In the day-to-day work of the agency, our clients come to us with various CMS for the management of online stores. A small part of them are developments from IT companies dedicated to programming ecommerce tailored to each client's needs. Increasingly, we are encountering clients who have Prestashop and Woocommerce CMS.
For years, the evolution of CMS content management systems has been very remarkableThe design of the site is based on the use of modules and plugins, as well as on the design through templates and themes.
We asked ourselves, what is the best content management system to set up an Ecommerce? For this, we have compared Woocommerce and Prestashop. The first is a WordPress plugin with the necessary functionalities to manage an online store. The second is a complete CMS, offering modules to customize the shopping and management experience.
Both are open source softwareThis provides us with a community of developers to consult doubts, and both also work on Linux servers.
Main functions of a content management system (CMS)
To begin to equate the two platforms, we must first be clear about the functionalities that make them useful.
The main functions that a CMS must have are:
- Creation and designTemplates, themes, plugins and modules facilitate the design of product pages and tabs in an agile and efficient way. It allows us to add custom fields to our designs and design elements adapted to each need.
- Product management: Organize products by categories, tags. Add photos, and videos to the products tab. Include filter options for color, size, size.
- Shopping cart and checkout processPayment processes through different platforms with security and efficiency are fundamental in any online store manager.
- Order, inventory and customer management: the collection and analysis of the purchasing process, customer database, and inventory management, is the basis of the daily work we ask of a CMS.
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO): facilitate indexing, rewrite product and category goals and descriptions, canonical url, redirection of old products, etc., facilitates the visibility of an online store on the web.
- Integration with external services: Interoperability with other platforms, services and marketing solutions is a competitive advantage over proprietary software developments.
Performance and loading speed in Prestashop and Woocommerce
Perhaps, in the performance metrics and loading speed is where the most notable differences between one CMS and another are to be found.
Woocommerce needs a WordPress installation as a base and load CSS and JS files that are not always necessary. We could say that they are "just in case" files, which slow down the loading of the web. These files can be reduced in weight, minify CSS and Javascript to improve the Core Web Vitals of the web.
Prestashop is able to load much faster with a high number of products, query the database more efficiently, have a large number of simultaneous visits and manage images efficiently without slowing down the web load and improving the user experience.
How to decide between WooCommerce and Prestashop?
When setting up an online store and deciding on Woocommerce or Prestashop, there are several determining factors. There are two fundamental elements, according to our experience, that can make you opt for one or the other, apart from those already exposed:
- The price of the modules or plugins: Prestashop development and installation can be more difficult for a new user and somewhat more expensive. Many Prestashop modules require an annual subscription. In Woocommerce, being a WordPress plugin, it is more intuitive and many people are already familiar with the WordPress manager, in addition to having a large community and many free plugins.
- Number of products in the online storePrestashop is a CMS designed and planned for the management of online stores. If the volume of products is very high, more than 5,000 references, the performance of Prestashop is superior to Woocommerce, and we recommend it.
Both managers will offer the basic functions for an online store. Even if necessary, you can have a part of the catalog only for registered customers and discount coupons from external platforms.
In case of publishing blog articles, our recommendation for customers with Prestashop is to install a wordpress to manage the content and relieve the blog load to Prestashop.
With both CMSs, it is possible to make code modifications to provide them with particular and customized functionalities, and even contract the programming of plugins.
The possibility of learning with the communities of developers of both platforms and making queries on the web, the possible solutions to common problems, makes of these CMSs the leading online store managers in the world.
Another day we will talk about Shopify, a Canadian proprietary CMS released in 2006, designed for online stores and ecommerce, which offers you everything you need to avoid messing with developers and servers, but unless you use Shopify Payments commission your sales, Amazon style.
Did you find this information useful? At Geotelecom we recommend these platforms In our experience, these are the ones that work best when it comes to improvement, among other aspects, the SEO of a website.
But, if you want us to help you get the most out of your website, we can help you, contact us at right now and we'll tell you how we work to develop a strategy to boost your business, call us!
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