What is WooCommerce?

If you have read our last article “What is WordPress?” Then you will have seen we mentioned plugins. One very popular plugin is WooCommerce with over 5 million active users, but what is WooCommerce?

WooCommerce

WooCommerce is a free to use open-source online platform that allows you to turn your website into an E-Commerce site. This means you will be able to sell goods and services from your website. Due to WooCommerce being open-source you are not limited like traditional E-commerce platforms, you can modify and customise every aspect of your store to create what is right for you to make you stand out from the crowd.

Features of WooCommerce

WooCommerce works seamlessly with WordPress and allows business owners to run their online store without the need of a web developer unlike other E-commerce platforms, making running an online store more accessible than ever. It offers all the features needed to run your online store and more. Some of these features include:

• Unrestricted customisation. Every aspect of your site can be changed to truly make it your own whether it is the theme or something small such as the design of your checkout button
• Reviews and ratings. Ratings and reviews can be placed on the product page for your customers to see.
• Search filtering. Products searches can be refined for newness, popularity and so on helping the right products be found on your site.
• Built-in payment processing. Take payments using a variety of methods from PayPal to debit card or cash on delivery, it’s up to you.
• Shipping rates. Calculate and change shipping rates dependant on product size or weight so the right price is shown for the customer at the checkout.
• Tax rates. Automatically calculate tax rates based on the customer’s address and changes based on major country or state tax rates.

The features available on WooCommerce are endless and cover every aspect of running an online business from the design of your web page to the managing of taxes and product shipping.

The way WooCommerce offers a variety of features is through its add ons and extensions. Extensions can be free or paid for and cover a multitude of features allowing the user to only add features they require creating a leaner and less cluttered online store.

Why choose WooCommerce?

So why should you choose WooCommerce? It is built to work flawlessly with WordPress the world’s most popular Content Management system. It is free to use and allows users to customise every aspect of their online store without the need of a web developer. Also, there is also a huge range of extensions on offer (free or paid) that aid in creating the best E-Commerce site for you.

How to Set-up WooCommerce on your WordPress site

You can find a link here to our guide on setting up WooCommerce.