Understanding the Basics About Using WooCommerce for your eCommerce Business

If you’re building an eCommerce site on WordPress, you are going to need to make a number of decisions that could possibly make or break your online store. Among the first considerations you’ll need to make is deciding which eCommerce platform will work best for your operations. With numerous eCommerce platforms to choose from on WordPress, you might want to narrow down your decision making by first checking out the biggest and most popular one. This being WooCommerce, the most popular eCommerce platform in the world.

To help guide your initial assessment, we’re going to highlight the benefits of using WooCommerce here but will also point out a few potential shortcomings that may indicate the need for a different eCommerce platform for your site. In fact, if your eCommerce site is specifically focused on digital download sale items rather than physical products, then you might be better off choosing a platform like Easy Digital Downloads, which is specifically tailored for digital download sales.  

WooCommerce Basics

The first thing to know about WooCommerce is that anyone with a WordPress website can create an online store from WooCommerce for free. WooCommerce comes with basic online store functionality, with tools to manage inventory, payment, shipping, and documentation. As an open-source platform, there are literally thousands of extensions, themes, plug-ins, and other features that you can use for your WooCommerce store—some free and some not. This means that you can tailor-make your online store’s design and layout in innumerable ways and include just about any online store option available. Note, however, that fee-based extensions, themes, and other features are typically backed by support options from either WooCommerce or the open-source feature provider.

With more than three million active WooCommerce online stores representing more than 30 percent of the world’s eCommerce, the platform and most of its wide variety of features—open-source and WooCommerce-centric—are obviously reliable. Part of this is due to WooCommerce’s “plugin” to WordPress, its tried and true parent software. This close connection also provides WooCommerce with excellent search engine optimization (SEO) capabilities as well as first-rate analytics to help guide your marketing strategies. It also provides WooCommerce sites with excellent technical support, especially for fee-based features from WooCommerce or the open-source feature providers.  

Potential WooCommerce Shortcomings

While there are plenty of benefits to using WooCommerce for your eCommerce store, there are also some potential shortcomings. That said, you’d probably be hard-pressed to find any eCommerce platform that perfectly meets all your needs with no difficulties or complications at all. A couple of WooCommerce shortcomings we’ve come across include:

• While WooCommerce works with any WordPress theme, they do not always coordinate well.
• New WooCommerce users can find the vast number of potential features and options difficult to navigate. 
• While WooCommerce sites are highly adaptable and can grow with your business expansion, at some point businesses may need assistance from a managed hosting service to help scale their WooCommerce store.
• Some free features may lack comprehensive support, which could prove problematic should you run into any technical difficulties.   

Turn to Moxxi Marketing for your eCommerce Needs

If you are interested in creating an eCommerce store for your existing business or a new stand-alone online store, Moxxi Marketing has extensive experience creating and managing eCommerce sites using WooCommerce, Shopify and other platforms. Whatever your online marketing needs learn how Moxxi Marketing can help grow your business with a powerful online marketing presence and/or campaign, by contacting us today at 239.330.6236.