Starting a trading business is one of the first decisions you need to make, the best platform to choose from the many options available in the market. However, of all the options available, WooCommerce is one of the most used.
WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin created from the ground up to facilitate online retail management. Despite the significant challenges of platforms such as Drupal and Magento, WooCommerce is the platform of choice for more than 40% of e-commerce companies worldwide.
The level of deployment of WooCommerce in the online commerce space perfectly reflects the fact that it is one of the most trusted platforms for new and existing businesses. The company was founded in 2011 and currently supports over two million companies worldwide. This open-source e-commerce platform has lowered the entry bar for an online store.
What exactly does WooCommerce do?
WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin that WordPress publishers can use to sell products online. WordPress, the basic version of the software, is free, but the additional costs are related to features such as appointments, post-subscription pricing, and product recommendation engine installation.
Adding products is relatively easy, from creating a store to getting started—nothing but adding posts or pictures to your WordPress blog.
WooCommerce and the startup business world
Automattic took over WooCommerce back in 2015. At the time, it was the first significant acquisition that Re / Code was speculating over $ 30 million. There are currently nearly 2 million active stores on the WooCommerce platform. According to the same report, around 530,000 of these stores were added in 2016.
Looking at growth since 2015 when it was acquired, WooCommerce has skyrocketed its global market share to 42% of all online stores. 12% jump from the numbers at the time.
Why WooCommerce is perfect for your startup
As a new company, you want to start your e-commerce business on a concrete pedestal. This means staying stable, minimizing unnecessary costs, and seizing valuable opportunities. WooCommerce helps small businesses achieve this in the following ways:
1. It Is Free
There is currently no shortage of quality eCommerce SMCs that companies can use to sell online efficiently and innovatively. Maximum time, the only downside is that they all come with a price. Everything except WooCommerce.
WooCommerce is currently free to download. While WooCommerce is unconfirmed and open source, it offers tremendous opportunities outside of the container. It is incredibly flexible in that it adds both nature and extensions that I will get into later.
2. Huge Flexibility
Perhaps one of the most significant advantages of WooCommerce for new entrepreneurs is that marketers using the platform can be very flexible with their articles without knowing too many technical aspects of the factors.
Products can be classified by sales value, independent attributes, and more. Also, WooCommerce stores can sell physical, virtual, downloadable, or even linked / external products.
3. Greater Than Ecommerce
When setting up an online shop, WooCommerce does not force customers to leave their comfort zone, but at the same time, easily opens the door to more than just e-commerce.
For example, WooCommerce users can create a fully functional store with an embedded blog on a professional website. These aspects of online presence are used and presented organically in one place thanks to the fact that WooCommerce is a WordPress based platform.
4. Effortless Stock Management
WooCommerce monitors inventory well. The add-on keeps track of your list, and when an item in stock runs out, it is marked as missing. This way, you can be sure that your company always has everything you need to deliver the products ordered by your customers. You can further expand the management features of the WooCommerce store by linking them to other plugins.
5. Simplicity Comes with Professionalism
Not only is WooCommerce free and easy, but it’s also professional. All of these incredible features are beautifully packaged to deliver a highly skilled online shopping experience.
The platform has great tools for customer interaction, order details, inventory management, even tax adjustments, and many other professional e-commerce functions. This allows sellers to manage exquisite deals while buyers can enjoy a flawless online store, thanks to WooCommerce.
6. Easily extensible with thousands of plugins
WooCommerce is a vast ecosystem with thousands of free and paid plugins that add extra features. For starters, I always recommend looking for the official WooCommerce extension. The company behind WordPress and WooCommerce develops them, so you ensure support and compatibility. One of the great plugins is the WooCommerce product video to help you promote your product effectively.
7. Security
In times of the internet and phishing, your customers want to know that their personal information is safe. The details and home address of these credit cards may not be passed on to third parties. WooCommerce protects this by offering its users a very secure trading platform.
In addition to regular updates, Automattic works with leading Internet security experts. They monitor and test system vulnerabilities, which gives them a business advantage over the proposed solutions. They also fix bugs quickly and provide users with one-click updates. This not only makes WooCommerce secure but friendly too.
8. Easy analytics
As a business owner, you want to know where most of your sales come from and what time customers prefer your products. With WooCommerce, you can monitor and optimize this valuable data to improve the performance of your website.
Besides, you do not need to be proficient in interpreting these built-in analyzes, as they are simplified for more straightforward users. You can get data such as hourly sales, statistics for individual customers, average total orders, and more simple pies.
Summing it up
WooCommerce offers a lot of flexibility to the layperson. For example, you can sell physical products, virtual services, downloadable content, or even perpetual/related products. Again, the retailer can categorize the work according to their needs – budget, features, size, etc.
As your eCommerce grows, WooCommerce grows with you. For example, the platform has many APIs that users can use to create extensions. Further information can be found in the extensive WooCommerce document library.