3 Ways To Master WooCommerce Without Breaking A Sweat
Is using WooCommerce for WordPress proving difficult. Here are 3 quick tips to help you master it....
Setting up your online store can prove to be a difficult thing to do. Whether you are trying to set up a brand new online store or integrate a new online business into your exisiting business - it can become an overwhelming experience. At BVSWebDesign we have helped businesses set up their WooCommerce stores in Skipton, North Yorkshire and UK Wide and have a few tips for those who are setting up their stores.
Before we get into any tips, let's explore what WooCommerce is...
What is WooCommerce?
WooCommerce is a plugin (or extension - if you will) to the WordPress Content Management System (CMS). On the backend, WooCommerce allows the store owner to input products and the data attached to those products into the database associated with the website, without any technical knowledge. On the front end of the website, WooCommerce installs templates to display categories of products, and single product a cart and an integrated checkout.
WooCommerce is 100% free to use - but this free version does lack features and requires further plugins to add functionality.
What features does WooCommerce have?
Which leads us nicely to this question... The truth is WooCommerce doesn't have many features. You can add products, categories and sub-categories (easily - unlike Shopify). You can also manager customers, who can create accounts. WooCommerce also offers it's own payment gateway and mobile app to view orders and and update products.
The reason WooCommerce doesn't have a big feature set is to allow you to integrate it with a variety of plugins or gateways to make it as flexible as possible.
So how do I get WooCommerce to Work for me?
With this in mind it can be a bit of minefield deciding what to do to with your site. Here are 3 ways to Master WooCommerce:
1. Make a minimal test store
The first tip would just be to build something! Get some products online and do a test run. How does it work? How does it look? How would your customers feel about it? What else do they need...
This helps you move onto the next stage...
2. List out your requirements
Probably the most important bit. Write down what you need your store (and indeed the back office system and website in general) to do. This will help you decide what is vital, and what isn't. If you have a long list, you might find you need a lot of plugins, or require increased server load to run your site efficiently. You might even decide you need some help. If so, get in touch.
3. Keep things Simple
Try to remove or merge some requirements. More plugins means more load on your website, and more cost in the case of some of the WooCommerce ones!
Alternatively you might be hiring a developer or agency like us. Not a bad move, but more requirements means more work, more testing, more software design. All of this means additional cost to you.
By keeping it simple, you can introduce things slowly, one feature at a time if need be, and monitor the way each feature effects both your site speed, and your conversions.
Bonus Tip: Take Advantage of Free Plugins
There are plenty of free plugins for a lot of the features you can think of. I found an awesome plugin that I combined with WooCommerce built in shipping functinality to vary postage price by weight. This does take a little bit more research, but it's well worth doing to keep costs down and improve the feature set of your store.
All in all, WooCommerce is fantastic platform to start your online store, especially if you have a WordPress website already. Don't expect to much from it to start with, but you can do almost anything with the number of extensions available. If you need any help, use the contact form below to get in touch.
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