Nowadays, ecommerce holds great potential. Today’s digital reality and the extensive range of opportunities offered by the latter can take your dreams and ideas to a whole new level. You know it, and I am not going to deny it either. However, “Where should I start?” is the main thing most people don’t know.
In our blog, you can find many articles with valuable information on how to grow your ideas online and run a successful ecommerce business. If you are just making your toddler steps in this sphere, we would highly recommend looking at those posts right after reading this one. Because in this article, we will talk about point zero of your business, aka which platform you should use to start your ecommerce game. In the following paragraphs, you will find 8 reasons for using WooCommerce to enter the incredible world of ecommerce.
What is WooCommerce?
WooCommerce is one of the best ecommerce plugins for WordPress. It is a free amazing tool that will help to create and manage an online store in a very simple way. It offers a great range of features such as secure payments shipping, inventory, and tax management, that will turn the whole process into a child’s play while keeping it professional. Keep in mind that WooCommerce is powered by WordPress, therefore your data is owned exclusively by you.
Currently, WooCommerce powers about 93% of WordPress online stores and has almost 82.5 million downloads. These numbers speak for themselves, proving that WooCommerce is the best ecommerce WordPress plugin that combines usability with professionalism.
How Does WooCommerce Work and How to Install It?
As mentioned above, WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin. Therefore after you download WooCommerce, it will automatically integrate with your already established framework.
If you are a WordPress user, you definitely can’t find a better option to build your ecommerce website. The main reason for this is that WooCommerce is explicitly created for WordPress. Therefore, it is designed to suit your already operating website perfectly.
The installation process is quite simple. To integrate this plugin, you should head to your WordPress Dashboard, search for WooCommerce in “Plugin Options,” and hit the download button, easy peasy. Yes, it’s that simple, and it seems like we have already started with the reasons why you should choose WooCommerce to build your online store!
Why Should I Choose WooCommerce?
Now it’s time to look at 8 reasons why you should choose WooCommerce to build your online retail store.
1. It's Free
Since you are looking for a platform to start an online business, you are definitely interested in comparing different options. Pricing is probably the square one of any similar research, and we will start from this as well. As mentioned before, there are a lot of platforms to build an ecommerce business, and WooCommerce leads this list with about 3.8 million users. The closest substitute to this platform is Shopify, with over 1 million users. Shopify offers three subscription plans, and the cheapest is Shopify Basic which costs $29 per month. Besides that, $29 is quite a lot for a newly-built business; this plan comes with very basic features and gives you only 10 themes. The rest comes at an extra cost.
Since you are a newly emerging ecommerce business, establishment costs are an essential factor you should consider. Obviously, success should be your main destination. However, investing extra resources in your establishment process while there is a cost-free alternative is not reasonable. Unlike Shopify, WooCommerce is free to install.
Besides, with WooCommerce, you can also add various paid extensions that allow you to track your orders, assess your customer engagement, modify your tax settings, manage your inventory, and much more. A key fact to remember is that most of those extensions are reasonably priced. This means that you can build a functional store at a relatively low cost. What else do you need to have a professional and well-operating ecommerce business?
P.S. Keep in mind that WooCommerce isn’t a starter pack. It’s a professional platform that will perfectly fit your business once you expand and acquire your firm spot in the market as well.
2. It Grows With Your Business
When you are starting a new business, you have to think about its future. Keep in mind that success and expansion should be your only destination. Respectively when you are choosing a platform, you should consider this “tiny” factor. So, even though it’s small now, it has the potential of growing. Therefore, when you are picking a platform to realize your ideas, you should boil down to a scalable one that will support your store once it grows as well.
So, if you are a beginner in this field who also has big ambitions, WooCommerce is precisely what you need. With this plugin, you can leap from selling a limited number of products to many thousands and from serving a few customers per week to hundreds per second. All this without extra complexity and effort.
As mentioned in the previous paragraph, WooCommerce isn’t an amateur starter pack but a great tool that grows with your business without becoming a constraint. We believe that this should be another great reason to use this plugin while entering the world of ecommerce.
3. It’s Open Source
One of the best features of this plugin is that it’s an open-source platform. This means that users are allowed to add different features, improve the existing ones, create new custom themes and extensions. This is an uncommon thing for most of the ecommerce platforms such as Shopify. Therefore, with WooCommerce, you can benefit from the improvements provided by a large pool of professionals without spending some extra money on third-party developers.
Besides, if you have any questions, there is no need to look for WooCommerce web developers on hire. You can simply interact with a huge community of WooCommerce web developers in different forums and Facebook groups. These include the “WordPress Online Forum” and the Facebook group “WooCommerce Help & Share.”
4. It Offers Strong Cybersecurity
As discussed in one of our previous articles, your website’s cybersecurity should be your number one priority. Therefore, while building an ecommerce business, you should pick a platform with maximum security and protection. For this exact reason, we find it important to highlight the fact that WooCommerce offers uncompromised cybersecurity putting the protection of your consumers’ data at the top of their scheme.
This is especially important when it comes to transactions and payments. WooCommerce never stores the number and the security code of your customers’ payment methods on your website. This means that even when your website gets targeted and hacked for several weak points we have mentioned in this article, the hacker won’t be able to access the payment information provided by your clients.
Moreover, if you want to provide your customers with a more convenient payment process, you can install some integrated payment gateway plugins allowing them to store their data via tokenization. With this method, their actual payment information will be stored on the payment processor servers, and the only information stored on your website will be in the form of tokens. These tokens are specific to each of your customers and the applied payment gateways. Therefore, they become completely useless and ineligible while viewed out of the particular context they are designed for.
Thus, we can surely claim that with WooCommerce, your customers’ payment information is protected and secure. However, it is also essential to take proper care of your customers’ personal information, which is stored on your website. Those include their name, email address, shipping information, and order history. Therefore, we highly recommend going through this article to learn how to improve your website’s security in general.
5. It Doesn’t Charge Transaction Fees with third-party payment gateways
One of the biggest pros of WooCommerce is that unlike many other ecommerce platforms such as Shopify it does not charge any transaction fees when using a third-party payment gateway.
For instance, Shopify charges 2% for each transaction unless you use Shopify Payments. You can decrease this amount by switching to advanced subscription plans, but this comes at an extra cost.
However, it is important to note that in some cases such as PayPal or bank transactions WooCommerce will charge a certain amount of transaction fees, too.
6. It Offers Strong Email Marketing and SEO Extensions
We have talked about the importance of SEO to your success in a couple of our previous articles. The main goal of SEO is to ensure that your website gets a decent rank in Google’s search results. If you fail to do this, there is a very small probability that your target audience will surf from page to page to find your store after typing keywords linked to your product. Therefore, SEO is one of the key rules in this online game.
WooCommerce is an excellent ecommerce platform that will make sure the right audience sees your store and products. It runs on a code optimized for SEO and offers an extensive amount of various plugins such as Yoast SEO. Besides, WooCommerce also allows you to add detailed titles and meta descriptions to your pages.
Another impressive SEO feature offered by WooCommerce is the possibility of having customized URLs. This will help your potential customers to find your website more easily. Additionally, while building your store with WooCommerce, you will have access to valuable SEO guides and prompts, which is yet another advantage.
Hopefully, you remember the critical role email marketing plays in your marketing strategy. Simply check this article out to refresh your knowledge. WooCommerce will lend you a helping hand in terms of this as well. This platform gives you a surprising range of extensions such as Mailchimp. These extensions help you connect to your customers through personalized emails and take your email marketing campaigns to a whole new level.
Transparent, fair and flexible pricing options with access to all of our services. Senior experts. Fast turnarounds. Remarkable designs!
7. It’s Customisable
One of the most important features of WooCommerce is that it is 100% customisable. To build your store, you can pick an existing theme and adjust it to your preferences. To do this, head to the “Customizer” section of your WordPress dashboard. Here you will be able to make some simple changes without any coding knowledge.
Additionally, if you have some coding background and are familiar with HTML or CSS, you can take the customisation to the next level. So, if you are a beginner and you are not looking for something complicated, we would highly recommend choosing a theme from the existing pool. However, if you need a professional helping hand to build a custom website we are here to lend it. The Passionate team has senior WooCommerce web developers that will help you create a custom website from scratch that perfectly suits your business.
For example, in one of our recent projects, a client needed help transitioning from Shopify to WooCommerce.
Having previously existed as a Shopify website, Type Department needed us to develop a seamless multi-vendor solution for their ecommerce site. WordPress as the CMS with WooCommerce was the clear option, with sellers able to create their own accounts and manage their own products. WordPress also offered the flexibility to include font samplers across the site, allowing visitors to type anything on the product pages to preview the typeface before purchase.
8. It Offers Built-In Analytics
Last but not least, besides that WooCommerce allows you to create and own a store where you set your own rules; it also provides you with powerful built-in analytics. With this extra tool, you will acquire valuable data about your store’s performance without any effort. You will have access to the number of your total sales by date and other shopping stats. This is incredibly helpful since, with this information, you will be able to improve your performance and expand your business.
Additionally, it is worth noting that WooCommerce offers a wide range of other advanced extensions that can be added at an extra cost, too.
Final thoughts
We have discussed 8 reasons why you should use WooCommerce to build a professional and successful online business. The amazing extensions and features it offers are worth a try, and trust me; you won’t regret it. This platform is 100% customisable, secure, and is a great marketing assistant. Its scalability and huge WooCommerce web developer community will help you grow your ideas and build an amazing store at a pretty low cost. What else do you need to start with realizing your ambitious dreams?
If you are looking for professionals to build a perfect custom website for your ecommerce business, contact us. Our team’s passion is to find the perfect solution for your business!
General FAQ
What is WooCommerce used for?
WooCommerce is an ecommerce plugin for WordPress. It is an excellent tool used to create and manage an online store in a very simple way. So, if you ever wanted to start an ecommerce business, WooCommerce is a platform we would highly recommend considering.
Is WooCommerce suitable for ecommerce stores?
WooCommerce is one of the best ecommerce plugins, especially for WordPress users. If you are thinking about entering the world of ecommerce, you should definitely consider using WooCommerce since it offers everything required to keep your store simple and professional. With WooCommerce, you will have access to an incredible range of tools, including secure payments, shipping, inventory, and tax management. Besides, WooCommerce offers uncompromised cybersecurity, especially when it comes to payments. Its super innovative tokenization strategy will keep your customers’ payment information safe, even if your website gets hacked in the worst-case scenario. Additionally, WooCommerce grows with your business and allows you to expand as much as you want. With WooCommerce, you can jump from selling a few products to a couple of thousands. All this without any extra effort. So, considering these and a couple of other points discussed in this article, we can conclude that WooCommerce is definitely good to build an ecommerce business.
What's better: WooCommerce or Shopify?
Both WooCommerce and Shopify are great platforms to start your ecommerce journey. However, we believe that WooCommerce has several wins over Shopify that you should consider when choosing a platform for your business. First of all, unlike Shopify, WooCommerce is free to install. So, with WooCommerce, you are not expected to pay an extra amount just to install the plugin. Secondly, unlike Shopify, which charges 2% for each transaction unless you use Shopify payments, WooCommerce doesn’t charge transaction fees while using third-party payment gateways. And last but not least, it’s an open-source platform.
Do big companies use WooCommerce?
Yes, many big companies use WooCommerce. WooCommerce isn’t a starter pack. It is a great tool to build an ecommerce business despite its size. Some big companies that use WooCommerce are Americares Foundation, Griffin Technology, and QA Limited.
