing in building e-commerce sites, in the epidemic ravaged + e-commerce outbreak of the past few years become a household name. Foreigners to build online shopping site preferred it, many nationals have also heard of its fame have been into the leek bureau.
Shopify and WordPress have their own advantages and disadvantages, there is no better or worse, and can not judge who is better. There is no way to tell who is better. Everything is about appropriateness.WordPress is more suitable for our country's situation, in line with the development trend of cross-border e-commerce, recommended for small and medium-sized sellers to build e-commerce site with it!The
Benefits of Shopify
Shopify based on the foreign environment market development, it is more in line with the needs of the foreign market. In foreign countries to sell products online only 3 mainstream choices, 1 - choose to open a store in Amazon, ebay and other e-commerce platforms; 2 - choose to build a station in Shopify, Wix and other Saas platforms; 3 - hire someone to build an independent station of e-commerce (most of the use of WordPress to build).
E-commerce platform to open a store:The first in the Amazon and other e-commerce platform to open a store is the most popular, because free, convenient, hassle-free, reliable, and the platform will have free traffic distribution. If you let Mo choose to think about it, you definitely choose to open a store in the e-commerce platform. That's why Amazon's stock soared in the first few years, and its owner rode the momentum to become the richest man in the world.
But then the e-commerce platform dividend period is over, there is not enough porridge, the traffic is more and more expensive. So Amazon and other platforms began to rise costs, strict management. As a result, store merchants need to pay more and more fees, commissions and so on, but the traffic is less and less, advertising is more and more expensive, business is not good.
And platform rules a lot, can not do no traffic, the product was also shelved, threatened to close the store, suffered malicious customer complaints, etc., so the merchants began to flee.
Outsourced website building:Where there is oppression there is resistance, so some people began to build their own e-commerce independent site. There are no fees, commissions and other expenses, and only a few cost outlays per year such as servers and domain names. You don't have to worry about your products being taken off the shelves, being shut down, or being maliciously complained about, and you can customize the store design and features as you like.
E-commerce independent station to do the brand effect is also better, do not have to fall into the price comparison quagmire, but also to get private domain traffic, combined with social media and so on for marketing. The vast majority of people do not have the skills to build a website, mainly outsourced. Outsourcing station also has disadvantages: 1- high cost in the early stage; 2- no traffic distribution; 3- unstable.
Foreign labor is too expensive! Hiring a company to build an e-commerce site costs thousands or tens of thousands of dollars, and may cost many tens of thousands of dollars if the number of products and visitors is high. Many store sellers are not willing to invest that high of an expense up front.
The greater disadvantage of the independent station is that there is no traffic, once you leave the platform, there is no traffic to survive. This leads to the need to invest huge sums of money to attract traffic + marketing, capital pressure, the future is not clear. So even if Amazon and other e-commerce platforms of all kinds of costs add up to 30% or so, there are still many merchants do not want to leave.
Another problem with outsourcing website building is that it is unstable, and in case you come across a website building company that is not reliable, the services provided as well as the quality of the website will be greatly reduced. Running a store is not easy, there are many things to cope with, and a bad website can affect your mood and business.
Saas self-service website builder:The above mentioned 2 methods have their own advantages and disadvantages, can not completely solve the customer pain points, so Shopify and other Saas self-service platform began to be favored. Shopify has all the advantages of outsourcing the construction of the site, 1-monthly, by order deductions to eliminate the merchant's upfront financial pressures; 2-Saas site can be customized features and design, do-it-yourself do not have to ask for someone else, the quality of the site and the service is also guaranteed. The quality of the website and services are also guaranteed.
Based on these circumstances, Shopify began to fire. It is a small investment, save trouble, stable and reliable, good service, customizable features and design, will not shelve the products to close the store and so on. Constructed a perfect set of content management, payment, marketing, logistics and other functions, so foreigners to build an independent station of choice for e-commerce!
This fatal drawback of independent sites not distributing traffic Shopify also has.
Who is Shopify for?
It is recommended that 2C small sellers, especially those who have just entered the cross-border e-commerce business to use Shopify, and then switch to WordPress + Woocommerce to build a website after doing so. This is the lowest cost, the highest efficiency, and high success rate.
The advantage of Shopify is that it is fast, you can set up the store in 1 day and start to store and sell. shopify is a listed company, their technical team is also more reliable, to ensure that the store runs stably. At the same time, Shopify's initial capital pressure will be much smaller, free store, only a small amount of rent per month, not many orders if the handling fee is low.
In contrast, WordPress will be relatively troublesome, need to specialize in technical knowledge to use, the server needs to pick and configure their own, domain name resolution, security certificates, content delivery network (CDN) need to configure their own. If the outsourcing of the station does not exist these problems, the station building company will deal with everything, but we have to look at the selection of the station building company is not reliable.
WordPress to build a 2C website at least 2-3 weeks, if you require a high level of constant modification (Shopify can be changed in less space) to build the station time will be infinitely extended. At the same time, the function and so on may not be stable, there are all kinds of problems. The cost of communication and emotional cost of building a website with the company is not low. Or that is: choose the right company to build the site everything goes smoothly, choose the wrong company physically and mentally exhausted, affecting the cause.
Some people use Shopify to build 2B independent site, there is no purchase function so do not need to give commission and so on, low cost. Seemingly perfect, often end up not get anything, a chicken feather. 2B website is the most important thing is to convert, bring inquiries. This involves attracting traffic, SEO effect, speed optimization and so on.
Shopify limit the number of products, there is a risk of store closure (see the following board introduction). 2B independent station built by Shopify is inferior to WordPress in terms of functionality, speed, traffic flow, SEO effect, etc. If the site is not good, the cost is a waste of time, and if the site is relocated later, the SEO effect may be lost. If the website is not effective, it is a waste of time even if the cost is low. Moreover, if the website is relocated at a later stage, the accumulated SEO effect and uploaded products may be burnt to ashes, which is a waste of time.
Do foreign trade independent station, foreign trade 2B English official website, or suggest the direct use of WorePress, the effect of all aspects are much better.
Shopify Cons
Shopify is good, but do not be greedy, it is not suitable for our situation!
1- Expensive and costly
The above mentioned foreign outsourcing website building costs up to several thousand, tens of thousands of dollars in the early stage, and later there are maintenance and other costs, so many people choose Shopify. while we have a lot of reliable domestic website building company, get a stable, fully functional website only!Thousands of RMB (no renewal fee). What is cheap in the eyes of foreigners is expensive in our hearts!
Call us, Adamo.Build a cross-border e-commerce independent websiteIt's only 3,000+.Lifetime validity without any renewal fee. From the second year onwards, only about 300 maintenance fees per year are charged, and customers can also choose to maintain their own or a third party. The ownership and control of the server, domain name and source code of the website belongs to the customer, and there is no backdoor in the website, and there is no restriction. Even if you don't find us to maintain your website, it will not affect the use of your website at all, and you can modify/relocate your website at will.
In comparison, Shopify fees are numerous and costly. The costs include: monthly fees, collection fees, transaction fees, Shopify APP fees, and more! These visible costs above alone add up toAt least a couple thousand/yearIt's much more expensive than building a website with a domestic or international package.
And there are costs such as decorating the store and SEO optimization that will cut into you until you doubt your life.
Shopify renovation costs:Free themes and plug-ins are too few and unattractive. Basically, we will buy paid themes / plug-ins, some companies may also pay for someone to decorate, which is the cost of WordPress to build the site on thousands of templates to choose from, all free.
Shopify Google SEO Optimization Cost:Shopify is a publicly traded company, and people set up all sorts of restrictions to ensure profits. To optimize SEO you have to buy their SEO optimization plugin before you can do so.
Not only optimize SEO, even compression of images and so on have to pay for plug-ins, otherwise the effect is very far. In WordPress the vast majority of plug-ins are free, the use of free plug-ins have been able to achieve the desired results. Even paid plug-ins can be purchased cheapGPL versionIt's only 19 RMB/each, and once you pay the fee, you can use it for the rest of your life, and it's updated permanently.
See here I believe at this point your mind has produced a thought: Shopify is too pitiful, hahaha.
2- Restricted
Listed companies will surely find ways to increase their profits for the sake of their stock price, so that users will pay more. How to make users pay voluntarily? The conventional practice is to set restrictions so that users voluntarily pay to upgrade their packages and unlock features according to their needs.
Shopify with WordPress has a lot of plug-ins to extend the functionality of the site, but the number and type of plug-ins is far less than WordPress. background functionality and the degree of modification is far less than WordPress free, powerful. This is understandable, after all, they are Saas self-service website platform, not an open source project, so it will not open all the features and permissions.
WordPress is much more powerful in terms of functionality and customizability, allowing you to customize the functionality and design of your website according to your needs. This is the primary reason why Diiamo chose WordPress as its website builder.
3- Not as effective at driving traffic as WordPress
As mentioned above, the fatal disadvantage of independent sites is that there is no distribution of traffic, whether it is 2B or 2C, the vast majority of independent sites end up dying without traffic, and then being shut down. Independent stations can only get traffic and orders by actively attracting traffic.
Now the mainstream and efficient way of attracting traffic is 1-put ads; 2-SEO optimization; 3-social media attraction. Ads do not have to think about it, the dividend period has passed, and now the price of advertising is high, the effect is general. Many people around the independent station earned money to the advertisers.
SEO and social media traffic is more suitable for independent sites, low cost and good results.WordPress SEO can be optimized to a better extent and results than Shopify, there are also numerous plugins to link social media. For example, 1 - through plug-ins can easily put WordPress productsautomatic forwardingTo the Google Store, Pinterest, etc.; 2 - can be their Youtube account video automatically transported to the WordPress site; can be in the site to get and display the Facebook, Twitter account customer reviews, etc..
Take a step back, using WordPress to build a website can save at least a few thousand dollars, the money to outsource SEO optimization diversion to solve part of the traffic problem. For example, our Diamo Google SEO optimization service is only 4000 +, one-time charge without renewal, choose 15-20 keywords, the effect of the package more than 1 year.
4- Not out-of-the-box, there is a threshold for use
Although Shopify is very convenient, there are a lot of difficulties in the actual operation, such as decorating the store, function implementation, speed optimization, SEO optimization and so on. The vast majority of Shopify merchants end up having to spend money on others to optimize their websites, and the cost of each of these is no less than that of outsourcing the construction of a WordPress website.
Shopify store operation is also a challenge, just like Taobao. How to make the minimum images and how to write copy that is understandable. The vast majority of Shopify sites we've seen are no faster or more SEO effective than WordPress sites. This is because Shopify users simply don't know how to optimize, and don't even think about optimizing.
Once there is a seller of plant lights Shopify seller contacted Mo, let us optimize SEO, we measured the volume of its website home page actually 12MB! Under normal circumstances, the size of a page in 1M or less, the volume is so large mainly because the picture has not been converted into a web page format, there is no compression.
Many people don't understand how to compress and process images, what size is appropriate, how to upload products, how to write copy, how to set up and optimize the store.... Do everything yourself, everything is very difficult to do well. Appropriately give some of the work to others, their own limited time, energy on the important things, this is the way to get rich.
The biggest advantage of outsourcing the station is to save time and efficiency. Most of the things that the company handles the whole process, what they do not understand can always consult the company to build the station, they just focus on sales on the line.
5- Risk of store closure
Yes, you read it right, Shopify store openings can also be blocked. As long as it's a platform there will be rules and regulations. As for what the rules are, they say so.
Why do Shopify stores get blocked?
Both Shopify and Facebook's blocking policies are opaque and unknowable. The following reasons have been summarized from numerous cases and experiences:
- When registering, use QQ, 163 and other domestic mailboxes, it is easy to be closed store;
- Registration information is not real and valid, such as false telephone numbers and virtual addresses;
- Ladder Tools (VPN) IP addresses are unstable and often jump around, which can easily lead to store closures;
- Pay with a virtual credit card or pay on your behalf;
- Do Dropshipping one piece shipping;
- Use a collection tool to collect products from other websites in bulk;
- Plagiarizing/copying someone else's website privacy policy, articles, material, etc. reported by peers;
- Shopify does not allow image theft, especially branded images. Once found and verified, the store will be closed immediately;
- Selling illegal or sensitive products such as imitation brands or infringement, etc.
Chinese cell phone numbers sometimes don't receive verification codes, just like WhatsApp.
Shopify Outlook
Shopify's July 2022 data shows a slight decline in market share, which could fall even more later. Despite a 16% year-on-year increase in revenue to $1.3 billion, net income was a heavy loss. The second quarter net loss of $1.2 billion, equivalent to $0.95 per share, contrasts with the $879.1 million profit posted in the same period last year.
Shopify CFO Amy Shapero explains that this year is "more of a transition year, and e-commerce has largely reset to pre-COVID levels. CEO Tobi Lutke said he overestimated the growth rate of e-commerce, announcing that Shopify will lay off 10% (1,000 people).
We are not optimistic about Shopify because of its high price and little benefits offered to consumers, there are many alternatives. Moreover, the foreign e-commerce dividend period has passed, and it is difficult to find new growth points. social platform e-commerce such as Tiktok stores is the future, because they grab a huge amount of traffic, and the traffic to e-commerce is like water to fish.
Shopify store relocation to WordPress?
Shopify stores can be relocated to WordPress in one click with a plugin, which is very convenient. If you are looking for Little D Builders, we will help you relocate your store for free. If you want to relocate yourself you just need to install a plugin, Google it for specific methods.
Now I say Shopify is a leek pit you have no problem with it? In fact, the essence of Shopify is a website builder, it builds a website to sell to everyone, but also add a variety of restrictions on charges. What is expensive in foreign countries, there is no better choice to run to use Shopify, the wise man is good at viewing the essence of things, make the right choice.
