By Praminder Bhuller | Business | Web Design | July 19, 2020

WordPress or Magento 2 for Our Clients’ e-commerce site?

There is a growing debate among Website Developers as to which Platform is suitable for an e-commerce site. Although, Magento is the industry standard for e-commerce sites, WordPress is increasingly being taken more seriously for e-commerce. I think this case study is a good way of helping you to decide which CMS would benefit your business.

We had a new client approach us for a website that was going to be a business to business store. The products were in the form of PDF reports, and the payments needed to be accepted from mainly, England, America and China. They had just sold their old business for a six figure sum, and wanted to create a new business, which would be a mirror image of the previous enterprise..

One of my Website Project Managers (Anthony) and I had a telephone conference meeting with the client. We needed to have an outline of the needs and demands that the client wanted from the new website. Looking at the old site, and tapping into the client’s experience, we would then be able to arrive at a solution.

The Client’s specifications

These are the important points we were able to learn.

  1. The website is an e-commerce site.
  2. Traffic is expected to be around 600 visitors /day.
  3. The products for sale will number at around 50 products. This number will grow over the next couple of years to about 100 products.
  4. The numbers of the products being sold will number in their 10’s of thousands.
  5. The client wants the ability to add and remove the products themself. In fact, the client wants to be able to run the online business independently. They do not want to rely and pay for website developers and administrators to do the work. Therefore, the administration of the website needs to be as simple as possible. The client is not technically minded, and only has a limited experience of using dashboards to run an e-commerce website.
  6. Does not want a login facility for consumers to make purchases, as they had learn’t from experience that this tended to stop clients from going further to complete the purchases.
  7. The website needs to be contemporary. The client does not want the website to be dated in terms of its aesthetics /design. It needs to be relevant for the next 10 years.
  8. Needs to be accessible on mobile phones.

The Pros & cons of WordPress and magento

We now had our information. It was now time for Anthony and I to decide which technology was the most suitable, based on these specifications.

  1. Magento is seen as the industry standard for e-commerce sites, around the world. It actually ranks number 1 for B2B sites around the world. WordPress is of course the most popular CMS Platform for all websites. And it is being taken more seriously for e-commerce as time goes on. However, WordPress also happens to be targeted by hackers, more than any other site, because of its popularity.
  2. Both of these platforms will be able to handle the 600 visitors per day. This is more of a hosting issue.
  3. Again both the platforms can easily handle 250 products.
  4. Magento and WordPress can process the 10’s of thousands of transactions being made. Again, this is more of an issue with the Hosting.
  5. The client wants the ability to add the products himself, and to add these items to the menu himself. Although WordPress is easier to use, and more intuitive, this is redundant. As a rule we offer at least 3 months post sales support. So whenever, the client needs advice or help, we are always just a phone call away. Furthermore, we will create a simplified back-end dashboard designed specifically with the client in mind.
  6. The client doesn’t want a login facility. I have included this in the list, because it illustrates a need to think about functionality in general. WordPress can not be beaten for functionality. It has thousands of paid and free plugins, that can do just about anything. Magento is not too far behind with it’s extensions. However, because we work with large teams of web developers, we are able to by pass most plugins and instead integrate the functionality directly.
  7. The aesthetics of the website can be customised completely using either platform. This is because we are not using templates. Our website developers are building the website from the ground up. Also, we can’t promise that the aesthetics of the site will not get dated. Who can predict future fashions and trends? However, we do want our website to be strong and durable, in terms of technology. Again, both the CMS platforms have been around for a while. They both look like they will be here for years to come. Magento is slightly ahead for another reason. It is highly scalable. It can easily work for a small online store to Multi National Companies. As this business grows – so too can Magento.
  8. The website can be viewed on any device, regardless of which CMS we use.

in conclusion – it’s because of website security

Looking at the list of pros and cons, there was not much that separated the two. However, we opted for Magento. The main reason is because of security. This client is a giant in his industry. Therefore, I wanted this website to be a stable and steady platform for adding value to his business.

Although WordPress is capable, Magento is more than capable. We will be hosting this site ourselves. I want to be able to sleep at night.

Praminder Bhuller / About Author

I started work as a freelance Graphic Designer for print-based media. This moved over to Graphic Design for the Internet. I have now moved over to online marketing. This includes working with Graphic Designers, Website Developers, SEO Marketers and many more experts. This journey has been going for 20 years.