WooCommerce or Shopify?

[littlepatchofheaven2015]

I currently sell on ebay and have my own website hosted through Freesites.

I am thinking of changing my website over to an ecommerce site and have been researching and tossing up between WooCommerce (Word Press) or Shopify.

The main reason I want to change over is for the intergration side of things. I am sick of doubling up when I list something on ebay, having to do the very same thing on my website over and over, then when I sell something on either the website or ebay, having to update my stock quickly so I don't sell something I haven't got etc, etc. I like the idea of only having to list a product once and have it sync to the other platform and having my inventory all in once place etc.

I was hoping to get some advice on which to use - if any of you use them and what your experiences have been like? Cost comparisons, postage options, benefits, for or against, all of that sort of stuff, if you don't mind sharing and helping out with your advice?

Any advice would be greatfully received. 

Thanks in advance for your help, cheers, Linda

[digital*ghost]

My reply probably won't be especially helpul, but I thought I'd add it anyway and give the thread a bump...

I didn't look into WooCommerce, but I did sign up for the 14 day free trials for Big Commerce and Shopify recently, which I initially thought would be enough to expolore both at the same time and decide in the best one to go with (it wasn't  but if you do one trial at a time, you should have a decent opportunity to explore options and functions).

I ended up asking another group of sellers for their recommendations, and although I didn't get a high quantity of answers, Shopify was the more popular, with eBay integration being among the benefits cited and it's what I decided to go with in the end. I can't really speak for the integration or inventory management, though, as I do that sort of thing manually to ensure there is 0 chance of error or overselling (eg I list 40% of stock on one site, 40% on another, and keep the remaining for cases where I may need to replace something, or to update stock levels on whichever site sells out first. 

[jellybirddesigns]

I used to have an ecommerce site with Wix and I've heard good things about Shopify.

If you can find one that integrates with Ebay, then great (I don't know if Wix offers that, I never looked)

Shopify is fairly straightforward to set up and their customer service is very good, from what I hear.

WordPress has a fairly steep learning curve, on the other hand.

With Shopify, Wix, and all the others that offer an ecommerce platform - you'll still need to drive your own traffic to your shop, so it can be a lot of work and money to get buyers eyes in front of your own website (I'm sure you know that if you already have your own site).

It was one of the reasons I closed my Wix based shop - I didn't get a single buyer in the 12 months I had the site and I probably spent about $500 on google ads. Now I just stick to Ebay and the other "E" site.

[melbourneclearance]

I use weebly for my outside shop. I was familiar with both wix and weebly at the time and wasn't looking at anything else. I picked weebly in the end because their free site was much easier to use and faster than wix. So I can only say something about weebly pay site.

Pluses of weebly:

- Reasonably fast most of the time

- Can use PayPal as a payment option

- Easy to use

- Their user forum's moderator is (certainly sounds like singular, he's everywhere) very knowledgable and always answers problems within 24 hours.

- 30-day money back cancellation period

Minuses of weebly:

- Their customer support is very slow, takes a week or more to answer emails, see Pluses above for the fantastic forum moderator

- When internet is slow, my weebly site is extremely slow

There is no inventory integration between weebly and ebay. Not wix either when I checked last year. On weebly you can copy and paste all your ebay items into an excel sheet in a very easy format and upload the whole thing. It saved me a lot of time.

[clarry100]

We've been using BigCommerce for about 3-years now.
At first our products were ranking in the first page or two of Google and sales were very promising and on the rise.
The about 18 months back something changed and we lost ranking and sales. We also tried spending around $600 on Adwords but the only winner was Google.
At the moment we are barely covering fees with sales.
So I'm currently engaged in updating all our product images. As I go I'm updating eBay listings with the new images. But when I'm done my intention is to migrate all our products over to Shopify and give that a try.
I will buy a theme from the Shopify store.
We also did this with BigCommerce but the theme had never been updated by the developer so wondered if this might be why the sag in rankings.
Anyway a change to a whole new platform and theme might do something good.
I guess in about another month I will have all the images redone and be ready to launch on Shopify.
Good luck with yours.

[littlepatchofheaven2015]

Thank you so much for your reply - yes it was helpful 🙂

Cheers

[littlepatchofheaven2015]

Thank you, I really appreciate you taking the time to reply 🙂

[littlepatchofheaven2015]

Thank you so much for your input, it is greatly appreciated 🙂

[littlepatchofheaven2015]

Thank you, I really appreciate your reply - I would love to know how you go with Shopify in the future, please keep us updated?

Cheers 🙂

[character_parties_aus]

I run woocommernce and I love it with the majority of my sales via this portal and not eBay but here is a brief snippet.

With Shopify you will pay a monthly fee but everything is pretty much done for you in terms of hosting and security by shopify. Your options on more basic plans in terms of layout anf functionality are fairly limited.The SEO is pretty rubbish.

With woo there is no monthly fee but you might need several paid plugins to make it look tasty. In addition to this you will need to be responsible for your own site security updates and hosting plans which is probably more than the shopify monthly fee. The SEO flexibility and functionality kills hopify but comes at a price. the SEO is pretty good. 

If you are looking for just a small web shop to operate via social media etc Id recommend Shopify even though I dont use it.