Opencart Developers

Question 1

Which is better Opencart or Woocommerce?

Answer

As specialist Opencart developers who also offer Woocommerce services (these are the only two ecommerce platforms we develop with) we feel we have a very valid answer to this question. Simple put Opencart is designed from the ground up to be an ecommerce platform only, and woocommerce is a plugin for the venerable Wordpress system. The two platforms serve different purposes well. Opencart has a better admin backend and is solely focused on selling online, but it is limited visually out of the box compared to woocommerce and also is more technically demanding to setup. Opencart is also not as good for article posting as wordpress. The flipside, Woocommerce does the job, but is a bit more clunky to deal with in the admin side. It has more theme options and is easier to make look very pretty, however it also can take more maintenance because Wordpress has updates frequently which can often mean a site backup and test to see if anything is affected by plugin or core updates. We would advise Opencart for larger or potentially larger stores, woocommerce for magazine or info style sites that want a shop element. Both platforms have great SEO potential.

Question 2

Is Opencart good for a website?

Answer

Opencart is a great solution to your ecommerce needs. Once it is setup and working, it is nice and easy to operate as a business owner and it is a very reliable and stable platform. Other options for the novice store owner are Shopify which is easier to manage but has lots of limitations. We have done a significant number of migrations for people from Shopify, to a full Opencart store where they have full control.

Question 3

Is Opencart difficult?

Answer

Opencart is easy to use for the store owner yes. It is free to use, has a solid open source code base, and offers a secure and reliable solution for your ecommerce site. It is also very scaleable and with the right server setup can handle huge amount of products and traffic.

Question 4

Is Shopify better than Opencart?

Answer

Shopify is ahead in terms of simplicity for user setup, but as commercial prospect Opencare is light years ahead of Shopify. OpenCart is more complicated to set up and maintain because you need some server and code knowledge, also it requires updates on occasion whereas Shopify is set and forget. The flipside to this is Shopify costs significantly each month, is never your platform (your always just renting a room) and has a lot of limitations to it that disadvantages it to Opencart. For one thing Opencart SEO potential is far better than Shopify.

Question 5

Is Opencart good for SEO?

Answer

Though SEO relies on keywords and OpenCart SEO has some basic but vital things for SEO, for example creating Meta Titles, Meta Description or Meta Tag Keywords, you have to add an affordable plugin like GeekoDevs complete seo pack for ultimate SEO power.
Once you have got an extension like this installed, the world is your oyster and Opencart when built and setup professionally can rank at the top of Google for big keywords as we have done for many clients.

Question 6

Is Opencart fully responsive?

Answer

Yes it is when using the default theme. The issues can arise when using an aftermarket theme and you may need an Opencart Developer like us to help fix issues with the mobile and tablet version of your site in that case. If the theme is very popular like Journal 3 it is fully responsive but will still need setting up for your site.

Question 7

What hosting is best for Opencart?

Answer

This depends on the size of your site, the type of products (for example one site we built has over 3Tb of digital product files stored on the server) unlimited data transfer, SSL certificate to secure your online store, suitable support (we offer a live support service), caching and not to mention the required server specifications. We would advise as a rule to use VPS cpanel hosting for small to medium sites (with suitable memory, ssd storage and processors). For bigger sites that have lots of products and visitors, you will need something like a Linode dedicated server or cloud hosting like Amazon EC3. SEO Leaders can setup and provide VPS or dedicated server hosting.

Question 8

Is Opencart Secure?

Answer

In our experience Opencart is very secure indeed. It is an Open source platform and has a solid code base that does not require weekly security patches like Wordpress/Woocommerce. In all of the time we have worked with Opencart sites, the only hacked sites we have encountered have been due to the owners installing an insecure aftermarket plugin to the site (once, the actual plugin had a backdoor!). For this reason it is wise to use a professional Opencart Developer like SEO Leaders who can ensure your site is locked down as securely as possible.