You can sell physical and virtual (digital) products in a WordPress store and, thanks to a variety of plugins and options, you can customize your store to suit your needs, payment types, shipping, or even turn your store into a dropshipping or B2B platform.
WordPress with WooCommerce plugin is the most popular eCommerce solution . With flexibility and access to thousands of free and paid extensions, over 30% of all online stores are powered by WooCommerce.
The main advantage of creating an online store with WooCommerce + WordPress is its simplicity and intuitiveness. Even new internet users will quickly master the basics of an online store. With WordPress, you can independently edit, add new products and content to your online store. But remember that there are no perfect systems and solutions, and when you finally choose a WordPress platform, you have to weigh the pros and cons.
What is WooCommerce?
The WooCommerce plugin allows you to create a complete online store based on WordPress. This plugin not only creates simple stores to complement an existing WordPress site, but also large, standalone online stores that give complete control over both store owners and the user’s shopping experience.
WooCommerce is just a plugin for converting WordPress into an online store, this is its plus, but there are also minuses. You won’t be able to develop such a store indefinitely, and at some point you will run into limitations in WooCommerce.
Although WooCommerce is free, you will have to pay for some of the plugins. WordPress doesn’t provide many important sales and marketing tools, and you have to buy a lot of plugins. There are premium plugins with limits, as a rule, there are enough of them at the start to launch an online store, but you still need to be prepared that you will have to spend some amount on plugins. In any case, it is cheaper than buying the same plugins for Bitrix or OpenCart.
Features of WooCommerce
WooCommerce is not a standalone e-commerce platform, just a WordPress plugin. The WooCommerce plugin was created in 2011, but in just a few years, this extension has become one of the most popular e-commerce solutions in the world. It is estimated that WooCommerce currently holds about 25-30% of the global e-commerce platform market. The popularity of WooCommerce Development is mainly driven by WordPress and its large community.
The WooCommerce plugin is as easy to install as any other plugin. However, WooCommerce offers a lot more options than a regular plugin. If you are new to WordPress + WooCommerce for the first time and have no experience with WordPress, you don’t need to worry about anything because the interface is friendly, intuitive and easy to use. There are also many video tutorials on YouTube.
By creating a store based on WooCommerce, you get everything you need to run your own online store. The WooCommerce platform provides full integration with payment systems, shipping, sales statistics and more. Its also gives you full control over your store from taxes, through inventory, to keep track of your customer accounts. You can add and remove extensions, change the look and feel of your store. To make your store look even better, we advise you to purchase a premium WooCommerce template, the cost of such a theme is usually up to $ 100 on Themeforest .
WooCommerce functionality
To start an online store, the basic free functionality of the plugin will suit you. But in the future, with the development of the site, you may need additional functions. Here are the most popular ones:
Integration with 1s
There are 2 working plugins on the market, with which you can synchronize 1c Trade Management and a WordPress site.
- WooCommerce and 1C: Enterprise / 1C: Enterprise Data Exchange is a free plugin supported by the community. In some cases it is more than enough, but it does not work with old versions of 1c UT and has a number of other limitations.
- WooCommerce – 1C – Data Exchange is a paid plugin with developer support. Works with all versions of 1c UT. It is actively developing and refining. The best solution on the market that solves all synchronization needs. The support responds very quickly.
Importing products into WooCommerce from tables
If you do not have a catalog of products in 1c, then you can import products into WooCommerce from Excel or csv tables. In addition, your supplier can provide an xml or json file for import.
There is also a great plugin for importing this data – https://www.wpallimport.com/. It is paid, but it is extremely flexible and allows you to import any data at all into WordPress. Including goods.
Advantages and Disadvantages of WooCommerce
WooCommerce is the most customizable and flexible e-commerce platform for building online stores. An online store based on WooCommerce, like any other product, has both advantages and disadvantages.
WordPress and WooCommerce are free and have a wide range of personalization options thanks to themes (templates) and plugins that provide easy integration of eCommerce functionality. As an open source platform, WordPress offers room for change and development. If necessary, you will find people or companies to help you grow your store, because the WordPress platforms have built a large community around them.
pros
WoCommerce has many advantages:
- Works in Pakistan in Lahore ;
- WordPress + WooComerce is a beginner friendly system ;
- Price – the software is free and open source, with no subscription or other license fees.
- Installation – easy installation and configuration of the WooCommerce system;
- Flexibility – the ability to freely modify the platform and add many functions;
- Personalization – advanced options for personalizing, modifying and customizing the platform in terms of appearance and functionality;
- Plugins – numerous extensions , add-ons, plugins for WooCommerce and WordPress that will match the solution for your online store;
- Products – Selling any kind of product : physical products, services, software, music, e-books, etc.
- Updates – frequent and regular system updates to ensure security and compliance with the latest technology requirements and e-commerce trends;
- Additional options – the ability to launch a store with multiple language versions and multiple currencies;
- Statistics – reports and statistics of sales, orders, information about customers and stocks;
- Data export – the ability to export store data in csv or xml format;
- Email Notifications – Transactional emails sent for in-store orders: new orders, order status changes, notes and customer information;
- Graphics – a very wide selection of graphic themes (templates), the ability to select a theme or implement your own design;
- Development – full control of the owner over the development of the store, very large development opportunities, access to source codes;
- Specialists – Easy access to subcontractors specialized in WordPress and WooCommerce implementations.
Disadvantages of WooCommerce
An online store powered by WordPress and WooCommerce, like any other platform, also has its drawbacks. Some of the most important:
- Limitations – WooCommerce is not a standalone trading platform, but only a WordPress plugin, so its development options may be limited;
- Technical support – there is no direct technical support from the creators of WooCommerce, each store must provide it for themselves or have it from specialists;
- Hosting – A store using WooCommerce, like any other store, needs to purchase a large hosting space on the server. Consider these hosting options ;
- Updates – frequent system updates that need to be done manually and optimize the store system;
- Plugin updates – some installed plugins may be incompatible with updates, this may lead to errors in the correct operation of add-on modules;
- Add – on compatibility – extensions are created by different developers, so you need to make sure that the chosen solutions will work stably together
- Number of products – managing a large store with a lot of products and orders can be difficult;
- Cost of modules and extensions – in the “pro” version you have to pay for some add-ons;
- Site loading speed – with a large number of products, you will need to hire a programmer who will optimize the site loading speed. The modules are quite heavy in WooCommerce, and the speed of e-commerce is one of the main factors.
Conclusion
A Online store has advantages and disadvantages just like any ecommerce platform. WooCommerce isn’t the only ecommerce platform on the market, and there are at least a dozen other platforms out there. The two most important open source alternatives to WordPress and WooCommerce are PrestaShop and Magento
