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E-commerce allows you to sell online, but the decision that matters most is which platform to adopt. Choosing the right option for your business can be difficult with so many choices available.
Today, WooCommerce is considered one of the most popular and commonly used eCommerce solutions on the Internet. This powerful digital shopping platform, built on the WordPress platform, provides a simple, easy and feature-rich way to sell online. This solution can be used by anyone who wishes to sell products online.
WooCommerce Features
WooCommerce is the most standout option to build an e-Com store. It’s been known to have powered 25% stores globally in the top 1 million sites. There are so many features of WooCommerce that makes it the most standout option, below are some the features:
Wizard guide to help the setup & installation
To install WooCommerce, it doesn’t require much effort. It’s the same as any other free Wordpress plugin. And, when installation is completed, you will be guided with a wizard that will help you to configure your online store.
Packed with nearly all features needed to run an online store
When using WooCommerce, you can sell any products or services. This will be enhanced with the use of product tags, categories as well as attributes. Additionally, you can add product reviews to your product. Visitors will also be able to use your online store easily since they can filter your products using type of product, rating, popularity and more. Moreover, the themes can really help you to customise your site layout.
Has many plugins
There are paid and free plugins that can enhance the functionality of your WooCommerce’s store. You can also find these plugins on the official website. Not to mention, there are more compatible plugins you can find on the Wordpress repository.
Multiple payment gateways
Checkout is important when opening your online store. WooCommerce cart is designed to make the checkout process as seamless as possible. More benefits can be gained when using WooCommerce as it can be added with multiple payment gateways, geolocation enabled functionality to help calculate taxes, implement an express checkout, there’s an option for a force secure checkout, and the ability to redirect your users to their cart upon adding a product.
Ability to custom tailor all product listing
Visitors will be able to know more visually & its use about the item that they are checking on your store as you can create your product listing to be as informative as you can be. Also, WooCommerce has an inventory management that will notify you when a product is out of stock or on backorder.
Various built-in shipping options
WooCommerce comes with various built-in shipping option that your customers can choose either using local delivery, flat rate, international shipping or pickup. There’s also an option to hide shipping rate until customer’s address is entered. This is enhanced with the use of additional plugins so you can have the ability to add automated tracking & upsells upon checkout.
Is WooCommerce Easy to Use?
WooCommerce is easy to use for either beginner or advanced site owners. It’s also packed with powerful features. Additional features can be added to WooCommerce by using various WooCommerce add-ons. Another reason why it’s so easy, it only requires you to have these 3 things:
- A Wordpress account to store your files
- A domain name for your website
- An SSL certificate for online payments
WooCommerce Pricing
The 3 things required to have your online store is not free & will cost you money. Actually, you need to pay for these things to build any website, not just WooCommerce. The total cost of your online store also depends on which services you choose to purchase for your website. But the total cost can be controlled just by only purchase the services you actually need. Additional services can be added at a later time when your business have grown bigger.
However, WooCommerce can be used to open as many online stores & e-commerce websites as you desire since it won’t cost you any licensing fee.
What Are the Pros and Cons of WooCommerce?
The following is a guide to what you should know about WooCommerce if you're trying to find the perfect e-commerce platform.
WooCommerce's Advantages
With so many users, WooCommerce clearly offers some attractive benefits. Let's look at some of the major ones here, even though it would be impossible to list them all.
Simple
It's crucial to remember that WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin first and foremost. This means that you must either have a WordPress-based site or install it in a subdirectory to use it.
WooCommerce makes adding e-commerce features to your WordPress site a snap. Simply install the plugin like you would any other, then follow their step-by-step setup instructions to have your site up and running in no time. If you have experience as a developer, you can also choose to manually set up your store.
Adding products (much like adding posts or pages to your WordPress site) and writing descriptions is all that is required to get your store up and running. After all is said and done, you could be selling by the end of the day.
The real advantage here, aside from setup, is managing your site and store from a single dashboard. You can easily switch between writing a blog post and updating a product page, which is a WooCommerce feature.
Free
WooCommerce also has the advantage of being absolutely free to install and use. As a result, it is an excellent alternative for both small enterprises and those whose primary source of revenue is not retail.
Of course, businesses of all sizes can benefit from the plugin's advantages — after all, who doesn't like the sound of "free"?
SEO-friendly
You must optimise your product pages if you want customers to find your products in search engines. However, if you're familiar with WordPress, you'll know that its editor makes it simple to alter body content, URLs, meta descriptions, alt tags, and other page elements.
The same is true for the WooCommerce plugin, which means that optimising your pages is an easy process even for those without coding experience. Of course, you'll still need to do keyword research and develop copy as usual, but getting that copy exactly where you need it is a simple.
WooCommerce's Disadvantages
WooCommerce has a lot to offer its users, but it isn't flawless, just like every other product. Here's what you need to know before you install it.
Every theme does not support it
Although WooCommerce is simple to install on a WordPress site, there's a chance it won't work with your current theme. And, if you've already created your site, updating the look of your entire site might be time-consuming.
Paid extensions are required
WooCommerce is a free plugin, however there are numerous expensive extensions available, some of which are required. For example, the default payment option is PayPal, which means that if you want to accept credit or debit cards, you'll need to acquire an extension that supports them.
While many of the others aren't as obvious, extensions for subscription services, inventory management, marketing, and reporting can be quite beneficial, especially as your company grows. As a result, it's critical to recognise that you may eventually have to pay for your e-commerce capabilities.
Not as advanced as other options
In terms of advanced functionality, WooCommerce isn't as robust as some other e-commerce platforms because it is a plugin, not a platform in itself. The application doesn't support multiple languages or currencies, neither can it support multiple storefronts.
As for reporting and analytics, they aren't very impressive. These problems have been addressed with a few optional extensions, but you must pay for them.
It is your responsibility to maintain
Your WooCommerce store, from getting it started to managing orders to maintaining the frontend, is all your business (or your team's). It's important to know who to contact if you have a problem, even if it's also true for many other major platforms.
The more you change your store and the more updates Wordpress releases, the more likely something may break. Even if you have coding knowledge, you may not be able to fix these issues on your own.
WooCommerce vs Etsy
Cost
WooCommerce is a free plugin. Primary things that will cost you money is Wordpress for services such as hosting, security & (possibly) theme. This is the backend side of your website while Etsy is free to use but you will need to pay for some of its services, such as product listing or payments.
SEO
WooCommerce is packed with things like proper use of titles, descriptions, and keywords, as well as schema markup since it is hosted by Wordpress while Etsy is technically a marketplace. There’s so little control over this, but, they have their own SEO features that can help rankings for your items.
Themes
WooCommerce is a Wordpress plugin. Therefore, there will be so many free themes available on the internet. You can select & customise the themes to your need.
Plugins
Once again, WooCommerce is a Wordpress plugin. There will also be plenty of free plugins available to add features & functionality to your store.
WooCommerce vs Shopify
Ease of use
WooCommerce will require some coding knowledge while Shopify doesn’t need you to add any code.
Build Time
WooCommerce will prompt you with every detail of your online store. Some may consider this a time-consuming process while Shopify has all features at the ready on their end. This means you can have your website go live much faster.
Frontend
WooCommerce have an unlimited customisation that you can make your website to look as close as you would imagine it to look like while Shopify have paid themes that can make your website a more stylish look.
Marketing Tools
WooCommerce have plugins & extensions that will allow you to integrate any marketing tool while Shopify has a built-in multi-channel integration. You can sell your items on other platforms (eg. eBay, Facebook, Amazon, etc)
Payments
WooCommerce comes with no transaction fee for third-party gateway payments while Shopify will enforce transaction fee unless you are using its own gateway.
SEO
WooCommerce is code-optimised for SEO. It also has plenty of remarkable plugins as well as guides that can further improve your website’s SEO while Shopify is good but not WooCommerce good.
Security
WooCommerce will require you to acquire the relevant certificates yourself while Shopify comes with SSL Certificate & is PCI-DSS Compliant by default.
Pricing
WooCommerce is free. Paid extensions are also reasonably priced. You can have powerful website at a low cost while Shopify have an expensive annual cost.
Final Thought
WooCommerce is a great choice if you have a small business or if you just want to sell a few products on your WordPress website. It's easy and convenient (to some extent), and it's free. You may not find the advanced functionality you need with this if you're looking to launch a large-scale e-commerce site with thousands of products.
Written by: Leonis Purba, Isna Firdaus
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