Nick Dow's blog : Why You Shouldn't Build an Online Store on WordPress
Why You Shouldn't Build an Online Store on WordPress
Undoubtedly, WordPress is probably one of the most popular engines in the world. A huge number of sites of various types have been created on its basis, from personal blogs to online stores and news portals. And a large number of plugins that exist for this engine allow you to expand the basic functionality to incredible capabilities. I will not even try to list what can be done on it.
You can also customize WordPress for yourself without any problems, because there are a great many specialists who are familiar with this engine and it won’t be difficult to find them. And considering that it is also free, it makes it a truly popular solution!
But don't get too excited too soon, because it has plenty of downsides too. And sometimes they more than outweigh the upsides, especially in terms of e-commerce.
Initially, WordPress was created as an engine for blog sites. And later, with the growth of popularity, many plugins began to appear for it. For example, to add basic functionality of an online store, you need to install a plugin called WooCommerce also with woocommerce product filter. It allows you to add products to the catalog and place orders through the basket. And, it would seem, what else is needed to successfully sell your products online?! But this only seems to people who have never sold any normal volumes of goods or services.
For example, all sorts of webmasters will tell you and even show you how easy and effortless it is to create your own online store website on this engine. How to install the necessary plugin, how to set it up, how to add a product to the catalog and even how to optimize the site for SEO promotion. However, no one will show you a functioning, well-selling store on WordPress! When I say selling, I mean sales greater than a few sales per day or even several dozen per day. By modern standards, this is a micro-business where people do not earn a lot of money. Rather, they just buy a workplace for themselves.
So, if you google it, then among popular sellers in the vast majority of niches, you will almost never find stores made on this engine. No, they do exist, of course, but this is more within the margin of error. Most often, stores on WordPress can be found among those who have just started doing business and are doing poorly so far.
Here its conditional freeness wins over, this is the reason why it is so popular. Roughly speaking, you can make a simple online store on this engine for the price of hosting. This is where its significant advantages end.
Cons and Disadvantages of WordPress + WooCommerce
- Very simple. The standard functionality of an online store based on the WooCommerce plugin is really very simple. In the sense that there is essentially nothing there. Just the bare minimum set, so to speak, just for show, that it is there.
- Unsafe. It breaks down easily if you don't install a bunch of security plugins that close various vulnerabilities with varying success. But even with them, it's not a guarantee that no one will touch the site. This is a popular engine and it is broken not because you have annoyed someone, but in order, for example, to send spam from your hosting or do other bad things. In general, to use the server's resources for free.
- Heavy. To bring the store to at least the basic capabilities of commercial engines using third-party plugins, you need to install more than a dozen of them. Add security plugins, caching, optimization for SEO promotion, marketing, etc., and you will get a huge number of these plugins. And the more of them there are, the greater the load they will create on the hosting, and the slower everything will work. Not to mention that even bare WordPress is not the fastest engine. As soon as some more or less normal traffic and user load on the database starts, you will very often remember some mothers! And, in fact, you will be forced to increase server resources so that this somehow works. And this pleasure is quite expensive!
- Lack of support. Since the engine developer is foreign, and WordPress itself is free, you can only count on support from third parties, such as webmasters, programmers, or the same kind of grief entrepreneurs like you who are forced to constantly tinker with this engine. Naturally, there is no documentation on the engine either. You can only study articles and videos from other users on the Internet.
And I'm not even talking about the fact that some of the plugins are in English, and their compatibility with each other is far from 100%. You can install some plugin and put the site down for several hours, or even days. Or ruin something in the current work of the site.
What tasks is WordPress suitable for?
Well, in conclusion, it is necessary to say for what tasks WordPress is suitable. If you already have a promoted information site on this engine, and there are several products or services that you would like to sell. Then there is nothing wrong with implementing this. The main thing is not to overload the store with a bunch of plugins and not to display tens of thousands of products. Otherwise, you will get a Frankenstein that will barely crawl with a high influx of users.
But if you want to make an online store from scratch, and one that won’t cause a ton of problems, both at the beginning and later, then I would recommend using engines that were originally written for online trading. And don’t even consider universal engines. It’s like trying to make a full-fledged comfortable car out of a motorcycle with a sidecar. Nothing good will come of it. It may look decent on the outside, but under the hood there will be a “collective farm”.
You won’t get far with that. And then you’ll spend a ton of money, time and effort to transfer the site to another engine. If WordPress were a really good engine for e-commerce, medium and large players would make sites on it. But only small stores make sites on it, and most often because it’s just free, and not because it’s cool and functional.
In: