Should I use WooCommerce?
WordPress is easily the most popular content management system on the internet so it should come as no surprise that its eCommerce platform WooCommerce, is the most popular eCommerce platform right now. However, despite its popularity, WooCommerce is not for everyone.
Simply speaking WooCommerce turns your WordPress website into a fully functional eCommerce store. WooCommerce is an eCommerce plugin for WordPress. WooCommerce is not a stand-alone site builder.
WooCommerce Pricing
As mentioned, WooCommerce is a plugin for your WordPress site. It also happens to be free and open-source but the hosting comes at a cost. WooCommerce costs can add up quickly if not careful when starting to expand to premium themes, plugins and extensions, and even developer themes. The total for a basic functional WooCommerce site can come out to as little as $45/month, excluding hosting. Of course, this total can vary a great deal deepening on business needs and desires.
Does WooCommerce need SSL?
Just like any other eCommerce store, you will indeed need an SSL to have a WooCommerce store. Luckily that is easy to obtain as most of the over 100 payment integrations include SSL and are PCI compliant. Included in these are Square and the ability to take payment in person with it.
How do I set up a WooCommerce shop page?
If you are new to WordPress and still want to use WooCommerce, I have good news. A quick search on google of how do I start a WordPress website will yield you about 807 million results. There are literally millions of guides to help you on your way. Of course, even easier than reading how to do it yourself is to entrust the building of your site to professionals that have designed hundreds of eCommerce sites, such as NuEthic.
Is WooCommerce easy to use?
Relatively speaking WooCommerce is very easy to install and configure. If you already have a WordPress website, it’s even easier. The dashboard for WooCommerce is similar to the dashboard for WordPress making it easy and familiar to navigate. The integration into WordPress makes it a nice option for busy small scale business owners.
WooCommerce itself offers Storefront, a free WordPress theme that’s designed to integrate deeply into the WooCommerce core plugin. It also seamlessly works with the most popular extensions and plugins for WooCommerce.
With free and premium themes that are designed specifically to integrate and work well with WooCommerce, there is definitely an option for every user.
What can I sell on WooCommerce?
WooCommerce is versatile. As the store owner, you have the option to sell both physical and digital goods. You can even sell services like plumbing, your time or sell digital items with instant access via download. Woo-commerce hails this as “your store your way”. Of course, the option to sell variants of products and multiple configurations of those products are available as well.
Creating a new product on WooCommerce is simple and streamlined. With multiple options, such as sales price and duration, to even how numbers are displayed in your total give the impression of real control. The store can also be controlled from your smart-phone for the mobile mogul.
WooCommerce SEO
Almost every theme on WooCommerce comes with built-in SEO features. One of my personal favorite separate SEO plugins is the Yoast WooCommerce SEO plugin. This plugin makes it possible to add things such as Pinterest specific details to create a rich pin that includes all information, leading to more people clicking on the product on social networks. Yoast WooCommerce SEO plugin also has optimization for keywords per page and real-time suggestion for internal links creating a greater average time on the page which is important in the Google metric.
Other WooCommerce SEO plugins do offer analytical tools for SEO optimization as well. If you’re confused about how to make your website stand out or just want to talk about SEO optimization for your eCommerce store, reach out today and let us see how we can help.
Plugin and Extensions
We talked about SEO and shipping plugins for WooCommerce but there are a lot more than just that. With extensions and plugins that help improve the function, feature, conversion rate, and customer rewards, there are multiple lists online of plugins that your WooCommerce store will need. I like this list by Colin Newcomer, over at WinningWP but with over 400 official extensions and more being made every day there is something out there for every type of store.
WooCommerce Shipping
Shipping is important for every eCommerce store and WooCommerce gives the site owner a great deal of control over shipping. Shipping options include free, flat rate, or real-time calculation via a myriad of third-party plugins. WooCommerce gives the ability to restrict shipping options based on things like geographical location.
WooCommerce Taxes
WooCommerce gives you an amazing amount of control as to how taxes are implemented throughout your store. You can configure settings so that tax is calculated on the shipping address, billing address, or store location.
Shopify vs WooCommerce
Both are very popular but if you already have an active WordPress blog and are looking to monetize it through sales, then WooCommerce is a logical fit. WooCommerce does lack the volume and traffic it can handle before the servers become overwhelmed. About 10,000 transactions a day will be the limit with WooCommerce. To put it into comparison, Shopify Plus can handle over 10,000 transactions a minute.
The cons of WooCommerce
WooCommerce is easily the most hacked eCommerce platform. Woocommerce cannot handle high traffic. So those Black Friday or Cyber Monday sales will plummet if WooCommerce is your eCommerce choice.
The pros of WooCommerce
Headless commerce in WooCommerce is incredible! The user experience and user interface might just be the best feature of WooCommerce and the design is beautiful and creates such a rich atmosphere of awe for your customers to behold.
Conclusion
If you already have a WordPress site, WooCommerce makes sense to use. If you want to create a brand identity that is more important than generating thousands of sales, WooCommerce might be for you. If you have limited numbers of products to choose from WooCommerce could be your choice of the eCommerce platforms to choose from but no matter what platform you choose to use, NuEthic can help you in your eCommerce choices.