Magento and WordPress can both be used to grow your business, both can support customer outreach, and both can be used for e-commerce, so determining which one is most appropriate for your business can be difficult. However, the two programs are designed differently and ultimately serve separate purposes, so picking one over the other really comes down to what your goals are and what you want from your site.
The main things to consider are whether your objective is to grow your customer base or to sell products and whether you have the skill and knowledge to use one more easily than the other.
What Can Magento and WordPress Offer Your Business?
Both Magento and WordPress can be used to grow and develop your business, but they’re responsible for different types of growth: essentially, WordPress can grow your customer base while Magento can increase sales. To determine which platform is best for your business, you must first understand what Magento and WordPress are and what they’re designed to do.
WordPress Is for Publishing Content
WordPress is a content management system that functions as a blogging tool and platform for your website. It’s an easy-to-use, plugin-based platform that has become so popular that over 60 million websites worldwide use WordPress templates. And while WordPress is primarily a content publishing platform, it can also be tweaked to serve as an e-commerce tool as well. Some of the more popular features of WordPress include:
- Easy to use and schedule publications
- Available in over 70 languages
- Customizable thanks to the thousands of plugins
- Already search engine optimized
- Flexible and simple to use
Magento Is for Ecommerce
Magento is e-commerce software for anything from small local businesses to huge international companies, allowing businesses of all sizes and in all industries to sell their products on the internet. According to Magento, about one-quarter of the world’s online retailers use their service for e-commerce sites, and that’s probably thanks to the flexibility of the service and the wide variety of features available through the platform, including:
- Business reports
- Catalog and management tools
- SEO tools
- Marketing capabilities
- Management capabilities for multiple stores
- Mobile-friendly e-commerce
Similar Benefits Offered by Both Platforms
Despite their different functions, WordPress and Magento software share a great deal of features, which can make it difficult for businesses to choose one over the other. For example, both platforms are open-source, meaning you can use and even change the code as necessary to suit your purposes. Both also allow you to use menus, control which versions are being displayed, and let you create complex pages.
The two are equally customizable, have multiple themes, and have great community support. Moreover, WordPress can even be modified into an e-commerce tool, though Magento is much more sophisticated, offering better security and more options when it comes to the shopping module, including the ability to redeem gift cards, manage prices, and offer shipping options.
Select the Website Platform That Best Suits Your Needs
Choose WordPress for blogging and customer outreach: Today, blogging is part of SEO best practices because it’s an important resource for disseminating high-quality content, connecting with other authoritative voices, and for reinforcing your brand. Blogging also helps pad social media accounts with relevant information, and social media likes are in fact taken into account with Google’s latest algorithm.
WordPress, therefore, is an essential tool for any company that’s trying to reach new customers, keep in touch with existing ones, and improve search engine rankings. But it’s important to note that on a very basic level, WordPress can be used as a simple e-commerce solution, especially if you only have a few products to sell and are primarily concerned with blogging and content management.
Choose Magento if you’re looking to expand into online sales: It’s becoming increasingly common for companies these days to close up brick and mortar stores in favor of online shops, and even many of the businesses that do maintain physical locations still have e-commerce sites.
This is because more and more of the shopping being done in the world is happening online, and companies that refuse to keep up with this changing consumer behavior will not remain competitive for long. Magento is the perfect solution for businesses looking to get into e-commerce or expand their current online retail stores because it offers a wide variety of features and a gives you control over various aspects of the shoppiing and checkout process.
Which Is The Easiest To Use?
If technology isn’t your specialty and you plan to tackle the WordPress or Magento management yourself, WordPress can be much easier to use for beginners. To use WordPress, you create pages and write posts that you can publish and later edit, and you index these pages and posts using function tags and loops. Magento is similar but more complex, so while both programs function using an analogous technique, achieving the same results in Magento takes more time, effort, and programming finesse than it does in WordPress.
Choosing to use Magento or WordPress really comes down to what you want to accomplish with your site. They were both designed for different purposes, and while there is some crossover, the two are ultimately specialized for separate tasks. WordPress is better designed for web hosting, blogging, and content publication, and it’s easier to use.
Magento, on the other hand, is strictly an e-commerce platform that will allow you to sell online. There are plugins and themes you can use to turn a WordPress site into a basic e-commerce site, but this isn’t recommended for companies that are serious about having a professional online retail business. You wouldn’t buy dress shoes to go jogging, and you’re better off leaving e-commerce to Magento and blogging to WordPress.
If you need more help choosing a platform for your website, contact Lead to Conversion™ and talk to one of our team members,
