Shopify launched an official WordPress plugin that gives you the best of both worlds — having a fully customizable WordPress website for content marketing and powering your e-commerce shop with Shopify.
Uh oh WooCommerce! Well, not quite…
Here's how the integration works:
- The solution consists of two parts: the “Sell on WordPress” sales channel within Shopify and the “Shopify Plugin” that you install on your WordPress site.
- Merchants add their products in Shopify through its traditional backend system that you're already familiar with.
- From there you can either create pages in WordPress and embed Shopify product details in them via the Gutenberg Editor.
- Or you can automatically sync your Shopify products and let the plugin create the pages.
- From there you can start accepting orders through Shopify's checkout system and tracking sales through Shopify's analytics tools, as well as manage your e-commerce business with Shopify's inventory and analytics tools and take advantage of their integrations with other major discovery channels.
Here's what the plugin DOES NOT do:
- It does not support hosted checkout on your domain. Checkout always redirects the customer to Shopify's hosted checkout, which you can't modify or add third-party scripts to unless you're on Shopify Plus.
- Shopify's product blocks currently have limited styling controls like changing the layout or button colors. The plugin does not automatically inherit your WordPress theme's typography, buttons, or containers, so custom CSS is required for brand consistency.
- The plugin doesn't support Shopify app integrations like reviews, upsells, or subscriptions.
- It doesn't support localization features like multi-currency or multi-languages.
- It does not currently sync your product Meta Titles and Descriptions from Shopify over to your WordPress site, instead it displays your site's default home page SEO title on every product page.
There have already been existing solutions on the market for integrating your Shopify store with your WordPress website — including Shopify's own Buy Buttons, which have existed for years. The new plugin adds the ability to sync your product catalog to your WordPress site without having to manually, however it still lacks basic features that would make it a viable WooCommerce alternative in my opinion.
Did I get all the information above correct? Forgive me if not, as there is very limited documentation about this plugin. If I got anything wrong, or you have additional information to add about the new Shopify-WordPress solution, please drop a comment on my LinkedIn post.
It's great that Shopify is bringing its e-commerce checkout to WordPress — but truthfully, what I really want, is to bring WordPress's powerful and customizable blogging tools to my Shopify store! Not the other way around.
Check out my post on 10 Reasons Why Shopify Should Spend $1B Completely Revamping Their Blogging Platform — and let me know if you agree.