WordPress and eCommerce go hand in hand, and many turn to the WordPress platform to build an online shop.
Shopify is a standalone platform that allows users to open up a hosted online shop in mere minutes. At first it might seem paradoxical to mix the two platforms, however, last year Shopify announced the publication of their WordPress plugin and three free WordPress themes. Clearly, this is a move to break into the larger WordPress community and become the eCommerce solution of choice for some of them.
Will it work? Does it make sense? That’s what we are here to find out. In this article, we will show you why you might consider integrating Shopify with WordPress (and why not) as well as give you the necessary steps to make it happen. Let’s go.
Why Use Shopify to Open a WordPress Online Shop?
Since WordPress already has WooCommerce and other native eCommerce plugins, why would you consider Shopify instead? Let’s discuss.
Pros
One of the main reasons to use Shopify is simplicity. The platform eliminates much of the necessary technical know how that makes setting up an online shop so complicated. Instead, now you can take care of your website with WordPress in the usual way while Shopify handles the eCommerce part.
No need to deal with code, CSS or anything else. Shopify offers a secure shopping cart, SSL, 70 different payment methods, flexible shipping options, tax calculations, inventory management and a host of languages. The service even includes options to sell on social media and you can get all of that for relatively small money (from $9/month).
In addition to that, Shopify offers WordPress themes that are made to work with their shopping cart and help you showcase your products to get the most out of your shop. Alternatively, if you already have a site going, you can easily integrate products from Shopify and take advantage of their eCommerce architecture. Plus, by using your own site, you are able to use your own domain for the shop instead of a subdomain on the Shopify platform.
In addition to that, you can take advantage of the advanced content marketing, blogging, SEO (not Shopify’s strong suit) and other benefits of using the WordPress platform. That way, you truly get the best of both worlds.
In short, integrating Shopify with WordPress is a very cool opportunity for business owners who want to start an online shop quickly without diving too deeply into the technical aspects of it.
Cons
Of course, one of the biggest arguments against it is that of decentralization. At the moment it is not possible to administer Shopify products and WordPress content from the same place.
As you will see below, you always have to switch back and forth depending on whether you want to take care of your products or the rest of your site. While not too big a deal, constantly having to deal with two different platforms can get annoying.
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