When growing an online store, you eventually must choose a suitable e-commerce platform. WooCommerce review might be something you often read, especially if your business website is WordPress-based. Should you choose WooCommerce over other numerous similar platforms?
Let’s take a look at several aspects of this platform for consideration.
The Capacity
WooCommerce is a great option if your online store or business is small to middle-range. The platform can easily handle traffic from such business sizes, and you can manage the store with a little help. WooCommerce even allows you to employ people without including them as web admin. You also get unlimited storage and bandwidth to grow your store.
Despite the capacity, the current version of WooCommerce is not suitable for big business, especially the one that deals with thousands of goods. Even if your business is not too big, you must still have suitable hosting to keep up with WooCommerce’s performances.
Product Catalogue and Presentation
WooCommerce was designed as an e-commerce platform so that users can get a high-quality catalog and product presentation. You can arrange all your goods based on tags such as colors, sizes, dates, and other indicators. WooCommerce is also able to manage thousands of goods, although you are still suggested to use more suitable platform for large-scale business.
WooCommerce also offers several presentation styles to highlight your products, which vary depending on your chosen theme. There are several features you can use to create a memorable presentation, such as image gallery, slideshow, video, and audio.
Simple, straightforward control.
How easy is WooCommerce for users? If you are familiar with WordPress, you will have no difficulties in managing WooCommerce. Once the platform is integrated with your store, the control is easy. You can change the theme, add plugins, write product descriptions, upload files, and much more. There are also options for additional team members to help manage your store.
Since the platform is WordPress-based, adding product description can be a little strange at first, because it feels like writing a blog. However, once you add all the necessary details, you can see the result immediately on your website.
Payment Methods for Customers
WooCommerce offers a wide array of payment methods, but not all of them available for free. The default methods are bank transfer, cash on delivery, PayPal, and check. Other methods, such as major credit cards and online payments like Stripe, are available as add-ons. While you can easily add them to your website, you need to pay the additional cost.
Some of the payment method add-ons may require a subscription to run. For example, if you want to add Stripe to payment method, you need to pay USD79 per year for Stripe add-on. The cost doubles if you pick more than one. You also need to adjust the rate depending on where your business is located.
Cost
WooCommerce itself is a free platform, and the same thing applies to most of its basic software products. However, to create a successful store, you need to spend extra costs. For example, you need to use the specific domain name, which will cost around USD10 per year. You must also pay for hosting service, and the cost varies depending on your service.
Finally, you must also consider payment getaway, like mentioned in the previous point. Outside of the basic payment getaways (PayPal, cash, etc.), you must pay almost USD80 per add-on every year. Extra costs are necessary to improve your business, but WooCommerce can cut quite a lot of spending, at least for first-time business.
Theme and design.
WooCommerce itself does not offer specific theme, but numerous WordPress-based themes are compatible with this platform. Since WooCommerce is famous as an e-commerce platform, you can be sure that most of the available themes are perfect for business. Many designers offer WordPress-based WooCommerce themes with the affordable process so that you can highlight your business.
Since WooCommerce is used by more than 30 percent of online stores around the world, there are numerous options for the specific business. You can easily find themes for restaurants, cafes, bookstores, fashion stores, and much more. In this case, WooCommerce delivers great options for WordPress-based websites, especially compared to other similar e-commerce platforms.
One common downside is related to themes outside WooCommerce. If you decide to use specific theme design that is not a part of WordPress or WooCommerce, it can be hard to get updates or perform troubleshooting.
Inventory and product management.
A good business owner must have neat inventory, including online store owners. WooCommerce is an e-commerce platform that provides easy product management method. It comes with the integrated inventory system, which means you only need to follow the required steps when managing the store.
The inventory functions in WooCommerce are quite complete. You can, for example, hide a product from the front page when it is out-of-stock, or hold the stock amount when a customer cancels the purchase. All these functions are available in one integrated system, so you do not have to do everything manually.
Support and customer service.
Currently, WooCommerce does not provide direct customer service or support lines, such as text and video chats. It makes it difficult if you need help or support for particular problems or questions. There are also similar communication lines through social media accounts and emails for customers. If you have questions about a problem or inquiry, you must write in WooCommerce’s “Contact Us” page. The average response time is 48 hours.
WooCommerce has various sources for troubleshooting, such as FAQ page, blog, and tutorials. They only offer the most basic suggestions, and there is little information about working on WooCommerce with add-ons outside it. There is an open forum for developers and customers, where you can ask more specific questions, but you can only do it after using WooCommerce.
Conclusion
Woocommerce is a great free platform for WordPress-based e-commerce websites. It is easy to control and manage, and there is integrated inventory system. There are also numerous themes to pick. However, WooCommerce still has limited methods of direct communications with customers. Also, it is more suitable for the small to medium-sized store.
This WooCommerce review was created to help with your business-related decision. Make sure to consider all aspects before making your choice.