E-Commerce websites are increasing at a rapid rate as consumers now do most of their shopping online.
Online shopping is expected to grow in the years ahead as consumers start to embrace voice search.
Millennials use voice assistants to do 40% of their online purchases. That percentage is expected to exceed 50% in 2020.
Today, it’s easier to launch an online store, find a product to sell and start advertising than years ago.
The introduction of exciting technologies has made it easy for anyone to create and launch their store on the web.
A tool like Shopify offers everything you need to start selling online.
Signing up on Shopify is easy.
You can test the Shopify’s platform for free for 14 days. You don’t need to provide your payment details when signing up.
Tina Roth Eisenberg got many talented artists and designers to create Tattly.
Tattly is a website where tattoo lovers buy temporary tattoos to apply on their skins.
Within a few years of launch, Tattly is now a successful e-commerce business. Thanks in large part to Shopify.
Shopify helped Tina launch her e-commerce site with little knowledge of selling online.
Magento is another content management system that’s made for e-commerce.
Today, many small, medium and large organizations use Magento to sell their products.
Magento allows sellers to organize categories, products, customers with ease.
It lets you develop a pricing model that suits your customers and your business.
Magento is an open-source software. That means anyone can view, edit and manipulate the code to fit their needs.
Magento gives you an unlimited power on your e-commerce site.
Shopify versus Magento? Which platform is the best?
This article answers these questions.
Shopify is more desirable because it offers features that make it easy to get started.
Magento is popular among web developers.
Web developers love Magento because they can do almost anything their clients ask them. The Magento platform offers a vast number of features.
Before we get started, I’ll like to point out that Shopify or Magento isn’t the only thing you need to develop a successful online store.
You need a tool like GrowthFunnel.
GrowthFunnel helps you create popups that convert visitors into customers, then fans of your business on social media platforms.
Click here to sign up for free today.
GrowthFunnel works with Shopify and Magento.
Shopify versus Magento: Inventory management
The Shopify Starter plan at $14 per month limits you to 25 store items.
The Magento Open Source lets you upload an unlimited number of items on your store.
But while Magento allows you to list unlimited items on your store, your server and site loading speed may suffer if you add too many products to your Magento store.
These are things you don’t worry about with Shopify.
Shopify manages your hosting and performance for you.
Yes, you can add 1 million products to your Magento store, but you’ll need the infrastructure to support it.
Shopify versus Magento: Calculating Shipping Costs
Both Magento and Shopify allow you to calculate shipping costs for customers. You need this important feature if you’re selling physical goods.
They let you calculate shipping costs based on a combination of conditions like:
- Weight vs. Destination
- Price vs. Destination
- Number of items vs. Destination
Where Magento shines is that it lets you set some Shopping Cart rules in your store.
You can use this feature to set free shipping for customers when some conditions are met.
Here’s how it looks like in Magento:
For example, you could say, if someone buys $500 worth of goods in your store, you’ll send the order for free.
If you’re on Advanced Shopify, which costs $299 per month, you’ll be able to use your custom credentials with USPS, Canada Post, UPS, or FedEx to display calculated shipping rates at checkout.
These carriers offer a wide range of shipping options to present to your customers.
Third-party shipping rates are based on:
- The weight of the order.
- Your package default shipment dimension. (With this option, your default product dimensions are sent to the shipping carrier and dimension weight are determined by your product’s height, width, and depth).
- The receiving name at checkout. Customers who enter their company’s name will qualify for business rates. Business rates are usually lower than residential rates.
If you sell variants of a product, you’ll have to ensure that your product weight for each variant is accurate. If your weights are not accurate, the calculated shipping costs will be incorrect.
You have the complete freedom to do whatever you want in Magento.
With Shopify, you need to rely on third-party shipping charges to make your store work beautifully for shoppers.
The most popular shipping carriers on Shopify are:
- USPS
- Canada Post
- FedEx
- UPS
Shopify also gives you the option to re-adjust shipping rates if they are too high to attract customers.
Or, they are too low to cover your own packaging and handling costs.
Shopify versus Magento: Providing coupons and discount codes
Offering discounts on your online store is a powerful marketing tactic for generating demand for your products.
All Shopify plans let you generate discount codes.
For example, Skinny Teatox, a Shopify store, is offering discounts on its site.
You can specify how long a discount code can be valid and the maximum number of times it can be used.
Shopify presents to you a Sales by Discount report in your merchant dashboard.
Use this information to track which discounts are converting into sales the most.
It’s super easy to create a discount on your Shopify account.
From your Shopify admin, go to Discounts.
From Discounts, click Create Discount.
Then enter a name for the new discount in the Discount code text box.
You can make your discount require a minimum amount of purchase before a shopper is eligible. Enter a monetary value in the field that appears below it.
Creating discounts in Magento is a little bit trickier, but it gives you more options.
You can choose who you want to see your discounts.
For example, you may want to offer discounts to customers who are not logged in. You may also want to offer Wholesale or Retail discounts to visitors.
The ability to offer discounts and customize them shouldn’t weigh too much on your decision when choosing between Shopify and Magento.
Yes, discounts are powerful ways of increasing sales.
But, they can also do significant damage to your brand.
Or worse, they can make the store unprofitable.
There are four types of discounts you can offer shoppers:
- Percentage-Based Discount: This is the most popular type of discount. You offer shoppers 5%, 10%, or 25% on goods they buy on your online store.
- Dollar Value Discount: If an item on your store sells for more than $200, this type of discount may help you boost sales. With this kind of discount, you only drop prices for customers when they buy up to a certain amount in dollar value. For example, if a customer buys $1,000 worth of goods, you may give them 10% discount.
- Free Shipping: Most shoppers cited the absence of free shipping as the reason for abandoning their carts. Offering free shipping is a great way to boost conversions. Use free shipping in combination with a minimum purchase requirement to boost your sales.
- Free Gift: A gift is an additional value a customer gets for buying from you. If you use it strategically, it’ll boost your average order size/value.
Keep in mind that popups are one of the most effective ways to display discounts on your store.
With GrowthFunnel, you can create personalized popups that attract visitors and make them convert on your online store whether you’re using Shopify or Magento.
You can create beautiful popups with our premade templates.
So, you don’t have to be a designer. Just a little tweak and you’re done.
You can sign up for free today.
Shopify versus Magento: Payment Gateway Options
If you’re not using Shopify Payments to accept credit cards, Shopify offers over 70 credit card payment providers to choose from.
Keep in mind that there are two types of credit card payment providers:
- Direct providers
- External providers
If you’re using a direct provider, customers can complete their purchase on your online store.
But if you’re using an external provider, your checkout page will be hosted outside your online store.
If you want customers to stay on your website, you’ll need to enable a direct provider instead.
Here are some direct providers on Shopify:
- Authorize.Net
- Stripe
- SecurePay
- CardStream
Magento allows you to use your payment provider of choice.
You can easily create and handle transactions inside your account.
Here’s how the flow looks like if you’re using an external payment provider with Magento.
Magento Open Source also allows you to accept credit cards payment directly from your site.
Magento supports payment gateways like:
- Amazon Simple Pay
- Checkout by Amazon
- Authorize.Net
- ChronoPay
- PayPal
Shopify versus Magento: Themes
Both Shopify and Magento offer premium themes.
Shopify themes start at $180. While you can get some nice Magento themes for $50.
Shopify offers 51 paid themes and 10 free themes on its Themes marketplace, with more than 140 styles to choose from.
Their themes are perfectly optimized for the mobile browsing experience.
Retina is one of my favorite Shopify themes.
Only 12 themes are available on Magento’s marketplace, but there are other marketplaces like ThemeForest.net and TemplateMonster.com, where you can buy Magento themes.
Shopify versus Magento: Apps and Add-ons
Shopify has over 1,200 apps to help you extend the functionality of your online store.
On the Shopify App Store, you’ll find apps for almost anything.
- Adding customer reviews to your product pages
- Publishing your product on Facebook
- Getting in-depth marketing analytics of your store,
And many more.
For example, Oberlo is a Shopify app that helps you find a product to sell and import directly into your Shopify store.
When you receive an order, Oberlo will ship it to your customers. You don’t worry about packaging and shipping.
MailChimp is one of the most popular marketing automation software, focused on email marketing.
They developed a Shopify app that connects your store to your MailChimp account for free.
On Magento, you’ll find extensions on almost anything.
On the Magento Marketplace, you’ll see extensions for:
- Account and Finance
- Content and Customization
- Customer Support
- Marketing
- Payment and Security
- Reporting and Analytics
- Sales
- Shipping and Fulfilment
- Site Optimization and a lot more.
Magento currently has over 2,700 extensions listed on its marketplace.
When you make a product search on Google, you may see searches that contain product ads like the one below.
BetaBrand, one of the merchants in the ads above, uses Magento.
They used a Magento extension to get their products listed on Google Shopping ads.
For example, an extension like Simple Google Shopping lets you advertise your products on Google search results.
The Refer a Friend Magento extension is a tool that lets your existing customers share your business with their friends and family.
With this extension, you can reward customers whenever they introduce your company to prospects.
Conclusion
Shopify and Magento are both amazing e-commerce platforms where you can set up your store.
If your store is new with few products, Shopify is the place you should start from.
But if you’re planning to sell lots of products and want 100% complete freedom and control over your store, Magento is the perfect e-commerce platform for you.
Don’t forget that to make these platforms work exceptionally well for your business, you need an amazing tool like GrowthFunnel.
GrowthFunnel will help you convert customers faster and build your business on social media.
