Why I think ShopWired is the best e-commerce platform

5 years ago I was running an e-commerce website that was built using Magento (now known as Adobe Commerce). Magento was a real step forward for e-commerce. Firstly there was a free version and there was also a huge community of developers who were writing add-ons and helping other developers produce much better e-commerce sites.

However Magento 2 was launched and I needed to make a decision, should I upgrade the site to the new version? I demo-ed Magento 2 and I just wasn’t happy with the new user interface and how various things worked. It had become a lot more complicated, plus the fact that it had also been bought out by Adobe, which meant they’d need to get a return on their investment somehow and I could see the free version disappearing.

So I considered moving the site to a different platform. I spent a number of weeks trying out Shopify, BigCommerce and others, weighing up their suitability and the costs involved, and it looked like Shopify was going to be the winner. However the thing that held me back from signing up was the fact that on top of a monthly fee, you have to pay them transaction fees to accept major credit cards. This is on top of the fees I’d have to pay to the payment gateways such as PayPal or Stripe.

It was then that I stumbled across ShopWired.

What I like about ShopWired

• The first thing I liked about it was that it was a UK based company. They understood how the UK e-commerce market worked and their offices are here in the UK.
• A number of big name companies such as SuperDrug and Marks and Spencers were already using ShopWired’s platform. This gave me confidence in their system.
• The user interface felt easy-to-use when I trialled it.
• They had a number of good-looking well built themes to choose from.
• Their technical support team were very friendly, helpful and responded quickly.
• There are no transaction fees on external gateways, such as PayPal, and their built-in payment gateway is competitively priced.
• Some of the add-ons cost extra if you choose the basic plan, however they aren’t expensive and you can easily have a good e-commerce site without them.
• I don’t have to worry about security. Using a hosted solution means someone else is thinking about that, leaving me to concentrate on other aspects of the business.

So I signed up! Throughout the whole migration process, their technical support were really helpful, even taking the product data from my Magento site and converting into a format I could use to import into the new site.

What I don’t like about ShopWired

There are elements I miss about my old website and ShopWired isn’t perfect… but I don’t think any e-commerce platform is.

For example, to add or edit multiple products at a time, you have to export and import CSV files. A little cumbersome and I wish there was a way to do it directly from the admin area.

I also wish a Mega Menu facility was built into the theme. If I wanted a Mega Menu, then some custom coding would be needed. (A Mega Menu is a menu type that displays several different categories in a large multi-column format that eliminates the need to scroll.)

However there are only minor annoyances and development of the platform is on-going. New themes, interfaces and enhanced features are planned. I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend ShopWired to any of my clients for its reliability, security and the ability to create a good looking e-commerce website!