There has been a continuous growth in the e-commerce industry for the last two decades. You will surprise to know that nearly 45.4% of the entire web is now comprised of e-commerce. There should be no qualm in accepting this fact that most of the shopper now prefer online e-commerce stores to do their regular shopping. In 2014, it was $1.34 trillion and reached $2.84 trillion in 2018. This is expected to cross $4 trillion by 2020 and reach $4.88 trillion in 2021.
The number of e-commerce lies in the range of 12-24 million globally. Also, starting an e-commerce business doesn’t require such a huge investment, unlike the traditional brick-and-mortar stores. Opening an e-commerce web store has not been a rocket-science, thanks to e-commerce platforms such as Magento, Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, and others. These platforms make the set up of an e-commerce site quite easier and quite cost-effective.
In this article, we would be discussing whether you should develop an e-commerce store on WooCommerce, how it is beneficial for you, and the list of best WooCommerce Development companies among which you can hire for your next e-commerce project.
Table of Contents
WooCommerce Overview:
WooCommerce is basically a plugin that gives e-commerce features to a normal web application built on WordPress CMS. So, if you have developed a WordPress web application and now planning to sell products on it you can simply implement the WooCommerce plugin. It will add all the features & functionalities to sell your stuff online. The best thing is that it is a very light plugin which even WordPress developers can integrate and set up your online e-commerce store. Also, just like WordPress, WooCommerce is an Open-Source plugin. It includes all the essential features every online store needs, including shopping carts, payment gateways, and a streamlined checkout process. On top of that, you also get access to advanced features such as tax management and a comprehensive extension system. The plugin was introduced in 2014, and since then it has grabbed 17% of the e-commerce market.
Interesting stats that you should know about WooCommerce:
- As per Builtwith, there are nearly 3.8 million sites around the world using WooCommerce as their e-commerce platform.
- The plugin has been downloaded nearly 86.3 million times.
- 93.7% of WordPress online stores choose the WooCommerce plugin.
- Currently, there are more than 2000 WooCommerce themes available in the market.
- 93.7% of WordPress online stores choose the WooCommerce plugin.
Features of WooCommerce: WooCommerce is packed with all the essential features that are required to run an e-commerce store smoothly. Here is the roster of WooCommerce features:
- Clean and Modern Interface
- WordPress Content Integration
- Complete control of the checkout process
- Support for Geo-location
- Cart Behavior
- Adding or Managing Products
- Product Variables
- Shipping methods & calculations
- Flexible Shipping Options
- 5+ WooCommerce Product Item Styles
- Custom Tax Calculations
- Unlimited Shop Layout
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
- Discounts, Promotions, and Codes
- Owner Verification
- Dashboard
- CRM and Store Management
- Better experience for e-commerce store owners
- Integrated Payment Gateways
- Default Currency Selection
- Login & Sign Up Page
- Reduced Page Loading
- Product Types
- Inventory or Stock Management
- Cart Calculator
- Shipping Costs
- Multiple Shipping Methods
- Geo-location taxes
- Tax rate definition
- Coupon system
- Reviews & Ratings
- Reporting
- Analyze products and orders
- Support & Hosting
Why choose WooCommerce for your next E-commerce Project?
There are numerous reasons why you should leverage WooCommerce if you are planning to start an e-commerce store. We will discuss the major or important ones…
1. WordPress Compatibility:
You must know that WordPress is the most used CMS in the world, in fact nearly one-third of all the websites or web applications are built on WordPress, and you install WooCommerce in it. As per some sources, nearly 455 million sites are built on WordPress considering all the blogs too. WooCommerce is an original plugin and can integrate with any WordPress site without any issue. The developer will not take huge time to integrate WooCommerce as it also behaves like WordPress, and is easy to install.
2. User and Customer Friendly:
The UI & UX of the e-commerce stores plays an important role to convert site visitors into customers. It is highly important to provide a user-friendly shopping experience to complete the customer journey from searching for products to checkouts. WooCommerce comes with a simple and user-friendly interface for both site owners and customers. It takes just a few hours to completely set up your site and start selling your products on it.
3. Sell anything on WooCommerce:
The WooCommerce plugin is highly flexible. You can sell anything with it. Whether you want to sell physical products such as shoes or bags; digital products such as software or plugin; subscriptions to a particular service, appointments, or anything else you can sell it on WooCommerce.
4. Powerful Analytics:
Analytics helps you in knowing your customers’ preferences, their choices, how they are interacting with your site. You can know your customers better with the help of analytics implemented in the backend of your site. WooCommerce comes with an extensive set of analytics that you can see in a clear & intuitive interface. Also, it is quite easy to integrate third-party analytics such as Google Analytics in WooCommerce.
5. Advanced Level Content Management:
As you must have expected from the e-commerce plugin for the world’s most popular content management system, WooCommerce gives you the ability to manage every inch of the content. Content plays an important role in the digital marketing of your site, serving customer needs, sales optimization, etc. With the combination of WordPress and WooCommerce, you get multiple options for content management with blogging, landing pages, e-mail marketing, product descriptions, etc. The most popular Yoast Plugin is best for optimizing the content of your site.
6. Huge collection of extensions:
WooCommerce is itself a free plugin that you can use to implement e-commerce features on your WordPress site. But if you want to implement more advanced options for your WooCommerce store then you can opt for the huge collection of extensions available from WooCommerce and other third parties.
You can use many of these extensions for free, however, the premium extensions are at a certain cost. You can find extensions for marketing, reporting, accounting, payment methods, coupons, product management, reviews, and ratings, etc.
7. Customizable Themes:
The design of your e-commerce store plays an important role in attracting users and make them loyal to your site. The design of your site should reflect the industry you are connected with. With WooCommerce, you get access to thousands of free and premium themes among which you can choose as per your choice. You can also change the default CSS style and color codes of the themes.
8. Security:
Security is one of the most important concerns in e-commerce. You don’t just have to prevent your site from attacks by hackers but also have to protect the customer data such as their payment information, name, address, etc. The team of WooCommerce works closely with their security experts such as Sucuri.net, to provide their users with the safest online interface. You can expect regular security updates and can implement them within a single click.
9. Search Engine Optimized:
If your site is not discoverable to the audience, you can’t expect traffic on your site, and without traffic, there would be no sales. To bring traffic to your site, it must be search engine friendly or search engine optimized. WooCommerce runs on WordPress which is highly SEO friendly. It follows most of the SEO guidelines provided by Google. WooCommerce also makes SEO optimization of your products much simpler. You can enter the SEO optimized product details.
10. Features Packed Shopping Cart:
You get exciting features in the shopping cart of WooCommerce. From Payment gateways to Checkouts, it has all. Here are some of the features;
- Payment Gateways: In WooCommerce, you can ask your customers to make payments through cheques, COD, bank transfers, or 3rd party payment gateways such as Paypal, Stripe, or Braintree.
- Geo-location and Automatic Taxes: You can also implement a tax feature on the store to display the correct price after including tax.
- Customizable Checkout: You can control the checkout process from beginning to the end. You can set checkout flow URLs, enable/disable guest checkout, or force secure checkout.
- Multi-Currently: There are multiple currency options available among which you can choose the currency for your online e-commerce store.
- Redirect Cart: You can enable the option to redirect your customer to their cart once a product is added.
11. Free of Cost:
The cost for developing an e-commerce store matters a lot especially when you are having a tight budget or are a startup. WooCommerce is an open-source free plugin that is available for everyone who has just begin in the e-commerce journey.
12. Great Customer Support:
There is a huge community of WordPress and WooCommerce experts who can help you whenever you get stuck in the WooCommerce feature or functionality issue. The platform’s developers have a great record of being reliable and professional with their products and support. Also, since there is good availability of WooCommerce developers you can get WooCommerce Development services at quite affordable rates in comparison to other e-commerce development platforms like Magento, Shopify, or BigCommerce.
Is WooCommerce a great choice for huge e-commerce stores?
That’s a remarkable question that everyone has. There is no doubt in this that WooCommerce should be the first choice if you are beginning in the e-commerce race, or you already have a developed WordPress site. However, if are planning to start from scratch or want to develop a huge e-commerce store then WooCommerce may not be the best option for you. Here are some reasons:
1. Database Structure:
WooCommerce makes use of WordPress flexible database structure that is capable to build data models but lacks ability when you have to implement complicated query or manipulate data.
2. Plugins Dependency:
Using 3rd party plugins for the site is helpful, but it also has some drawbacks like:
- Not every plugin is written for huge e-commerce stores.
- Finding the right plugins for your e-commerce store is a very arduous task.
- Using multiple plugins can show compatibility issues
- Payment gateways are often the most troublesome, particularly if the gateway isn’t a very popular one.
3. Infrastructure requirements and scaling:
There is a difference between running a blog and e-commerce sites. You can’t just rely on CDN like Cloudfare to handle the spikes of traffic. E-commerce is highly dynamic and even infrastructures like AWS hosting are not able to manage.
In short, a WooCommerce is best when you already have a WordPress site with tons of content or you want to create a small e-commerce store to sell 10-30 products or you don’t have enough budget for your e-commerce store.
WooCommerce Summary: Pros and Cons
Pros:
- Free and works on all devices
- Can add unlimited products and product attributes
- After installing, you can customize it as per your choice
- Easy to install and use
- If you already have a WordPress site you can make it e-commerce simply by installing this plugin
Cons:
- No free hosting and you need to pay for it
- Not the best choice for the non-WordPress user
- WooCommerce is itself free but add-on extensions can be expensive.
Top WooCommerce Development Companies:
We are not leaving you by just telling the reasons for using WooCommerce and when to not use it, but also will give you references of the best WooCommerce development companies which you can hire for your next e-commerce store. Here it begins…
1. Elsner Technologies:
Elser is a certified eCommerce development company that has proven expertise in delivering top-notch web development, mobile app development, and digital marketing services across the globe. We are currently based in Lakeland, USA.
They have a creative team of designers and developers that make all the efforts to bring your virtual dreams into reality. Their professional team has gained prowess in developing customized e-commerce solutions and third-party extensions with great flexibility and scalability.
2. Emizentech:
Emizentech is 8+ years old top-rated, certified website & Mobile development company and has a global presence in Singapore and the United Kingdom countries. The company is having expertise in a wide range of services especially e-commerce whether on the web or mobile. They are having 250+ dedicated clients and 80+ Team members. If you are having any e-commerce requirements you should first consult them.
3. Absolute Web Services:
Absolute Web is a full-service development agency specializing in eCommerce and business websites & applications. At AW, their team understands that digital impressions matter more than ever. Their goal is to create an engaging web presence, increase lead generation, with memorable user & device friendly experiences. Since 1999, their entire team of digital strategists, project managers, certified developers, and designers focusing to give clients the look and feel they desire.
In addition to their development team, their full-service digital marketing team is available to design and implements digital strategies for Online Demand Generation. Not a product but innovative thinking that offers a unique approach, resulting in business growth and brand transformation.
4. Commerce Pundit:
Commerce Pundit has its roots in Atlanta and three other branches located across the globe. Dedicated to providing customized Magento eCommerce solutions to its clients, the company houses a team of experts and has experience of around a decade.
With over 250 experienced IT professionals available at service, the company aims to deliver B2B and B2C eCommerce solutions to clients irrespective of the industry they belong to.
5. Brainvire Infotech:
Walt Disney, Entrepreneur.com, Insomnia Cookies, Bay Alarm Medical, FreshDirect, Landmark group are some of their clients, for which they have transformed businesses. Brainvire is a Digital Enabler and an IT consultancy firm that has fueled Fortune 500 companies and startups.
Their core expertise lies in Industry 4.0 technologies like Artificial Intelligence, IoT, Machine Learning, Cloud Computing, and Blockchain. Some of the applications built by them have been lauded by the United Nations, and many others have made headlines in the leading news dailies of the US.
6. Magneto IT solutions:
Magneto IT Solutions is one of the most experienced e-commerce development companies in the world. Being a top-rated e-commerce development company reputed Solutions partner, and Premier Extension builder, they develop advanced level WooCommerce stores. The company is having 10 years of experience in developing e-commerce stores. Magneto IT Solutions is a web and mobile product based organization and crafts software for enterprise-level e-commerce businesses.
7. The Commerce Shop:
The Commerce Shop’s single goal is to grow its customers’ monthly revenue. They do this by reducing shopping cart abandonment, creating custom checkout processes, and using the best e-commerce practices.
With a team of certified e-commerce developers and eCommerce experts, they specialize in WooCommerce development, Magento consulting, and development. Their comprehensive services include WooCommerce, Magento development, Magento Community to Enterprise migration, CRO Audits, WooCommerce Maintenance, and Support among others.
8. Firstline Software:
First Line Software is a premier provider of software engineering, software enablement, and digital transformation advisory services to clients across North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia. Headquartered in the US, First Line’s global staff of 650+ technical experts leverages agile technological excellence to efficiently deliver complex projects in retail digitalization, web content management & eCommerce, healthcare IT & real-world evidence and data, machine learning, and enterprise data management.
As active members of Object Management Group and the Industrial Internet Consortium, the company collaborates on establishing standards for technology, enterprise integration, and Industrial Internet.
9. MindSter:
Mindster is an e-commerce app development company that prioritizes on developing powerful e-commerce apps that offer enriched user-experience to the customers. They partner with startups and outsource web application development to enhance productivity in business. Mindster has a work experience of more than 6 years in developing retail, e-commerce applications, and software.
10. SynapseIndia:
Software company in India, SynapseIndia provides Web & Mobile App Development services since 2000. Delivered 10,000+ projects to global clients in various business domains like real estate, education, automotive, etc. Their list of clients includes companies such as Kenwood, Audi, IBM, etc. They have given numerous awards such as Certified by RedHat Linux, Verified Drupal Member, BigCommerce Partner, Google Partner, Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, Kentico Partner, and Xamarin Certified Developers.
Wrapping Up:
WooCommerce comes with many advantages if you are planning to go for e-commerce. You can get many things for free and at an easy cost through it. Consult a company from the above-mentioned roster and get the best feasible solution for your e-commerce requirements.
