Shopify to Woocommerce Migration
Are you planning to migrate your store from Shopify to WooCommerce?
Shopify to WooCommerce (and Why You Should and it’s benefits)
It may appear that switching eCommerce systems is a difficult task, but moving your products, customers, and orders to WooCommerce is simpler than you might expect.
The benefits of choosing WooCommerce instead of Shopify
More freedom & control over your store
With the power-packed features of Open Source woocommerce offers endless flexibility for customization and you can develop exactly the store your want without going through any sort of platform limitations or product listing policy restrictions. With Woocommerce you have full control over SEO, Plugins and all sort of E-Commerce aspects and every sort of technical aspect including payment gateway, Shipping rules, Product feeds, Customer Data, Order management and automation etc.
Zero Transaction Fees & Recurring Costs and overall pricing aspects
WordPress and Woocommerce, Both are completely fee without any recurring costs. You can choose a decent hosting with your domain name by paying a nominal one-time fee which falls under the range of $50 for a year without paying any further recurring charges. If we compare Shopify with the costing aspects you could be paying a monthly recurring fee between $29.99 and $299 a month, In that case, also you have to pay additional for any extensions like live shipping rates, Advanced On page SEO etc.
Addons:
Most of the Shopify addons which offer additional functionality needs a monthly plan and the prices of the same can change at any time which may cause a big hike in the overall expenses to run your store properly. But in the case of Woocommerce you have a vast range of free plugins and if in case you need a Pro version of the plugin, the cost is a one-time expenses of a few dollars mostly available under the $50 range
Transaction fees:
If you use an external payment gateway, Shopify will charge you between 0.5 and 2 percent for every transaction, plus any costs your payment gateway may charge. It doesn’t take long for these charges to accumulate! You might lose hundreds of dollars in profit each year even if your store just performs a few transactions every day. However, there are no additional transaction fees with WooCommerce. As a result, you’ll have more money in your pocket.
Product Categories:
Shopify doesn’t have a concept of product categories or sub categories, They simply have a functionality called collections which is very limited in terms of flexibility and product allocation aspects. However Woocommerce supports an unlimited number of categories and sub-categories.
Product Variations:
Shopify limits variations on each product to 100 however Woocommerce supports unlimited variations without any sort of additional requirements / pricing aspects.
In a real scenario if you sell products like men’s shoes that are available in three widths (narrow, regular, and wide), standard sizes 6-15 (including half sizes), and three colors, you’d have 153 variations. This would exceed Shopify’s limits. However, with WooCommerce, you can offer as many product variations as you need.
Shopify can suspend your store at any time if you accidently violiate any sort of product listing rules / Policy
Shopify can suspend your store at any time if you violate any sort of their product listing policy such as there are few rules that insists not to increase the pricing of certain products which are falling under a specific category within a specified range where as in the case of a Woocommerce store you are the decision maker with your complete freedom without any sort of such restrictions & you don’t have to fear about any sort of store suspension no matter whatever you list up in your store.
Shopify : Very Limited / No free plugin to publish your products to Google Merchant Center
As every serous store owners knows now a days, Google Merchant Center (https://www.google.com/retail/solutions/merchant-center/ is a gold mine to tap the traffic to your store from potential customer through organic search traffic from Google and woocommerce have a plenty to free plugins to achieve this Goal, however Shopify needs a pro extension with an ongoing subscription to get this functionality integrated in your store
Shopify : Needs advanced knowledge / Pro Extension for visitor behavior analysis or conversion tracking in Google Analytics or PPC
If your ever used Paid Traffic (PPC) , Ad Campaigns or promotional offers you might be knowing the importance of conversion tracking. If you have a Woocommerce store you have the options to choose hundreds of free plugins to automate the conversion tracking / analytics / Customer behavior process without having any sort of advanced technical knowledge. But in the case of Shopify you either needs a pro extension with a monthly plan or advanced knowledge of Shopify development to achieve this functionality
Backup and Ownership of your complete store – The most important Factor for a long run
Shopify allows you to export customer data and orders, you have to pay a fee to back up your website design and settings still you have to stick with their platform / Store to keep your store functional. WooCommerce, however, allows you to take a complete backup of your site through free plugins and migrate to any hosting/ servers according to your requirement at any time within a few clicks. At any point of time you have complete ownership of each and every data pertaining to your store.
