WordPress is the most popular choice of CMS (content management system) for websites, both e-commerce, and companies. One-third of websites today are built on WordPress. As an open-source CMS, WordPress empowers businesses to build and manage websites without spending extra money. At the same time, themes, templates, plug-ins, and extensions provided by CMS help developers build custom websites and web applications faster.
But WordPress is not designed as a platform for developing web stores and eCommerce websites. When a developer wants to use WordPress to develop an eCommerce app, he or she should use a WordPress plugincalled WooCommerce. This plugin is also open source like WordPress and can be used for free. Developers can create eCommerce websites with WordPress WooCommerce. Therefore, the development of WordPress eCommerce is similar to the development of WooCommerce.
Whether WordPress is good for eCommerce depends on your business and your needs. For some businesses, WordPress is a great solution for selling products online. For some companies, WordPress lacks expectations and needs, making it such an ideal solution.
But the developers must understand the pros and cons. let’s look at some pros and cons of WordPress for eCommerce.
Pros of using WordPress for eCommerce
WordPress can be used for eCommerce and offers great benefits. Here are a few of the pros of using WordPress for your business:
1. Free and easy to use
WordPress is the most popular because of its simple and quick installation process. An enterprise using WordPress can use the WooCommerce plugin to convert its website into a web store without any technical expertise. The free and easy-to-install nature of the plugin also makes many enterprises use WordPress for eCommerce. If users need any help during installation it is available for free.
Woocommerce Plugins help you craft a site that has all the functionality you need for your business. If you want to have an eCommerce site, WordPress offers numerous eCommerce-focused plugins to help you sell products on your site.
- WooCommerce enables you to:
- Create eye-catching storefronts
- Optimize your pages for search engines
- Customize product pages
- Choose from multiple payment gateways
- Set your shipping options
- Calculate sales tax with ease
2. Customization
Web developers consider WooCommerce to be more flexible than other eCommerce platforms. The plugin allows users to customize the storefront as per their requirements without putting extra time and effort into it.
Even the themes can also be personalized to give the storefront a desired look and feel.
The developers have the option to distinguish the storefront by making changes to the themes, they can take advantage of the plugins and extensions for WooCommerce to customize product attributes without any hassle or delay. WordPress allows you to add plugins to the website so that you can add custom features such as booking forms, e-commerce stores, payment gateways, analytics, SEO management, email integration, and more.
3. Flexible Product and Inventory Management
The website created using WooCommerce can be used to sell both digital and physical products or services. Users even have the option to keep adding new products regularly, categorize these products, and manage things easily.
For smoother inventory management, the platform provides a user-friendly user interface (UI). This UI can be used to keep a track of stocks level and management of regular day-to-day inventory. However, he must obtain adequate server space to manage products and inventory efficiently.
4. Support for multiple currencies and payment gateways
WooCommerce accelerates custom eCommerce website development by supporting multiple currencies, payment gateways, and shipping options. The support for multiple payment gateways and shipping options helps in attracting customers from various locations and countries. Further, it detects a customer’s address using geolocation and displays the appropriate currency, payment gateway, and tax rate. The customers can pay in their suitable currency and tax rate. This can accelerate the sales of online retailers.
5. It offers dozens of template options
If you want an eCommerce site that encapsulates your brand’s unique style, WordPress offers a template for it. WordPress has over 8,000 themes to choose from for your site, with over 1,200 eCommerce-focused templates you can use to build your site. With so many options available, you can build a custom site that fits your business’s needs.
6. Web analytics Tool
Most online retailers nowadays use analytics to track visitor activities and collect customer data, the analytics is critical to analyze the performance of the website. Most eCommerce platforms allow enterprises to use third-party web analytics services.
While using WordPress for eCommerce, retailers can take advantage of a robust extension called WooCommerce Google Analytics. This extension can be used to not only track the basic user activity, but also the events, sessions, and important data like product views and actions on the shopping cart.
7. SEO-friendly
WordPress is good for search engine optimization (SEO) as it provides extensions and plugins like Yoast SEO. If you want people to find your products when they search for them through a search engine like Google, you need a site that’s optimized to rank. SEO plugin enables you to optimize pages on your site to perform well in search engines and drive results. This helps you to improve your rankings on Google and other search engines by providing relevant suggestions. This way, you can improve the SEO on your own.
Cons of Using WordPress for eCommerce
Along with pros, there are cons to choosing WordPress as your eCommerce site builder. Here are some drawbacks to having a WordPress eCommerce website.
1. Not an eCommerce Content Management System
While WordPress does have plugins to make your site eCommerce-friendly, it’s not an eCommerce site builder. Since WordPress isn’t eCommerce-focused, you may miss out on some crucial features you need for your eCommerce store. The features and tools provided by WooCommerce help developers build web stores. But they cannot use WooCommerce as a robust CMS for eCommerce websites. Also, WooCommerce lacks some of the advanced features provided by other eCommerce platforms.
2. Theme should be compatible with WooCommerce plugin
There are hundreds of free and premium themes available on the WordPress repository that can be easily downloaded and installed on the site in no time. While there are numerous themes and plugins available for free, not all of them are trustworthy. The free and cheap themes and plugins don’t provide support if issues arise. These products have to be used very carefully.
WooCommerce is used to design the store, and then the used theme should support the plugin. Hence, the website owners need to find the right e-commerce theme for WordPress that is reliable and trustworthy. Otherwise, the site might crash and cause errors.
3. plugins and functionalities issue
While WordPress allows customization of several features and things, there is still room for a lot of things to be improved. One of the biggest struggles is getting all the plugins to work. Some plugins may not be compatible with one another, creating functionalities issues when you’re trying to build your site.
4. Security issues
When it comes to security and data privacy, users have to rethink and redefine their strategies to ensure that everything remains safe. As the most popular CMS, it is naturally the most targeted for cyber-attacks. WordPress updates its security measures frequently, so it’s important to keep on top of updates. The thing here is that you will need to check regularly if any updates are available for WordPress, plugins, as well as themes. If things are not updated, the site remains somehow vulnerable. The frequent updates make using WordPress for eCommerce complex and time-consuming.
5. Increases Overheads cost
As a free WordPress plugin, WooCommerce helps enterprises to curtail eCommerce application development costs. But we need to have premium themes and plugins eCommerce features to improve customer experience and make the web store standout. These paid themes and functionality often increase eCommerce development costs.
Conclusion
If you are looking to use WordPress for your e-commerce business, then you must check both the pros and cons before thinking about it. we would recommend using WordPress for e-commerce if your product offering is small. For other big eCommerce think about limitations and find ways to handle the limitations effectively. WordPress is good for you, but if you can’t manage the security, plugins, then it’s better to think again.
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