Choosing an eCommerce platform is quite a challenge these days because of the availability of so many great platforms such as WooCommerce, Shopify, and Magento. In general, these platforms do the same thing but their features and compatibility are different enough to merit discussion.
According to the stats, WooCommerce is by far one of the best platforms for digital commerce.
Without a doubt, WooCommerce is the most popular eCommerce plugin for WordPress. It was developed by WooThemes who hired Mike Jolley and James Koster, developers at Jigowatt, to work on a fork of Jigoshop, which later became WooCommerce.
In 2014, Woocof held the first conference in San Francisco with around 300 attendees. This was the start of the popularity of WooCommerce as a popular eCommerce solution for WordPress powered websites.
In 2015, Automattic, the operator of WordPress.com and a core contributor to WordPress acquired WooThemes and WooCommerce.
The best thing about WooCommerce is its tight integration with WordPress. As a result, you do not have to deal with two separate software, and you do not go through the hassle of two separate logins for your website. Because of the underlying foundation of WordPress and it’s own features, WooCommerce users have a complete package that can be further extended by customizations and extensions.
WooCommerce Usage & Stats 2020
WooCommerce is an open-source platform and quite easy to use for both developers and store owners. Take a look at the following stats:
- WooCommerce powers over 28.19% of all online stores
- 3,317,205 live websites are currently using WooCommerce
- 22% of the top 1M ecommerce stores use WooCommerce
- 93.7% of all WordPress ecommerce stores are powered by WooCommerce
- WooCommerce is the most popular plugin/module on the entire internet – with 68% usage distribution
- There are 980 plugins for WooCommerce on WordPress.org alone
- There are 1,267 WooCommerce themes on ThemeForest alone
Source: Burn2
Benefits of Using WooCommerce
- WooCommerce is very easy to customize
- Millions of themes and plugins available
- Great support for search engine optimization
- Official and third-party extensions
- All processes (particularly the checkout process) is very intuitive
- Secure platform
- Powerful payment gateway options available
- Powerful analytics for tracking sales, purchases, stocks, etc
- A vibrant community means you can ask anything anytime and you will be answered by someone
WooCommerce Pricing
As I mentioned earlier, both WordPress and WooCommerce are completely free. However, you’ll need a hosting solution to actually get the store up and running.
In my opinion, one of the best options is Cloudways that provides powerful hosting for WooCommerce applications with hassle-free server management. Let’s have a closer look at Cloudways WooCommerce managed hosting platform.
When you log into your Cloudways account, you can jump directly to the Platform. Here you can launch your WooCommerce application on the cloud infrastructure of your choice. See the screenshot below.
In addition to hosting, you also need a domain and other marketing tools such as Beeketing, Yoast, Cache, etc. The good thing is that we have created a complete guide about WooCommerce pricing that outlines all the details of WooCommerce cost.
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WooCommerce Dashboard
Since WooCommerce is the WordPress plugin, you can manage the store entirely from your WordPress dashboard.
Here is a closer look at the WordPress Admin Dashboard
If you have never worked with WordPress before, you’ll probably need some time to get used to the options. If you are a first-time user, the WooCommerce wizard will help you set up your online store. Click the WooCommerce tab and navigate to the Home tab.
You will find some really helpful information.
The next window is “A personalized inbox full of relevant advice.” where you can select store notifications preference about key traffic and sales milestones.
The third window is about “Good data leads to smart business decisions.” which explains how you can monitor your store performance, leads, etc.
Now click the “Let’s go” button and you will jump to the WooCommerce home screen where you can see the stats of your WooCommerce store (sales, orders, etc.).
WooCommerce > Settings
Under the Settings tab, you can configure the basic things like currency, payment, tax, shipping, account & privacy, emails, and integration options.
As you can see, there are lots of options. However, I will focus on the most interesting feature – the Payments option.
When you click it, you can see the four payment options available by default:
- Direct Bank Transfer
- Cash Payments
- Cash on Delivery
- PayPal Standard
In addition to these four, you can integrate other payment gateway options. Here is a great piece on the best WooCommerce payment gateways.
WooCommerce > Orders
In the Orders tab, you can see the history of the orders. In this tab, you can manage and update order information at all stages from processing to post-delivery.
WooCommerce > Customers
Here you can see customer data including name, email, country, etc.
WooCommerce > Reports
Here you can analyze the reports and take action whenever you need.
WooCommerce > Extensions
As I said before, WooCommerce has a large number of extensions. I have listed some of the essential extensions that could greatly simplify business processes.
That’s all about the WooCommerce review.
Are you ready to set up a WooCommerce store?
We have written a complete guide on setting up your WooCommerce store in a few easy steps.
Frequently Ask Questions
Q: Is WooCommerce secure?
A: If you are hosting your WooCommerce store on a hosting provider, make sure that the host is using server-level security. Cloudways provides managed WooCommerce hosting, where we take care of the server security and mitigate any attack on servers. We also provide SSH and SFTP access and make sure all the communication between you and our servers is encrypted.
Q: How much does WooCommerce really cost?
A: WooCommerce is a free-to-use WordPress plugin. Since both are free, in theory, you can start a store for $0, given that you already have a place to host it, and a bunch of products to sell.
Q: Why is WooCommerce the best?
A: WooCommerce is by far one of the best platforms just because it is easy to use and thousands of themes and plugins available.
Q: Is WooCommerce cheaper than Shopify?
A: Yes it is, not only WooCommerce but some of the great themes and plugins are also free. Compare this to Shopify where you need to buy each and everything.
Final Words
Without a doubt, WooCommerce is the best online store solution for WordPress. it gives you full control over store development and management, thanks to many handy features already included with the core WooCommerce
If you have any comments regarding this tutorial, feel free to add your thoughts via the comments section below.
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Saud Razzak
Saud is the WordPress Community Manager at Cloudways – A Managed WooCommerce Hosting Platform. Saud is responsible for creating buzz, spread knowledge, and educate the people about WordPress in the Community around the globe. In his free time, he likes to play cricket and learn new things on the Internet. You can email him at [email protected]
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Keep reading the article at The Official Cloudways Blog. The article was originally written by Saud Razzak on 2020-10-29 10:16:12.
The article was hand-picked and curated for you by the Editorial Team of WP Archives.