Why You Should Use WooCommerce Instead of Magento
Creating your own online store is a big step in running your own business online. Whether you’re selling physical products, or digital downloads, you want the process to be as easy as possible. I personally love WooCommerce and use it all of the time, so I know the ease and success you’ll experience from using it.
WooCommerce
WooCommerce was meant to be used with WordPress. In fact, The owners of WordPress have recently purchased WooCommerce, so you can expect even more powerful integration between the two. WooCommerce is easy to integrate with any WordPress theme. They even give you a step by step guide on how to enable WooCommerce with any WordPress theme. There are a lot of themes out there that are already WooCommerce ready, so all you have to do is install the plugin and set it up.
Magento
Where do I even begin? A lot of big businesses use Magento, which is perfectly fine, but to use it, you almost need to be a developer to be successful. The average website owner or business owner wouldn’t know how to even get started. Magento is an industry standard for big businesses, but I think it’s overkill for smaller companies. If you need something changed or fixed, you may end up having to hire a developer, which can cost you money.
The Advantages of Using WooCommerce Over Magento
WooCommerce is easy to set up. You can integrate payment gateways, such as Paypal in just a few minutes. WooCommerce also installs all of the pages you need automatically. This makes setup much easier, and takes out a lot of the legwork.
Adding Products
Adding products in WooCommerce is easy within the admin section of WordPress. It’s similar to adding pages, posts or categories inside of the regular WordPress panel. You can select from existing options the types of products you’re selling. It also handles shipping, too.
Selling Digital Downloads
WooCommerce is great for selling digital downloads, because they are provided once someone pays for them. You can also enable up-sells or additional recommended products, like what you’d find on Amazon. This can increase sales, helping you to generate additional revenue. A lot of people will be in the middle of making a purchase,when they see your additional product recommendations. They’ll see those, finding something useful, and end up saying “well, I am already buying this, why don’t I just get this, too?”
Selling Variable Products
If you sell products that are different sizes, colors, etc., WooCommerce makes it easy to add all of those, without complicating the process. This about selling large, medium and small red t-shirts, which will all be the same price, but it’s all organized in one simple place.
Customer Emails
You can tailor custom emails for clients that are generated whenever they perform a certain action. You can generate emails when someone makes a purchase, sending them a confirmation, while thanking them for their business. If they leave your site without finishing the checkout process, you can set it up so that they receive an email, letting them know they left with an item in their cart. Your email can direct them back to the site, where they can complete the purchase. These simple types of interactions can greatly increase revenue, all while being completely automated inside of WordPress and WooCommerce.
Product Descriptions and SEO
WordPress makes handling SEO easy. That’s why a lot of store owners love using the killer combo of WordPress and WooCommerce. Combine your efforts with the Yoast SEO plugin, and you’re sure to make SEO a snap. Writing detailed product descriptions, with seo in mind will help drive search engine traffic your way, making sales and generating revenue. That’s all for the price of a little more of your time on the front end of the site building process.
There Are Add-ons Available
You aren’t stuck hiring a developer when you need extra features. You’ll be blown away when you find out how many add-ons and plugins are available to supplement the WooCommerce plugin. There are plugins that add extra shipping features, custom product galleries and features, and much more. Before paying for custom features built by a developer, look to see if an extension is available. It may just save you a ton of money.
Product & Inventory Management
Using CSV files, you could easily import 1000 products in little to no time at all. There are plugins out there made just for this, so you could save hours of time by importing your products automatically. Imagine not having to create a new page by hand, enter the product description, and it’s attributes, such as size or color. Imagine handling all of that with a simple spreadsheet and importing in within minutes!
Conclusion
WooCommerce is a fantastic eCommerce solution for creating your own online store. There are so many options and features to choose from in WordPress themes, and additional plugins. You could build just about any type of store in no time.