Many of the same rules to success apply whether you’re using Shopify or WooCommerce for your eCommerce platform.
Rely on the core system
Both Shopify and WooCommerce cover ~95% of what any store needs right out of the box paired with officially developed extensions for things like Bundles and Subscriptions.
Hold your service vendors accountable
Any eCommerce business uses service providers for things like: email marketing, payment processing, shipping and fulfillment. These vendors provide plugins or Apps that are required to integrate with their services. While these extensions can provide maintenance and compatibility problems, they’re required and tend to be safer single-service type extensions.
What store owners need to bear in mind with these service vendors is that it’s a two way street. Feedback, including bug reports, is crucial to the long-term success of that relationship. This applies to large-scale vendors just as much as smaller and cloud-based solution providers. They all need to be worked with and held accountable. It’s part of the cost of using them. If the relationship sours, you know that you’ve done your part to work with them and an eventual split is justified.
Do not trust third party plugin or App vendors
I see it all the time. Clients get drawn in by the marketing promises made by third party plugin vendors: Make your website do XYZ for a nominal cost. What the sales literature doesn’t tell you is that the product isn’t well built, tries to silo its services, and will bombard you with SPAM not just to your inbox but all around your site. It will load extra things that slow down your site, steal your data, and create maintenance and compatibility issues. All for a nominal cost!
Thin layer of custom code works best
Shopify provides a convenient way to add custom code in its theme Customizer. It supports CSS, HTML, JavaScript, Liquid dynamic embeds, and Metadata fields. Its App Embed system lets you activate third party App logic site-wide or in specific sections. The platform even has a Flows App to configure triggers and actions.
WooCommerce as an open-source platform lets you customize further, but at risk of going too far. The safety rails are easier to overcome. Code customizations should never go in your theme (or child theme) functions file. The Code Snippets plugin is best to house these, providing title, description, and toggling features. It’s also wise to use the latest generation in Block Theming to basically erase the theme vendor and better utilize the core system – see Blank Block Theme.
Custom code should be small and portable. In theory, it can replace an entire third party application by achieving just what you need versus an oversized solution. Some maintenance is required.
