Magento vs. Shopify: Which Is Best For Your E-commerce Store?

Published on: 11 June 2019 Last Updated on: 12 September 2024

The first quarter of 2019 has almost passed, and it has been predicted that 18% of the purchases will be made online by 2040. Further, 95% of the orders will be facilitated by e-commerce store.

Considering the above statistics, it comes as no surprise that the fate of your online business is dependent on how your website works. But did you know that all your website operations rely on the choice of your e-commerce platform?

Now, as the online store owners narrow down the choices, they are only left with two main platforms as the contenders- Magento and Shopify. While both platforms can create a one-of-kind e-commerce store, they differ in many areas.

To start with, Shopify works best for smaller businesses. On the flip side, Magento is aimed at enterprise businesses. This post is going will give you an in-depth insight on Magento and Shopify and help you decide which is an ideal platform for your e-commerce store.

Magento and Shopify in a Nutshell: e-commerce store

Magento:

Launched in 2007, Magento is a self-hosted e-commerce platform that powers a number of web stores. The platform is open source and comes with two versions including community (suitable for developers and small businesses) and enterprise edition (best suited for mid-sized and large e-commerce stores). The usage of the platform is free, but you’ll have to pay an amount for premium apps, themes, and hosting.

Irrespective of the price you have to pay, this platform is best known for its flexibility, ability to customize, and scalability.

Shopify:

Shopify is a hosted e-commerce platform that allows single-step order fulfillment and lets you set up a store with a custom domain and a theme.

This platform comes with an easy-to-use interface and is more for beginner developers. Moreover, it comes with a 14-day free trial, allows integration with over 70 payment gateways, and is available in almost every language.

Although there are numerous Shopify alternatives available across the web, what sets this platform apart from others is its ability to set up a dynamic store in no time. You will have to pay for the platform after the free trial, but the Shopify team takes care of all the technical tasks.

Magento and Shopify: What Numbers Say!

Description	Shopify	Magento
Number of Websites	600,000	250,000
Number of Extensions	2,400+	3,000+
Number of Themes	60 (external purchase is allowed)	12 (external purchase is allowed)

Now when you are aware of what these platforms are, here is a feature comparison of Magneto and Shopify.

1. Basic Functionality and Ease of Usage:

Both the e-commerce platforms have all the basic store functionalities that are easy to use and maintain.

But if we compare both the platforms, Shopify is a drag and drop website builder. Magento has a steep learning curve, and you will have to learn some technical terms to get through the e-commerce store development process.

With Shopify, the developer can add the products; customize the look and feel of your store and set up the payment process in no time. The best part is you can make the entire e-commerce store without any technical knowledge.

In Magento, you have to learn some code to develop an entire e-commerce store. Not to forget, they have comprehensive user guides that walk you step-by-step through various processes. They also have a forum from where you can learn some tricks of the trade.

2. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

When it comes to SEO, both have great search engine optimization capabilities. However, you’ll have to leverage extra plug-ins in the cases for both platforms. But in the case of Shopify, SEO features are automatically built into the website, even in the product pages.

3. Themes and Templates Availability:

In terms of themes and templates, both platforms offer highly-functional customization capabilities. They let you edit the raw code directly and give you full control over the design and appeal of your e-commerce store.

Coming to the differences, Shopify offers a wide variation of mobile-optimized themes. Although many of them are free, if you go for the paid ones, your store gets a professional look and gets equipped with great sales potential. You also get the option to add new pages, change the color palette, move or resize the elements, and integrate the social media feeds.

When it comes to Magento, it has 12 themes. Out of 12, 10 of them are fully responsive. This platform does have free themes, and the paid ones also start at just $1.

With this platform, you can also create your theme or template from scratch. You have the option to add a slide, newsletter, and animation to the website.

4. Inventory Management:

All Shopify plans allow unlimited products in the store. Magento also allows you to add or create an unlimited number of products on the website.

But Shopify is one step ahead in this point due to its integration with drop shipping inventory apps such as Oberlo. Further, in Magento, you have the risk of slowing down your website.

5. Hosting Features:

Your website’s performance, storage, security, and speed are dependent on the hosting you choose. Did you know that 40% of people will abandon a website if it takes more than three seconds to load? This will result in a loss of customers as well as revenue.

As Shopify is a hosted platform, it takes care of your entire domain and hosting needs; offers you 24*7 support, and let you concentrate on your business.

Magento comes with two hosting options, including Open Source and Cloud. In Open Source hosting, you have to buy your domain and hosting. But in the case of Cloud, your e-commerce store is hosted and maintained by Magento.

Hosting

6. Payment Processing:

Shopify platform is already equipped with a payment processor, which is known by the name of Shopify Payments. If you use Shopify Payments for your e-commerce store, you won’t be charged any transaction fee. Moreover, it comes with the support of 60 external payment processors.

For Magento, you will have to download the extension of the payment processor that you want in your e-commerce store. You can look for these extensions in Magento’s marketplace. However, some factors that make Magento worth the consideration are international market coverage and support for multiple languages.

Summing Up:

When it comes to choosing an ideal e-commerce platform, there are lots of factors to consider including interface, scalability, number of themes, templates, speed, load time, cost, search engine optimization, and more.

Is Shopify worth it? If your considerations are ease of usage, availability of themes, not wanting to pay the transaction fee, and having the hosting and bandwidth taken care of, look no further than Shopify. It is user-friendly, has a payment processor, and comes with an array of themes to help you get started.

But if you are technically savvy and want to build an e-commerce store for a large enterprise, go for Magento. With this platform, you will also have to find your hosting provider, which can become expensive, as your business scale. Moreover, there is a chance that you might have to invest some time as well.

If you are still stuck on the decision, skim again through the comparison of features, weigh their pros and cons, and make the best choice for your business.

Read Also:

Content Rally

Content Rally wrapped around an online publication where you can publish your own intellectuals. It is a publishing platform designed to make great stories by content creators. This is your era, your place to be online. So come forward share your views, thoughts and ideas via Content Rally.

View all posts

Behavioral Targeting – A potential DSP strategy for media campaigns

Aren’t you happy that you are finding the perfect leads that automatically convert into customers in your digital media campaigns? Behavioral targeting, a recent technique in digital advertising, has enabled marketers to achieve 90% success from their campaigns. Although the name itself tells about the kind of marketing strategy behavioral targeting is, let’s find out more… Behavioral targeting effectively uses a customer’s past activity while displaying an ad. While matching an ad with the user, the media planning software uses non-personal and anonymous information from the user. The fact that identifying user behavior is not just limited to the desktop makes media planning software a versatile technology. There are some mobile media platforms that help companies to target users depending on their mobile search patterns. One of the key factors in mobile tracking is where the users are located when they conduct a particular online search. How behavioral targeting functions The agencies use demand-side platforms (DSPs) for buying the advertisements across the networks in real-time. As there is media software that can track the user’s IP address and content type, the user browses using deep package inspection (DPI), and the marketer is able to identify the ad appropriate for the user. The marketers then buy relevant ads via real-time bidding (RTB) and put them up on the websites. This media planning software allows marketers to focus on ads for granularity specified audiences. The tool uses different kinds of data to show the right ad to the right audience. Information marketer’s use for behavioral targeting: The demographic information that the user has shared with partner websites Data extracted by cookies from the websites visited by the consumer General assumptions based on the types of websites visited by the user Social networking sites for collecting data for this kind of targeting Types of behavioral targeting Several technologies and approaches are used in behavioral targeting. Every company in space has its set of nomenclature and approach. However, the entire gamut of behavioral targeting can be roughly divided into three categories: Targeting based on affinity Also known as traditional targeting, the tracking is based on the information the users take in. Here, the user is tracked within a particular category. By consistent consumption trait, the tracking is based on the interest the user shows in web search. This way, advertising is based on unique profiles of users rather than by focusing on the current search that the user has keyed in. Re-targeting This tracking is simpler than affinity-based targeting. Here, the user has already visited a website, made some pre-decision stage activities, but has not completed the action. Usually, users get tagged through cookies and they can be targeted again via some cross-selling prospects. According to the user’s latest interest, an advertisement can be tailor-made using re-targeting. Predictive targeting Predictive targeting is based on a series of data collected both, online and offline. The first step is gathering data online— analyzing user behavior through their clicks and real-time internet surfing. The user gets monitored through the websites they visited the amount of time spent on each website, etc. The first profile of the user gets created through online monitoring. Complete data is then collected by some kinds of socio-demographic survey, which provides complete information on the lifestyle and interests of the user. Predictive technology is used to analyze the survey data (offline) with performance data (online) to complete the profile. Thus, there is the extrapolation of socio-demographic data of the sample population to a larger user base, using the similarities in the behavioral patterns observed in the sample users to a larger population. Behavioral targeting is definitely a valuable media planning software for digital advertising. However, you need to beef your strategies up with adequate tactics. Start with the identification of the right audience for a certain media buy, the required accomplishment of the campaign, and consequently its appropriate channels and communication media. Within this framework, identify if behavioral targeting can achieve better or not. Author Bio: Preethi Vagadia is currently a Senior Business architect with the Service operations practice at a well-known IT Industry in Bangalore. She has worked in several process improvement projects involving multi-national teams for global customers. She has over 8 years of experience in mortgage technology and has successfully executed several projects in logistics management, logistics integration, reverse logistics, content management system software, warranty software, and programmatic solutions.

Content Marketing Mistakes You Shouldn’t Be Making

By now, most people know the value of a content marketing campaign to your business. Given the reach and convenience of the internet, most brands are bound to hop onto the content marketing bandwagon. The only problem here is that not everyone who hops onto trends completely understands them. Before you fully commit to a content marketing campaign, it’s important to know what you’re getting yourself into so you can avoid making catastrophic errors. In this article, we have outlined some horrible content marketing mistakes many marketers are making these days. Read this article if you don’t want to make these mistakes. Why Should I Consider Investing In Content Marketing? ROI: The first reason that content marketing is beneficial is that it significantly contributes to your return on investment (ROI). ROI can come in different forms, such as a customer subscription, better brand visibility, improved brand reputation, increased inbound traffic, and customer loyalty. Establishing Brand Authority: Content marketing also helps establish your brand as an authority, so long as your content is of good quality. You can even become your niche’s primary source of information. When this happens, customers are more likely to remember your brand whenever they need a product or service that you offer. Interact with Target Audience: Finally, content marketing is a potent means to interact with your target audience (and your target demographic). Sharing content helps you build trust with your audience, and it also acts as a means to extend your reach even further whenever your audience shares your content. Lead Generation: Furthermore, frequent followers and readers eventually become actual customers. Content marketing is a useful method to bolster your business’ performance, but only if you utilize it properly. It’s not a silver bullet that’s going to solve all your marketing problems. Generally, your best course of action is to hire a content marketing agency to launch and implement your campaign properly, but for those who want to try their hand at doing their own content marketing, there are some mistakes that you need to avoid. Poor Audience Understanding At the core level, it boils down to how well you know your audience. Your marketing message will work through the content you publish when you know who you are speaking to. The digital mediums, the analytics, and the other technical aspects come way later. Publishing content without knowing your audience is simply shooting arrows in the dark. It negatively impacts the different marketing and sales metrics you are trying to achieve. Here’s how your digital presence might suffer if you make the mistake of not understanding your audience – Low Engagement When your content isn’t aligning with your audience, your website will suffer from low engagement. Low Traffic: Your website can also suffer from low traffic. Poor Brand Reputation: when your business content is everywhere, your audience doesn’t recognize what you are posting. You also don’t get to build your brand image which can sustain your business for the long term. Poor SERP Ranking: readers will not stick around to read content that isn’t engaging, giving your website a poor search engine presence. Publishing Content Without A Goal In Mind: If you aren’t doing anything for free then you shouldn't also do anything without a purpose in mind. Whenever we publish content, it’s important to always have a goal in mind. You have to determine whether the goal of your content is to sell, generate leads, inform, or engage with your audience. These goals or purposes shape your content strategy, which dominates the core function of your content journey. What’s the content journey, you ask? It’s your process to create, publish, distribute, promote, and measure your content. Then there are your content channels and promotion tactics based on the type of channel and the type of content you are putting out. Yes, we are talking about everything starting from Social Media and YouTube to Blogs. If you are posting it on Instagram, you’ll use Instagram analytics. But, for blogs, you’ll need to use tools like Google Analytics. Your goal will determine things about your content, such as your call to action and tone (whether conversational, informative, or imperative). For example, if your content is meant to sell a product, it needs to sound friendly yet informative. A post that’s meant to engage with your audience is best written in a sincere, genuine tone. Failing To Utilize Paid Content Amplification: The internet is currently oversaturated and highly competitive. Content brands are constantly vying to get their message on the feeds of prospective customers. The brand that gets relegated to the background will surely lose customers, even if its product is superior to that of its competitor. Paid amplification helps your content reach your intended audience, and it almost always produces quality leads. Consider the fact that even industry giants make use of paid content amplification. This means that you should do so as well if you want to stay relevant in your chosen industry. Forgoing The Use Of Social Media Stories: Social media stories are mobile-viewed vertical videos and images that appear outside a user’s regular feed and last only 24 hours. Storytelling will be the key to distributing your content successfully. Stories are perfect for building emotional connections with your audience because they are more casual and are mostly used as a medium for real-time engagement. Stories also have a natural progression. This means that users can arrange their content to be more cohesive to viewers. Stories also allow users to enable their viewers to react to the story while also helping users determine the type of content that viewers want. Limiting Your Content Form: In today’s market, text and image content alone will not differentiate you from your competitors, especially when you consider that users are gradually shifting away from written content because of the increasing popularity of video content, podcasts, and infographics. This is especially true considering how these types of content are also searchable on major search engines. It’s important to invest in other content channels to maximize your reach. This also allows your users to choose how they consume your content. The best part about this is that you don’t necessarily have to generate new content to fill these channels. In fact, you can repurpose written content and simply change the channel they’re published on. An old blog post can serve as your framework for your video and audio content. Your users will appreciate the variety of your content, and this variation will also help improve your website’s SEO ranking. Ignoring Data Analysis: Successful content marketing is not just based on artistic taste and content popularity. It is also heavily influenced by data. Running an analysis of your campaign’s performance grants brands the insight needed to make informed decisions regarding content. The numbers will help you determine which approach is better for a particular demographic. This also allows users to correct a wrong approach. For example, if you’ve discovered that most of your users are active at a certain time, then use that data to determine the best time to publish your content. Simply ignoring the data will not only rob you of the traffic you would have gotten otherwise, but it will also convey that you’re indifferent to your audience, which will eventually spell the failure of your campaign. Conclusion Content marketing is a boon to business owners because it grants them the ability to grow their businesses quickly. It requires a lot of work and experience to get it right the first time, but since you’re posting your content on the internet, it essentially means that as long as your website is up, your content will continue to do its job. Whether your content becomes effective or not depends on whether you do things correctly. Read Also: 4 points to consider when creating a Great Content Marketing Strategy Crucial Role of Content Marketing in Local Business Required Content Marketing for Your E-Commerce Know Why Content Marketing Is Important For SEO

How Promotional Merchandise Can Change the Way You Do Marketing

Promotional merchandise has had a long history in brand marketing. Companies from all over the world see the impact and effectiveness of this useful tool to create and promote their corporate identity. If you are looking for a way to enhance your business, you can use promotional merchandise to boost and revitalise your marketing initiatives. You have a wide array of choices when it comes to deciding what kind of product you want as promotional merchandise. You can use wearable items such as caps and shirts, or you can use non-wearable ones such as calendars, pens, and umbrellas. No matter what your company does, or where it’s located, you can benefit from promotional merchandise. There are a variety of ways you can use these items to your advantage. Here are the ways it can change your business: Different Ways Promotional Merchandise Can Change The Way You Do Marketing These are some of the factors you have to take care off while you want to increase the promotional merchandise of your marketing technique. Do not make your choices in grey while improving your organizational status. 1. Increase visibility You will have a broader reach by using promo merchandise because you will be calling attention to yourself. It will lead to an increase in visibility,and it will undoubtedly result in increased brand awareness. Hence, by using promo merchandise, you don’t need to resort to advertising or more expensive marketing gimmicks to attract new clients. 2. Promote your brand Promotional merchandise will give your brand a stronger image and identity. You will gain more credibility and generate brand love faster with these on hand. 3. Build loyalty Who doesn’t love freebies? Promotional merchandise will earn you the devotion of your past customers and potential clients. It is no secret that every customer wants to feel special. When you make them feel valued by trying your best to give them the royal treatment, they will come to love and rely on your brand to provide them with what they need. 4. Make effective sales Promotional merchandise gives you the chance to communicate with potential consumers effectively since you have their complete attention for a short while. You can make your sales pitch without boring them or losing their interest with promo merchandise as giveaways. 5. Increase market demand There will be a surge in sales since promotional merchandise increases brand love. You can expect that you will get a lot of pre-orders when you start rolling out your promotional merchandise. 6. Increase customer base Promotional merchandise can guarantee that you will have a wider market share. Since you are going to be more visible, you will become more well-known and popular than your competitors. 7. Increased profit and business growth Of course, when you are gaining more attention, you will clearly see an increase in your earnings. Promotional merchandise is worth the cost to have it made. And, since the items are cheap, they won’t put a big dent in your wallet. If you are experiencing a business slump, it might just be the answer to your problems. It can guarantee your business success in your field. These are the ways promotional merchandise can directly impact your marketing initiatives and make them more efficient than ever before. Using this marketing tool will give your business the boost it needs. Read Also: Why Do Entrepreneurs Put Up Their Drop Shipping Websites For Sale?

Magento vs. Shopify: Which Is Best For Your E-commerce Store?

Magento and Shopify in a Nutshell: e-commerce store