Today 39% of all eCommerce sites are powered by WooCommerce and WordPress — over 1.5 million active stores. That’s 17.6 million live sites (over 26% of the entire internet!), and, well… that’s a lot of sites.
It’s no coincidence that developers and store builders choose to work with WordPress because there are some pretty convincing reasons why WordPress has climbed to the top of the charts, and why WooCommerce has soared in popularity right along with it.
Stores backed by WordPress have multiple advantages over those on other platforms. And these advantages allow them to work faster, spend less money, and ultimately become more successful than their counterparts.
Let’s take a look at a few convincing reasons why shops running on WordPress have a competitive edge — and why you should join their ranks, if you’re not already among them. 🙂
From hosting to plugins, the entire store is 100% under your control
When you set up a store using a hosted platform, you’re essentially paying to rent your space from someone else. Hosted platforms can also limit your ability to customize your store’s appearance or sell specific kinds of products or services.
The beauty of WordPress is that it’s completely under your control. You choose where to host your store, how you want it to look, and how you want to extend it.
WordPress is flexible from top to bottom — hosting, content, expandability, and design.
With an online store built with WordPress, you’re in full control of the entire experience.
It can be fully customized to suit your needs. If your hosting seems slow, you can upgrade it or simply switch hosts.
You’re never “stuck” with anything. If you decide you no longer like your URL, you can change it. If you don’t want to use a specific plugin, you can find a replacement. WordPress isn’t anything like hosted platforms that give you a single choice and tie you to it for life.
You’re not even stuck with WordPress: if you ever decide to move to a different platform, there’s nothing stopping you from taking your data with you. WordPress allows you to export all your content, including Posts and Pages, in a handy XML format, while your WooCommerce products can be saved as a CSV. There’s also an extension available to export your orders and customer data.
No matter what your plans are, when you start with WordPress, your store’s data is yours (and yours alone) forever.
There are hundreds of plugins and extensions for your every need
We already mentioned that building a site on hosted territory could limit your ability to grow or extend. Not so with WordPress — you can add as much functionality as you want through the use of plugins and extensions.
The plugin directory on WordPress.org is filled with thousands (over 46,000, to date) of free tools you can use to extend your site.
There are complex SEO (Search Engine Optimization) plugins, simple widgets, and everything in between.
If you can think of it, there’s probably a plugin for it.
Some of the most popular plugins currently served up by WordPress.org — and there are plenty!
Stores can change their appearance on the fly
Some eCommerce platforms give you a powerful store, but the design is up to you — which means you’ll need to hire a developer to get what you want. Other platforms allow you to switch between pre-made themes, but if you want to make changes? Forget about it.
The powerful theming options built into WordPress allow stores to change their appearance as they please, and without any big time or financial investments. Want your store to look different? Swap your theme. Not happy with the colors? Changes made in the Customizer menu or even or a child theme will do the trick.
Change your theme, change your whole site — in a snap.
Built-in content management allows for incredible, easy-to-create product and landing pages
People who have heard of WordPress (or even used it!) as a blogging platform sometimes question using it to run a store. What they usually don’t realize is that its built-in publishing capabilities are one of the very reasons it makes such a great eCommerce platform.
WordPress gives anyone the ability to efficiently create and publish content on the fly. For a store, this translates into product, category, and landing pages that can be created quickly, look beautiful, and are able to be edited or changed at any time for any reason.
Some eCommerce platforms require knowledge of HTML to create beautiful landing pages, or have sparse visual editors that don’t allow you to make high-quality product pages without knowing code or hiring a developer. With WordPress, though, you can use the editor and tools you’re already familiar with to build up your store.
The icing on the cake: with WooCommerce, you can sell anything, anywhere
We’ve mentioned WooCommerce, the WordPress plugin for setting up an online store, a few times along the way here. While there are multiple ways to set up a store with WordPress and multiple solutions for selling online, we think WooCommerce is the best choice because it allows you to sell anything, anywhere — beautifully.
No matter what you want to sell in your store, you can do it with WooCommerce and WordPress. Have twenty thousand SKUs with variations? Doable. Have a single digital product with just a few images? Sure thing.
Stores powered by WordPress are winning — is yours among them?
Between the flexibility of open source to the wide availability of free and paid solutions to built-in image and content management, it’s clear: WordPress gives online stores a huge advantage.
Here are just a few of the WordPress Online Stores That we have built:
Barracuda Moon Jewelry – Charleston, SC
Hand-made sea glass and seashells jewelry with sea glass and seashells using only natural gemstones, and gold-filled chain, wire, findings, etc. It is beachy-bohemian mixed with elegance; jewelry designed to wear with your bikini or your favorite cocktail dress. It is jewelry for anyone, especially girls who want to howl at the moon and say “Viva!”. How beautiful it is to be alive! https://barracudamoon.com
Island Hoppers Bicycle Rentals – Ocean Isle Beach, NC
They needed a website for their bicycle rentals that allowed bicycle rentals to be Saturday to Saturday only. The site also keeps track of inventory so if there are only 6 of a style of bike and 2 are rented for a a week then only 4 are available – no double bookings! https://islandhoppersrentals.com
Islands Art & Books Online Store – Ocean Isle Beach, NC
Local art and books can be purchased online – customers receive an email receipt and store receives an email notification of the order. WooCommerce reports give details on best selling items, most profitable items as well as gross and nets sales and sales tax reports for easily doing taxes. Also keeps track of inventory to notify of out of stock items.
