Nowadays it’s extremely difficult to surprise someone with an online store. For the last several years it became a must for every product-selling company. That’s why it’s normal that more and more companies are setting online shops up to expand into the Internet market. But practically all of them are facing the challenge of its creation.
As for a company, which is specialized on websites development, we can confidently say that there are lots of E-commerce CMSes that can help to cope with this task, but as we are keen on WordPress development, we often use WooCommerce for E-commerce sites creating. We’ve chosen this very plugin because since 2011, when it entered the market, it has proved its effectiveness millions of times. WooCommerce can boast of the huge number of E-commerce total market share that rates to 30%. This plugin was developed and is supported by WooThemes. Like other initial code open supplements, it can be downloaded for free, but for high quality performance you will need to download paid add-ons.
What should you know about WooCommerce:
- WooCommerce has a good basic functionality of an online shop, but if you need some additional functionalities (like filters, payment/delivery systems, etc.), you need to expand it with plugins or add required functionalities by yourself. Really good plugins are paid;
- There is a huge variation of readymade templates and plugins;
- Sales analysis can be done very quick and simple;
- As WooCommerce has a basic functionality, it’s very easy to sift it to the bottom even for a person who has never been connected with IT development;
- It has lots of instructions and a good community on forums;
- It represents simplified control of taxes and stock on hand.
As we have already touched on the topic of useful plugins, we decided to compile a list of the best FREE WooCommerce plugins which are to be must-haves for those who is connected (or want to be connected) with WooCommerce. It looks like that:
- WooCommerce Multilingual – allows users to switch languages and order products in their local language.
- Stripe for WooCommerce – allows to accept payments using credit cards on WooCommerce store.
- WooCommerce Product Slider – allows to add a responsive slider featuring products.
- WooCommerce Product Gift Wrap – allows to add gift wrapping option on product pages. It also allows to add additional fees for gift wrapping.
- Order Delivery Date for WooCommerce – allows users to choose a delivery date for products during the checkout. WooCommerce store owner can see the delivery date on their orders page in the admin area.
- Weight/Country Shipping for WooCommerce – allows users to adjust the shipping cost based on customer’s country and the weight of products.
- WooCommerce Product FAQs – allows customers to ask questions about products which are then displayed as product FAQs. This allows to build FAQs based on actual customer interactions.
- WooCommerce Checkout Manager – allows to customize and manage the fields on the WooCommerce checkout page.
- WooCommerce PDF & Print – allows to integrate PDF, doc and print buttons on WooCommerce product pages. Using this plugin, users could print and save product information as PDF or doc.
- WooCommerce Gift Cards – allows to sell gift cards and certificated on WooCommerce store.
With the help of the all above, WooCommerce can brag with such awesome web shops appeared:
Hence, it appears that WooCommerce is ideal for:
- Small and medium businesses which want to set up an E-shop at a lower cost without too much investment;
- Businesses which are familiar with WordPress CMS;
- Smaller E-commerce websites with less than 1000 products.