The 21st century has been the most life-changing for all of humanity. We witnessed how breakthrough technologies revolutionized the world and scaled human living standards.
One such revolution was brought about by eCommerce industries that made shopping and buying essentials more convenient and accessible for a wider population. It is not the case that eCommerce did not exist before the 21st century, it did, but it was not widespread and efficient as it is today.
Businesses, especially retailers, are rushing towards building their eCommerce platforms with the help of the best eCommerce developers in the world. The global eCommerce market is thriving and expected to reach USD 4.48 trillion by 2023, and with a CAGR of 4.9% is expected to cross USD 6.39 trillion by 2027.
This post will discuss an eCommerce solution that helps developers build and manage eCommerce platforms hassle-free. We will discuss WooCommerce, one of the highest used eCommerce solutions worldwide. We'll also look at its most significant competitors and their most striking features.
So, let's move forward and get a brief overview of WooCommerce.
A Brief Overview of WooCommerce
WooCommerce is one of the most used eCommerce solutions by developers and agencies worldwide. According to Statista, WooCommerce was the most used eCommerce solution in 2022, with a market share of 36.68%.
WooCommerce, built on WordPress and written in PHP, was launched on 27 September 2011. In such a short time since its launch, WooCommerce has become the leading eCommerce solution loved by developers around the world.
All Blacks, Singer Australia, Daelmans Stroopwafels, and Cosmos Magazine are some of the top businesses that built their eCommerce platforms on WooCommerce. With the help of its rich set of features, WooCommerce streamlines the various processes relating to an eCommerce business.
Let's move further and look at some of the most striking features of WooCommerce that make it highly appealing to e-commerce developers.
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Key Features of WooCommerce
WooCommerce is one of the best solutions packed with intriguing features that eCommerce developers and businesses cherish. Let's take a good look at some of these features.
#1 Sell Anything
The best thing about WooCommerce is that it allows you to sell almost anything on its platform. Yes, that's right. You don't need to worry if your product is qualified to be sold on WooCommerce. Be it groceries, cosmetics, fresh and frozen foods, or service booking like spas, flights, beauty parlor appointments, etc., all types of products and services can be sold online with the help of WooCommerce.
Many businesses benefit from the versatility of WooCommerce by improving their presence and selling their products and services to a broader audience.
#2 Flexible and Secure Payment System
For an eCommerce business providing a secure, reliable, and hassle-free payment system is crucial to ensure a better customer experience. WooCommerce helps businesses easily connect payment processors of their choice from a long list of reliable names such as Stripe, Klarna, PayPal, and many more. Most of these payment processors are popular and widely used by e-buyers.
Adding such payment processors to your e-store can help make purchases easier for customers, thereby improving their experience. You can also add other popular payment methods to your e-store, such as net banking, credit & debit cards, and cash-on-delivery.
Businesses can easily enable and disable any of these payment methods, thereby easing things for admins.
Suggested Reading: Top Ways Buy Now, Pay Later Policy Is Benefiting Ecommerce Industry
#3 Extraordinary Dashboard
WooCommerce brings an all-in-one place dashboard that helps e-store administrators to keep tabs on crucial parameters as well as manage them with ease. WooCommerce dashboard provides quick insight into a variety of information such as inventory status, real-time details of shipped products, real-time price changes of products and courier charges offered by the shipper, and so on.
You can customize the number of widgets on your dashboard based on your priorities and the type of services that you need to monitor often. You can add various metric shortcuts as widgets on your dashboard that help you evaluate your performance quickly at any time.
#4 Access WordPress Templates
As we already know, WooCommerce is made for WordPress. A WooCommerce plug-in can make any WordPress site into an eCommerce Store. But the best part about this is that WooCommerce developers can access all WordPress templates.
In addition to WooCommerce's templates, developers can use some of the best templates offered by WordPress for their e-store layout.
#5 Better Security
Cybersecurity is the primary concern these days for both businesses as well as customers. With the rise in cyberattacks and cyber threats, the need to address security concerns has become crucial. Companies and developers can integrate some of the best security features for their dream eCommerce store using free-to-use plug-ins made entirely for WooCommerce.
One such plug-in is Jetpack; it not only carries tools for security but also for speed enhancement and marketing. The primary package of this plug-in is free to use and allows developers to put some reliable security measures in their eCommerce platform. For tighter security and to access some premium features, businesses can use Jetpack's standard plans at nominal rates.
#6 Easy-To-Use
WooCommerce is one of the world's oldest and most trusted eCommerce services, used by the top eCommerce developers. Thanks to the large community of WooCommerce developers spread across the globe and thorough official documentation, and numerous learning resources, it has become easy to learn and use this service for new developers.
WooCommerce has a straightforward and flexible user interface that is easy to navigate. Any first-time user will find it user-friendly, and its interface easy to glide through.
#7 Easy to Put Multilingual Content
WooCommerce allows developers to create a multilingual eCommerce website that helps businesses attract customers from all over the world, regardless of their dialect. You can integrate MultilingualPress, a plug-in from WooCommerce that accurately translates the website into any language a user wants in no time.
Developers can make their eCommerce store multilingual and open to a broad audience by paying $99 annually.
#8 Excellent Library of Resources
WooCommerce is full of great plug-ins and resources that help developers create robust, unique, and seamless multilingual websites at a low cost. With the help of a vast library of plug-ins, extensions, themes, and APIs, developers can put excellent features on their eCommerce store at nominal rates.
From marketing integrations and payment processors to social media integrations, WooCommerce provides you with every type of integration to create your dream eCommerce platform. WooCommerce has a range of efficient plug-ins that businesses can add to their websites for free such as WooCommerce Google Analytics, WooCommerce Payments, Facebook for WooCommerce, WooCommerce Blocks, and many more.
Apart from the free ones, businesses can get some paid and premium plug-ins for various operations, be it payments, shipping & delivery, store management, or customer services. UPS Shipping Method, FedEx shipping method, Amazon fulfillment for WooCommerce, BioMetric Login for Woocommerce, and many more are some of the highly used paid plug-ins.
#9 High Scalability
WooCommerce helps businesses to start their eCommerce business from scratch and scale it to new heights. As already mentioned, WooCommerce allows companies to sell any products they wish without restrictions. Moreover, with the growing demand, they can use some of the best plug-ins and APIs to add features that can help scale their business in no time.
#10 Better Order Management
Using plug-ins like WooCommerce Order Status Manager, WooCommerce print invoices and packing lists, WooCommerce order status control, Split order, and many more, businesses can manage orders hassle-free. These plug-ins streamline and automate the process of order management for eCommerce businesses and save time and cost.
#11 Cost Effective
WooCommerce is a free-to-use service; hence businesses do not need to pay anything to access this plug-in and turn their WordPress site into e-stores. But, like every major service, it has some hidden costs that businesses need to pay to enjoy the premium features of the platform and some third-party plug-ins.
Additionally, you also need to pay hosting and domain fees. These additional costs are nominal compared to other leading eCommerce services.
Top Alternatives to WooCommerce
Wrapping Up
Today almost every business has a website to represent their brand and as a measure to improve their online presence. Enterprises, to improve their service accessibility for a broader population, are turning their websites into eCommerce stores. Moreover, businesses with higher budgets tend to launch eCommerce stores on omnichannel to attract more customers and better customer experience.
This post discussed WooCommerce, one of the oldest and most used eCommerce solutions worldwide. WooCommerce allows developers to build robust, efficient, and secure eCommerce solutions cost-effectively in minimal time. We discussed some of the critical features of WooCommerce, which are important reasons eCommerce developers love it worldwide.