The Definitive Guide on WooCommerce FAQs

You can’t afford to not sell online and to do it well. You must get your products where your customers are, and that’s on their phones, in social media, etc. Yet, successfully executing an ecommerce strategy is difficult. Making the right technology solution is a critical first step. At Fruition, we have 20 years of ecommerce experience with nearly every ecommerce software platform. We've come to really appreciate the ease of WooCommerce for the end user and the endless possibilities to extend WooCommerce. There are a ton of pre-built solutions that can help you quickly get your online store built, operational and selling products. While they range in price, features offered and overall power, the platform that’s right for you will depend on your existing setup, immediate needs and the future you envision for your store. The ecommerce experts at Fruition recommend WooCommerce for businesses that are already using WordPress to power their websites and are ready to start selling on their own online marketplace.

WooCommerce is a free, open-source ecommerce solution that’s built on top of WordPress. It’s technically a WordPress plug-in, originally released in 2011 to add eCommerce capabilities directly to a WordPress website. Since its original release, WooCommerce has evolved significantly, and now offers all the features you’d expect from a robust ecommerce platform. In fact, 21% of eCommerce stores today are powered by WooCommerce. From small businesses to large retailers, all kinds of businesses all over the world use WooCommerce to sell their products and services on their WordPress websites.

As far as ecommerce platforms go, WooCommerce is relatively low cost, highly customizable, and quick and easy to set up, making it the go-to solution for stores that need to get up and running fast. And because it’s so user friendly, it’s a great choice for business owners that don’t want to introduce added complexity for their team to manage.

WordPress is the most widely-used content management system (CMS) in the world,currently powering nearly 50% of websites large and small. WordPress is really what you make of it, in that it can do a lot of impressive things with the right widgets, plugins and add-ons. A CMS is a tool that helps users create, manage and modify a website without having to write the website code from scratch (or even know how to code in the first place).

WooCommerce is a great eCommerce solution because it’s designed for selling. Right out of the box, it offers all of the features you need to get your online store up and running. And it’s totally customizable; with the right extensions from the WooCommerce Extension Store, it can meet just about any eCommerce need you might have. - Shipping - Payments - Inventory management - Order management - Refunds

With WooCommerce, you can sell just about any type of product. And the platform is good at handling all types of product configurations for products with multiple sizes, colors, lengths, etc. With WooCommerce powering your eCommerce store, you can sell: - Physical products - Subscriptions - Digital products - Memberships - Downloadable products - And more Because WooCommerce was designed for WordPress specifically, it inherits all of its strengths, advantages and capabilities.

Just like WordPress, WooCommerce is also very user friendly. There’s a low learning curve; if you know how to use WordPress, you’ll be able to use WooCommerce. Furthermore, the administrative features are very intuitive, so you should be able to pick up on the best way to manage things very quickly.

All of the major payment gateways (Authorize.net, PayPal, Stripe, etc.) can be easily integrated with your WooCommerce store, letting you serve more customers with ease and reliability. - Physical products - Digital products - Downloadable products - Subscriptions - Memberships - And more

Yes, Fruition does many bidirectional WooCommerce integrations with QuickBooks, NetSuite and other accounting plaforms.

Yes, Fruition can setup your WooCommerce site to calculate sales tax. When you’re selling products across the country, taxes can get pretty confusing. Thankfully, WooCommerce can make calculating, charging and tracking sales tax stress-free. The platform has a number of options to help you set up and collect taxes, without having to manually calculate, set up and track the individual tax rates of various zip codes, states and counties. And with the help of add-ons, it can even automate tax rates and collections, saving you significant amounts of time.

WooCommerce allows for domestic and international shipping, supports many carriers and offers valuable shipping and fulfillment-related functionality.

You can create coupons for all kinds of scenarios, like customers buying a certain number of products, for BOGO specials, for free shipping or for customers hitting a certain dollar amount in their cart.

WooCommerce inherits a lot of the great SEO features that come with WordPress. And just like WordPress, you can use optimized meta tags and other eCommerce-specific tools to track sales and conversions and make sure your site is ranking at the top. - Configurable shipping zones and shipping classes - A feature that calculates shipping rates for multiple carriers (FedEx, USPS, UPS, etc.) - The ability to establish rules for free shipping, like when customers buy a specific dollar amount or even buy a specific product

With just a couple of add-ons, WooCommerce lets you power robust marketplaces where users can sign up (free or paid) to sell their own goods on your website. You can create rules to have them pay a membership to sell these goods or you can even charge for a percentage of what they sell.

With the help of a plug-in, WooCommerce lets you act as a wholesaler, offering reduced prices for bulk purchases for specific customer groups. Not only can the platform’s wholesaling capabilities help you serve B2B customers, but also reward loyal B2C customers with a price break. Like any software platform, WooCommerce is what you make of it. WooCommerce can power almost any type of store — you just need to integrate the right extensions. Some kinds of eeommerce stores WooCommerce can power include: - Affiliate stores where you sell external products through your website - Auction websites with dynamic data fields for conditions like buy it now, bid increments, reserve price, etc. - Booking websites for hotels, property and equipment rentals, reservations or services - Dropshipping stores that sell products from a supplier - Education-based businesses where customers purchase, rent and book lessons all through the online store - Memberships that rely on a recurring payment setup, like memberships for gyms, yoga studios, associations - Subscriptions for physical goods (like subscription boxes), access to digital content or subscription-based ecommerce models - Those that book and sell online or in-person consultations - Travel or experience-based businesses - Virtual stores that sell digital downloads like ecourses, stock photos, font packs, music files, designs, wallpapers and more. Types of eCommerce stores WooCommerce can power WooCommerce is a great eCommerce platform for many cases and business types, however, it does have its weak points and areas of improvement. Some disadvantages of woocommerce include the following.

Two disadavantges of woocommerce including weak dashboards and weak product management. Dashboards and reporting are fairly weak. Like most eCommerce systems, the reporting and dashboards that come with WooCommerce can be somewhat limiting. We find this disadvantage across the eCommerce space, most likely due to the fact that different businesses need different dashboards, and there’s no universal, or even standard, set of metrics for retailers. Luckily, there’s always a plug-in to compensate for whatever WooCommerce itself lacks. If you want to track more complex things like sales by state or sales by SKU, you can download an extension. But when you start to need this data in a more complex way, you could be looking at some custom development. WooComerce’s weak points

Not really. WooCommerce has recently added a much better system for bulk editing your products, however; it’s still fairly limited in its capabilities. This is why we generally recommend WordPress and WooCommerce for stores that don’t have too many SKUs, as future editing can become very cumbersome. Or the product management is handled outside of WooCommerce e.g. in QuickBooks or in an ERP that is then integrated with WooCommerce. Customers expect a quick, convenient and easy-to-navigate online shopping experience, and the right eCommerce platform can help you provide just that. With WooCommerce powering your online store, you can leverage the diverse capabilities and dynamic nature of WordPress, effectively future-proofing your business so it can adapt and evolve for whatever comes next. Onboarding a new eCommerce system is a lot of work, and moving from one platform to another is an even larger undertaking. That’s why it’s important you make the right choice the first time — and have the support of a dedicated eCommerce development team. Successful ecommerce projects require thorough planning, attentive management and expert execution. When you partner with Fruition, that’s exactly what you get. Future-proof your business with the right eCommerce platform and the right eCommerce partner.

Here at Fruition, we have deep experience designing, developing and optimizing ecommerce stores. We regularly help our clients build these sites from scratch; integrate WooCommerce capabilities into their existing WordPress website; and maintain, optimize and add features to existing WooCommerce stores. Fruition is a certified "WooExperts" team. Our WooCommerce experts can help you make the right decision for your business and get your store where it needs to be: in front of the right customers. Contact us today with any eCommerce questions and to learn if WooCommerce is the right fit for your products and services.