Building a webshop with Woocommerce
What is Woocommerce?
In 2008, three WordPress enthusiasts met on a forum. This was the beginning of one of the biggest e-commerce platforms of our time: WooCommerce. WooCommerce is not a platform itself, it is a plugin that you can install on your WordPress website. This allows you to easily transform your website into a webshop. The e-commerce platform has been downloaded millions of times worldwide and currently has a huge community behind it. The plugin is free to install and offers you the chance to build a simple webshop.
WooCommerce is known for its user friendliness which will certainly be familiar to WordPress users. The backend of WooCommerce is integrated into the backend of WordPress so you don't have to manage your website and webshop in two different systems. There are also numerous templates to download with all the standard elements you need for your webshop. For a custom shop you do need technical knowledge. It is therefore advisable to consult professionals.
Benefits of Woocommerce
We list the biggest of Woocommerce advantages for you
Very extensive
Creating discount codes, invoicing directly from WooCommerce or having shipping costs calculated by weight, country or distance are some of the countless features Woocommerce has to offer.
Reporting
You can get a comprehensive view in the reporting functionality of Woocommerce where you can see various statistics about the performance of your products, revenue and VAT rate.
Everything in one backend
Woocommerce is a plugin within WordPress. So you only need to work in one backend. Here you can manage both your website and your webshop.
WordPress and Woocommerce
Do you already have your own website with WordPress or do you have experience with Wordpress? Then Woocommerce is the perfect choice to launch your webshop.
What are the disadvantages of WooCommerce?
Besides the great advantages, WooCommerce also comes with some disadvantages.
Update Policy
Just like WordPress, WooCommerce is regularly updated. Updates can make your webshop more secure and stable, because, for example, security holes are closed. However, many problems can arise after an update. This is partly because plugin and theme developers need time to make their software compatible with updates of WooCommerce or WordPress. So it is important that before you update, you have the store thoroughly tested in a closed test environment.
Time and attention with a large number of products
WooCommerce is ideally suited for small to medium-sized online stores. If you have more than 10,000 products, you will have to ensure that each product is optimized to prevent your shop from becoming incredibly slow. This means, for example, that images are correctly scaled and that there are a sufficient number of categories and subcategories to allow products to be loaded gradually. In addition, it is important that the right server strategy is used to ensure that the webshop can run on a stable environment. All in all, for a large webshop with more than 10,000+ products we recommend working with a professional to optimize loading times.
Is WooCommerce right for you?
Woocommerce is an excellent choice to set up a professional webshop. Especially because of the findability, manageability and the many features the platform offers Woocommerce is definitely worth considering. However, it is important to keep in mind that a good online e-commerce platform is not set up in a few days. To bring a webshop to a real success, it is advisable to consult the expertise of professionals in addition to a good preparation.
