WordPress Ecommerce has grown tremendously in the last few years like blogging. WordPress is widely used by bloggers to power their blog but eCommerce is something different for which WordPress was not made for.
But as wordpress is user friendly and free, it is quite popular among small businesses and organizations that look at it to power their online stores. Over a period of last few years, these companies have started looking at wordpress as not only their preferred blogging application, but also as an ecommerce solution.
As mentioned earlier, wordpress is not made for ecommerce. Now you may say there are many features which are not built in wordpress and most of the bloggers use plugins to add that extra punch to their blogs.
But as wordpress was meant for blogging, plugin creators were primarily focusing on blogging and its requirements rather than its application in ecommerce. So, as a result there are many plugins for literally everything as far as blogging part is concerned but when you look at wordpress ecommerce plugins, you will have lesser number of plugins to choose from.
You might be interested in 15 must have wordpress plugins
WordPress ecommerce is not a new phenomenon but still you won’t find many good solutions for a ecommerce store in wordpress.
There is a difference between a blogger and online store. In case of an issue, a blogger may lose few visits and clicks, but an online store will lose real business which can have serious impact on their business.
So it is important to have a stable solution for wordpress ecommerce. Stability only comes when the creator of the plugins or any other product is an organization or individual doing business in that niche.
In fact, organizations are better than individuals. Because they are much more professionally organized and their business goals are clearly defined which have a positive influence on their product.
So if a plugin is created by an part time blogger or developer, you never know if that plugin will be constantly updated, maintained and supported whereas in case of professional organization or individual, as it is their bread and butter, they are going to do it.
Always prefer a professional individual or organizations for your product needs of any kind.
So coming back to wordpress ecommerce, Woocommerce is one of the best wordpress plugins available in the market.
Woocommerce plugin is created by woocommerce.
Woocommerce is a fully fledged company dealing in premium wordpress themes and plugins, so they constantly update their products and provide support.
Woocommerce is a free plugin but it is recommended to use premium extensions and themes from woocommerce to give it an extra edge in this current competitive world.
You can download it from the wordpress directory like any other plugin which you use.
Now let’s walkthrough Woocommerce wordpress ecommerce plugin to understand it better.
How to Install Woocommerce
As mentioned earlier, you can install woocommerce plugin like any other plugin from wordpress plugin directory which you might have done in the past. If you need any help on this, please leave your comment, I will let you know.
The first step after you have installed and activated it is to “install woocommerce pages”, don’t worry you just have to click on it and do nothing else. Plugin will do that automatically.
With this, your installation is complete and now we will look at its features which can take your online store to an entirely new level.
Woocommerce Features
Woocommerce General Options
You can configure the basic settings of your online store using this option, this option include bunch of features like your country of operation, currency, checkout process, enable or disable options and styling. Just look at the screen shot to see all the options which you will get in woocommerce general settings.
Woocommerce plugin general settings
Woocommerce Catalog
Catalog in woocommerce provides an excellent option of configuring your product catalog.
Woocommerce Pages
Everything is organized in pages in a online store. So your homepage, product page, cart page, thank you page and everything else. It is quite tedious to design attractive pages for an online store. These pages are life of an online store. Have you ever shopped on a online store if its pages are not designed well and organized. Woocommerce allow you to quickly design awesome pages for your online store.
Inventory Options
Managing inventory is crucial for an online store. With woocommerce, it is hell of easy to manage that.
Tax
Every country or various states within a country will have different taxation system. Using tax option, you can easily and quickly configure it for your wordpress ecommerce store.
Shipping
Shipping information is the most crucial factor for an online store. Using shipping option in woocommerce, you can easily define your shipping settings for your wordpress ecommerce site.
Payment
Like shipping, payment processing is critical for the success of any online store. After all, its money you are after. So you can easily customize your option using Payment option in Woocommerce.
Email Option
Emails are the mode of communication for online stores. You need to send order confirmation and other details to your customers on email. You can use this option to configure email settings for ecommerce store.
Integration
Tracking and Monitoring your traffic is the key to your success. Using integration option, you can easily integrate Google analytics code to your online store.
Woocommerce also provide additional features like
Coupons
Coupons are a great way of offering value to your customers. They are extremely popular among online retailers and you can use them too to enhance your user experience. Coupons help in acquiring new customers and retaining existing ones.
Reports
You can extract reports using this option
Order
You can further extract orders relation information using this option in woocommerce.
Conclusion
Woocommerce plugin is must for those who are looking to create their online stores using wordpress.
It is very important to make investment in your business, if you want it generate good returns for you.
About akhilendra
What to say about WooCommerce, it has made WordPress capable enough to raise as a good competitor against Magento, “if you’re running a small to medium online store.”
And the recent WooCommerce updates has proven that they are working real hard to bring all those modern ecommerce features to an average WordPress shopping store, and that too, completely free 🙂
this is a nice ecommerce plugin. I’ve tested it and i recommend it for others as well.
Hey there Akhilendra!
This is a great break down of the woocommerce plugin. It really is a convenience for anyone who doesn’t want to setup one of those expensive over complicated ecommerce systems.
I highly recommend this plugin for online shop owners!
Thanks for the review!
Hey Marc, thanks for stopping, glad you liked it.
Hi, thanks for taking the time and effort to write this precious and informative post 🙂
Perhaps someone needs to write a book on WooCommerce!!
By the way, I tried Cart66 and was very disappointed. It crashed my system, but only provide support to paid users… but tell you to try the free version to be sure you want the product! 🙁
Thanks Brian for sharing your feedback.