4 Advantages of Open Source Ecommerce Over Closed Source

Yash Prajapati
Read Time: 6 Minutes
4 Advantages of Open Source Ecommerce Over Closed Source

There’s a lot of money to be made in the lucrative world of ecommerce. That’s why so many online businesses have been popping up, giving consumers the flexibility to order what they need from the comfort of their homes. 

Flexibility is also vital for business owners. To create the ultimate online shopping experience, you need the freedom to design and roll out your store exactly how you want it. 

If you are this kind of new entrepreneur, closed-source ecommerce like Shopify may be appealing. It is less customizable but doesn’t require coding knowledge to operate an effective ecommerce store. However, your feelings about customization may change as your business grows and scales.

The only way to truly create a winning customized ecommerce experience for your customers is to dive into the world of open-source ecommerce. But what is open-source ecommerce, and how can it help your online business? In this article, we’re going through four reasons why open source ecommerce is more advantageous than closed-source online systems.

What is Open Source Ecommerce?

Open source ecommerce is an ecommerce platform in which you can completely control the source code of your store. You either own the code outright or work off a licensing agreement covering your usage and any modifications made by your development team. 

Open source eCommerce doesn’t limit you to customizable design templates like most hosted ecommerce providers. It allows you to customize your site within the website code fully. 

Having open-source ecommerce lets you customize your store to align with the brand image you want to convey. It also sets your unique online shopping experience apart from other stores. 

Considering that, on average, a 35.26% increase in conversion rate can be achieved through better checkout design. That means having open source ecommerce that allows you to customize and test your own checkout flow can massively impact your bottom line. 

When we say closed source ecommerce, we’re talking about hosted solutions like Shopify, BigCommerce, and other services that provide you with a template. Many of these templates are customizable to an extent, but you have no ownership over the code and no control over some of the fundamental features of the service. 

Top 4 Advantages of Open Source Ecommerce

1. More Customization

The first and most obvious advantage of open source ecommerce over its closed-source counterpart is the level of customization you can bring to the table. While open-source systems will take more expertise and time to set up, you can compensate with effective custom designs and unique layouts that can’t be achieved through a template. 

When using templated services, your ability to customize is limited. Sure, you can change up the colors and add your company branding, but at the heart of the system, it’s run on a template that millions of other businesses worldwide can access. That means it can never be uniquely yours and can even be copied by some of your fiercest competitors. 

Customization isn’t just limited to the webpage layout of your store and product pages. Everything down to the text content you create is included in your 100% owned source code. 

Your content is incredibly important, as it allows you to express your business in the best way possible to appeal to your targeted audience based on their feedback. With an open-source system, your text's fonts, spacing, positions, and color can be exactly what you want them to be, whether you’re writing out the content yourself or describing products with an AI writer tool. 

Remember, there are 9.1 million online retailers worldwide, 2.5 million in the United States. That means you’re facing a lot of competition in a crowded marketplace. That’s why customization is so important. You can leverage the power of open-source ecommerce customization to provide something fresh and original to your audience in a way that your competitors won’t be able to copy easily. 

2. Freedom to Add Plugins

When you find an integration or third-party plugin that you want to include in your ecommerce store, the last thing you want to hear is that your closed source e-commerce platforms doesn’t allow it. 

With open source ecommerce solutions, you can add any plugin, extension, or integration you can dream of. 

Open source ecommerce enables the creation of custom integrations and the ability to edit existing plugins. For example, if you have an ecommerce store that sells fleet equipment such as fleet dash cams and security equipment, you might need specific software to fit your needs. Opting for a closed-source platform might make implementing integrations more difficult, while open source offers a greater advantage when it comes to customization.

Additionally, suppose your business outgrows the capabilities of your closed source platform’s shopping cart. In that case, you’re not going to be able to change things up and allow your service to scale and evolve in a way that your audience demands.Open source allows you to choose the payment processors you prefer, so you can offer unique promotions, such as discounts with prepaid debit cards. By owning your source code, the sky becomes the limit when it comes to integrations and improvements.

Again, this boils down to creative freedom. Open source ecommerce technology allows you to create the service, functions, and discounts you want to offer your customers. 

3. SEO Benefits

What’s the point of having an ecommerce store if no one can find it? That’s why you must implement SEO best practices into creating your online shopping experience. 

SEO stands for search engine optimization, and it’s the process of making several tweaks to your website, both on and off the page, that make your content more attractive to popular search engines like Google. SEO is one of the most important components of content marketing, and its role is especially growing in content marketing for SaaS.

Open-source ecommerce provides several benefits for appealing to Google’s ever-changing search algorithm. When several hundred of your global competitors are selling the same product as you and using the same closed-source shopping cart, it all starts to look very similar to Google. 

That’s the worst thing that could happen. 

Open-source e-commerce allows you to present this information in a unique manner. Google wants to see originality in the pages it recommends to users. 

Additionally, Google’s search algorithm is constantly changing. That means what worked yesterday for SEO might be detrimental today. You need the freedom to change things up at the drop of a hat, appealing directly to the latest Google algorithm updates. 

This can be much harder to do when using a templated closed-source system. That’s why you need the power of open source ecommerce technology to change things up as required and ensure that you remain on top of the search engine world. 

4. Own Your Code Forever

Throughout this article, we’ve talked a lot about the importance of owning your ecommerce store’s search code. But why is this so important? 

The ecommerce market is constantly shifting, and you need to be able to change with the times whenever necessary. When you use a closed-source solution like Shopify, you don’t own the code you’re using. Shopify owns that code, and you can’t change it or take it with you if you decide you need a change.

With closed-source e-commerce stores, you’re basically renting code from a provider. It’s like renting a house to live in. You might want to pull out the bushes in your front yard, but you can’t just do that at will because it doesn’t actually belong to you. 

Open-source e-commerce grants you full ownership of your code. Like owning a house, you can make any alterations you want because it’s your platform. 

Additionally, if you are running off of a closed-source e-commerce platform that you eventually outgrow, you can’t take that existing code with you when you migrate to a new service. That means starting over from scratch with nothing to show for your efforts, even if you’ve been running your online store for years. 

Migrating to a new system can be time-consuming, and you might even find that it causes a temporary dip in efficiency that can lose you business. With open-source technology, you’ll never have this problem again. 

Conclusion

There’s a lot of money to be made in the world of e-commerce, and open-source e-commerce solutions can help you maximize your opportunity.

By switching to an open-source e-commerce platform, you can bring more customization to the table, add whatever plugins and integrations you want, improve your SEO efforts, and own your source code forever. 

The benefits of this growing e-commerce trend can be felt immediately, providing your customers a unique online shopping experience for years to come.  

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