Thousands of e-commerce stores are launched every year on the Internet in various parts of the world, but only a few of them succeed in attracting visitors and customers and generating enough profits to ensure their continuity. The reason for this can be due, at least in part, to a lack of knowledge of the e-commerce platform used and its features. .
For this reason, and because WooCommerce is the most popular way to launch an online store, in this article we will introduce you to what WooCommerce is, and its advantages, and we will show you the types of stores that can be created using it, and we will also shed light on how to use it, so that you have the necessary information. Convert it if you want to use it or you are using it in your online store.
What is WooCommerce?
WooCommerce is an add-on that works on the WordPress content management system, allowing it to be transformed into an integrated online store with great ease, by adding all the functions and tools necessary to create and manage a store and sell products and services through it, including payment and shipping systems, and functions. Add products, as well as manage orders and inventory, etc.
Both WordPress and WooCommerce are free and open source, which reduces the costs of creating an online store , and at the same time allows for a high degree of customization. WooCommerce cannot work outside of WordPress. If you want to use it to create and manage your store, you must first install the WordPress system on your hosting, and then through it install the WooCommerce add-on to use it.
Advantages of WooCommerce
WooCommerce is the most widely used e-commerce platform, as nearly a quarter of online stores use it. This is because it has many features that make it easy and helpful to create a professional, highly customized online store. These features include, but are not limited to:
- It is free and open source, meaning that the WooCommerce plugin can be downloaded and used without paying any money, and it can be modified to add new functionality or delete existing functionality because its code is publicly available.
- It includes all the basic tools needed to build and manage a professional online store , including tools that allow managing products, inventory, and orders, in addition to sales reporting, shipping and payment management tools, and more.
- There are many templates compatible with it , and this allows you to customize the appearance of your online store quickly and easily by choosing the most suitable template from thousands of free and paid WooCommerce templates.
- Its functionality can be easily expanded , so if the default tools don’t provide all the options you need, you can use add-ons to add those options, and since there are tens of thousands of free and paid add-ons running on the program, this is a powerful feature.
- It is easy to use and set up , as you will not need any programming or even high-level technical knowledge to create and manage an online store using it, as it guides you during the process of setting up the store, and it also has an intuitive user interface that is not difficult to get used to.
- It provides tools and options that allow the sale of various types of products and services , including physical products such as books, furniture, and electronic devices, and digital products such as programs, templates, add-ons, documents, and designs. This allows the creation of all types of stores and in any field of e-commerce.
WooCommerce also has many other technical and non-technical features that make it a truly powerful tool for creating and managing online stores. Although it also suffers from drawbacks, its drawbacks are not of great importance, as they are similar to the drawbacks of the WordPress system within which it operates, and they can be overcome. on them and neutralize their impact on the online store.
Read also: Advantages and disadvantages of WordPress, and how to overcome its disadvantages
Types of stores that can be created with WooCommerce
WooCommerce allows you to build various types of online stores and sell various types of products and services through them in various fields. This includes:
- Physical product stores : You can create an online store to sell all types of physical products, including clothing , electrical appliances, food and drinks, perfumes, and others.
- Digital product stores : WooCommerce provides the ability to build a store to sell all types of digital products, and enables the buyer to obtain them automatically without your intervention after completing the payment process, by allowing them to be downloaded directly.
- Subscription-based stores : You can use WooCommerce to create a store where customers pay monthly or every period you specify for access to specific content, such as newspapers and magazines, videos, images, articles, or other types of content or products. This is possible for both physical and digital products, but works best with the latter.
- Affiliate marketing stores : By using the WooCommerce add-on, you can build an online store for affiliate marketing , where you can add the products of other companies to your store, direct visitors and customers to them, and thus obtain a percentage of the money that the customer spends to buy products from other companies or electronic stores.
- Membership-based stores : If you want to create a membership-based store, for example, only members can see all the products displayed in it, or only those with a certain membership can get discounts, WooCommerce provides the ability to do this easily.
- Multi-seller stores : Using WooCommerce, you can create an integrated online marketplace such as Amazon or eBay, where other sellers can register and display their products and services, and professional functions can be added to the store, such as auctions and others.
The WooCommerce add-on also supports the ability to create many other types of stores in a professional manner thanks to the functions, features, and options it provides, whether by default or through additional add-ons, many of which are free and paid.
How to create an online store using WooCommerce
It is not difficult to create an online store using WooCommerce. As we mentioned above, this platform is easy to set up and use, and the basic steps for implementing this process include the following:
- Obtaining the basic requirements : You must obtain web hosting and a domain name before starting to create the store, because no website can function without them. A domain can be reserved through one of the companies we mentioned in the list ( the best sites to buy a domain at a low cost ), and high-quality cloud hosting can be obtained from Digital Ocean .
- Installing WordPress on hosting : WooCommerce works within WordPress, so in order to use it to create your store, you must first install WordPress on hosting.
- Installing WooCommerce on WordPress : This step is easy to perform, as the method of installing it does not differ from the method of installing any WordPress plugin. You can review the following article for a detailed explanation ( How to install a WordPress plugin and activate it on your site correctly ).
- Installing the template and configuring store options and settings: There are a set of technical steps that must be carried out after installing WooCommerce, which are choosing and installing the appropriate template, setting up shipping methods, configuring payment gateways, in addition to setting sections and adding products. We have explained in more detail these steps and the previous steps. In a comprehensive article entitled ( Explanation of WooCommerce to create an integrated online store – step by step ).
After creating the online store, you must strive to make it successful by working to manage it professionally by following the instructions we provided in the article ( How to Manage an Online Store Professionally ).
Thus, we have introduced you to the WooCommerce platform, its features, and the most prominent types of stores that provide the ability to create them, and we have shed light on the steps to build a store using it. In conclusion, we would like to point out that this platform is characterized by many other options and features that we did not mention in this article, thanks to Thousands of plugins work with it, making it one of the most powerful e-commerce platforms ever.
