Introduction
Building an online store does not have to be complicated. With Wordpress and the WooCommerce plugin you can quickly and cheaply have an online store up and running within a couple of hours. It doesn't matter what type of products you want to sell, WooCommerce can provide a safe and secure platform with which to launch your online business.
What kind of E-commerce sites can I build?
Wordpress and WooCommerce are so flexible that with a few plugins and a little bit of imagination you can begin trading online in no time. Typically the most popular sites tend to fall within the following categories:
- Online Shop for Physical Goods
- Online Shop for Digital Downloads
- Membership Sites
- Online Courses
- Events
Online Shops for Physical Goods
Straight out of the box, WooCommerce is designed to deliver an online store for physical products. Sophisticated features allow you to sell simple products ( A single item), variable products (products with variations such as an item of clothing available in different colours and sizes) In fact, you will be hard pushed to find a product that you can't sell (as long as it is legal)
You are able to integrate payment processors such as Stripe or PayPal (to take credit card payments) and WooCommerce have even released their own payment system called WooCommerce Payments.
You can add real-time shipping calculations too, and if you are a drop shipper you can integrate with various fulfillment and warehousing services.
Online Shop For Digital Downloads
If you are only selling digital downloads, that is ok too. You can sell digital products and once a customer has paid, the download link will be sent onto the customer. You can limit the number of times your digital product is downloaded too
Membership Sites
Membership sites represent a great opportunity to generate recurring revenues with membership levels and subscriptions. Premium plugins such as MemberPress and PaidMemberShip Pro offer the functionality to protect content and only show it to fully paid up members
Online Courses
Knowledge products have been particularly popular since lockdown. Learndash and SenseiLMS allow you to build out entire courses and charge customers for access. You can even issue certificates for your customers on completion of their courses. If you are an expert on a subject why not give it a try?
Event Booking
Events, whether face-to-face or online can be lucritive. Events booking plugins such as WooCommerce Box Office can make proting and charging for an event childs play.
Is WooCommerce right for you?
If you are looking to get your business online then WooCommerce may be the solution for you. Built on the Wordpress platform, WooCommerce can help you to start generating an online income.
WooCommerce is a well-supported, secure e-commerce system with the features you need to take your business online. It is intuitive and easy to update. If the functionality does not exist in the base product, there are free and premium plugins that will provide the functionality you need.
If you would like to discuss your WooCommerce project contact me here