6 Reasons Why WooCommerce Is One of the Best Shopping Carts for Retailers

Released in 2011, WooCommerce is an open-source shopping cart WordPress plugin for ecommerce retailers. With over 2.3 million downloads in 3 years, it is one of the most popular and most powerful ecommerce options for online business owners and retailers (both large and small).

The WooCommerce plugin is one of the premier shopping cart platforms for WordPress. And it’s easy to see why. With the wide array of flexible options, and the streamlined ease-of-use, it provides simple solutions for retailers.

In this blog post, we’re going to talk about some of the main reasons why WooCommerce is so special, and why you should use it to boost your ecommerce efforts.

Reason 1: It’s easy to use

Ever downloaded a plugin, but there was such a high learning curve to use it properly? Thankfully, this is not the case with WooCommerce. The default options promote ease-of-use, and they have a sweet out-of-the-box functionality. Installation is a piece of cake, and it comes with the default checkout and cart pages already set up and ready to be used. And even better, it’s on the familiar WordPress platform, which will greatly reduce the learning curve.

At the base, WooCommerce is extremely simple because its many features are user-friendly (unlike many other ecommerce platforms).

You can add products as WordPress posts, and each product can have its own unique url.

There are four product types with WooCommerce

1. The Simple Product– The most popular and straightforward option. No special features with the product you are selling.
2. The Grouped Product- This is a product that is composed of different parts that can be sold individually. For example, if you’re selling a smartphone, but are also selling the individual battery, screen, etc.
3. The External Product– This is a product that is listed and linked on your store, but must be bought on a separate third-party site. This is basically an affiliate product from which you receive commission.
4. The Variable Product– The most complex and flexible of the product options. This is where you can sell different variations of your product, often with assorted pricing options. For example, a piece of clothing that has several sizes and has different prices for each size would be considered a variable product.

Another awesome feature is its one-page checkout, which customers love. And it also features real-time form validation, which doesn’t allow the user to complete the transaction until all the fields are entered completely and with the correct information.

Reason 2: It’s free.

The word “free” is always a good thing. The plugin is free to download, with a large gallery of extensions that are either free or available to purchase.

Reason 3: It’s highly customizable.

WooCommerce is supported by 39 themes that have WooCommece capabilities built in. Once you’ve chosen a theme, you can dig into the CSS and change the features, colors, functionalities, etc.

Being that WooCommerce is open-source, you can integrate the plugin into themes that aren’t Woo Themes. However, WooCommerce works smoother with Woo Themes than without it.

Reason 4: It has dynamic tracking options

If you ignore your store’s analytics, you are doing a huge disservice to yourself and your store’s success. Tracking the performance of your store and its products is a necessity  for any ecommerce retailer.

WooCommerce supports ecommerce tracking out of the box. Metrics like the total sales amounts, revenue, which items sold the most, the number of sales brought in by your affiliates, and sales by date can be viewed with easy-to-read graphs and reports.

Reason 5: It’s only going to get better

The open-source shopping cart from Woo Themes has made some vast improvements since it was first released in 2011, and it will only get better.

The benefits of WooCommerce:

• It’s free to download
• It has one-page checkout
• It has customizable themes
• It has dynamic product and pricing options
• It is supported with online documentation
• It hosts a wide array of free and paid extensions, plugins and widgets
• It has tracking options built in
• It is flexible enough to support small-large retailers

Reason 6: Zen Agency has a staff of experts in WooCommerce ready to help you

That’s right, the folks at Woo Themes have recognized our company as an expert in WooCommerce and they’ve listed us in their Affiliated Woo Workers section to assist e-shop owners with the development and customization of their online storefronts.

Ecommerce shopping has made some resounding noise in the past three years and it’s clear that it will continue to do so.