WooCommerce is a free WordPress plugin that adds e-commerce functionality to your WordPress website so you can run an online store. With just a few clicks, your WordPress website becomes a fully functional e-commerce site.
If you’re asking “What is WooCommerce?”, chances are you already have a WordPress website, and you’re ready to start selling, well, just about anything. In this post, we’ll cover what WooCommerce is, what it can do for you, and why you should use it.
What is WooCommerce?? Its brief history…
WooCommerce is a plugin that easily integrates with your existing WordPress website, transforming your site into a fully functional e-commerce website in just a few clicks.
When the plugin launched in 2011, it quickly became the go-to solution for users looking to launch their own online stores.
Automattic (owner of WordPress.com), acquired the plugin and its parent company in 2015 – it was their largest acquisition to that date, and it has continued to experience growth in the years since.
It currently powers more than 99% of WordPress e-commerce sites in the US, Canada, and the UK.
With over 27,000,000 downloads and millions of active installations, it is definitely the driving force behind many e-commerce websites. (Source: WordPress.org )
What does WooCommerce do?
WooCommerce provides basic store functionality right out of the box, with a free plugin available from the plugin repository, or directly from your WordPress dashboard.
While it has hundreds of extensions available – we’ll talk more about that later – it offers some amazing features.
Easy installation, settings and integration
WooCommerce is a plugin designed to make getting started as easy as possible, with a simple installation and setup wizard that helps you get your e-store up and running with your WordPress theme.
Installation – The WooCommerce plugin is installed just like any other plugin; look for it in the plugin options in your WordPress dashboard, install and activate it with a few clicks.
Setup – When you install WooCommerce, the setup wizard will guide you through the basic steps to get your store up and running. Your eCommerce options are almost endless, and the setup wizard walks you through the process, highlighting the most important options so you never miss a step.
WordPress Theme Integration – Because WooCommerce is compatible with WordPress, it works well with most WordPress themes. You can choose the Storefront theme if you want to use the official theme – and just like the plugin, it’s free!
Data control
Never worry about losing control of your data – WooCommerce puts you in the driver’s seat.
Your data, always – When you use a third-party e-commerce platform, if it goes down, your data is lost. With WooCommerce, you remain in charge of your data at all times. Data related to customer and purchase history, as well as store performance, is essential to running a successful e-commerce site.
A shopping cart packed with features
Customize your website visitor checkout process from start to finish, with processes that help you convert visitors into customers. From payment gateway to checkout URLs, set up your website your way.
Payment gateways – With WooCommerce, you can accept checks, cash on delivery, bank transfer, or use PayPal to accept major credit cards and other PayPal payments.
Geolocation and Automatic Taxes – WooCommerce gives you the option to enable geolocation and automatic taxes, so your store will display the correct price including taxes to your customers, no matter where they are located.
Customizable checkout process – Take full control of the checkout process from start to finish. You can choose to sell to specific countries or worldwide, set your checkout URLs, enable/disable guest checkout, and force a secure checkout.
Default Currency – A wide range of available currencies allows you to choose the currency you would like to use for your store.
Cart Redirect – You can enable the option to redirect your customer to their shopping cart after adding a product.
Full control over products
Whether you sell one product, one product with many options, or dozens, hundreds or more… WooCommerce gives you complete control over each and every one.
Unlimited Products – Start with your first product, and keep adding. WooCommerce gives you the ability to add as many products as you want, only limited by your hosting solution.
Product Types – Do you sell e-books? Affiliate products? Your own unique stock? No problem. You can set your product type to Simple Product, Bundled Product, External/Affiliate Product, Variable Product, or Virtual/Downloadable Product.
Product Variations – If your products are available with options, your customers can select those options when ordering, saving you both valuable time. You can set sizes, colors, prices, inventory levels, images, and more for each available option.
Inventory – Control your inventory management! Stock levels, reorders, hiding out-of-stock items, email notifications when an item is low or out of stock, and more, all help you streamline and simplify product management.
Simple delivery
WooCommerce not only makes it easy to sell your product, it makes it just as easy to ship it to your customer. A variety of shipping options help your customers receive your products with minimal effort!
Shipping Options – Make shipping less complicated with built-in options to offer flat rate, international shipping, domestic shipping, or local pickup. Set your rate to automatic, and give your customer the lowest rate based on their address – or even offer free shipping.
Shipping Calculation, Display, and Destination – Hide the shipping rate until an address is entered, offer a shipping calculator in your shopping cart, and allow your customer to ship to their billing address only, or to a separate shipping address.
Easier tax management
Running a successful ecommerce store means dealing with taxes. WooCommerce simplifies this for you with a variety of options designed to make dealing with taxes much less stressful.
Tax Management – Since WooCommerce is an online product built for selling products online, handling sales taxes is built right into the plugin. Custom tax rates, calculating master tax rates, and geo-location tax rates are just some of the options available. You can also set tax rates and control the tax rate assigned to your shipping costs.
A leader in marketing and search engine optimization
WooCommerce leverages the power of WordPress SEO to help spread the word, and let your potential customers know you’re there.
WordPress SEO – Because WooCommerce runs on WordPress, your e-commerce store benefits from the SEO options provided by WordPress. Thanks to this and the detailed controls provided for key SEO options, WooCommerce storefronts get a significant SEO boost.
Coupons and discounts – Easily enable discounts and coupon codes, without deducting tax.
Reviews – Product reviews are essential for driving online sales, and you can enable them directly from your dashboard. Alternatively, you can allow reviews from verified customers only, and display a label identifying reviewers as verified.
Keeping you updated
Selling products is a great start, and with WooCommerce reports, you can track what you’re selling, identify trends, and analyze your data to plan for future growth.
Store Dashboard – Quickly view your traffic, orders, and status summary from the built-in dashboard.
Reports – With WooCommerce reports, you can see your gross and net sales, and print reports.
Analytics – Track your growth and sales trends to optimize store growth planning.
Customer management
From visitor to customer, from customer to repeat customer – WooCommerce customer management tools make it easy for your website visitors to take the next step.
Accounts and Passwords – Encouraging your customers to create accounts, and making it easy for them to do so, will help you retain your customers. You can optionally configure your WooCommerce installation to automatically generate passwords, and generate the customer account username from the customer’s email address, making the account creation process flow more smoothly.
iOS app – because your store should go with you! Easily check your product catalog, product details, orders, and more, right from your iOS device.
Easy Mobile E-Commerce
Customers on phones, phablets, and tablets are a growing demographic, and WooCommerce ensures your customers have a great experience, no matter what device they buy from.
Mobile Friendly – “mCommerce,” or mobile e-commerce, is overseeing a large portion of online sales, with projected growth rising astronomically. WooCommerce is mobile friendly, so you’ll never miss a sale because of your customer’s device.
All of this, and so much more, comes bundled directly with the core plugin – enough to set up your own eCommerce store right out of the box.
For every occasion, there are WooCommerce extensions.
Fully flexible
With WooCommerce extensions, the sky is truly the limit.
More than 450 extensions and more point to this.
You can configure your store in almost unlimited ways.
Instead of adding the extensions to the core plugin, the extensions are plugins that only work if WooCommerce is installed first, and they add additional functionality to your ecommerce site.
You can grab free and premium extensions from the WooCommerce store, and there are many more plugins designed for or compatible with WooCommerce in the WordPress plugin directory.
Why should I use WooCommerce ?
Now that we’ve answered the questions “What is WooCommerce?” and “What can WooCommerce do?”, the answer to “Why should I use WooCommerce?” is pretty clear. From ease of use to SEO, inventory control to mobile-ready, WooCommerce is the obvious choice for your WordPress eCommerce site!
The article was translated from English to Hebrew and taken from the Items website.
Image by Mediamodifier from Pixabay
