WooCommerce Review – An In-Depth Analysis of SEO, Security, Features, Pros & Cons, etc.

WooCommerce is excellent for ecommerce, and this WooCommerce review will explore what makes WooCommerce among the best ecommerce platforms.

The evolution in the ecommerce industry over the past few years has been gigantic. 

The industry is growing rapidly as we continue to see the debut of new products, sellers, companies, and stores. 

As more people and businesses join the ecommerce space, so is the number of high-quality ecommerce platforms for business owners to choose from.

There are many ecommerce platform options for ecommerce business owners, managers, executives, and operators. 

However, only a few have been able to stand out over the past several years.

One of the best and most popular ecommerce platforms available today is WooCommerce. 

WooCommerce has been the go-to platform for many ecommerce businesses that want to sell online.

So in this WooCommerce review, we will let you in on everything you need to know about WooCommerce.

And most importantly, why WooCommerce has continued to win the heart of many ecommerce businesses.

Overall Rating

What Is WooCommerce?

WooCommerce makes ecommerce happen. So you think Shopify is the most popular ecommerce platform?

According to BuiltWith, here’s a shocker, WooCommerce controls 30% of the market, with Shopify controlling about 18%. 

If you have used WordPress for ecommerce, chances are you have heard of WooCommerce. 

WooThemes, a WordPress theme developer, initially developed WooCommerce in 2011. 

And in May 2015, the operator of WorPress.com, Automattic, acquired WooCommerce and WooThemes. 

Since then, WooCommerce has been downloaded more than 84 million times. Making it a highly trusted and popular platform for ecommerce.

When it comes to ecommerce platforms, WooCommerce is like the king of all the platforms. 

Many users even consider it the best because of its amazing pricing (i.e., free), features, functionality, and more.

WooCommerce is an open source ecommerce software that is available for free to integrate into any WordPress website. 

With this WordPress plugin, you can transform your WordPress website into an online store. 

As a formidable platform, WooCommerce holds a considerable share of the ecommerce platform market.

And being an open source ecommerce platform, WooCommerce is free for both commercial and personal use. 

As such, you can download and start using it instantly.  

However, the free version does not include several advanced features that you need to run an ecommerce business.

For example, WooCommerce comes with some free themes, but you’ll need to purchase themes on the WooCommerce marketplace if you need better-looking designs.

Likewise, there might be features you need, such as integration with a specific payment processor.

You get the option to purchase such customizations via the WooCommerce marketplace.

And where no vendor is offering the customization you need, you can hire a web developer to develop it.

WooCommerce is free but allows for customizations to suit your ecommerce business needs.

Benefits of Using WooCommerce

WooCommerce makes ecommerce happen. And it has been doing so for over a decade.

It’s a trusted ecommerce platform that is home to millions of ecommerce websites worldwide.

As an open source and free platform, there are limitations with the core WooCommerce installation.

However, the WooCommerce ecosystem of developers, plugins, themes, web hosts, etc., is vast.

As such, if you can imagine it, you can find a solution for it on the WooCommerce marketplace.

Now, let’s put in perspective some of the amazing benefits of using WooCommerce as the ecommerce platform for your business.

1. Open Source and Free

WooCommerce is open source and free for anyone to use.

As an open source software, you can access WooCommerce’s source code to customize as you see fit.

And as a free ecommerce platform, you don’t pay anything to use WooCommerce except if you need additional customizations via themes and plugins.

These themes and plugins are premium add-ons that enhance WooCommerce’s core functionality and features.

Nevertheless, you do not need to pay money to start using WooCommerce, which is one platform’s value proposition.

2. Popularity

WooCommerce is one of the most common and popular ecommerce platforms in the marketplace.

Its popularity is a great benefit because of the large user-base and ecosystem.

If you experience problems with WooCommerce, there’s a large community of users to tap into for solutions.

Likewise, with a large ecosystem, you can enhance the platform with add-on plugins and themes to achieve almost any business objective.

3. Easy to Setup

A major advantage of WooCommerce is that it is very easy to setup. 

Once you’re running WordPress, installing WooCommerce is a point-and-click affair – just as with any other WordPress plugin.

WooCommerce also provides a guide to show new users how to install and configure your online store.

Due to the platform’s popularity, you can easily find tutorials on the web (including YouTube) on installing and using WooCommerce.

4. Versatility

WooCommerce is among the leading ecommerce platforms in the marketplace in terms of versatility.

Your imagination only limits you, as what you can create with WooCommerce is impressive.

As a versatile ecommerce platform, you can use WooCommerce for both physical and digital products.

It also allows for subscription sales, which means you can use it to sell recurring services and products. 

If you’re running a dropshipping business, you can use WooCommerce to integrate with the various dropshipping platforms.

WooCommerce also allows you to sell goods with different configurations and variants. 

It is also the home of many digital product sellers, as it provides instant access through download to digital items. 

WooCommerce is more versatile than many ecommerce platforms out there. 

You can also use this platform with an affiliate marketing model to sell products from Amazon and other large ecommerce sites.

5. Advanced Features and Plugin Extensions

Hundreds of official and third-party plugin extensions support business functions such as analytics, shipping, payments, accounting, sales, and marketing.

Official plugin extensions are those developed and supported by WooCommerce. And third-party plugin extensions are those developed by third-party vendors on the WooCommerce ecosystem.

Some of these plugin extensions are available free for download, whereas others are available for fees ranging from $20 to $100.

With all these advanced features via plugin extensions, you can enhance your WooCommerce online store’s functionality to meet your business needs.

Particularly, larger enterprises find these plugins and the ability to create one (if non exist) beneficial to bringing offline functional capabilities online.

6. Customization Options

WooCommerce has many free and paid themes that you can use to customize your store. 

You can modify these themes and use them to change your online store’s look and feel by changing their skin, colors, layouts, and more. 

Moreover, with WooCommerce, it’s relatively easy to change your online store’s look and feel by changing the theme.

You have the option to work with free and paid themes – it’s up to you.

If you’re unsatisfied with the free themes listed in WooCommerce’s marketplace, you can opt to buy one.

Paid themes cost anywhere from $40 to $100 and can be purchased from WooCommere’s marketplace, the theme developer’s site, or platforms such as ThemeForest.

WooCommerce themes are also highly responsive and mobile-friendly, which means your store will appear very well in almost any screen size.

Is WooCommerce Free?

Yes, WooCommerce is an open source platform, and it is completely free to download. 

You can download and install the WooCommerce plugin without paying any money. 

The platform does not charge transaction fees or collect a commission, and it does not regulate storage or bandwidth. 

However, this does not mean that running an ecommerce business on WooCommerce will cost you nothing.

While WooCommerce is free to download and use, you’ll need to purchase a few plugins and themes to get your online store to the desired state.

To begin with, you need to buy web hosting for your WooCommerce store.

Your web hosting service provider provides the hosting environment to host your online store and make it available on the Internet.

Furthermore, you can buy tons of extensions and plugins to enhance your store’s look, feel, and functionality. 

However, WooCommerce will still save you more money than other ecommerce platforms, as most of the expenses are mostly one-time purchases.

WooCommerce Hardware and Software Requirements

You can integrate WooCommerce into any WordPress website. 

If you want to really enjoy the ease of use and full potential of this plugin, you should use it with a theme.

There are some basic server, software, and hardware requirements to run WooCommerce smoothly and successfully.

Server Requirements to run WooCommerce:

• HTTPS support
• MySQL 5.6 and higher or MariaDB 10.0 and higher
• PHP 7.2 or higher
• A minimum WP Memory limit of 128 MB

Recommended Hardware Requirements:

• Web Server: Nginx or Apache
• RAM: 512MB or more
• Disk Space: 1GB or more
• PHP: Version 7.3 or higher
• Database: MySQL version 5 or higher or MariaDB
• Processors: 1.0 GHz or higher

Also, your web hosting company needs to support MySQL 5.6 or higher, PHP 7.3 or higher, HTTPS support, and the mod_rewrite Apache module. 

The most feature-rich and robust servers for running WordPress are Apache and Nginx, but any MySQL or PHP-supported server will work.

WooCommerce also offers mobile applications for both Android and iOS. The application supports Android 5.0 and above and iOS 11.0 and above. 

With the mobile app, you can get sales notifications, manage orders, and view your site’s statistics from any location.

Detailed WooCommerce Review

With WooCommerce, you can easily transform any WordPress site into an online store. 

It comes with many great features you will need to set up an ecommerce website. 

With the core WooCommerce installation, plugin software is 100 percent free and open source.

But you will still need to purchase other themes, plugins, and extensions if you need more features and a customized look and feel.

So in this section, we will review in more depth and take a detailed look at WooCommerce’s features.

We will discuss WooCommerce pricing, design, performance, functionality, security, and more. 

Here is everything you need to be informed about the WooCommerce ecommerce platform.

WooCommerce Pros

WooCommerce has many advantages and edges over many ecommerce platforms available on the market. 

Some of those advantages are:

1. Easy and Quick Setup 

WooCommerce is a straightforward platform, and setting it up is never an issue. 

Setting up WooCommerce is quick and straightforward, and you do not need to be tech-savvy to install and use it. 

Plus, the WooCommerce Wizard is also there to guide you through the installation process.

And you do not need knowledge of CSS and HTML to run the platform. 

2. High Scalability 

WooCommerce allows for easy scalability. This is one vital feature you should look out for in any ecommerce platform.  

Scalability creates room for expansion as your business grows. 

When compared to other ecommerce platforms, WooCommerce offers high scalability.

3. Free & Paid Extensions

The WooCommerce ecommerce platform has an almost unending list of extensions (i.e., themes and plugins).

While most of them are free, you have to pay for the others to get advanced features. 

With these themes and plugins, you can enhance the look of your online store.

As such, you can also add more functionality to the store with advanced extensions and plugins.  

4. Variety of Payment Options:

With WooCommerce, there is a wide range of payment options for accepting payments from your customers.

As you can imagine, without the ability to accept payment in real-time, there is no ecommerce.

And without an assortment of payment processors, you will be forced into a limited choice of payment processors.

WooCommerce also connects to other financial and warehouse management systems that support accounting and point of sale.

The platform’s vast payment option makes it easier for people worldwide to shop in your store. 

WooCommerce Cons

Like every other ecommerce platform, WooCommerce also has its drawbacks. 

Some of the disadvantages of the WooCommerce platform are:

1. Frequent Updates

With WooCommerce, you have to get ready for frequent maintenance updates/patches from WooCommerce and third-party extensions (themes and plugins) providers.  

Especially if you’re using many plugins, this can be cumbersome, and you can’t afford to miss these updates.  

Not doing the regular updates provided by WooCommerce and third-party extensions leaves your site vulnerable to security exploits.

2. Expensive Theme Customization

It can be expensive to change your website’s existing look and feel if your business requirements (or processes) change.

So if you’re planning on changing your ecommerce website’s look and feel, get ready to spend time and money to customize the existing theme or design a new one.

3. Maintenance and Support

You’re responsible for the ongoing maintenance and support of the WooCommerce ecommerce platform.

First, you need to ensure that the web hosting environment is up and running properly. And that the web host meets its Service Level Agreement (SLA) obligations.

Next, you need to ensure that your WooCommerce installation is secure and not vulnerable to security exploits such as hacks and malware.

Then you have to ensure that all the third-party extensions are promptly updated and provides no room for security exploits.

However, you can make life easy by subscribing to Managed WordPress Hosting services or a WordPress Support provider that can handle all these for you.

4. It’s a Plugin

WooCommerce is actually a plugin and not a standard-alone software. It’s an extension to WordPress Content Management System (CMS).

Hence, the platform is exposed to any security issues or shortcoming WordPress experiences, unlike other platforms such as Shopify, BigCommerce, etc.

5. Learning Curve

WooCommerce is a robust and advanced ecommerce platform. As such, it can be a little tricky for non-technical people to grasp.

If you’re going to choose WooCommerce as your ecommerce platform, ensure you allocate time to constant learning.  

And if you don’t have the time, then have someone on your team who does.

WooCommerce Pricing and Costs

You should already know that WooCommerce is an open source ecommerce platform, which makes it free. 

However, it will cost you about $10-$20 per month for the basic features you will need to make the core WooCommerce plugin functional. 

If you want to increase your ecommerce site’s functionality, your running costs will easily run into the $100s (if not $1000s) annually.

Nevertheless, businesses with more customizations can spend $1,000s annually and more to get ecommerce websites up and fully functional.

When making your WooCommerce pricing budget, here are some of the things you should include in it:

• Hosting – $6.95-$9.95 per month for basic sites, $8.95-$12.95 per month for mid-range sites, and $19.95-$29.95 per month for advanced sites.
• Domain Name – $15 to $100 per year depending on your domain name’s extension (i.e., .com, .net, .shop, .store, etc.)
• Theme – There are free WooCommerce themes that may or may not meet your requirements. However, you can purchase more professional themes from $40 to $100. And you can hire a designer to create a custom theme for hundreds (if not thousands) of dollars.
• Plugins – Free for basic sites, $100s per year for mid-range sites, and $1000s per year for advanced sites.
• Developer Fees – The developer fees for customization can easily run from hundreds to thousands of dollars depending on what you’re trying to accomplish.
• Security – While there are free version security plugins (e.g., WordFence), expect to spend $50 to $200 yearly for advanced features.

In total, on an annual basis, expect to spend $100s for a basic online store, $100s to low $1000s for a mid-size online store, and low $1,000s to high $1,000s for an advanced online store with all the bells and whistles.

WooCommerce Features

WooCommerce controls about 30 percent of the ecommerce platform market share.

And this is for a reason, thanks to its great functionality and features. 

Here are some of the outstanding features of this platform:

• Seamless Integration with WordPress: WooCommerce is built on WordPress, making it very easy to integrate.
• Built-in Payment Processing: Another amazing feature of this platform is that it has a built-in payment processor, which is very easy to set up. With the built-in payment gateways, you can process payments through Credit Cards, PayPal, Stripe, Checks, Bank Transfers, and even cash on delivery.
• Extensive Theme Options: The platform has tons of themes for you to choose from, both free and paid themes.
• Tons of Plugin Extensions: The load of extensions WooCommerce offers makes building an online store very easy. 
• Simple and Robust:  WooCommerce comes with straightforward but highly functional tools that make it great for small and large businesses. 
• Extraordinary Flexibility: WooCommerce is super flexible, as it allows you to sell a wide range of products – both physical and digital products.
• SEO Advantage: WooCommerce has great SEO tools to help you build a very successful online business. 
• Easy Integration of Marketing Tools: It also allows you to integrate your online store with marketing tools such as Google Analytics, MailChimp, Klaviyo, Google Ads, Facebook Ads, and more. 
• Unlimited Product Listing: With this platform, you can list as many products as you want. There’s no limit to how many product pictures you can upload.
• Product Sorting and Rating: This platform also allows you to filter, sort, and rate products as you see fit.

WooCommerce Ease of Use

WooCommerce is relatively easy to use, but it is not a hosted ecommerce platform like Shopify. 

This means you will have to download and install the base plugin, keep backups, manage updates, and cater to your online store’s security. 

Fortunately, there are many paid and free extensions and plugins that can handle all these tasks for you automatically.

When it comes to customization, WooCommerce is one of the most flexible ecommerce platforms you can find. 

It is highly flexible, and it provides you with full control over the whole platform. 

Moreover, it also has many plugins that you can use to add more functionality to your online store. 

The platform is straightforward to use, and you can get through all of these without knowing web development.

However, knowing the web development fundamentals can make life much easier and save you money in the long run.

Nevertheless, WooCommerce lacks the drag and drop design builder features. 

This feature makes it super easy to create websites and online stores.

However, you can purchase a WordPress page builder such as Elementor or Beaver Builder, but this will cost you more money. 

Using these builders, you can customize your store to fit your desired look and feel.

The more advanced features also come with a learning curve, and you might need some experience to handle them. 

WooCommerce’s setup wizard guides you through the process of setting it up. 

Nonetheless, Shopify is much easier to use than WooCommerce.

WooCommerce Performance

Performance is a vital indicator of a successful ecommerce. As such, you need an ecommerce platform that performs.

When it comes to overall performance, WooCommerce has all the necessary parameters to outperform any ecommerce platform.

However, if not properly configured, deployed, and implemented, you will miss out on its best performance.

For WooCommerce to perform its best, your web hosting service, design themes, plugin stack, graphic optimizations, etc., all matter.

The performance of your online store will do a lot in determining its success. 

If your pages take so much time to load, it could frustrate your customers to abandon their buyer journey.

Some of the culprits behind the poor performance of a store are:

• Bloated plugins
• Poor website optimization
• Poor graphics optimization
• Slow web hosting provider
• Using the wrong hosting plan
• No content distribution network (CDN)

Fortunately, you can avoid all of these and provide your customers with a speedy, high-performance store when shopping. 

You can take some vital steps to improve the performance of your store, such as:

• Using a reliable and fast web hosting provider
• Purchasing the appropriate web hosting plan
• Replacing slow extensions and plugins
• Optimizing your images and content structure
• Using a content delivery network (CDN)
• Using light themes
• Apply regular WooCommerce and third-party themes and plugins updates

WooCommerce Integrations and Add-Ons

WooCommerce, at its core, comes out of the box with basic features to support simple online stores.

However, if you want more functionality from WooCommerce, you would have to do a lot of integration and installation of extensions and add-ons.

For example, you can integrate with a payment processor to accept credit card payments.  

Likewise, you can integrate with a shipping courier to provide real-time shipping estimates and tracking.

With WooCommerce, this sort of integration (and any you may think of) is achieved using extensions and add-ons.

These extensions and add-ons come in Plugins’ form – software codes that add additional functions and features to your WooCommerce store. 

Any advanced feature you want on your online store will come via add-ons, usually not free.

There are hundreds of add-on plugins available on the WooCommerce marketplace (i.e., app store). 

However, it would be best if you always avoided the temptation of installing any extension you come across.

It’s prudent to only go for the ones you know you need from a security and performance perspective.

Installing too many extensions (especially irrelevant ones) can reduce your store’s performance and leave it vulnerable to exploits.

With the hundreds of extensions available in the app store, there is a higher chance of always finding what you need to run your store. 

You can find different types of add-ons for marketing, subscriptions, payments, shipping, store management, and more. 

Integrating these add-ons is also not difficult. 

However, you can still hire someone to develop a custom plugin for you if you cannot find what you need.

WooCommerce Plugins and Extensions

As a highly versatile platform, WooCommerce gives you so much flexibility when setting up your ecommerce website.

It allows you to integrate extensions sold by WooCommerce and third-party WordPress plugins with your online store.

As mentioned earlier, extensions and plugins are vital to adding extra functionality and features to your ecommerce website.

When you have the right functionality and features, you give your customers a customized buying experience unique to your business.

However, these extensions do not come free, but most are cheap and are one-time or subscription (monthly or annual) purchases.

There is a plugin or extension for almost any business function or feature you want present on your ecommerce store.

For example, you can add an extension to upsell select products (as a discount) to the shopper when checking out.

You can also add extensions for things such as checkout field editing, forms, min/max quantities, and name your price tools.

There are also many social media, anti-spam, marketing, email, SEO, and accounting plugins that you can add to your online store. 

Since WooCommerce is built on WordPress, WordPress plugins interact very well with WooCommerce plugins.

And this means you will not have any issue with leaving WordPress plugins on WooCommerce.

WooCommerce Themes

When it comes to ecommerce themes, WooCommerce has one of the largest varieties in the world. 

Anyone can create themes for WooCommerce and make the theme available on the WooCommerce app store or third-party marketplaces such as ThemeForest, TemplateMonster, etc.

Hence, there are tons of design themes available for you to choose from for your ecommerce store.

And as you can imagine, it can be a little bit confusing with so many options.

So you need to be considerate when selecting a theme for your store. 

There are many poorly coded themes out there, and you do not want to end up with one.

Such poorly designed themes will negatively affect the functionality and performance of your online store.

I recommend using themes from reputable theme creators such as ThemeFuse, StudioPress, Templatic, and ElegantThemes.

For a basic or mid-range online store, you can work with some of the free themes available on WooCommerce’s marketplace.

However, if you’re serious about ecommerce, you should avoid using a free theme on your online store. 

You should opt for premium themes that will bring out the functionality and beauty of your business. 

Nonetheless, WooCommerce themes are also customizable and are optimized for mobile devices. 

So you can adjust and tweak the settings to suits your specific needs.

WooCommerce Security

WooCommerce can be the most secured ecommerce platform and equally can be the most vulnerable.

The platform security entirely depends on how well its implemented.

Remember, WooCommerce is a self-hosted ecommerce platform, unlike cloud-based platforms such as Shopify, BigCommerce, and others.

So you don’t have a large IT department monitoring the platform, as is the case with cloud-based platforms.

Security is a major concern of any ecommerce platform, and if not properly implemented, your ecommerce website will be vulnerable to threats.

I recommend choosing a Managed WordPress hosting provider to ensure your entire WordPress hosting (including WooCommerce) is highly secure.

Then you must have the necessary security plugins such as Sucuri or WordFence to guard and protect your online store against DDoS, Malwares, Hacks, and other security threats.

However, if the costs of hosting your WooCommerce store with a Managed WordPress hosting provider exceed your budget, don’t lose hope.

You can still host your ecommerce website with a non-managed provider.

But you need to be proactive and ensure that you’ve taken all the necessary steps to secure your website.

As the most popular ecommerce platform in the world, WooCommerce is often the target of unscrupulous entities.

Consequently, you need to be up to your plugin and security updates and ensure you have captcha install site-wide protecting all forms.

You have to look for a highly reliable web host that will not create room for hackers to break into your store. 

WooCommerce Hosting Options

WooCommerce has many hosting options.   

Any web hosting provider offering LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL & PHP) stack can host a WooCommerce ecommerce website.

When creating your online store with WooCommerce, one of the most crucial decisions you will make is finding a suitable hosting provider. 

Keep in mind that a typical shared hosting provider might not always be the best option for WooCommerce. 

And this because you need a web hosting provider with reliable, fast, and secure infrastructure and responsive customer service.

Here are some of the best WooCommerce hosting providers out there:

• DailyRazor – DailyRazor is a reliable and highly reputed web hosting provider. The company has over 16 years of experience in the web hosting space and offers affordable WordPress Hosting for WooCommerce.
• SiteGround – SiteGround is one of the highest-rated and most popular WooCommerce hosting providers. This company’s speed and security are top-notch, ensuring your store is super safe, secure, and fast.
• Bluehost – Bluehost is the number one web hosting provider for small stores and businesses. Bluehost is an official WooCommerce, and WordPress recommended hosting provider.
• WP Engine – This is a VIP WordPress hosting provider that provides stress-free hosting. It is robust, fast, and can handle anything.
• HostGator – HostGator is one of the most used hosting providers in this industry. The company has a great customer support and is suitable for WooCommerce.

WooCommerce SEO

WooCommerce is known for its search engine optimization (SEO) features and is the most search engine friendly ecommerce platform.

And this is because the WordPress platform on which WooCommerce runs is a content management system that search engines love.

Hence, WooCommerce, by default, inherits this innate feature of WordPress by being search engine friendly at its core.

With WooCommerce, you do not have to worry about scouring the site code to create metadata and titles.

There are helpful plugins such as Yoast SEO and RankMath that will do this for you.

These plugins enable you to optimize each product page, information page, and blog post for the keyword you intend to rank.

WooCommerce Marketing Features

WooCommerce lacks many useful inbuilt marketing features that you can use to promote your business.

However, with its architecture, you can purchase numerous plugin extensions for any conceivable marketing idea.

For instance, you can integrate with MailChimp or Klaviyo (and others) for email marketing campaigns.

Likewise, you can offer instant coupons, free shipping, FOMO (fear of missing out), and other forms of marketing tactics.

You can also integrate landing pages and social media tools via different plugins and themes.

WooCommerce Mobile-Friendly

Having a mobile-friendly ecommerce website critical to success. Most online shoppers make their purchases using their mobile devices.

So making your online store mobile-friendly is not a nice-to-have but a necessity.

WooCommerce (and the WordPress platform in general) is mobile-friendly.

According to TechCrunch, WooCommerce and WordPress are most often viewed on smartphones – a reported 51 percent.

It’s important to note that you have a key role to play in ensuring your online store is mobile-friendly.

To begin, you must first ensure you’re using a mobile-friendly theme.

Likewise, it would help if you used plugins that don’t alter your online store’s mobile-friendliness.

If such an occasion arises and you really need that plugin, hire a developer who can write some CSS code to adapt your online store’s layout.

Similarly, if you’re using a custom theme, make sure that the designers deliver a mobile-friendly theme.

For instance, Storefront, which is the free WooCommerce theme, is optimized for mobile devices. 

It is also highly responsive, so make sure other themes you choose are as responsive.

WooCommerce Customer Service

When using WooCommerce, you’ll realize that customer service is crowd-sourced.

While WooCommerce allows you to create a support ticket for issues, you’ll get more of your solutions to WooCommerce issues using publicly available resources.

And this is a testament to WooCommerce’s huge community of users who share information and create products for the platform.

WooCommerce does not provide direct customer support since its base plugin is completely free of charge.

But they will provide support for purchased extensions and add-ons.

Nevertheless, resolving any issue with WooCommerce is not that difficult, as all it will take is a little research. 

WooCommerce has extensive online documentation where you can find answers and solutions to almost all the issues you might run into. 

However, the quickest and easiest way to resolve issues on this platform is via a Google search.

WooCommerce Store Settings

There are important store settings you need to have in place before you can launch your WooCommerce ecommerce store.

Now, let’s study these settings and how they stack up.

1. Payment Processing Options

When it comes to payment processing options, WooCommerce is highly versatile. 

This platform comes with 5 different inbuilt payment options. These five options are ideal for any business.

The default payment options of this platform are:

• Stripe – Apple Pay is available through Stripe
• PayPal
• Check payment
• Direct bank transfer and cash on delivery.
• Cash on Delivery

In addition to these five options, WooCommerce gives store owners the freedom to add as many payment gateways as they want to their stores. 

So if you already have a payment processor, you can purchase the appropriate plugin extension for that processor and connect it to your WooCommerce store.

There are over 100 additional payment processors, which you can download and install as extensions. 

WooCommerce’s flexibility in payment options makes it one of the most sort after. 

With the vast payment options available on this platform, you can attract customers from every part of the world with different payment systems.  

2. Taxes

Setting up taxes on the WooCommerce platform is straightforward.

You can access the WooCommerce Shipping & Tax setting for a guide on how to set it up.

However, you can still use the automated tax calculation, which sort of makes things much easier. 

To enable automated tax calculation, you should go to WooCommerce > Settings > General to check “Enable tax rates and calculations.”

Do not overlook saving the changes when you are done. When you enable automated taxes, most of the tax settings will be disabled. 

This will override any tax rate you have previously set, including the Shipping and Compound toggles for those tax rates.

3. Discounts and Coupons

After setting up your store and adding a few products to it, you might want to offer your customers some discounts and coupons. 

Interestingly, WooCommerce allows you to do that in a stress-free way. 

Creating coupons and discounts on this platform is very easy, as all you need is just a few clicks.

To create a coupon, go to the directory – Marketing >Coupons in the WordPress admin backend. 

From the available options, select add coupon and create your first coupon for your customers.

You need to specify a coupon code. The coupon code is the code that your customers will enter during checkout to get their discount. 

There is also a text area for you to add a brief description of the code to inform customers of the code’s purpose.

After entering the coupon code and description, you need to specify the coupon type and the coupon amount. 

The coupon amount is the value of the discount the user will get. If you want the coupon to allow for shipping, there is also a box for you to check. 

Lastly, at the bottom, there is a tab for you to set the coupon’s expiry date. 

WooCommerce’s coupon feature comes in really handy when running promos for a limited period.

4. Shipping Options

WooCommerce can accommodate almost any type of shipping configuration.

Whether you are offering local pickup, free shipping, flat rate shipping, or real-time shipping rates, this platform has everything you need. 

Depending on the shipping methods you offer your customers, you may need to install the appropriate plugin extension to provide the required functionality.

For your shipping configuration, go to WooCommerce > Settings> Shipping in your WordPress admin.

On this part of this dashboard, you will see an option for Shipping Zones. 

Shipping zones are the geographical areas you intend to ship your goods to, and they are categorized by regions, countries, states, and zip/postal codes. 

Also, the shipping zones feature allows you to set different shipping rates based on the customer’s location.

Assigning shipping methods to zones is also easy – click Add Shipping Method and choose your shipping option (Flat Rate, Local Pickup, or Free Shipping). 

Pick the option you want and save the changes. WooCommerce also allows you to set rates based on shipping classes. 

This feature is useful if you’re charging shipping fees for individual items and free shipping for larger quantities. 

To create the class you want, click the Shipping Classes tab.

5. Email Automation

Email is one of the most effective communication channels for your ecommerce business to keep in touch with customers.

With email, you can send ongoing new offers, promos, and product communications to your customers.

And without some automation, you’ll find out that manually sending out email communications can be quite tasking.

To avoid spending a hefty amount of time manually sending out emails, the best option you have is to automate it, and WooCommerce provides you with this option.

With email automation, you can write, schedule, and send relevant messages to your customers automatically. 

Just create the message once, and the system will handle the rest consistently and on a regular schedule.

There are several email marketing plugins and extensions you can use to achieve this, and one of them is MailChimp.

By integrating MailChimp into your WooCommerce store, you can synchronize your store’s order and customer data with your MailChimp account. 

With this, you can create both automated and manual campaigns. 

MailChimp makes it easy for you to develop an Automation Workflow – a sequence of automated emails initiated by any event of your choice. 

For example, if a customer adds an item to their cart and doesn’t complete the purchase, you can send them a follow-up email.

Also, you’re able to segment customers and send different email marketing communications based on the customer’s segment.

6. Analytics and Reporting

As an ecommerce operator, you need access to accurate analytics and reporting to make business decisions.

Fortunately, WooCommerce provides this feature and allows you to create, export, and view reports and graphs across various data points.

It provides you with a wide spectrum of information reports, including orders, sales, shipping costs, inventory, and more.

And it also lets you customize the report by specific types and categories of products. 

With WooCommerce, you can export your data and information in CSV format, which you can import into spreadsheets and other platforms. 

Thus, making it easy to work with your online store’s business for analysis and reporting.

WooCommerce currently has a new dashboard that makes it easy for you to keep track of data and statistics that matter to you and your business. 

You can customize every section of the dashboard to suit the needs of your online store. 

The three major sections of the dashboard are:

• Charts
• Performance Indicators
• Leaderboards.

Examples of Successful Websites Running on WooCommerce

In this section, we will view real-life ecommerce stores running on the WooCommerce platform.

These stores have stood out significantly, and they are proof that you can make something extraordinary with this platform.

1. Sodashi

Sodashi is an Australia-based skincare firm. This website is designed with WooCommerce, and it uses a modern, minimalistic style. 

The store has high-quality photos of its products, with simple and clear instructions too.

2. Porter & York

Porter & York is another highly creative WooCommerce website. 

This company sells fresh meat, poultry, and fish, and they can have any of those delivered to your doorstep within two days. 

The website consists mainly of a custom-developed WordPress theme with Google Analytics tracking. 

They have a broad gallery with high-definition images.

3. J. Hornig

J. Hornig is an Austria-based premium coffee roaster. 

With the attention to detail evident on the website, it is easy to see that they have love and passion for their product. 

The company paid close attention to how they handle product variations and clear call to action on the homepage.

And this is indicative of how well the company knows its customers and what they want.

J. Hornig also uses a customized WordPress theme, Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager for tracking, and WPML for handling multi-lingual content.

4. Picky Bars

This company is in the performance energy bar niche and uses WooCommerce to run its ecommerce operation.

Their ecommerce store runs on a custom-developed theme and uses WooCommerce Subscription to offer a subscription option to their customers.

The design is amazing, and it is highly responsive and mobile-friendly.  

5. BetterBody Foods

BetterBody Foods is an ecommerce business to help you to achieve a healthier diet. 

This company’s colorful website proves that organic online stores do not have to be boring and dull. 

It features a classy design that separates it from many organic online stores out there. 

The design, choice of colors, and layouts are all amazing.

WooCommerce FAQs

With all the information we’ve covered, you’ll probably have some questions.

So let’s study and respond to some of the frequently asked questions for WooCommerce.

Also, feel free to post any questions you may have in the comments section.

Wrapping Up

There’s a reason WooCommerce has been dominating the ecommerce platforms space for over a decade.

WooCommerce is definitely one of the best ecommerce platforms in the world. 

The numbers attest to this, given its 30% market share, WooCommerce dominates other ecommerce platforms.

WooCommerce is a free, open-source plugin, which means you can download and use it free of charge. 

Unlike other ecommerce platforms that limit what you can and cannot do, with WooCommerce, you’re only limited by your imagination.

You can customize WooCommerce to support any business process or requirement.

It lets you offer for sale both physical and digital products, thus expanding your revenue options.

Moreover, there’s the availability of a large ecosystem of developers and third-party theme and plugin providers.

This positions WooCommerce for continued dominance in the years again.

No matter the size of your business, WooCommerce can adapt to support your needs.

However, as a self-hosted ecommerce platform, WooCommerce is vulnerable to security exploits if not properly managed and maintained.

So if you’re going to set up your ecommerce store on the WooCommerce platform, you must be ready to do the needful in maintaining the platform.

So, what ecommerce platform are you currently using? Leave your commentary below with your thoughts on WooCommerce.