Table of contents
- What is WooCommerce?
- Why should you use WooCommerce?
- What are the advantages and disadvantages of WooCommerce?
Have you ever found it difficult to create Websites and manage them? New to Ecommerce and have limited knowledge on how to run a website? WooCommerce is here to help you.
What is WooCommerce?
WooCommerce is an open-source e-commerce plugin developed by WordPress. Online businesses that use WordPress are the main users of WooCommerce. With WooCommerce it is easier to create and manage an e-commerce website.
It offers reasonable levels of flexibility, and many important features such as inventory and tax management, secure payments, and shipping integration. They have hundreds of extensions and over a thousand plugins. The base product of WooCommerce is free and open source because of which it has become popular. There are thousands of extensions available which are paid add-ons.
Some of the most popular extensions of WooCommerce are WooCommerce Bookings and WooCommerce Memberships. WooCommerce Bookings allows users to sell blocks of time as appointments, whereas WooCommerce Memberships allows users to allow only a part of their website to public, and to make the other part visible only to those with paid memberships.
Why should you use WooCommerce?
WooCommerce is full of features. It has features like order tracking, delivery status update, customer engagements, inventory management, and so on. It is estimated that 99% of WordPress stores are powered by WooCommerce. WooCommerce is mostly chosen by people due to its user-friendly interface. For people who are first time to an e-commerce website and for first-time online business owners, this is the best option and is most often chosen by them.
Here are some reasons why you should use WooCommerce if you own or are planning to own an online store.
WooCommerce Price Rates
When somebody just steps into the business it is very important for them to look after their budget and expenses. The price range of e-commerce applications is from free to thousand of dollars per year. The rate is not proportional to the features and capabilities available in the applications. It is simply their choice to put up a price.
WooCommerce is free and that is one main reason why you should choose it over any other platforms for conducting your business.
WooCommerce is a free platform but that does not mean it compromises its function. It is one of the leading enterprise e-commerce applications that we have on the web today. So, businessmen and entrepreneurs can make use of WooCommerce to get the best experience free of cost without having to pay expenses for support contracts and proprietary software licenses.
If you use third-party groups to make any sorts of payment with WooCommerce, the money will not be directed to WooCommerce, but to the third-party applications.
Modular Framework of WooCommerce
When we analyze the modular framework of WooCommerce we can point out many similarities with WordPress. It has got a very rich set of features that can be expanded with the addition of plugins.
This helps the users of WooCommerce in many ways. The users will have access to many WordPress plugins and themes and many specific e-commerce extensions which were made particularly for WooCommerce. The idea behind this modular framework of WooCommerce is that it can assist you in cultivating a developers’ community that creates extensions to add specific functionality which is not available with monolithic applications. Setting up a business on WooCommerce will give you the perfect e-commerce store experience if you use the right plugins and is well-versed with it.
The plugins help you in expanding the functionality of WooCommerce. It makes easier shipping, payments, the way in which products are handled, and so on. Over the years, WooCommerce has developed many plugins and recommends to you the plugins suitable for your business while you use their store.
WooCommerce is WordPress
WordPress is the parent application and WooCommerce comes under it. WooCommerce is constrained by WordPress and therefore, it is said that it can never be as good as WordPress or any other purpose-built e-commerce application.
But actually, having a parent application like WordPress is a good thing for WooCommerce. The flexibility and functionality of WordPress have made it widely popular and are the choice for millions of businesses around the world as it is the best foundation for their websites. It is fast and secure.
The compatibility between both the application, WooCommerce, and WordPress is great and their themes will make space for smooth integration. WooCommerce has got all of the strengths and reliability of WordPress. And with these features, it continues to give world-class e-commerce experience for its users and customers.
Sell anything on WooCommerce
WooCommerce can be used to sell anything and everything. It is incredibly flexible allowing its users to do business on anything. It can belong to any category like physical products, digital products, subscriptions, appointments, and so on. WooCommerce is often called the Swiss Army knife of e-commerce applications due to its versatility.
The vibrant developer community of WooCommerce
WordPress and WooCommerce are open-sourced and therefore, the retailers or users can alter them. They can change the core features, create customized themes, and also build new extensions to WooCommerce. For e-commerce applications that are not very popular, it is difficult to find a developer to make changes. In such cases, you have to find a developer yourself and it is an expensive process financially.
Retailers using WooCommerce can benefit largely from the huge number of developers and professionals WooCommerce has. In the case where you want to make changes to your WooCommerce store, the developers are always there to do that for you and that is absolutely free of cost.
WooCommerce optimal security is easier to achieve with its extensive use and a large network of WooCommerce developer community.
The powerful analytics of WooCommerce
WooCommerce works on analytics, and it is important to have a strong base. WooCommerce has got built-in analytics and because of this, you can now know more about your customers and their interactivity with the store and your products. The WooCommerce application provides a broad set of analytics that are clearly displayed on its interface. WooCommerce can be integrated with external analytics services like Google Analytics with extensions.
WooCommerce grows along your business
When you start your business, be it anything, online or offline, you always have to think of the future of your business, of its growth. If you think about the future, it should occur to you that though the business is small at the moment, it has got the potential to grow in the coming years and requires a platform that can accommodate the expanding business. There should not be any future consequence to that.
WooCommerce is able to take care of businesses that are small as well as large. Therefore, if you plan on growing your business, WooCommerce is an application that should be on top of your list. It can showcase products from hundreds to thousands, and from a few shoppers a day to hundreds of shoppers at a time. Since WooCommerce is growing and expanding, it will also increase the functionality of your store.
World-class content management
Content is a very vital component, and you need to produce quality content to stay relevant. E-commerce marketing (digital marketing), sales optimization, and search engine optimization (SEO) all need content. A wide variety of content management services are offered by WooCommerce, as well as WordPress which makes it easier for its users to manage the content of their sites. The content management options include Blog, landing pages, email marketing, and product descriptions. Yoast WooCommerce SEO, a WooCommerce-compatible SEO plugin, makes it easier for retailers or customers of WooCommerce to optimize their search content.
The fast nature of WooCommerce
WooCommerce is a very fast application like WordPress. Both applications provide a very fast as well as responsive e-commerce experience to their users. This is one of the main benefits of WooCommerce and a pushing reason why you should WooCommerce over any other similar Web Application.
You can combine it with performance-optimized WooCommerce hosting to speed up your WooCommerce store. The performance-optimized WooCommerce hosting is specifically tailored to maximize the performance of WooCommerce store. Another software that can support WooCommerce is standard web hosting but the downside to this is that it cannot provide the highly optimized PHP, MySQL, server, and a network of environments that are necessary for a responsive low-latency e-commerce experience.
The purpose is to sell
WooCommerce was mainly made for selling which is an advantage of WooCommerce. It has got everything to help a new businessperson get on track and get going. Some of the special features it has got for its selling users are: –
- More than 100 payment gateways that can be used for easy integration with your store.
- Numerous WooCommerce shipping systems with configurable shipping zones and shipping classes.
- An insightful backend that helps in stock management, order management, refunds, email management, and all the processes involved with your e-commerce store.
- Choice of thousands of configurable mobile-friendly friendly WooCommerce themes which are free and also can be upgraded to premium. You can also build a custom theme to match the look with that of your store.
- World-class documentation that can help the new retailers to get on track and keep going.
What are the advantages and disadvantages of WooCommerce?
Advantages
- Great flexibility: – WooCommerce is very flexible and is quite popular for it. Retailers can sell any products on the application regardless of the niche. You can sell physical products, appointments, subscriptions, and so on. It also allows having a very large store with lots of products and shoppers. The plugin is capable of handling large businesses, and therefore, you do not have to worry or think about any other if you plan to expand your business.
- Unlimited customized options: – WooCommerce has got an infinite amount of free plugins on the WordPress Plugin Directory. It also offers a large number of themes, and also an option to customize your own. You do not have to be tech-savvy to operate on this application.
- Maximum security: – As an online store, it is important to safeguard your website from security threats. You should always secure your gateways so that your customer’s credentials are always safe and not in the wrong hands. WooCommerce uses secure payment applications like PayPal and Stripe. The developers update the platform regularly to keep it safe from hackers.
- Interactive community: – WooCommerce has got nearly 4.5 million sites under it. The large user base shares their experience on forums and helps newbies to get smooth with their online business. They also share articles and guide them on the configurations that have helped them in the past. With a WooCommerce interactive community, it is also a guarantee that WooCommerce would not shut down any soon.
- Professional aesthetic: – The access of WooCommerce to warehouse management and POS system allows the customers to undergo the process in a smooth manner. The tools used by the platform make it look more authentic on the go. Customers have the option of tracking their orders and checking their delivery status.
Disadvantages
- WordPress specific: – WooCommerce has got a patent application. It is a plugin, and therefore can only be available to sites that WordPress hosts. This causes problems for established businesses to make a change and start using WooCommerce since they will have to start from the beginning.
- Advanced options are premium: – Though it is a free plugin, some of the extensions are to be paid for. You can download WooCommerce for free, but you would not get every feature for free. In order for your site to run at maximum capacity, you will have to pay for these extensions.
WooCommerce is definitely a great choice and has got very less shortcomings. However, there are many other alternatives for WooCommerce like BigCommerce, Member Press, and WPForms.
If you have any more doubts about WooCommerce, feel free to comment below.
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