Building an eCommerce store from scratch can be daunting. Many options are available, and finding the most suitable platform according to your requirements and budget can become challenging. Despite the tough competition, the numbers confirm that WooCommerce stands above the rest.
Among all eCommerce platforms, WooCommerce is at the top with a daunting 29% of the total market share and a 7% share of all the eCommerce stores worldwide. Apart from WooCommerce’s dominance and popularity, WooCommerce is free! Yes, it is free and flexible to the extent of anyone’s imagination. That is why WooCommerce is the most accepted eCommerce shop platform worldwide.
Suppose you are still not confident in choosing WooCommerce as your eCommerce platform. We dive deeper to explore its exceptional features.
Let’s get started!
Progression And Background Of eCommerce Platforms
eCommerce platforms have been continuously evolving for the last 40 years. It became popular in the early 90s with the launch of the first browser on the internet; then, eCommerce stores and payment gateways were developed, which in turn required platforms for secure transactions. To fulfill that, many eCommerce platforms were introduced.
Woocomerce made its appearance in 2011 and immediately became popular. Automattic, the owner of WordPress, noticed that and acquired WooCommerce in 2015. After that, WooCommerce grew by leaps and bounds.
Woocomerce works flawlessly with WordPress, one of the reasons for its exceptional success. To fully understand the impact of WooCommerce, let’s look at its pros and cons.
Pros of WooCommerce
Cost Efficiency
WooCommerce is a free and easy-to-install plugin. You can turn your WordPress site into an eCommerce store with a few clicks. You can start running a business with no additional cost, which gives you an edge over WooCommerce compared to its competitors. This aspect is dearly appreciated by emerging businesses where saving cost is of prime importance because what you save can be used to buy paid extensions. For example, tracking orders, customer communication, inventory management, and whatever you need.
Flexibility
WooCommerce is an open-source plugin. It gives you total control to tailor and modify the eCommerce store according to your needs. Add any feature you require and enjoy unlimited possibilities. You can also add multiple products and handle many users and orders, which makes WooCommerce ideal for businesses of all sizes.
Support
WooCommerce offers extensive documentation to help you eliminate the steep learning curve. Still, if you need help, you can check out the public forums. In addition, WooCommerce account holders can chat with a committed support team of WooCommerce, available 24/7. Due to its popularity and extensive use, you can also get help from web developers and WooCommerce users online.
Secure And Reliable
Unbeatable cybersecurity is not an option for an eCommerce platform. WooCommerce stands out in this feature by providing uncompromised security. Woocomerce does not save the record of your client’s security numbers or payment methods on its website. That makes it impossible for hackers to get your valuable info online. You can also add a third-party gateway extension for security and ease of payment.
Complete Control
Unlike its peers, WooCommerce gives you complete ownership of your eCommerce platform. You can access and sell anything. With WooCommerce, you are in control and can choose which plugins and extensions to install, which features to enable/disable, and create an amazing eCommerce store while staying within budget.
Multimedia Support
Your website is more than just a placeholder for SEO-based content; it is a marketing tactic that can lure in customers and entice them to purchase your product. Images speak louder than words, and WooCommerce understands that.
Through WooCommerce, you can create engaging and modern storefronts and display high-quality multimedia without restrictions. Woocomerce can handle media content like pictures, product pages, videos, or infographics.
Seo-Friendly
Search Engine Optimization plays an integral part in scaling your business. Woocomerce is rated the best platform for SEO. Your business can grow exponentially with good SEO and save you marketing costs. You can get more business from a simple web search.
WooCommerce runs on code that optimizes SEO and allows you to integrate various plugins for SEO optimization. It also lets you have tailored URLs, detailed titles, and meta descriptions to help with organic web search results.
Email Support
Despite what you may think, email marketing gives you the highest return on investment. For every $1 you spend on email marketing, you can expect an average ROI of $42. WooCommerce facilitates you to integrate many extensions like MailChimp, Omnisend, etc. These extensions help you reach out to potential customers by customizing emails, setting schedules, and following up through targeted messages.
Analytical Data Support
You must determine your business objectives, target market, consumer shopping behavior, etc. WooCommerce helps you find the answers to these questions by providing a built-in data analytical tool. With the help of this tool, you easily access your store activities like updating sales figures, top-selling products, profitable customer segments, etc. With this information, you can make better decisions to scale your business.
WooCommerce Cons
Learn And Adapt
If you have decided to use WooCommerce, you must roll your sleeves up to learn coding to get the desired results. As mentioned above, WooCommerce has a steep learning curve, and you need to have sufficient WordPress and coding knowledge to help you customize themes and integrate plugins. Otherwise, you would need to hire a developer to deal with all this, which can get costly.
Compatibility
WordPress powers WooCommerce. This excludes you from using any plugin which is not built on WordPress. But don’t worry; WooCommerce has many plugins far better than other platforms.
Difficult To Start
WooCommerce does not offer features like hosting services, SSL certificates, domains, etc., which are important before you set up your eCommerce store. You either deal with this yourself or spend some money to get professional help.
Conclusion
It is obvious now that WooCommerce’s benefits outweigh its drawbacks. Considering its flexible and customizable nature that enables you to go beyond any limitation, and all of it for free, it is not surprising that WooCommerce powers 28% of all online stores.
It is compatible with multiple features and plugins, like security, media handling, analytic data, SEO, and above all, it gives you total control of your eCommerce store. We hope this article convinced you why you must choose WooCommerce.
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