For the average SME there lies a plethora of potential ecommerce options and, depending upon where you are in your online shopping systems research, you may well have already been presented with dozens of so-called ecommerce platforms. So when there’s a world of information upon ecommerce, with blog articles that are filled with confusing technological jargon, just how can you be sure that you’re moving in the right direction?
Well here we cut out much of the unnecessary debate and confusion. And here we present one clear cut argument for why, above all others, the combination of WordPress and WooCommerce is all that you need for a kickass online presence and a shop with each and every one of the features that you could ever have imagined.
WordPress and WooCommerce
Let’s get straight to the main selling selling points of WordPress and WooCommerce: they are (seriously) powerful.
WordPress and WooCommerce are the most popular choice of online commerce CMS (that’s Content Management System, to you and me) and it simply means a system where the user can change pages, products and all of the other bits and pieces in between.
Together they are fast, feature rich and are known as the undisputed king for ease of use – suitably for everyone from the novice upwards. Most specifically their combination provides for the following industry leading features:
- A central invoicing area that provides for the ability to analyse your sales;
- A straightforward product screen, where a product can be added within two minutes or less;
- Easy to use, yet plenty of options, for shipping and tax handling;
- A world of tutorials and comprehensive documentation for each platform that can help you in making the most of this powerful pairing;
- Excellent scalability, where the website can grow as you grow and handle significant volumes of orders and traffic;
- Mobile friendly design – Which is essential in today’s mobile focused world, where consumers browse today more often via mobile than they do desktop (Search Engine Land 2015);
- Excellent coding for super high standards of security.
WordPress and WooCommerce are (incredibly) future proof
Now let’s get down to one of the biggest advantages of opting for a WordPress/WooCommerce combination: that of being future proof. This means that whatever way your business grows and in whichever direction your online shopping business takes you, your website will flex and fit to meet your every demand. Most specifically this is down to the fact that features can be added with ease through the ‘plugin’ feature. Here’s a quick overview of how plugins work and why you should pay them some serious attention.
WordPress & WooCommerce Plugins
Plugins may be either free or paid for, and as of September 2015 the WordPress collection of free plugins included a staggering 40,119 plugins, which have been downloaded a staggering 1,031,883,623 times. This array of plugins is then reflected by the thousands that can be purchased at a pre-defined price, the cost of which can differ greatly depending on the plugin, although they tend to be very low.
Plugins add functionality to your site, and they span every area there is, from social media through to communication (such as a Live Chat feature). Each and every plugin comes as zipped little packages that you simply click to upload onto your website. They do all differ as according to their settings, and some may need an expert’s helping hand if you’re less than tech savvy. By and large however plugins are known for being user friendly ways of adding in features quickly and painlessly.
To finish it all off, WooCommerce and WordPress is Open Source, which means that the code behind each is available with rights to study, change, and distribute the software to anyone and for any purpose. In layman’s terms this means that both WooCommerce and WordPress are empowered by a world of other developers who can code, alter and advance what each may offer, particularly through those clever plugins we’ve just told you all about.
What’s more, many of the Open Source files for both WordPress and WooCommerce are free to download; of course you’ll likely need some trusty expert hands to truly harness what each of these tools can provide, however for the entrepreneur with plenty of time and dedication on their hands (the former of which, we know, is pretty rare) there is certainly potential to learn these platforms for yourself.
At ‘And We Do This’ we are true fans of all that can be achieved when WordPress and WooCommerce meet, and we consistently harness this partnership to provide our clients with the super savvy online presences that they seek.
