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

11 June 2019

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.

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Ariana Smith

I enjoy writing and I write quality guest posts on topics of my interest and passion. I have been doing this since my college days. My special interests are in health, fitness, food and following the latest trends in these areas. I am an editor at Content Rally.

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Content Marketing: Tips For Better Results

Content marketing has been around for quite a long time, and it is the go-to marketing strategy for many businesses nowadays. But everybody uses it, and the results they get are more or less along the same lines…in terms of the time they take to materialize. What if you’re looking to get better results from your content marketing endeavors? What if you want to do some smart work rather than hard work? In this post, let’s take a look at some answers to this question. What Is Content Marketing? Content marketing is basically defined as the type of marketing that involves creating and publishing/distributing content to a certain audience. The purpose of distributing this type of content is to increase awareness of the product/services so that they can be sold more. While “content,” in this context, refers to the content of all types, mostly written stuff is utilized for marketing purposes. This type of marketing takes different shapes and forms. Some people can engage in content marketing by writing and publishing blogs regularly. Others can utilize their product pages as a medium to engage in marketing, i.e., by making the descriptions and the visuals, etc., appealing and attractive. Actually, instead of mentioning them here somewhat haphazardly, let’s look at some of the content marketing methods in detail before moving on to the tips. What Are Some Common Methods Of Content Marketing? Here are a few of the common ways in which content marketing is employed. Blogs: Blogs, especially when created by a professional writing service, have a key role that goes beyond just advertising products or services. Their main goal is to educate and engage readers. This approach helps grow a brand's readership and audience. By providing valuable and informative content, the brand naturally attracts more people. This isn't just a marketing strategy; it's about genuinely helping readers. As more people find the blogs helpful, they start to trust and follow the brand, leading to increased business opportunities. With the help of a blog writing agency such as Compose.ly, brands can consistently deliver high-quality content that connects with their audience. Emails: Email marketing is technically a marketing strategy on its own, but since it almost always utilizes content of some sort, it can also be mentioned in content marketing. In an email marketing campaign, individuals are reached out separately by the brand. These emails can either inform the recipient about some sort of new product release, a sale or a special discount, etc. Newsletters: Newsletters are technically emails, but they are not like other messages that are typically used and sent in an email marketing campaign. While the latter, for the most part, directly promote the offerings of a brand, newsletters are geared toward educating the readers. You can think about them to be a type of hybrid between a blog and a typical email marketing message. E-books: While this one is a more elaborate step than what brands usually do, it is a good way to engage in content marketing. Now, with all that out of the way, let’s take a look at some tips that you can follow to get better results from your content marketing endeavors. Tips For Getting Better Results From Content Marketing As we mentioned earlier, while content of all types can be employed in content marketing, written content is the most common…and perhaps the toughest to create. That is why our tips will be geared towards it in particular. Don’t Write Like A Robot, And Don’t Write For Robots In that rather wordsmith-is line, we’ve summed up one of the most important principles of writing online content. Firstly, when you write content for marketing purposes, be it of whatever type and kind, you should make sure that your tone is friendly, communicative, and human-like. Mind you, there are exceptional cases where a totally opposite tone would be more suitable, but we are talking about the common cases here. This is what we mean by not writing like a robot. Here is what you can do to make your writing tone fall into this criterion. Of course, depending on the situation at hand, some of these tips may not be very applicable. Try and refer to the reader as “you” and yourself as “I” or “we.” This is one of the basic and simplest ways to make your tone look more natural and human-like. Since you have to make your written content look more like a conversation than a piece of written text, you should reduce your overall use of passive voice. People hardly use passive voice when they speak. I mean, I could have just said, “The passive voice is hardly used by people when they speak,” but I did just make my point. Keep sentences short. Keeping your sentences short can also give a natural touch to your writing and make it more reader-friendly. The second part of our tip was Don’t write for robots. We should actually clear this up a little before moving on. Nowadays, a lot of content marketing is done via search engines. When people write blogs, they channel them to their readers via search engines. The same goes for a lot of other types of content, like product descriptions and e-books, etc. Now, in a bid to make their content look nice to the search engines, a lot of people can end up making it look too mechanical, erratic, and awkward for human taste. Consider the following example: We offer the best ramen in Tokyo. Our quality ramen store in Tokyo is very good. Buy quality ramen near me in Tokyo. (Note the atrocious keyword usage) Good content? For the search engine, maybe. For the reader? It’s just gibberish. You have to avoid doing this sort of stuff when writing content for your audience. You should strike a balance between making the content appealing for SEs as well as your human readers. Do Proper Research…And Use It When it comes to content marketing materials such as blogs and newsletters, your aim should be to provide reliable and educative content to your audience. This can only be done if you do proper research and then utilize it when writing the content itself. In this part, let’s look at how you can do research properly and what benefits you can get from it. Here are some things that you can do for effective research: Look for popular and reliable sources on the internet. Before you start gleaning information from anywhere, you should establish its reliability first. Once done, be sure to find out relevant facts and figures to add to your content. This tip is, of course, subjective. In some types of content, adding facts and figures may not be very suitable. However, it can be a good idea in things like blog posts, emails, and the like. If you find yourself in a situation where you have to use some material from a source verbatim in its actual form. (More important than implementing theoretical and conceptual information is the utilization of the data you get from audience research. In other words, you should conduct audience research and then use the details that you find to adjust your content as per the needs of the audience. When we say “audience research,” we basically refer to using analytical tools to find out necessary information and details about your audience, such as the details about their age, gender, location, and so on.) Now let’s look at what benefits you can get by doing and incorporating research into your work. Authority: When your content is backed with research, it comes off as authoritative. For example, when you present a stat for a certain situation or occurrence, it looks more grounded as compared to an opinionated guess. Up-to-date information: Conducting research can also get you in touch with up-to-date information. By not researching your material before writing it, you can get stuck with old, outdated information that can neither help you nor your readers. Value: When your content is based on research, it provides value to your readers. For problems, it can provide solutions. For choices, it can provide expert opinions. This sort of content is a lot more potent in building a better readership and for growing your brand. Aim For Content Perfection Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection, we can catch excellence. Vince Lombardi It’s a bit of a dramatic way to start off this heading, but it does make the point that we want. No content is perfect because perfection (least of all in written content) is not achievable. But if you aim for the bullseye, you can land somewhere close to it. That is why you should make all the effort possible to remove all types of imperfections from your content. Grammar errors: Grammar errors are by far the most common and most harmful errors that you can make in your content. You should be proactive about avoiding such errors during the writing phase. And once you do write the content, you should take steps like proofreading the content and using an online grammar checker to weed out the remaining ones. Clunky readability issues: Readability issues, such as confusing words, long-winded sentences, and weird phrase choices, can also adversely affect the quality of content. you can remove these types of imperfections from your content by using an online AI-driven paraphrasing tool. A good AI paraphraser can improve the readability of the provided content during the rephrasing process. Plagiarism: Plagiarism is like the diamondback of content imperfections. You can’t spot it quickly enough, and it can kill the quality of your write-up without you realizing it. Removing this imperfection is necessary and tricky at the same time. The best way to go about it is to use an online plagiarism checker and then analyze the results to take the steps you need. Conclusion A lot of brands do content marketing nowadays. But, to bring yourself a cut above the others, you have to follow some best practices. We’ve outlined a few of those in the post above. Read Also : How To Monitor The SEO Health Of Your Website Best SEO Tools For Ranking The Website Get A Return On Investment With Your SEO

Set Your Lead Generation on Fire! 5 Tips for Marketing Your Heating Repair Company

Marketing professionals agree that the number-one most important thing to look out for when creating an effective campaign and strategy is the quality of sales leads your efforts to produce. When you're marketing your heating repair company, you want to be certain you're not pitching to random people who may or may not even need your services. You want your HVAC marketing to be geared towards those who need what you offer. Read on to learn how to make it happen. 1. Your Online Reviews Matter: Over 90% of people read online reviews about a business before deciding to reach out to them. Especially since you know the people reading your reviews are doing so because they need help with their HVAC services, you want to make sure they have something to look at. Embed review requests in your emails, and offer discounts for customers who do leave reviews. Read your reviews as often as possible, and make sure to promptly respond to every one of them. 2. Submit to Online Business Directories: You need to connect with local consumers if you want your business to stay afloat. After all, people aren't exactly going to call an HVAC and heating repair company that's three states away. Submit to local business directories, and also try to form relationships with other local businesses to promote each other. 3. Give Hyperlocal Marketing a Try: We just spoke about the importance of local marketing -- but you also need to get hyperlocal. When you draft keywords to include in your content, make sure you reference not just your city and state, but even nearby landmarks. The same goes for your street name, local festivals and events, and more. 4. Embrace Email Marketing: Email marketing is so effective when it comes to marketing your heating repair company because those receiving the emails have actively chosen to be contacted by your company. Perhaps they were past clients, maybe they live in the area, or maybe you're connecting with other local business owners. Either way, you know they are quality leads. Plus, emails offer invaluable analytics that allow you to further refine your marketing strategy. 5. Remarket on Social Media: If you want to capture leads, you need to focus on converting the people who have already shown an interest in your heating repair services. These people have clicked on your social media profiles or website, but for whatever reason, didn't book your services. Remarketing -- having your site and service pages show up in their social media profiles -- is an awesome gentle reminder for them to complete the transaction. Get More Leads for Your Heating Repair Company with These Tips: This is a great starting point when it comes to the top ways to get more leads for your heating repair company. Of course, you also need to learn how to improve your campaigns, schedule social media posts, write blog posts, track analytics, and much more. Don't sweat it -- we've got you covered. Keep checking back with us for more marketing tips you can't afford to miss. Read Also: What You Need To Know About Electric Mattress Pad Why Sensors Are Essential In Machine Automation 5 Tips For Marketing Your HVAC Business That Actually Work How Servicing For Your Commercial Boiler Works: A Step-By-Step Guide To The Process

Avoiding Sales And Operations Planning Mistakes

When it comes to sales and operations planning, a lot of mistakes can be made throughout the process, and you won’t be successful. Planning for the sales and the operations is going to lead the organization to the peak of success. But faults and errors are going to cost more than this. For beginners, the sales mistakes chances are enormous. Take a look at the common mistakes and avoid making blunders. 5 Common Planning Mistakes In Sales And Operations The organizational structure and the profit are entirely depending upon the organization’s sales and operational system. Therefore, avoiding these sales mistakes can help you execute best practices and reap the rewards. Here are five common sales mistakes which can lead your organization to a dark and challenging state. 1. Lack Of Executive Ownership The big sales mistakes happen when the executive leadership team doesn’t fully own the sales and operations planning process. If leadership isn’t engaged, then it won’t be as successful. If the leaders aren’t involved, it’s essential to understand why. It could be you aren’t giving them the tools to run the company or consider information that is easy to understand. A good technology platform may also be the key. The best processes and people can only take you so far, and technology can help speed up the process and allow the team to shift focus from just calculations to analysis, which is more important. 2.Lack of Cross-Functional Engagement The whole point of using the sales and operations planning process is to make sure the entire organization is moving in the same, right direction. This can be hard to do if there isn’t any involvement from the key stakeholders. If you aren’t having sales, operations, or finance teams engaged in the process, you won’t be successful. Usually, this is due to a lack of a way to translate between the different views of information. To make the process work, you need to have the same information exposed to each stakeholder in the form they need and understand. You can start small and work your way up to more significant projects, but you need to extend the scope to all the different people and provide the required translation to make sure everyone is on the same page. You may go through History and How to Increase Sales in Your Confectionery Shop 3.Focusing On Just One Number For years, the mantra of sales and operations planning was to get to a one-number plan, but this can be too simplified and limits the value of planning for many executives. Executives are paid for predictability, and they are hired to manage sales mistakes risk. Planning can be a great tool to help, but only if you aren’t falling for the one-number trap. Instead, it helps plan in ranges and have a best case, worst case, and expected all in the process. The ability to know what can happen if things don’t go according to the plan is priceless information. 4.Complexity It’s essential to keep it simple when it comes to metrics. Companies can become paralyzed by making the wrong decisions when looking at hundreds of different metrics. On the other hand, having things too complex can prevent companies from asking the right questions. You should pick your big 10 to 15 metrics and then go with them. Then, track these metrics and make the performance transparent. Therefore everybody can understand why these metrics are being tracked, what they are, and how to learn from the numbers. Common sales mistakes can be avoided by knowing the metrics and analyzing the data. 5.Not Having Documentation In order to learn from past mistakes, you have to have documentation. You need to capture all the assumptions and knowledge that goes into the plan. You need to provide a tool to capture this information and make it easy for teams to contribute. For instance, if you are collaborating as a group using social media, then be sure to capture those chats and embed them into the plan, so you are able to understand the context of changes or decisions six months later. If you aren’t learning from history, you are doomed when you will repeat it and won’t succeed. Conclusion: Sales and operations planning can give you great results, but you may not achieve success if you aren’t executing the process correctly. These are the common sales mistakes that may happen at any time. If you want to avoid making these mistakes, always look at the operation and data collection before planning. What is your strategy to avoid making mistakes for the sales and operation plannings? Do not forget to share your opinion in the comment section. Read Also: This Is Why Social Media Is Essential in the B2B Sales Process Getting Help from an E-Commerce Expert to Boost Your Online Store Sales

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

Magento and Shopify in a Nutshell: e-commerce store