Introduction: What is WooCommerce?

The pandemic, global shipping crisis, and supply chain backlogs were the major challenges for the eCommerce industry during the year 2021. However, the year also saw eCommerce retailers step up their game to provide better experiences to customers and meet rising consumer needs.

The global outbreak of covid-19 compelled worldwide lockdowns, eCommerce undoubtedly became the path forward for retailers all over the world. However, as businesses rapidly shifted their operations online, many were unsure of which eCommerce channels to use.

With a look back at 2021 eCommerce trends, e-tailers can now better understand where to focus their efforts in 2022. Among other trends, we've seen an increase in the adoption of the WooCommerce platform, which is making eCommerce easy and accessible for those shifting their businesses online in 2022.

WooCommerce is a plugin built upon the WordPress platform that allows you to create a web store. It turns your simple WordPress site into a full-fledged eCommerce website.

You will have a multitude of options when it comes to creating an eCommerce website, and the top option we've seen so far is WooCommerce.

To compare it to other eCommerce platforms, WooCommerce powers more than 25% of the top 1 million websites worldwide. These figures continue to rise as a result of its adaptability and user-friendliness.

WooCommerce makes it simple and inexpensive to sell any product or service on your website. Once integrated with your WordPress website, it enables you to sell digital and physical products, accept secure payments, manage inventory, and automatically sort all of your taxes.

Also, it integrates seamlessly with WordPress because both are owned by the same company, Automattic Inc.

Popular Alternatives to WooCommerce

We’ve handpicked a list of eCommerce platform alternatives based on market research, public opinion, reports, and other factors. Because of their features and functionality, we think that over time these eCommerce platforms will increase in reputation and reliability.

BigCommerce

BigCommerece has the most built-in eCommerce sales tools and features. Used by over 1,000,000 eCommerce sites this self-hosted WooCommerce alternative platform is ever-expanding racking a growth rate of about 28% per year, according to their statistics.

BigCommerce provides an extremely agile environment that assists your business in evolving and remaining relevant to its changing needs. The platform provides powerful analytics for analyzing year-over-year growth, order increment, and conversion rate.

BigCommerce includes a clean dashboard in addition to highly effective SEO tools. Furthermore, BigCommerce offers flexible payment options, simple migration, and ongoing customer support.

Shopify

If you want an all-in-one eCommerce website builder with features like security, theming, hosting, and customization, Shopify is the way to go.

With over 18% of the top eCommerce websites using it, simplicity has been their top report.

Shopify is undeniably one of the best WooCommerce alternatives available, as well as one of the most comprehensive eCommerce platforms for running your online store.

OpenCart

OpenCart is a powerful WooCommerce alternative platform that is free to use and offers a wide range of add-ons to its users. You can integrate a variety of features and functionalities into your eCommerce stores using these add-ons. The platform offers advanced customization options as well as intuitive usability.

With OpenCart, you can not only generate sales reports and receive performance analytics, but you can also use different languages and currencies. In addition, OpenCart provides a multi-store management system within the same interface, which is a fantastic feature.

Magento

Another superb alternative to WooCommerce that is also making waves on the internet is Magento. Just like WooCommerce, this platform was developed with PHP and is used by 31.4% of the top 100,000 online stores, Samsung and Nike being two of them.

A top-notch benefit of using Magento is that you don't need to buy additional plugins to manage your eCommerce business.

To cut it short you can say, it's an all-in-one eCommerce platform with advanced order, product, and inventory management features.

PrestaShop

PrestaShop is an excellent alternative for those looking for a plugin that seamlessly replaces your WordPress WooCommerce plugin. Surprisingly, this WooCommerce alternative is currently used by over 300,000 online stores worldwide, and that accounts for a pretty strong community.

PrestaShop offers you versatile and limitless customization advantages making rounding it to be among the top alternative to WooCommerce. Design and management tools are integrated into its dashboard. Notably, this independent eCommerce platform enables you to quickly launch your shop and provides a variety of marketing functionalities as standard with the system.

Pros and Cons of Using WooCommerce

As with many good products, some advantages and disadvantages influence your decision to use them or not. We'll begin with the pros.

Pros of Using WooCommerce

Let's start by looking at all of the features of the WooCommerce platform that could make it the best platform for your eCommerce store.

Free and Open-Source

Nowadays, it appears that there are numerous costs involved in the establishment and operation of a successful business. As a result, one significant advantage of WooCommerce is that it is both free and open source.

Although there are some paid aspects to it, being an open-source platform provides you with many more benefits than drawbacks. For example, it has many themes and useful modifications created by other users anyone can use freely

These themes, which have been optimized for a great user experience, are ready for use by other eCommerce store owners, so you can be sure that they have been tried, tested, and are of high quality.

Because WooCommerce is open-source, developers and users can make significant changes and customizations to the platform. This results in an even better product that is updated regularly. As you consider upgrading your e-store, this should give you more confidence that you will have excellent options to choose from.

Quick and Easy to Use

Time is a huge factor here. Whether you have an existing eCommerce site or are on the verge of creating one for the first time, you'll want to have it done and available online ASAP.

You won't be able to make significant improvements to your e-store if you lack the technical skills required to tweak or customize it.

Fortunately, WooCommerce is immensely simple to use, especially if you have prior experience working with WordPress, on which the WooCommerce plugin is built.

Showcasing items on your store is as simple as going to the 'add product' button and entering a short title and description, as well as setting the price for the product. You can choose whether the product is physical or digital.

The WooCommerce community provides you with so much support if you run into any problems. Also, a direct chat with a member of the WooCommerce support team will almost certainly resolve your issues.

Simple Reporting Tool

Keeping track of information such as income, profits, inventory, sales, and other such factors is a common problem for sellers when running an e-commerce site.

Fortunately, WooCommerce takes care of everything for you hassle-free. Users are provided with easy reporting tools that provide rich information about the performance of their e-store.

These reports are available at any time via the WooCommerce website or app and will provide you with a much clearer picture of your online store's performance.

For example, which products are selling well, how many people visit your store, how many of those visits result in actual sales, and how much stock you have left in your store inventory.

So, if you're looking for an eCommerce platform that takes the guesswork out of your store statistics, WooCommerce is a great choice for you.

Useful Mobile Application

The fact that WooCommerce can be accessed via a mobile app is a huge advantage for a busy business owner.

Although the mobile app does not allow users to do much customization on their store's theme, it does allow them to get data analytics such as reports, stock numbers, sales details, and more on the fly.

So it's ideal for providing you with a valuable snapshot of your eCommerce store's performance while you're away from the home or office.

That’s some detailed information on the pros, now let’s look at the cons.

Cons of Using WooCommerce

To proceed, let's look at some of the drawbacks that WooCommerce may need to take into consideration

Hidden Cost and Premium Extensions

Although there are many free themes available, the best and most optimized themes are a little more expensive.

When making a purchase that will allow you to have the highest level of WooCommerce support, speed, and SEO ranking, you could be looking at a cost range of $5 to $100. This price tag may deter you if you want to keep costs as low as possible, even though there are advantages to these premium options.

Additional costs may also be incurred as a result of plugins required for payment gateway options.

Requires The Knowledge of WordPress

WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin and so you will need a good understanding of WordPress to fully utilize everything that comes with it. If you don't know how to use WordPress or are currently running your eCommerce store on a different platform, WooCommerce might not be for you.

You can also consider hiring someone to do this for you. You don't have to be an expert in this field; simply hire a WordPress developer to create the site for you.

Let’s go deeper into understanding what features are available to you on WooCommerce.

WooCommerce Features for eCommerce Websites

We have compiled a list of features that we believe are the most important reasons why you should consider using WooCommerce for your online retails, and they are as follows:

It's Free and Open-Source

Because it is entirely managed through its GitHub repository, the platform is completely free and open-source. This means that anyone can view, change, or contribute to its development.

Companies developing custom WordPress solutions can easily use its source code in building a robust and scalable platform that can power multitudes of e-stores.

Smooth Integration with WordPress

The fact that WooCommerce is built on WordPress, the world's most popular CMS (content management system), is its main selling point. As a result, the principles working for WordPress also work for it. This integration with WordPress greatly simplifies the job of a website owner.

Seamless Order Management

One of the most significant benefits of the WooCommerce dashboard interface is the ability to help you update products and fulfill orders. It alleviates many of the headaches associated with running an eCommerce site.

It also makes life easier for merchants by offering free automated tax calculations right out of the box, live shipping rates, iOS and Android mobile apps, and much more.

Unmatched Flexibility

The internet is filled with many kinds of eCommerce businesses and ventures. The sale of tangible and intangible products is well represented. The platform is an excellent choice for merchants because it provides them with easy customization set up to sell a wide range of products.

The best part is that you don't need to be a rocket scientist to customize WooCommerce. Changes can easily be made to any part of your website from the product page down to the order confirmation page. This feature alone provides so much ease and comfort to the merchant.

Integrated Payment Processing Channels

WooCommerce customers appreciate how easy it is to set up payment channels on their e-stores. This is due to the built-in payment gateways, which allow them to accept payments via Stripe, Paypal, Credit Cards, Bank Transfer, Checks, and even Cash on Delivery. And all of these channels are simple to set up with a few mouse clicks.

Huge Library of Extension

The platform provides you with not just a website to start your eCommerce business but much more. Payments, shipping, marketing, accounting, and a slew of other things need to be set up.

WooCommerce includes a plethora of extensions that make all the above functions much easier to manage. The good news is that WooCommerce has over 400+ extensions in the extensions library that you can use to solve your unique problem.

A Vast Collection of Themes

It's difficult for two e-stores to look alike, just as it's difficult for two brick-and-mortar stores to look the same. You need an online store that communicates the value and style of your business to stand out from the crowd. WooCommerce works with WordPress themes from all over the web to help you achieve this.

Abundant SEO Benefits

No matter how far social media progresses, one customer channel will always have an advantage. A strong SEO strategy is required if you want to build a successful online business. If you're building your store with WooCommerce, you're already one step ahead in terms of SEO rankings. That's because it is built on WordPress, which is widely regarded as one of the best platforms for SEO. This explains why WordPress and WooCommerce are so popular among professional eCommerce SEO specialists.

There are a lot more features WooCommerce offers and it will take a second article to discourse them all.

Why Your Business Needs WooCommerce

Conclusion

In this article you have been taught a lot about WooCommerce and whether you should use it as your preferred eCommerce platform. Hopefully, the information you obtained here was useful to you.

Growing a successful eCommerce business entails many processes and components, and customization is undoubtedly one of the requirements for creating an excellent e-shop. These customizations assist you in managing the business, making sales, generating new leads, and converting leads. Moving your business to WooCommerce at this time, in our professional opinion, is a wise decision.