WooCommerce for WordPress – Why use WooCommerce
By Raeleen
| 14 April 2022
We have seen a surge in eCommerce these past few years and we can expect its continued growth in the future. If you are thinking of launching your own online store, then you might be wondering what is the best platform to use.
There are a ton of options when it comes to eCommerce platforms and each has its pros and cons. In this blog, we will talk about WooCommerce and why it is one of the best eCommerce platforms out there.
What is WooCommerce?
WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin that turns a WordPress website into an eCommerce site. Unlike other eCommerce platforms, WooCommerce is not a stand-alone platform. You need to be running a WordPress website before you can install the WooCommerce plugin.
WooCommerce core software lets you create a beautiful storefront, sell digital and physical products, accept payments securely, and manage inventory, among other features.
If you want more functionality than what is offered out of the box, you can install extensions and customise your website according to your needs. You can find extensions for payment processing, accounting, marketing, customer service, analytics, and more.
WooCommerce is open-source software. It means that its source code is open for anyone to inspect, modify and enhance.
Why use WooCommerce?
WooCommerce is the most popular eCommerce plugin for WordPress and one of the best eCommerce platform options. Here are seven reasons to choose WooCommerce as your eCommerce platform.
Affordable Pricing
Other eCommerce platforms like Shopify, WixCommerce, and BigCommerce will charge you a monthly fee for you to be able to use their platform. Aside from that, Shopify also charges additional transaction fees if you are using a third-party payment gateway.
On the other hand, the core WooCommerce software and the content management system (WordPress) it runs on are free to use.
That said, it doesn’t mean that it’s totally free to create your own eCommerce website with WooCommerce. WordPress and WooCommerce won’t charge you for anything, but they don’t take care of website hosting. So you need to get your hosting provider. The cost of hosting will depend on your provider, the hosting plan, and add-ons to your hosting plan if any.
In addition to the costs related to hosting, you might also need to buy premium themes or extensions to expand the functionality of your website according to your needs.
It may not always be cheaper to use WooCommerce as your eCommerce platform especially if you need a lot of customisation and premium extensions. Premium extensions cost anywhere from around US$49 to US$299 per year if you get them from the official store.
But compared to other eCommerce platforms, WooCommerce is more within reach when you are just starting your online business. The core WooCommerce software is good enough for a basic online store. You can keep your costs low by using free themes and extensions to expand the functionality of your website.
As your business grows, you can add more features through paid extensions or develop a unique solution for your store with the help of a WooCommerce developer.
WooCommerce is simple and intuitive to use
You don’t need coding knowledge to be able to build and manage an online store with WooCommerce.
WooCommerce installation and setup are easy. The Wizard setup will guide you in configuring your eCommerce site according to your needs.
If you already are familiar with WordPress, you’ll find that it’s a breeze to use WooCommerce. If even if you are new to WordPress and WooCommerce, you’ll learn how to use them in no time.
WooCommerce is packed with features
The core WooCommerce plugin is good enough to create a basic online store. Here are some of the best features of WooCommerce.
- You have a choice from a wide variety of themes.
- It has a built-in blogging function to help you drive traffic to your site.
- You can add unlimited products to your store.
- Unlike other paid eCommerce sites, there is no limit to the product variations you can add.
- You can use unlimited images and galleries to showcase your products.
- You can offer flexible shipping options to your customers (pick up, local delivery or shipping).
- It lets you offer coupons to your customers.
- It has built-in reporting so that you can analyse the performance of your products and your store.
- You can manage your stocks, orders, refunds, email, and more through its user-friendly backend.
In addition to the above features of the WooCommerce core software, you can further expand its functionality through free and premium extensions.
WooCommerce is highly flexible
You can use WooCommerce to sell anything: physical and digital products, services, memberships, online courses, and subscription-based products or services.
You can sell both physical and downloadable digital products and a combination of both right out of the box. For selling services, memberships, online courses, subscription-based products or services, and others you need to install the corresponding extension.
WooCommerce grows with your business
With WooCommerce you can start small and then scale up as your business grows.
For example, you may start out selling physical products. The basic WooCommerce plugin will fulfil your business needs. However, if you want to scale up and offer subscription-based products to your customers, you can then add an extension to enable you to offer subscriptions on top of your regular products.
Likewise, as your income grows, you can add more premium extensions to improve how you run your business, enhance your marketing efforts, increase your profits, provide better customer service, improve your SEO, and more. These additions in turn will help grow your business even more.
WooCommerce is fully customisable
You can customise your eCommerce websites according to your needs. You have lots of options when it comes to themes and functionality that you want to add to your website.
Being open-source software, WooCommerce can be modified and improved upon by anyone. You can fully customise your WooCommerce website to your preference. You can hire a developer to create custom themes and solutions for you.
WooCommerce has a vibrant community of developers and users
WooCommerce is one of the most popular open-source eCommerce platforms. It follows that there are a lot of developers that are constantly improving on the platform and developing themes and extensions for it.
You are most likely to find a solution for your online store from over 700 free and premium official extensions from the WooCommerce extension store.
If you want a full custom theme and solution, you’ll have no trouble finding a development and design company that can do the work for you.
If you hit a snag in using WooCommerce, you can go to the community support forums of WordPress and WooCommerce where you can ask questions and you’ll get a response from WooCommerce experts and users. You can also find extensive documentation to guide you in using WooCommerce.
Getting started with WooCommerce
If you already have a WordPress website that you want to turn into an eCommerce site, then proceed to step three.
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Get a hosting and domain
A hosting service provides the space where your website data will be stored and the technologies and services to get your website up and running. Invest in a good WordPress hosting service for your website. Poor hosting can affect your website’s speed and can cause downtime which can directly impact your revenue. We recommend WP Engine because they offer a lot of features and their plans are reasonably priced. You also should have a domain name which is the name and address of your website. You can get domain names from legitimate domain registrars. Sometimes some hosting companies also sell domain names. Before you can proceed to WordPress installation, you have to link your domain name to your hosting first. -
Install WordPress
Installing WordPress manually is a little bit complicated. It is best to get a hosting provider that will make it easy for you to install WordPress. If doing a manual installation, you need to download WordPress from WordPress.org, upload WordPress to your hosting account, create a database and database user, then run the install. You need to fill in your site title, username, password, and email to finish the installation. -
Install WooCommerce
Once you have installed WordPress, you can proceed to install WooCommerce. In your dashboard, navigate to Plugins > Add New > and then search for WooCommerce. Click “Install Now” then “Activate” to enable WooCommerce on your site. -
Configure your WooCommerce website
The Setup Wizard will guide you through configuring your WooCommerce website. Here you will be asked to fill in your store profile, choose a theme for your website, add products, personalise your store, set up shipping, tax, and payments.
Takeaways
WooCommerce is one of the best platforms for eCommerce websites. Many businesses choose WooCommerce as their eCommerce platform because It is powerful, flexible, and fully customisable.
WooCommerce is a complete eCommerce solution with solid core features which are great for those starting their online business. The functionality of the WooCommerce website can be further expanded through extensions and customisations to suit the needs of a growing business.
WooCommerce Developers in Queensland
If you are planning to create an online store or you want to revamp your existing one, Mettro team can help. We have a dedicated website design team who can help you to create a fantastic online store.
Mettro is a proudly Queensland, independently owned and operated digital agency that has been delivering award-winning website design & development and digital marketing for over 20 years. We are dedicated to solving our client’s business problems with smart, simple digital solutions and have the testimonials to prove it. We’ve built thousands of digital solutions including apps, eCommerce websites, custom software, eLearning applications, WordPress websites and more.
Where to from here?
Contact us or book a one-on-one to discuss your web design and development project!