Five Product Types You Can Sell with WooCommerce

Are you interested in starting an online store or ecommerce business, but don’t know the best way to sell your product? Try WooCommerce. An online store is a great way to showcase and sell your merchandise online because 96% of Americans have made an online purchase in their life, 80% in the past month(Big Commerce, 2016). Therefore, not having an online store means you could be missing out on a big opportunity for more revenue. Online stores offers many advantages over traditional or “brick and mortar” stores because they are open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and 365 days out of the year; also, it’s open to anyone, anywhere with an internet connection including computers, tablets, and mobile phones. With expanded hours, you’ll be able to increase your revenue without boundaries. Another bonus of online stores is the ability to display more items, sizes, and colors, helping customers find what they need without the limitations of shelf or rack space. No more searching in the storage room or rummaging through inventories, just to come up empty handed. With an online store, you’ll be able to keep exact inventory; giving customers faster and more exact results. So, now that you’re interested in selling your goods and services online, what types of products are you able sell? Here is a list of five product types that you can sell on WooCommerce.

Physical Products

When most people think of ecommerce, they automatically think physical, tangible products that are bought online and delivered to the customer. Global ecommerce companies including eBay, Amazon, and Overstock are widely considered pioneers and leaders in the industry because they revolutionized their ecommerce platforms into the marketplaces they are today.

Marketplace

When you enter a store, you automatically start browsing to see what merchandise the store has in stock. From groceries to appliances, you roam up and down the aisle to find the item you need. This is also true in a marketplace concept for ecommerce. The marketplace is a directory of product inventories for the customer to browse. Usually multiple vendors sell their goods and services on a marketplace because of the volume of customers the marketplace attracts. Once the shopper finds the item or items they need, they will be able to purchase it online and have it sent directly to their address of choice. Using a website to navigate through inventories, marketplaces allow the user to find the merchandise they need without having to leave the comfort of their home, which saves them time and money of having to go to a physical store.

Site to Store

Have you ever been on a big retail chain’s website and found an item that you absolutely love? In fact, you love it so much that you need the item immediately? In recent years, many giant superstores have seen this trend, so the concept of “site to store” came to be. Site to store is the ability to purchase the item online and then pick it up from the physical brick and mortar location. So now you have some merchandise that you want to be able to sell online. WooCommerce is a great WordPress plugin for setting up an online store with physical merchandise.  WooCommerce is able to list the product online with detailed descriptions of the items, as well as how many are in stock. After purchasing the merchandise, the plugin is able to collect shipping or site to store information. All this makes it easier to run an online store with efficiency.

Digital Products

Having an ecommerce website has many advantages; the biggest advantage over a brick and mortar business is the ability to sell digital products, which reduces your storage space. Digital products are merchandise that can be sold and downloaded directly to the customer through the internet.

Ebooks

In a digital world, every aspect of book-reading is changing. Ebooks are electronic book files that are able to be read from any computer, tablet, or phone screen. With ebooks, users are able to have a whole library right in the palm of their hands. This means that there is no need to purchase an extra room in your house just for your books.

Software

These days, computers have become the social norm. Computers are an essential part of everyday life. Computers are the driving force for most everything we do, but computers require something else to drive them: software. With ecommerce, users are able to purchase software and it have it directly downloaded to their computers. Users can buy directly from online marketplaces such as the Apple App Store, Google Play Store, or Steam, a platform for online games. This ability to purchase directly over the internet allows companies to push software updates and fixes to their customers without long delivery times. When selling ebooks or software on your website, you need a medium or platform to handle your transactions. WooCommerce makes it easy for users to sell and purchase ebooks or other digital media from a website. Inside the Woo plugin, you will be able to list your digital media in the products section and direct it to force download immediately after purchase, giving your customers quick and direct access to your downloadable merchandise.

Subscription

Have you ever subscribed to a magazine or any kind of service that offers you access to regularly scheduled content? Then you have the general idea of a subscription model service, but with ecommerce, that product is instantaneous.

Video on Demand

Remember the days when if you wanted to watch a particular movie, you had go to the local movie theater or rent it at Blockbuster? Those days are over. Now you can stream and view content through video on demand. Netflix, the global leader in video on demand, introduced the concept of video streaming in 2007. Since then, Netflix has grown to become a household name with 57 million subscribers at the end of 2014 to 75 million at the end of 2015. Each day their subscribers continues to grow exponentially.

Music on Demand

Remember when you had to go to the local music store to grab the latest CD or record, or having to change the radio station due to out-of-range static? Paid music subscription services like Apple Music and Sirius Radio have made CDs, records, and radio wave broadcast a thing of the past by bringing the music directly to the user over the internet

Original Content

When dealing with subscription services, one of the biggest advantages is original content. In 2013, Netflix introduced original shows to their lineup. By doing so, Netflix altered both the digital and cable television worlds by changing how viewers approach television. According to Market Watch (2016), “numerous cable companies have seen a decline in subscribers this year. Meanwhile, Netflix recently announced during its stronger-than-expected earnings report that the company saw a jump in new subscribers this quarter despite a price hike.” Because viewers no longer had to purchase a television package to watch quality, cutting-edge, award-winning television shows, services like Netflix are quickly taking over the marketshare. Due to Netflix’s original content success, a dramatic change rippled all across other online video-on-demand services including Amazon and Hulu, and traditional primetime television networks including ABC, CBS All Access, and HBO Go began to introduce their own online subscription services. Conducting a subscription service on your WordPress site requires a program to navigate it. WooCommerce offers WooCommerce Subscriptions to allow your customers to subscribe to your products or services via a weekly, monthly, or annual payment plan. The subscription plan offers recurring payment plans allowing for you sell memberships for your online content.

Time

Professional services and continuing education are very important to the development of any professional. If you are a professional trainer or have something knowledgeable to talk about, why not sell it on your website?

Webinars

Webinars are a great way to give your customers instructional videos that will help them succeed. The content on webinars can be either be pre-recorded or streamed live for viewing. The webinars can be complex instructional videos for professional success or simple, easy to make cooking shows.

Professional Services

Are you an established professional? Are you an individual who wants to offer your advice to others? Do you want to be able to sell your professional services and consultation to others? If so, that’s great. WooCommerce can help. Typically when you are seeking professional services, you would have to call and ask about the service. Now, professional services and knowledge are one of the latest trends in ecommerce. With WooCommerce, you will able to monetized your services online, schedule appointments, or even conduct your services over the internet.

Tickets

Running an event is already a hassle, so conducting your ticketing system online is an easy way to manage event attendees. From selling the tickets to assigning seats, ecommerce can help your events succeed.

Sell Tickets

The biggest task to any event is the ability to sell tickets effectively and efficiently. Using an ecommerce platform to sell your tickets online is like having 3 full-time ticket box employees, who are fast, efficient, and knowledgeable of the event. With WooCommerce, you will be able to sell tickets directly from your WordPress site without any third-party ticket fees. By selling your tickets on your own WordPress site, you’ll be able to create information that is personalized for your customers without the hassle of dealing with another company.

Manage Attendees

Another daunting task for any event is managing the event attendees. WooCommerce allows users to manage attendee information, including custom registration tailored to the needs of the event. This way you don’t have to remember who gets what t-shirt, where they’re sitting, and where they are from: WooCommerce can collect that all for you while collecting their payment. Piloting an event is already stressful enough, why make things harder on yourself? With WooCommerce, not only are you the pilot of your event but the pit crew as well. It gives you the power and information you need to run your event, all the palm of your hands.

Why Should I use WooCommerce?

Now, that you’ve learned about the different types of products that can be sold with WooCommerce, you’re ready to be the next Amazon or Netflix. It’s time to get down to business: Boasting over 20 million downloads (WordPress, 2017), WooCommerce is a plugin for WordPress websites, which means it’s an open-source platform that “provides users with a feature extensive, yet hugely user-friendly experience.” WooCommerce provides flexibility for its users to effectively sell their products, and “doesn’t force users to go beyond their comfort zone when building their online store, yet at the same time, it readily opens the door for more than just ecommerce” (CMS Critic, 2013). So, are you ready to open your store? Let us help.

Tags: Ecommerce