We’ve recommended plugins before but never discussed one for eCommerce specifically. And for any aspiring business to succeed online, making the right choice in this regard is paramount in your strategy. Originally offered by CMS Critic, check out these WooCommerce benefits to understand how it can help create a winning website.
WooCommerce Benefits
It’s Free!
The budgets allocated to websites for a small business are often shoestring. As a result, you need to keep costs to a minimum where possible. This plugin offers a nice balance between being budget friendly, without having to sacrifice utility.
Why pay for an alternative, when at 1.6 million downloads, it’s one of the most popular plugins for developers? WooCommerce is an open-source platform that’s feature extensive, yet still user-friendly. It’s literally perfect for eCommerce startups to get a feel for online business and get moving.
Huge Flexibility
Within eCommerce, everyone has different desired processes and outcomes. To match your own needs, your plugins have to be flexible. Thankfully, WooCommerce is one of the most adaptable systems available.
The platform can exercise a whole lot of flexibility with your products, without having to know too much about the technical side of things.
Products can be categorised, given sale prices, independent attributes, and more. Additionally, WooCommerce stores are capable of selling physical, virtual, downloadable and even affiliate/external products.
Regardless of what you need, this plugin will be able to manage it.
More Than an eCommerce Tool
It’s important to keep everything simple when developing your website. It’s better to have only a few bells and whistles than anything over the top that isn’t functional. Therefore this plugin is particularly useful for basic WordPress builds. WooCommerce is constructed to work whether a bespoke experienced developer builds it, or a novice blogger.
Because it’s a WordPress based platform, all the dimensions of a business’ online presence can be harnessed in one place. This is a very underrated feature and will be of a huge help as you develop your site.
Familiar Friendliness
Similar to be the above, the fact this is a WordPress based plugin will bring some much needed familiarity in your development. There’s nothing worse than trying to remember all the individual features of different interfaces and systems.
WooCommerce will work straightforward, in a framework that you’ll be used to.
Themes Galore!
Themes keep things easy to manage, and ensure that all aspects of your site are functional. One of the biggest assets to WooCommerce users, is the amount of themes readily available.
Currently, users can choose between 39 different themes via the WooThemes Store. Changing pre-set CSS styles and colours once a theme has been selected is also possible. For the more advanced developers, tweaking the code and experimenting with the special features which each theme is also possible.
Professional yet Simple
So far we’ve sold WooCommerce as a free, user-friendly ecommerce platform. However, don’t let that fool you into thinking it isn’t a professional online store solution. In fact, that’s exactly what it is.
Within the platform, a detailed order tracking and customer engagement tools can be found. This allows merchants to view past and open orders, update delivery statuses, apply discounts and so forth. In fact, tax settings, inventory management, shipping options, coupon codes and pretty much everything else you need for a professional ecommerce setup, is part of WooCommerce.
Just because something is simple doesn’t mean it’s not professional!
Analytics Made Easy
Information is everything in digital strategy. A key factor to success online, is how a developer uses analytics to continuously improve. Many eCommerce startups may not know how to apply an analytics system to their website. And without access to such information, how do they know what’s working and what’s not? Thankfully, WooCommerce has such users covered.
The built in analytics system makes a wide array of statistics crystal clear. Figures like total sales, sales by date, average order totals, individual customer statistics and much more are all neatly presented via graphs. This is all done internally, so the user never even has to leave their admin panel. Simple!
Apps Galore!
As it is, WooCommerce has the ability to help any aspiring online sellers set up, and run a business easily. Yet, for those looking for extra functionality, this plugin once again doesn’t disappoint.
There are hundreds of extensions available, some of which are free, and some of which require a fee. From these extensions, one can find applications relating to accounting, payment gateways, marketing, reporting and more.
You shouldn’t rely too heavily on apps, but they do offer another level of functionality that can work wonders for a specific tool.
Room For Growth
Starting out with WooCommerce is relatively simple. But as you develop, opportunities for growth and expansion in terms of how you manage your store, products and customers are available.
Modifying templates is made easy, for example. Whether users want to do so directly via the theme files, or use the many hooks and filters available. Building extensions is also simple with various APIs at the ready. Along with an extensive documentation library, users can get to know how WooCommerce works, inside and out.
Startups can quickly get underway with WooCommerce, but as they grow – so too does the plugins utility.
Because WooThemes
One of the best ways to tell whether a plugin is worth using is the developers behind it. And thankfully, WooThemes are one of the most trusted groups within the world of WordPress. They have a proven track record and are behind some of the biggest plugins used today.
On top of a myriad of real, contactable people to talk to, WooThemes users can benefit from community forums, video tutorials, and more. When you tap into that community, you’ve reached one of the best resources for development advice available online.
Win with these WooCommerce Benefits
Are you in the process of building an eCommerce site? Let us know about your experiences and if you need a hand with anything, get in touch. We’ll be sure to set you on the right path!
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