29 Jul, 2020
Nowadays, businesses are turning more towards online services and online sales of goods. There are multiple advantages of having an online presence. Firstly, it opens up a new dimension to you, allowing you to reach out to the global customers. Secondly, it builds the faith and trust of the customers who can contact you through the online platforms. Thirdly, by applying various online strategies and using a reliable platform, you can increase sales while the customers become more aware of your brand. Hence, it is essential to choose the best online platform for developing an e-commerce portal. This exclusive domain is called shopping portal development and in this article, we are going to show you the best of the lot.
Among many e-commerce platforms available today, WooCommerce and OpenCart are perhaps the most popular ones owing to their fantastic features. If you already know about these two platforms and want to know which one is the best, here is an analysis that might help you. Here, we will make a comparative analysis of both the platforms to see the possibilities associated with them. Also, the platform you choose for your business has to be suitable for your business. Hence, we will try to show you multiple aspects of these two platforms so that you can find out the one that works for you. So, without any further delay, let’s first know what these platforms have in offer for you.
WooCommerce: Introduced in 2011 by WooThemes, WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin. Initially, it was designed to convert a WordPress website into a functioning online store. Since then, WooCommerce has been a huge success. Being developed by a renowned company, it has a huge set of features that makes the shopping experience very engaging for the visitors. Though a powerful platform, WooCommerce is very easy to use. The most current WordPress users are finding this platform as a great solution. WooCommerce takes only a few minutes to install and there are plenty of themes it offers.
OpenCart: Launched in 2008, OpenCart is an open-source platform. Initially, it was designed to manage the store very easy for everyone, no matter how big the store is. As an open-source platform, it is free and offers its own themes and extensions. Being a user-friendly platform, OpenCart is more popular among the newcomers. The medium-sized stores can be managed appropriately with this open platform owing to the many features it offers. The best part of this platform is that it allows you to manage multiple stores within the same interface. The initial and ongoing costs are affordable. However, customization is not very easy and plugins and extensions are less in number compared to other platforms.
Ease of Installation & Usage:
You can install WooCommerce easily by navigating to your ‘Plugins’. After the activation, simply fill in a few questions about your store and you’re done.
You can either install OpenCart manually or by using a single click script installer. Manually installing this platform is a little complicated process since it requires a lot of technical skills.
Design:
There are more than 2,100 free themes and also over 30,000 paid themes in WooCommerce. It gives you an opportunity to have a level of specialization in your business domain.
OpenCart provides you with just a basic store design. There are options for free and paid themes that would cost around $60-70. A skill in HTML and CSS is important while setting these themes.
Price:
As an open-source platform, WooCommerce is free to install and use on your WordPress website. The cost for a domain name is $10 per year and hosting service charges are approximately $5-100 per month.
OpenCart, also an open-source platform, is free. All you need to know is how to set up and design your store. If you don’t know, you need to hire web developer and the charges vary from company to company.
Customer Support:
The official WordPress forums are the first stop when you need support with WooCommerce. It has a huge community happy to help you or else you can check their documentation.
When it comes to support with OpenCart, support is limited to documentation and forums. Also, you can hire third-party developers on their website for help. There are two packages for one-time help and a premium support plan.
Features & SEO:
WooCommerce is loaded with features enabling you to manage your store and apply your email marketing techniques. Adjustable taxes and shipping rates, payment processing, unlimited number of products and categories, mobile-friendly site structure are some of its great features.
OpenCart, on the contrary, lacks many features and yet gives you an opportunity to add any feature you can imagine. It has some basic features like listing unlimited products and images on each product, a variety of currencies and languages, plenty of extensions and apps.
Above are some of the important aspects of WooCommerce and OpenCart. Now that you know all of these, you can make a choice. If you are looking to hiring a developer, feel free to get in touch with us. We, Idiosys Technologies, are a renowned company providing web and app development to a huge number of clients across the globe. With a team of highly skilled and experienced developers, we provide top-notch services in shopping portal development. To know more about our services and packages, feel free to contact us today!
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