With over 17,000,000 downloads, WooCommerce is the most popular Ecommerce platform on the web, so you can rest assured you’re in great company.
WooCommerce gives you complete control of your store, from GST to stock levels to shipping to customer accounts. Add and remove extensions, change your design, and switch settings as you please. It’s all under your control.
Features and Benefits
A WooCommerce Store Can Be Anything You Want it to Be.
- Sell any product anywhere anytime… WooCommerce supports basic product types ‘out of the box’ and can be expanded to offer virtually any type of product including events, subscriptions, digital downloads or appointments/rentals/bookings
- Build YOUR brand… WooCommerce is built on WordPress so you can style your store to completely reflect your brand
- Optimised for Mobile… Partnering WooCommerce with WordPress and Genesis ensures your online store is available to shoppers on any device
Modular and Expandable.
- One of the great features of WooCommerce is the ability to add functionality through extensions
- You don’t have to launch your store with all the bells and whistles straight up. You can start with the basics and then add functionality to your store as your budget and audience grows
Supported by the Best in the Business.
- In May 2015, WooCommerce was acquired by Automattic, the same company behind WordPress. That means the platform is now supported by the same software engineers who built WordPress, and the entire community of WordPress developers
- If you ever need help with your site, there’s a 99.999% chance that you can find a friendly local developer to help you out
Secure.
- WooCommerce is audited by Sucuri, the industry leader in WordPress security, to ensure that it adheres to industry security standards, best practices and coding standards to keep your site and data secure from hackers
Integrates with Your Site Content.
- As an extension of WordPress, your WooCommerce store will integrate perfectly with your blog and other site content
- With WordPress handling all of your products, sales data and customers, you’ll be able to integrate all of your marketing efforts into the one platform
- This also means that you only have to learn the one platform, manage one site, and remember one set of login details
Downsides??
Extensions
One of the great features of WooCommerce is it’s flexibility by adding extensions. These extensions do come at a cost, typically ranging from FREE to $200+ and many have yearly renewal plans.
However, this simply means making informed decisions about which extensions you really need at key points in the growth of your business.
Hosting
All websites need to be hosted and WooCommerce is no different, however it simply resides on the same server as your WordPress website.
Hosted platforms like Shopify add hosting costs to their monthly service fees.
Note:
WooCommerce can generate a lot of database queries and place extra demands on your hosting.
Choosing a hosting provider that actively supports WordPress/WooCommerce, and can handle the amount of traffic you expect on your site, will alleviate any issue.
I’ll be happy to discuss the various options with you at the appropriate stage of your project.
Updating
With any independent platform you are responsible for keeping your site updated and secure. This simply means being aware of what updates are available and addressing them on your site. WordPress and WooCommerce have a streamlined updating process to make this process as efficient as possible.
Is WooCommerce for You?
Unlike a hosted solution (like Shopify) you won’t get a WooCommerce store at the click of a button.
Setting up and fully customizing a WooCommerce store will take a bit more effort, but the flexibility in having a custom store that you control is a reward well worth the effort in my opinion.
WooCommerce Core Features – Download PDF
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