A recent review of integration data from OrganicPaymentGateways.com showed a roughly 3:2 ratio of CBD site owners who chose Shopify Inc. vs CBD site owners who chose WooCommerce.
Martech News WooCommerce and Shopify Inc. dominate the e-commerce market, according to usage statistics and industry insiders. WooCommerce is a popular WordPress e-commerce plug-in used by over 3,800,000 websites, according to stats published by the data and usage company BuiltWith Pty Ltd, and Shopify Inc. is a hosted, all-in-one e-commerce platform with over a million merchants and a gross merchandise volume of over 14 billion dollars in Q3 of 2019 alone, based on Shopify’s public reporting.
As per the Organic Payment Gateways, a snapshot of 150 recent CBD site integrations showed that of sites that utilized one of the two major platforms, 59 percent of CBD sites used Shopify as their site builder, and 41 percent chose WordPress with WooCommerce as the shopping cart.
Although the data unveiled by Organic Payment Gateways focused only on CBD sites using either Shopify or WooCommerce, most of the other site builders are commonly used by CBD site owners looking to accept payments for legal CBD online. According to the president of E-Commerce 4 IM LLC, Alex Roy, the parent company of Organic Payment Gateways, “Wix, ClickFunnels, Magento, and Open Cart are also common site builders and shopping carts used by CBD businesses.”
Selecting a site builder and shopping cart solution wisely is essential for new CBD site owners. Alex Roy stated that “other than seeking qualified legal advice upfront and ensuring that your products are all tested – with valid certificates of analysis (COAs) setting up the right site builder out of the gate is one of the most important decisions a new CBD business owner can make. Beyond costs, site owners must ensure that the payment processor they use, and the payment gateway they plan on integrating, works well with the shopping cart they choose.”
Based on information published within the “CBD Basics” section of the Organic Payment Gateways website, the list of things that new business owners must resolve before launching their CBD website is dominated by items like CBD certification and compliance, payment gateway compatibility, legal reviews, and which CBD products can and cannot commonly be sold online.
The choice of a site builder often affects site owners’ other decisions. For example, for a business looking to pick between the “big 2,” Shopify and WooCommerce, compatibility is essential. According to a recent press release announcing their membership in the National Hemp Association, Organic Payment Gateways offers an online pre-application with built-in “if/then” logic that facilitates a proprietary, automatic online credit card processing gateway pre-screening process. Developed to protect CBD site owner’s time and frustration, their quick web-based process enables CBD and hemp businesses find a payment gateway that best fits their products and their shopping cart.
Organic Payment Gateways is a CBD-focused payment gateway provider based in Maine, that focuses on placing legal, US-based CBD businesses with the appropriate payment gateway for their business. According to their site, OrganicPaymentGateways.com, their mantra is to help site owners sell online using the shopping cart platform they already have in place.