WooCommerce is the leading eCommerce platform, used by 30% of all online stores and over one million websites. It’s perfect for a start-up online store, someone looking for a more user-friendly option to migrate over to, and for million-dollar retailers alike. It’s filled with themes and plugins that make adding functionality to your online store as your needs and business grow easy to do. And unlike most of it’s competitors, it is free to download and use, with no monthly payments for the software.
3 Reasons to Choose WooCommerce for Your Online Store
WooCommerce Plugins
Moving your company from selling products at your only your physical store to adding on eCommerce takes lots of planning. For physical items, you need to figure out shipping logistics including packaging and postage, or choose to partner with a drop shipping service. Shipping times and delivery service choices if you’re shipping to Alaska and Hawaii are quite different than the continental United States. Taxes differ for each state and you’ll need to accurately report it. WooCommerce excels in helping you setup these functions for your store and has many support forums to guide you in making these business decisions.
One of the strengths of WooCommerce is the depth of plugins that easily add on additional functionality to your base install. Here’s a few of our favorites:
- Payment Gateway: If you’re going to offer payment choices beyond on-site credit card payments, this plugin is a key tool. It’s setup for 117 different payment options, including PayPal, Authorize.net, Stripe, Amazon Payments, and many, many more.
- WooCommerce Product Gift Wrap: Makes it easy to add gift wrapping of one or several items onto your store, and lets you charge extra for the service.
- WooCommerce Product FAQs: Customers submit questions on your site which then display as FAQs on each product page. Helps you build FAQs based on actual customer questions.
- WooCommerce PDF Invoices and Packing Slips: Gives you the resource to email an invoice to the customer when their order has been placed, and print a packing slip to add to their box.
- WooCommerce Follow Up Emails: Touching base with your customers after their order is a great way to get repeat customers and reviews. This plugin lets you setup emails that go out at a specific time after a customers order, such as 30 days after their purchase to ask for a review or if they need to order more.
- Product CSV Import Suite: One of the most time-consuming steps of setting up a new eCommerce website can be inputting your products into the system. Whether your products are in a database, another eCommerce platform, or an Excel spreadsheet, this plugin is a must to quickly add your items into your new online store.
WooCommerce versus Magento
Magento is the second most popular eCommerce platform, and like WooCommerce, the interface is easy to use. Initial setup for the sites are both user friendly, but once you want to add additional functionality to Magento your expenses will start to climb. Whereas with WooCommerce the plugins are easy to add on and setup with the help of the robust support forums, Magento extensions will require you to hire a costly developer to do the setup. Magento also requires dedicated servers and additional hosting services, while WooCommerce can run on your same hosting service as your regular WordPress website.
Read our blog for more details on how to migrate from Magento to WooCommerce.
Benefits of WooCommerce
Still not convinced that WooCommerce is the perfect choice for your online store? WC Marketplace has a detailed infographic that shows the benefits and market share of WooCommerce. It also showcases why WooCommerce is a better choice for your business than Magento. View WC Marketplace’s WooCommerce Infographic.
Hiring WooCommerce Professionals
TheeDigital is experienced in creating WordPress and WooCommerce websites that get noticed by consumers and search engines. We can transform your outdated Magento site into a user-friendly WooCommerce site that is both easy for you to update and profitable for your business.
Tags: Ecommerce • WooCommerce • WordPress
