What is WooCommerce?
WooCommerce
Amongst several eCommerce platforms available today, only a few can manage to stand out. Let’s look at WooCommerce today, one of the most preferred platforms for those who wish to open an online store!
What is WooCommerce?
WooCommerce is an open-source platform and a free e-Commerce plugin launched in 2011. The platform quickly gained popularity right after its introduction, thanks to its accessibility, flexibility, easy installation, and freeware.
WooCommerce is a sought-after website builder in the market. When it comes to the platform’s functionality, it allows its users to build their eCommerce store and make it completely functional from scratch.
You can quickly sell products (digital or physical) or services, add a shopping cart functionality, manage your inventory, make secure transactions, and much more.
The best part is that since WooCommerce is an extension of WordPress, the WordPress websites can be turned into an eCommerce store without much effort.
Selling on WooCommerce
So, what exactly can you sell on WooCommerce, you ask? Pretty much anything. Physical items such as coffee, clothes, shoes, bags, and jewellery are excellent examples of the kind and range of products sold here.
If you’re someone who’s looking to provide a service, WooCommerce can help you with that too. You can feel free to offer digital services on this platform while also making appointments and selling digital products such as e-books, graphics, etc.
WooCommerce is the way to go if you’ve got a product service to provide and receive payments in some of the most secure methods.
Benefits of WooCommerce
Using WooCommerce comes with many benefits. Let’s find them out:
1. Simple to Setup and Install:
We’ve just mentioned how WooCommerce gained much demand when launched, given its easy installation. That’s true as setting up and installing WooCommerce is similar to any other plugin.
It is available for free download from the WordPress plugin directory — you can access this through the WordPress admin. While for the setup, you can utilise the wizard to help guide you. The wizard will ask you several questions about the configuration of the store.
2. Provides almost all the features required for an online store:
WooCommerce consists of essential features needed to manage an eCommerce store successfully. Some of these are as follows:
- It is possible to sell any product or service
- Easy customisation
- Allows users to add tags, categories, and product attributes
- You can integrate payment methods such as PayPal or credit cards
- Customers can filter products according to their rating, type, and popularity
Plugins available on WooCommerce
Once you’ve got a store up and running on WooCommerce, the next step is to get a plugin or two to enhance how your store functions. Here are a few plugins that we think would work great for any store :
1)Cartflows:
The checkout page is one of the most opportunistic ways for firms to get their customers to come back (customer retention) again to buy from you and upsell too.
Cartflows is your best friend to customise the checkout process. It has ready-made templates that you can apply to your online store and create the exact checkout page as you wish.
The best thing is you do not need to be a tech-savvy person to use this or hire one either since this plugin is straightforward to use.
2)Sendinblue:
At some point, your store will need regular newsletters, records, and emails for customers to remind them that you’re still existent. A single person handling this can be pretty tiresome, and that’s where Sendinblue kicks in.
Sendinblue helps you automate your marketing, send the best newsletters and emails regularly, keep records of all customers, and receive real-time analytics of your store. It uses a drag and drops editor, which will enable you to create signup forms much more quickly.
Conclusion
Overall, WooCommerce is an excellent competitor to the eCommerce platform Shopify. With some of the best benefits and ways for vendors to sell their products and others to sell their services, WooCommerce is a platform worthy of attention.