WooCommerce was founded in November 2007 when Mark Forrester, Magnus Jepsen, and Adii Pienaar joined forces to create a WordPress theme. The early days of WooCommerce were spent building themes for WordPress customers. Eventually, the product evolved into a WordPress plug-in for creating a storefront.
What is WooCommerce?
WooCommerce is a WordPress plug-in that allows you to turn your WordPress website into an ecommerce site. You’ll have all the functionality to fully customize your website however you like. This ecommerce plug-in includes themes, features, and even extensions that let you build a more customized online store. Customers choose WooCommerce for its built-in content system, which lets them build a blog and run an online store simultaneously to drive organic search traffic.
How does WooCommerce work?
WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin. WordPress is an open-source website builder. WooCommerce is a plugin that integrates with WordPress to deliver a shopping cart and storefront experience on a platform that doesn’t have this functionality by default.
To set up WooCommerce, you’ll need to create a WordPress website first. After you set up your WordPress account, you’ll need to set up the WooCommerce plug-in. In addition to setting up these two parts, you’ll also need to register for a hosting plan, SSL certificate, and potentially other plug-ins to create a website that’s truly your own. The setup process is a bit complicated; many sellers hire a third-party developer to handle it.
What you need to know about selling on WooCommerce
While WooCommerce is a free plug-in, that doesn’t mean that running a store on this platform will be free. Since it’s a self-hosted platform, you’ll need to pay for your own hosting through a third-party provider. You’ll also need to pay for your own domain registration, SSL certificate, premium themes, extensions, and transaction fees through WooPayments. When you add up all these costs, they can run into the hundreds or thousands of dollars a year.
WooCommerce is also a very technical platform. It isn’t an intuitive, easy-to-set-up platform to sell products. The average person will likely need to hire someone to help set up their store, unless they’re technically savvy. There’s also a lot of separate parts, like domain registration, hosting, and an SSL certificate, that you’ll need to connect as they’re not automatically added or created during sign-up. This can feel a bit tedious or overwhelming for a beginner who hasn’t built an online store before. WooCommerce tends to be a platform for more experienced online retailers.
Another challenge you’ll face is managing the technical maintenance of your online store. For example, managing backups of your website, updating all plug-ins and security elements, managing and upgrading your hosting as needed, and more. Since there are many moving parts, there’s more maintenance required.
Some sellers run into issues when parts of their website break due to outdated or out-of-service plug-ins that no longer work with updated versions of WordPress. Not all plug-in creators continue to upkeep all of their products. This can be problematic if your website depends on that plug-in for a specific aspect.
Most ecommerce platforms include all the features you need on one platform. WooCommerce is just one plug-in of many. Unfortunately, most sellers will need to add multiple plug-ins to add all the features and components they need to build their online store. However, plug-in bloat can cause your website to lag or load slowly. A slow website can hurt your conversion rate as a seller.
Is WooCommerce the best platform to sell products?
No, WooCommerce isn’t the best platform to sell products. The best platform is Payhip, a WooCommerce alternative, which offers a Free Forever plan with only a 5% transaction fee. You’ll also get many advanced marketing tools that let you add unique components to your website without the bloat. You can also access a marketplace on this platform to sell both physical and digital products online with ease. To start building your website, sign up today.