Pros and Cons of using Woocommerce for Ecommerce Development
If you are a business owner, you would want to have an online store, but you don’t have any idea about the best platform to launch your eCommerce store, here’s all you need to know. There are many online store hosting service providers in the market. You can get a wide range of choices in eCommerce development frameworks when you are planning to have a perfect website. With so many options available, business owners are generally confused on which framework to select between many popular ones such as PHP or Java, or ASP.NET and PHP or any other for their web development process.
Having said that, if you want to have a perfectly user-friendly and customized online store, there is no better framework than PHP and no better host than WordPress. It is one of the most popular eCommerce hosting service providers writing in PHP. WordPress uses a free plugin that is known as WooCommerce.
WooCommerce is a very useful eCommerce plugin for businesses that want to create customized stores. It is known for its straightforward and clean shop system that enables in creating a seamless experience for customers when they visit the site to shop.
WooCommerce plugin is different from eCommerce. eCommerce is nothing but a simple model that enables the users to have an online exchange of services and goods. Basically, it is a broader term to specify that it is an online business. After knowing this, let us understand WooCommerce perfectly and go through its pros and cons that every business owner must know before choosing it as their eCommerce plugin.
What is WooCommerce?
WooCommerce is one of the most popularly used free and open-source eCommerce platforms. It offers users a highly customizable software development package that every business owner would love when they want to increase their sales. WooCommerce plugin is widely spread in the market. Thousands of business owners across the globe are using this platform to fulfill their business requirements and reach a larger amount of audience.
Basically, WooCommerce is a platform that enables businesses with the ability to sell their services or products of almost any kind. These products or services can be anything from digital content to physical items. With the help of WooCommerce, a perfect eCommerce platform can be created that delivers everything directly from the business to the customer’s doorstep.
Top Pros and Cons of Using WooCommerce for eCommerce Platform Development
Here we will go through WooCommerce pros and cons.
Pros of Using WooCommerce
WooCommerce is a platform that stands out in what it offers. Here are is pros which show it.
1. Great Flexibility
The main reason behind the popularity of WooCommerce is that the majority of the business owners who are selling different kinds of services or products can use this platform and get the best out of it. Businesses can sell:
- Physical items like hair products, couches, or more.
- External services or products like Amazon affiliates
- Downloadable products like comics, novels, or comics
- Invites to training sessions or webinar
Besides this, WooCommerce is a highly scalable platform that enables businesses of all sizes to create an ecommerce store. Once the business owner starts working with the free WooCommerce platform, he doesn’t have to worry about his online shop as this platform does it all.
2. Maximum e Commerce Security
As an e commerce website is an online system, securing the gateways is very essential if the business owner doesn’t want to misplace or lose the customers’ credentials. The WooCommerce store offers various secured payment lines like Stripe and Paypal. aren’t compromised. Besides, if your site is very popular then it can be highly targeted by hackers or crackers on a daily basis. Therefore, the website developers need to update it regularly so that it remains secured from various cyber-attacks.
But not every plugin can offer services that can take instant backup of the data in case of an attack. Therefore, you need to add a backup that stores all the important information in its encrypted form. This can help in maintaining the customers’ confidentiality. This is why businesses prefer WooCommerce as it enables adding a website security plugin that scans the site from any harmful malware.
3. Limitless Online Store Customization Options
WooCommerce is an open-source platform that enables any company to create a shop that is specific to the services or products it offers. This e commerce platform development platform has an infinite amount of themes and plugins in the directory of WordPress themes and plugins. Any company can use these free plugins or can also purchase one from WooCommerce.com and Codecanyon.
The number of WordPress themes that this platform offers is just impressive. You can choose the theme that perfectly suits your business requirements and can customize each of the sections of them as per your needs. A customized platform enables you to have a perfect search engine optimization e commerce solution.
Besides, one of the most advantageous things about Woocommerce plugins is that one doesn’t need to be tech-savvy to use them in customizing your website. But if you don’t want to do it yourself, you can surely hire a web development company who can handle all the extra services of your shop.
4. A Very Interactive Community
WooCommerce has become the heart of the market when it comes to having a unique and profitable business website. There are around 4.5 million live WooCommerce websites. And the user base keeps on increasing each passing day. Besides, the large user base of this tool is distributed across several forums and this allows every member of the forum to share blogs and guides on the configuration that eventually helps newbies to work effortlessly.
Basically, the large user base also ensures the businesses that WooCommerce won’t stop working and go off the market. The plugin is here to stay for the long run.
Some of the most popular and user favorite WooCommerce forums are –
- Advanced WooCommerce
Advanced WooCommerce is a closed Facebook group that consists of all the experts in this field. The main aim of this group is to focus more on the advanced aspects of WooCommerce. It is a forum where you can go with all your questions and get solutions for everything.
- WooCommerce Support Forum
WooCommerce Support is the main forum that asks you to register with your WordPress account if you want to have access to the group and its information. WooCommerce developers are in charge of this forum and make it a leading place for discussions.
- WooCommerce Help & Share
It is also a closed Facebook group. Its forum offers security measures that can protect the site from spammers. This group can be called the sibling of the Advanced Group. It is a place where people go to get all the answers related WooCommerce.
5. A Professional Aesthetic
WooCommerce is a technology that has access to POS and warehouse management systems that can help the clients to go carry out the entire management system process very smoothly. It also allows customers to track all the details about the product order and also enables the tracking of the delivery without any hassle.
Disadvantages of Using WooCommerce
As we know that WooCommerce is a perfect tool for website hosting but there are few shortcomings that cannot be overlooked. And they are –
1. It’s WordPress Specific
WooCommerce being a plugin, cannot be used on websites that are not hosted by WordPress is still a plugin; hence you cannot use it on sites that WordPress. Such a condition can make it difficult to create proper business opportunities.
2. It has Many Expenses
Though WooCommerce is a free-to-download WordPress plugin, some of its extensions may require a subscription. This can be one of the biggest disadvantages of this tool.
Conclusion
As seen in this blog, WooCommerce is a free, open-source, and user-friendly online store hosting service provider. This means that it has a lot to offer for your business. While working with WooCommerce, the businesses don’t have to worry about managing the online store and can sell any of their physical products digitally. Besides, being an SEO-friendly tool, it makes sure that your site reaches a huge audience.
