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WORDPRESS: CREATING AN ONLINE SHOP WITH WOOCOMMERCE
Creating an e-commerce site is a highly interesting option for any business owner or company today, as it offers the chance to reach an enormous international market who use the internet, computers and smartphones to buy products and services online.
When it comes to developing an online shop, you will need to make a few very important decisions, such as your choice of domain name, the type of hosting service purchased and the e-commerce creation and management tool used. Among the options available on the market, WooCommerce by WordPress is one of the most popular, given the great wealth of benefits it offers – both to the shop itself and to its users.
Creating an online shop on WordPress is an affordable, quick and easy process, thanks to the advanced WooCommerce plugin which turns the most popular CMS on the market into an e-commerce-management tool capable of competing with PrestaShop, Magento and Shopify.
What is WooCommerce?
WooCommerce is a plugin for WordPress that transforms this CMS into a tool for the creation and management of an online shop. This is an open-source plugin, which means that it can be used to create professional e-commerce sites free of charge.
Thanks to WooCommerce, users can create a virtual shop in no time at all, without the need for any significant financial investment, and with a high degree of flexibility that will allow you to customise even the smallest of details.
Once WooCommerce has been downloaded, installed and activated, new options will appear in the WordPress control panel, allowing you to manage your shop, create products or edit your accepted payment methods.
WooCommerce comes with specific plugins that allow you to boost the options presented by this tool in order to transform it into a veritable online-shop manager, capable of competing with the specific tools available on the market today.
Why create an e-commerce site with WooCommerce?
More and more business owners and companies are opting to use WordPress as the tool with which to develop their e-commerce projects. WooCommerce is capable of extensively and efficiently transforming WordPress, turning this tool into an e-commerce platform.
The popularity of WooCommerce comes as a result of the multiple benefits it offers to those looking to develop an online shop with this platform. Let’s take a look at the main advantages of this WordPress plugin for the creation of online shops.
Reduced costs
As we mentioned earlier, WooCommerce is an open-source plugin, which means that you can use it for your professional projects completely free of charge. All you need to do is head to the WordPress plugin options, search for WooCommerce and proceed to download, install and activate it. From then on, you’ll have free access to all the main options for the management of your online shop.
Avoiding the need to invest in an e-commerce development tool means that your project will require less financial investment, allowing you to dedicate your available resources to other important aspects like WooCommerce hosting or advertising your online shop (through SEO and digital-marketing strategies).
Ease of use
WordPress is a CMS that stands out for its ease of use and very gentle learning curve. Any user can learn to operate the tool in a short period of time, obtaining high-quality and professional results. WooCommerce follows in this approach offered by WordPress, as it is very simple to install and set up, and presents no significant difficulties when it comes to creating and managing online shops.
With WooCommerce, you can create an e-commerce site in very little time, without the need for any knowledge of web development and design technologies such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript or PHP, among others.
Flexibility
Another important aspect that makes WooCommerce one of the best options on the market with which to create a virtual shop is the flexibility offered by this plugin. Users can create any type of online business, regardless of their sector or the size of their business.
The types of e-commerce sites WooCommerce can manage include:
- Online retail shops.
- Sites for the sale of services.
- Booking websites.
- Marketplaces.
- Ticket offices.
The WordPress shop offers a range of plugins to boost and customise WooCommerce. Some of these are free, while others are paid plugins, all allowing you to adapt the shop to the specific needs of each business.
Web positioning
WooCommerce online shops are very well positioned on Google. In much the same way as WordPress, which has been designed to facilitate search-engine positioning, WooCommerce makes it easier for online shops to achieve higher rankings on Google SERPs.
The plugin itself features a SEO-friendly structure and elements, boosting the web positioning of the shops created on this platform.
Scalability
WooCommerce is a very powerful plugin that allows users to expand their online shop according to their business’ needs at any given time. You can add new features, edit the design, change the shop’s hosting provider, increase your product catalogue, and make all sorts of changes without negatively impacting the shop (with zero downtime).
Web security
WooCommerce offers a range of great advantages, but – without a doubt – one of the most significant is the high degree of security it offers to online shops. The aspects that make WooCommerce a reliable and safe tool with which to create a professional e-commerce site are:
- Continuous updates. This is a frequently updated plugin, including security patches that increase levels of protection and eliminate any vulnerabilities detected.
- Security of WordPress. WordPress itself stands out for its efficient construction, as its code has been optimised so as to prevent any malicious third parties from accessing the data it processes.
- Security plugins. The majority of WordPress security plugins are compatible with WooCommerce, offering e-commerce sites a high degree of protection.
Support
WooCommerce also comes with a wide and very active digital community, making it possible to very easily find help solving any issues you may encounter. Extensive documentation is available online regarding the installation, configuration and use of WooCommerce, as well as some truly valuable audiovisual resources (such as explanatory videos on YouTube).
What’s more, it’s easier to find qualified professionals with experience in WooCommerce. If you want to develop an online shop and elevate it to a professional level, finding developers capable of working with WooCommerce is easier than for other tools, and more affordable.
Customised shop design
With WooCommerce from WordPress, it’s easy to customise the appearance of your online shop, thanks to the use of specially designed templates. By opting for a responsive template, you’ll be able to adapt your WooCommerce shop to ensure that its appearance and functionality offers the best user experience on smartphones and tablets.
What’s more, advanced WordPress design plugins like Elementor also work perfectly on WooCommerce, allowing you to personalise even the smallest visual details of your e-commerce site.
In this article, we have taken a closer look at WooCommerce and all the advantages it offers that make this tool a global favourite for the creation of online shops. Any company or user can opt to create their own e-commerce site, without the need for any web-design and development knowledge and even on a limited budget.