WooCommerce is a plugin by WordPress which is designed to create e-commerce websites. WooCommerce is totally free and currently the leader among all ecommerce websites that are built across various platforms.

WooCommerce is a game-changer in the world of e-shop builders. Magento and Shopify are its competitors, but Woocommerce leaves them past as its free, unlike Shopify which charges on a monthly basis and it's highly customizable, unlike the classic Magento ecommerce.

 WooCommerce was initially introduced by WordPress’ theme developers WooThemes, now Automattic, the company that owns Wordpress.

If you want to create a website which sells products, then I will suggest you must go with WooCommerce. This is the most customizable platform for building small to large-sized online businesses. With no time it became famous because of its flexibility, easy-to-use and free of cost.

Payment methods like PayPal or Stripe are very easy to install this plugin, it provides a complete interface to set up your payment methods. It once offered to add a payment method (PayPal) while installing the process but that is not mandatory. You can add that any time after installation.

Though WooCommerce is very functional and flexible, yet it needs to add some plugins or addons to change the looks and add more functions. ‘WooCommerce Product Addons, WooCommerce Dynamic Pricing and Discount Rules, Check Fielder Editor and Manager’ etc are some of them which offer a marvellous experience. We will talk about them later in this article.

How to Install & Customize WooCommerce:

Installing WooCommerce is so simple just like adding any other WordPress plugin. Everyone can download it from the WordPress plugin directory for free, which is available right from your website dashboard.

Once WooCommerce is installed, it will take a few steps to complete the set up including payment methods and shipping.

Note: Choosing the right theme is crucially important. You must check for WooCommerce compatibility when choosing a theme. Storefront is a theme by WooCommerce itself, you can customize it with Elementor Page Builder.

Additional plugins which can bring your WooCommerce shop to new heights are explained below, have a look.

Plugins

It provides a different range of basic to advanced level plugins that give more ease and user-friendly environment to develop e-commerce business. WooCommerce allows you to add further plugins called extensions, to discriminate them from WordPress plugins to add particular functions and features.

WooCommerce Product Addons

This is a plugin developed by Acowebs, provides a wide range of options to decorate products. Adding to WooCommerce's basic features it gives extra options in the form of fields to collect more information from the customer regarding their order. It’s very helpful for customers as they can add information on what designs/sizes they are looking for. WooCommerce product addons plugin is very easy, drag and drop form builder. In short, this is a must-have WooCommerce plugin. It has a free version called Woocommerce custom fields, which is one of the leading plugins in the Wordpress.org directory.

WooCommerce Checkout Field Editor and Manager 

This plugin which is known as WooCommerce checkout manager, is a free plugin in Wordpress.org and is especially designed to decorate checkout pages. This is a kind of form which helps you collect details from buyers when they proceed to checkout.

Features:

·      Drag and Drop Builder

·      Free version available & Premium version at a nominal cost

·      WPML and Poly Lang Supported

·      Customize Checkout Page

·      Collects Information from Buyer

There is also a premium version of the same in the name Woocommerce Checkout field editor which is available at a nominal cost.

WooCommerce Dynamic Pricing With Discount Rules

The WooCommerce Dynamic Pricing plugin is another must-have free Woocommerce plugin. It revamps all online shopping experiences. With this plugin, in your WooCommerce store, you can set prices for a different group of products and offer discounts in bulk. You can cash an event like summer sale or new year sale with this plugin, create an offer and advertise it with let’s say ‘20% off Summer Sale’

Features:

·  Bulk Discounts

·  Set the same price for a set of products and others for another set of products

·  Easy to install

·  Easy to customize

There’s a huge list of other valuable plugins you need for your store, we named them below;

• WooCommerce Multilingual-run WooCommerce with WPML.

• Breeze-Free WordPress Cache Plugin.

• AliDropship Plugin.

• WooCommerce Google Analytics Integration.

• WooCommerce Feed Manager.

• WooCommerce Product Slider.

• Woo Social Media Marketing.

• WooCommerce Product Gift Wrap.

• Genesis Connect for WooCommerce.

• Product Import Export for WooCommerce.

• WooCommerce Currency Switcher.

• Yoast SEO

• WooCommerce Shortcodes.

• Booster for WooCommerce.

 

Themes:

Multiple purpose themes are available for WooCommerce.

These are some famous themes,

• Shop Keeper e-Commerce

• The Retailer Premium WooCommerce Theme

• XStore Responsive Multi-Purpose WooCommerce Theme.

• Woodmart Responsive Multi-Purpose WooCommerce Theme.

• Electro Electronics Store WooCommerce Theme.

• Savoy Minimalist AJAX WooCommerce Theme.

• Legenda Responsive Multi-Purpose WooCommerce Theme.

• Labomba Responsive Multi-Purpose WooCommerce Theme.

• Martfury WooCommerce Marketplace WordPress Theme.

• North Responsive Multi-Purpose WooCommerce Theme.

• Nitro Universal WooCommerce Theme from eCommerce expert.

• Mr. Tailor Responsive WooCommerce Theme.

• Basel Responsive Multi-Purpose WooCommerce Theme

 

There are 1000s of themes selling on third party websites, it is difficult to estimate how many themes are associated with WordPress but some statistics show 1135 WooCommerce themes are on ThemeForest, also there are 548 WooCommerce themes on a directory of the wordpress.org. While on Mojo Themes there are 240 WooCommerce themes.

Extensions:

In the last year, WooCommerce contained near 330 extensions and 1000 plugins. Meanwhile, there were thousands of paid add-ons for fixed prices. Premium Themes nowadays offer ability with WooCommerce as well as plugins that make a theme framework compatible.

Some important Extensions are:

WooCommerce Booking: that provides users to sell blocks of time as appointments.

WooCommerce Memberships: that allows the user to restrict access to certain parts of their WordPress website and sell access to these parts of the website.

There are tens of thousands of Wordpress developers across the world who develop and sell WooCommerce plugins - majority of those are available on the official Wordpress.org directory.

Advantages of WooCommerce

·      WooCommerce is for

·      presenting and selling products

·      Selling services

·      Affordable and Accessible e-commerce business

·      Sell digital and physical products online

·      Manage inventory and shipping

·      Take secure payments

·      Sort out taxes automatically

Conclusion:

WooCommerce is an eCommerce solution for WordPress. WooCommerce comes with the power of an easily expandable digital platform for setting up an online store that is backed by the repute, popularity and community support of WordPress. Now we can choose a right and attractive, innovative way to run our business online.

 

You have 100% control over all your data, this provides support for mobile devices, and the potential to scale your sites is limitless.