In a world where online sales are becoming more important as each day passes, it’s no wonder businesses want their eCommerce platform to be up to scratch. With shopping cart functionality, user-friendly design, and high performance at the top of everyone’s list, it’s good to shop around every few years. New companies are cropping up every year and boast functionality that leaves some of the eCommerce stalwarts in the dust.
So, perhaps you’ve been using OpenCart for a while and are looking for something that offers more options. Or perhaps you’re simply looking to see which is best, OpenCart of WooCommerce. Well, you’ve come to the right place. In this article, we examine the pros and cons of both CMS platforms and how to migrate your site from OpenCart to WooCommerce.
What is OpenCart?
Ready to go and packed full of built-in features, OpenCart has long been a go-to for small to medium-sized businesses. The open-source eCommerce solution has been around since 2008, with the goal of simplifying store management.
OpenCart is known for being easy-to-use straight out the box. It also offers free acquisition and lets users expand by creating multiple stores. The best bit? Multiple stores can all be managed on the same interface. So, no more switching between logins and sites every time you want to update a different store. Plus, it’s multilingual and offers multiple currency options without having to invest in an extra tool.
In terms of eCommerce tools, OpenCart has plenty. The ability to sell and spend gift vouchers and coupons, award reward points to customers, and set up recurring payments are all features included in OpenCart’s core software. Plus, extra features can be downloaded from the OpenCart Extension Marketplace. Whilst not all of the 400 extensions are free, there are complementary options to help improve your site.
When it comes to payment OpenCart is compatible with major payment gateways like PayPal, Klarna, Sagepay, Worldpay, and Square. It isn’t bad when it comes to SEO either. The ability to customize meta titles and descriptions is built into the platform. However, deep coding skills come in handy when trying to make any major SEO improvements.
What is WooCommerce?
Like OpenCart, WooCommerce has been a popular open-source eCommerce solution for around a decade. However, the biggest difference between the two is that WooCommerce is a plugin, rather than an independent eCommerce platform. The clever plugin was designed so that users could transform their standard WordPress site into a full-blown online store. With WordPress’s immense catalog of articles and forums behind it, WooCommerce is incredibly user-friendly.
Whilst WooCommerce is somewhat light on integrated features, for users this is actually a benefit. Why? Well, that’s because WooCommerce just adds a basic shopping function to WordPress, leaving users to completely customize their plugins based on their needs. That means access to WordPress’s library of over 7000 free plugins, including WordPress social media plugin, that work with WooCommerce. Plus, any pre-existing built-in WooCommerce features are incredibly powerful.
WooCommerce offers a massive 2,100 free themes. That means users can choose a design that really suits their needs. Plus, invest in a paid WooCommerce account and they’ll have access to a whopping 30,000 themes. When it comes to payment, WooCommerce’s core platform offers payment options from industry leaders PayPal, Stripe, Klarna, and Amazon Pay.
In addition to the vast range of themes and the seamless payment processor integration, the WordPress plugin also gives you levels of user-friendliness that are difficult to match. WooCommerce is easy to install, and getting used to the interface is rarely a problem, even for complete novices. Achieving a decent Google ranking shouldn’t be that difficult, either.
For companies looking to dominate the SERPs then WooCommerce is there to help. Not only can they create SEO-friendly URLs, but users can also write long-form content on WordPress. Additional extensions and plugins can also help improve SEO ranking with more off-page functionality like robots.txt and generating sitemap.xml. Plus, they’ll have access to the world’s leading SEO plugin, Yoast SEO. This user-friendly software guides you through everything from keyword density to suggestions for internal linking. As SEO guidance goes, Yoast SEO is one of the best when it comes to doing it yourself.
Is OpenCart Better than WooCommerce?
It’s worth noting that whilst both OpenCart and WooCommerce are free open-source platforms, they may not be free to run. Everything from hosting to buying a domain name and additional WooCommerce Wholesale Plugins can cost money. So, when making a choice between WooCommerce and OpenCart, make sure you invest some time in estimating cost.
When it comes to SEO there’s a sure-fire winner, WooCommerce. Sure, OpenCart offers some neat SEO features, but they aren’t nearly enough and can be quite tricky to put in place. For example, updating meta information means tinkering with the code, something not everyone will be up for. Plus, common techniques like 301 redirects and canonical tags are difficult to perform if you aren’t familiar with PHP coding. In contrast, WooCommerce’s extensive library of SEO plugins, including Yoast SEO, couldn’t be more user-friendly.
Overall, it’s that easy-to-use functionality that makes WooCommerce a great choice for most companies. It works fluidly with other plugins and offers simple page builder functionality to really customize your site. However, if you want your website to be ready-to-use and you don’t foresee much need for additional features, then OpenCart is still an excellent choice. If in doubt, why not enlist the services of a professional? A freelance SEO consultant like Amine Dahimene will be able to help you migrate without losing valuable traffic.
How to Migrate Your Website from OpenCart to WooCommerce
There are several free and paid methods to migrate your website to WordPress, and along with it, WooCommerce.
First, let’s check how to do it manually free of charge.
Manual OpenCart to WooCommerce migration
In order to make this migration safe we recommend keeping your OpenCart site live until the entire content is transferred.
If you are going to change your domain name, make sure to check our tutorial: How to choose the right domain for your site.
And if you also change your hosting provider, we strongly recommend reading the article: Best Web Hosting Providers for WordPress websites.
So here are the steps to get your OpenCart site moved to WordPress.
First of all, install the WordPress engine. Most of the modern web hosting providers have a 1-click WP installation service. But if your provider does not have one, check the article: How to install WordPress quickly and correctly.
The second step is to choose and install a WooCommerce compatible WordPress Theme. When you get it installed, go ahead and customize it according to your needs (change logo, menu, footer, header, color scheme and pages).
The next stage is to export the data from your Opencart store and then import this data into your WooCommerce shop correctly.
Luckily both frameworks have their import/export tools.
1) Go to your OpenCart dashboard and install the Export/Import tool. It is free of charge.
Navigate: Extensions > Marketplace or via Extensions > Installer > Upload. Then go to Extensions > Modifications and find the Export/Import tool. Click on the Refresh button.
After that just modify the admin’s permissions. Navigate System > Users > User Group > Edit Administrator. And set access and modify permissions for ‘extension/export_import’ (for OC 3.x or later) or ‘tool/export_import’ (for OC 2.x or earlier).
2) Once this app is installed proceed with the export. It allows a bulk export of categories, products, options, attributes, filters and customers. Navigate System > Tools > Export/Import and get all the info extracted.
3) As a result you will get one Excel spreadsheet file with all the data. In order to make a free conversion it is recommended to split the file into 3 and save them in the .csv format.
The first file should contain products.
In your WordPress dashboard navigate WooCommerce > Products and then click Import on the top of the page.
Then just follow the import wizard and get your products to your WooCommerce store.
In order to import your orders, you need to temporarily install Order Export & Order Import for WooCommerce free plugin. Once you install and activate it you can import your orders in the WooCommerce > Orders section. Then you can simply deactivate the plugin as you no longer need it.
And the last step is to import your customers. Here you will also need to temporarily install another free plugin Import Export WooCommerce Customers. When the plugin is installed and activated you can import your customers in the WooCommerce > Customers section. As in the previous step you can deactivate the plugin when the import process is completed.
4) Now go through your frontend and dashboard to make sure that everything went well. Due to different reasons (server limits or bad CSV files) there may be some imperfections that you will need to fix.
When you make sure that everything is alright you can accomplish the migration by disabling your OpenCart store and switching completely to your WooCommerce shop.
Automated OpenCart to WooCommerce migration is the opposite of manual database transfer. It means conducting the store database transfer across various shopping carts without human involvement in the process. There are automated migration tools available at the web market that have been designed to simplify the whole data migration procedure to a few easy-to-do steps.Cart2Cart is one of such tools.
Turn Your Single WooCommerce Store into a Multivendor Marketplace for Free
As the number of online customers is rising, running an eCommerce store can be extremely profitable for any industry. Not only that, you can extend your profit margin by turning your single WooCommerce store into a robust multivendor marketplace. A marketplace enables you to invite vendors to register on your site and sell their products. So, your customers get the opportunity to choose from a variety of options and you can earn a commission from each sale.
If you’ve already configured your WooCommerce store, you only need a perfect tool for launching your online marketplace inside WordPress. Here Dokan Multivendor plugin comes into play.
Dokan is a fast and feature-rich multi-vendor marketplace plugin powered by WooCommerce. Dokan enables you to build a fully functional online marketplace regardless of technical expertise, embracing the best features at minimum or no cost in less time.Dokan gives you a lot of customization options to create a specific niche-based marketplace. Such as a traditional marketplace, digital marketplace, or service-based marketplace. Currently, 70k+ businesses are using Dokan to run their online activities.
So, what are the steps to turn your single WooCommerce store into a multivendor marketplace? Here you go-
-
Install Dokan plugin from your dashboard & configure general settings
-
Setup admin shop & upload products on your own store (optional)
-
Invite vendors to sell on your marketplace
-
Choose and Set up a commission type
Dokan lite comes with all the basic marketplace features and it’s completely FREE. But as your marketplace starts growing, you may need to unlock the pro modules of Dokan. There are four Dokan premium packages starting from $127/year. If you take it as an investment cost, you’ll get rewarded with huge returns in a short period of time.
Professional OpenCart to WordPress Conversion
If you don’t have the time, resources, or inclination to migrate your site yourself or using a plugin, then no fear. Experts like ThemeREX Studio offer worry-free migration services. That means they’ll take care of everything from rebuilding all your website’s pages in WordPress to setting up payment gateways. Plus, that’s all within 7-10 business days. Using a process like this works for many businesses because everything is done by the book. That means no worries about losing traffic and no accidental mistakes that damage the integrity of the new site.
