WordPress, A wonder blogging and popular content management system can actually work as your e-commerce framework.
The plugin architecture built into WordPress makes it an ideal candidate which makes it extendable per your needs. With the launch of WooCommerce- the e-commerce plugin, WordPress can now be extended to run as an e-commerce system. There are other e-commerce plugins available with WordPress but none are as good as WooCommerce.
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Is WordPress Ideal Because It Is Free?
Pundits claim that as the base system of WordPress and WooCommerce are free, hence their popularity. This notion is nearly correct, because there are various other features included in it that make WordPress indomitable. The following features makes WordPress aptly suitable for use as your e-commerce system or website.
Cost
The base systems of WordPress and WooCommerce are free. The features available to you in their free version are often more than enough to launch your e-commerce ventures. The WordPress plugin repository offers you many free plugins that can be used to provide additional features to your site.
Take for example a scenario where you are offering a marketplace for sellers. There are different sellers and they have different products to offer. One of the most important features that you may want is to give the ability to your sellers to set their shipping prices.
When we were tasked to do this using Shopify, we found that our client ended up paying around USD400 per month to support the feature. We have nothing personal about Shopify, but such a system can be accomplished using WordPress for free. Even if you hire a developer to do the same for you, the one time fee will not be even USD400.
Ease of Use
Taking our discussion forward based on the example we discussed, the UI to use in Shopify is not up to the mark and the fact that for management you are redirected to third-party site, makes data security a farce. We do not doubt the integrity of the Shopify plugin creators.
Neither are we complaining. We just hoped that it will be easy for our client to understand and work on. In comparison, when it comes to WordPress with WooCommerce, the UI is pretty easy to follow and comprehend.
Actually with little help from your developer you can make the UI in WordPress as you want it. That I am sorry to say is not the case with most of the leading shopping cart software and applications available.
Availability of Features
Feature wise WordPress with WooCommerce is no less than the other shopping cart applications available. Starting from products, attributes, variations, shipping, taxes, reporting – you actually get a load of them in the default system. Creating new plugins to meet your requirements is easy.
For example, adding a new payment gateway is far easily accomplished in WooCommerce than in others. In most of the shopping cart software, you have to choose from a limited number of payment gateways available.
Customization
Most of the available shopping carts offer customizations but then most are created to meet the requirements of most customers. They by default are not built for your requirements. The same is true for WordPress – WooCommerce too.
What we check is how these available shopping systems respond to customizations that are needed to run your site. Apart from a few which includes WooCommerce most do not allow much customizations and limit your needs within set limits that they offer.
This is even true for larger marketplaces like Amazon and Ebay too.
Now consider, WordPress with WooCommerce. The beauty of the WordPress platform is that it can customized and extended as per your need. That is how this system is built. There are no limitations to which WordPress can be extended to meet your requirements.
Creating your e-commerce site using WordPress with WooCommerce provides you with a lot of ready to use features. If you ever need any customizations, search in the plugin repository, we are sure that you will get one meeting your requirements. If not, there are WordPress developers who can do the necessary customizations for you.
Optimization and Speed
Today the most important feature of a website has come down to the speed with which a site loads. If you have to meet Google standards, your desktop and mobile website should load within 2 and 3 seconds. This requires a lot of optimization, careful thinking and intelligent coding. Most systems like BigCommerce of Shopify do not allow any optimization.
These sites for that matter cannot be optimized much. It is not something that can be done because their architecture does not support it. You end up with sites having abysmal loading times.
WordPress on the other hand is customizable and can be made to meet Google standards for web page speed. As we have reiterated above, the one feature that makes WordPress stand out among others is its ability to be customized per your requirements.
