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Shopify vs Amazon WS vs Magento vs BigCommerce

by Generic SEO Guy
13 replies
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Hi guys,

I have a client who's looking to move to a new platform (currently on Yahoo! Small Business, which is not very flexible) and we are looking to the 4 solutions in the thread subject line. Does anyone have experience with these? The site has about 3,000 SKUs by the way.
#amazon #bigcommerce #magento #shopify
  • Profile picture of the author rafsco
    Hello,
    you might not like my experience. I have tried all of them but Amazon and I have to say that only Prestashop does everything I need.
    The last version (1.6 i think) makes it easier to import and export products, categories,...and it is a real plus feature. Plus, no recurring fees. I would give a try to PrestaShop and maybe hire a graphic designer for a one time template creation.
    Like any platform it takes a little bit of time to learn everything but, again, it does everything I have always needed.
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    • Profile picture of the author Generic SEO Guy
      Thank you for the input. How big is the site (how many pages/products) and what is it that Prestashop has that the others lacked? I'm also largely concerned with SEO-friendliness.
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      • Profile picture of the author rafsco
        Originally Posted by Generic SEO Guy View Post

        Thank you for the input. How big is the site (how many pages/products) and what is it that Prestashop has that the others lacked? I'm also largely concerned with SEO-friendliness.
        I dont think there is any limit to the size other thn the limit your hosting plan has.
        i.e.: shopify makes it hard to bulk upload pictures, bigcommerce have very pushy salesmen that all they care is to sell you the biggest plan.

        For me Prestashop always made it.

        SEO i dont know too much but ecommerce sites are hard to rank, you really need to work on building a community and keep customers coming back. If your customers will be coming back periodically you should be able to afford ppc or paid traffic. If you are making a one time sale make sure to have a good margin.

        I used to build ecommerce sites, put hours of work, to find out later that it was impossible to make a profit.

        Now, first i drive traffic to a landing page to study ppc cost and ctr, if the numbers are good i move forward with the ecommerce site.
        Last, make first a dummy website, when ready clone one for yourself and sell the other on eBay or Flippa, if your items allows you to. 99% of people arent going to do anything with it, so dont worry about competition.

        Good luck
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        • Profile picture of the author Generic SEO Guy
          Originally Posted by rafsco View Post

          I dont think there is any limit to the size other thn the limit your hosting plan has.
          i.e.: shopify makes it hard to bulk upload pictures, bigcommerce have very pushy salesmen that all they care is to sell you the biggest plan.

          For me Prestashop always made it.

          SEO i dont know too much but ecommerce sites are hard to rank, you really need to work on building a community and keep customers coming back. If your customers will be coming back periodically you should be able to afford ppc or paid traffic. If you are making a one time sale make sure to have a good margin.

          I used to build ecommerce sites, put hours of work, to find out later that it was impossible to make a profit.

          Now, first i drive traffic to a landing page to study ppc cost and ctr, if the numbers are good i move forward with the ecommerce site.
          Last, make first a dummy website, when ready clone one for yourself and sell the other on eBay or Flippa, if your items allows you to. 99% of people arent going to do anything with it, so dont worry about competition.

          Good luck
          Thanks for all the tips shopify and bigcommerce. PUshy salesman can be really annoying!

          In terms of SEO, I am referring to things like:

          canonical link rel element management
          301 redirect management
          avoiding duplicate content
          ease of managing/updating meta/title/H1/H2 tags
          XML sitemap creation/management

          I have had one client who used Volusion and it lacked some of these features. It was a bit of a nightmare.
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          • Profile picture of the author rafsco
            Originally Posted by Generic SEO Guy View Post

            Thanks for all the tips shopify and bigcommerce. PUshy salesman can be really annoying!

            In terms of SEO, I am referring to things like:

            canonical link rel element management
            301 redirect management
            avoiding duplicate content
            ease of managing/updating meta/title/H1/H2 tags
            XML sitemap creation/management

            I have had one client who used Volusion and it lacked some of these features. It was a bit of a nightmare.
            I know you can set metatags and such, I don't know about duplicates or canonical link, even never heard of this.
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            Joe Falcade
            Make Money with greedyjoe.com

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            • Profile picture of the author KhanhHQ
              Of all above e-commerce flatforms, i love Magento most. Why?

              I won't tell you in details the reasons because people explained them many times on the Internet. Magento is the leading flatform for e-commerce from small to big scale business.

              I love Magento because of their extensions. They make Magento unique and powerful for both performance and CRO.

              Another reason is that Magento is SEO friendly. Search Engines love Magento.

              What's your choice?
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              • Profile picture of the author Dunhill
                I cannot agree with you more.

                Magento also has the most extensions you can think of. If you look at most of the ecommerce that are doing well in 1st pages of google, they are mostly made out of Magento.
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  • Profile picture of the author tiana with ecomdash
    If your client is comfortable developing aspects of his website on his own (or maybe that's what you do for him?) then Magento is a great solution. Shopify is another good option, and its fantastic for people with less experience building a site (intuitive, user-friendly,pre-built themes to choose from, etc).

    Good luck to you both!
    Tiana with ecomdash
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    • Profile picture of the author Generic SEO Guy
      Originally Posted by tiana with ecomdash View Post

      If your client is comfortable developing aspects of his website on his own (or maybe that's what you do for him?) then Magento is a great solution. Shopify is another good option, and its fantastic for people with less experience building a site (intuitive, user-friendly,pre-built themes to choose from, etc).

      Good luck to you both!
      Tiana with ecomdash
      Thank you. There is no full time developer on staff so it sounds like as great as Magento sounds (and I've certainly seen some impressive sites using it) it probably won't be an option. Sounds like Shopify might be the way to go...for now at least.
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  • Profile picture of the author Acornia
    They all work out of the box without any development, which one depends on how micro you want to go. Shopify is probably the best SaaS and the nicest templates, Prestashop is the next level up and then on to Magento. Magento is a technical platform, but if you ignore that it's also the most powerful, the problem is that most want to adjust it and you just don't need to. As you go up you can automate more, so Shopify growth needs business resource (employee costs), Magento needs more technical resource however that releases your business people. It's not just about now, it's also about the next 3-6mths and 1-2yrs.
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  • Profile picture of the author brotherZ
    Any reason why you didn't mention OsCommerce. I played with OsCommerce before and I loved it.
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  • Profile picture of the author Generic SEO Guy
    Originally Posted by Acornia View Post

    They all work out of the box without any development, which one depends on how micro you want to go. Shopify is probably the best SaaS and the nicest templates, Prestashop is the next level up and then on to Magento. Magento is a technical platform, but if you ignore that it's also the most powerful, the problem is that most want to adjust it and you just don't need to. As you go up you can automate more, so Shopify growth needs business resource (employee costs), Magento needs more technical resource however that releases your business people. It's not just about now, it's also about the next 3-6mths and 1-2yrs.
    Thank you for explaining all of that. Sounds like there are some tradeoffs we'll need to consider.

    Originally Posted by brotherZ View Post

    Any reason why you didn't mention OsCommerce. I played with OsCommerce before and I loved it.
    No reason. It just so happens that the 4 I mentioned are the 4 currently being considered.
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    • Profile picture of the author ShristiJohn
      Well, all of these are the best eCommerce platform. But according to me, I would like to prefer Opencart or Magento regarding an ecommerce website. Because, As I know that for light platform, Opencart is the best ecommerce platform and for heavy platform, Magento is the best one. Both of them provide attractive features and services according to the needs.
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