If e-commerce is your primary focus for selling product, you have a large inventory and you will be driving traffic from channels such as PPC (Pay Per Click) and social media, I recommend using Shopify:
Shopify does one thing well, and I am a huge advocate of that approach.
In contrast, WordPress does pretty much everything and does not specialise in one thing. Woocommerce is a powerful e-commerce plugin for WordPress but it's clunky, complex, and needs regular maintenance - it's going to suck time and energy. You are likely to run into two key issues:
- It's going to look...WordPress
- You're going to lose sleep over maintenance and management
If you intend to drive traffic through SEO (Search Engine Optimisation), your content will be a key focus - this is where Ghost comes in. This is also particularly useful if you have a small inventory, or sell digital products.
The power of the blog in selling products (and how Ghost can help)
If you haven't already, read this to learn about Ghost:
Blogging using Ghost can help drive your website traffic and build a membership base.
Using Shopify and Ghost together
You could use Shopify's integrated blog functionality, but it's basic; the focus is on product and not content. You could run a Shopify store and put your blog on a sub-domain (blog.yourshopifysite.com).
This would give you the power of Ghost and allow you to separate the platforms for each type of content - retail and blogging.
However, this adds to the expense of cost, time and energy.
Selling products with Ghost
If you have a small inventory of products, you can sell them on Ghost using any of the solutions below, without running a dedicated online store. These solutions are slick and easy to implement, adding a flawless shopping cart experience.
You could sell things like:
- Downloadable software
- Printables
- E-books
- Product types that have few variations
- One-off products
You could set up monthly payment tiers within Ghost and charge for premium content, accessible only to members. This would work well with downloadable. Alternatively, you could integrate dedicated retail platforms, such as:
Selling courses with Ghost
Again, you could set up payment tiers within Ghost and charge for premium content, accessible only to members.
Alternatively, you could integrate course-specific platforms, such as:
