What is WooCommerce in WordPress? Quick Rundown of WooCommerce Features

Searching for "eCommerce platforms", "shopping cart" or any platform related keyword will bring up multitude of options and WooCommerce will definitely be in the list. What is WooCommerce in WordPress? What are its peculiarities? Should I choose it? Why might it be better than other platforms? These and other questions may occupy your mind and to dispel your doubts we have prepared this short WooCommerce features overview.

What Is WooCommerce in WordPress and Why Does It Suit You?

Looking Back Into History

WooCommerce is popular WordPress plug-in, that was developed by WooThemes and rolled out in late September 2011. Three years later in August 2014, it powered only 17% of all e-commerce websites. Although it gained popularity headlong and acquired around 1.7M downloads what equals to 30% of eCommerce websites according to statistics provided by BuiltWith

Free and Open Source

WooCommerce is a free plug-in for WordPress, so you can easily download it and play it around to ensure it meets your requirements. The application is multi-functional and will definitely handle the needs of small and mid-size shops with minimal input. Furthermore, it is open source what allows developers to tweak, refine or replace every last line of code and enhance functionality correspondingly. It makes WooCommerce limitless and widely used by merchants to create fast growing websites with assorted capabilities.

Flexibility + Ease of Use

These are far not the last features making WordPress and WooCommerce approachable. As it has been stated above, you can start using it any time you want, since it is simple in installation and running.

You can take advantage of flexible framework, get control over functions, style, page layout and sell whatever you want - from online services to physical merchandise. WooCommerce uses the same interface WordPress does and experiences WordPress users will find it simple to create product catalogs, categorize goods, set sale price, independent attributes etc. WooCommerce supports various types of products - physical, virtual, downloadable, affiliate/external products - what greatly contributes to creating neat catalog and facilitates positive customer shopping experience.

WooCommerce is Responsive

WooCommerce users are lucky to have prominent collection of free premium layouts from WooThemes that undoubtedly give storefronts professional and complete look. You can set any of 65+ responsive themes and be sure, your site is performing properly though all the browsers and devices. It is very important since cross-browser compatibility and mobile friendliness are things making your site as relevant as it can be for search engines.

Integrated Payment and Shipping Options

WooCommerce offers different payment options out of the box. The involvement of functional payment gateways, such as PayPal Standart, Bank payments, Checks, Cash on pickup/delivery allow shoppers to make payment conveniently when leaving an order at WooCommerce. Although you can extend the range of payment options and fall back upon additional payment gateway integrations from popular processors.

Shipping management can be fulfilled with core shipping options, such as Flat Rate, Free Shipping , Local Delivery. Local Pickup, International Flat Rate. Nevertheless, when WooCommerce inventory grows or embraces multitude of products, you might need a helping tool to manage your store conveniently. You are free to choose between variety of methods accessible at official WooThemes site - https://woocommerce.com/product-category/woocommerce-extensions/shipping-delivery-and-fulfillment/

WooCommerce Future

WooCommerce in WordPress is a fast growing eCommerce solution that made a great leap forward within several last years. As we can track by Google Trends, its popularity grew headlong. Graphics are continually moving ahead what lets us predict prosperous future.

Quick Rundown of WooCommerce Functional Capabilities

• supports various types of products - simple, grouped, external, affiliate, virtual, downloadable
• allows to create product variables through attributes
• facilitates inventory management, supports backorders
• allows to promote products via cross-selling, up-selling
• makes it easy to create promotions designating coupons
• possesses logic reporting that represents detailed graphs for sales, top sellers and other sales metrics
• comes with shortcodes used to input content into WooCommerce posts and pages
• represents one-page checkout

We have clarified what is WooCommerce in WordPress and must say that it belongs to all-round solution for appealing store development. The dashboard is completely integrated with WordPress, what makes it easy for experienced users to run their stores. Current pros include flexible product handling, awesome reporting, possibility to integrate with payment/shipping options and large number of opportunities to extend its functionalities. There is abundance of extensions by means of which you can add new functionality or enhance WooCommerce admin and Store Manager for WooCommerce takes prominent position among them.