Today we’re lighting the figurative birthday cake candles and saying a big happy birthday to WooCommerce.

The ecommerce platform is now 10 years old and in this blog we’ll be wishing it many happy returns and looking at the reasons why it has stood the test of time.

A recap: what is WooCommerce?

In a nutshell, WooCommerce is a customisable ecommerce platform that’s built on the WordPress CMS.

It’s designed to make online selling and customer relationship management simple.

A potted history of WooCommerce

2010: WooThemes began to think about adding ecommerce functionality to its collection of themes.

2011: An internal team of four developers launches the first iteration of the WooCommerce platform with nine extension options and six theme choices.

2013: WooCommerce reaches 500,000 downloads.

2014: WooCommerce reaches five million downloads.

2015: Automattic acquires WooThemes

2016: The WooThemes brand is retired so the focus can be placed solely on WooCommerce.

2019: The WooCommerce mobile app is launched.

2020: WooCommerce is used by 3.9 million websites worldwide.

10 reasons to choose WooCommerce for your business’s ecommerce site

1. There are millions of ways to customise your site

When you have a WooCommerce store you can customise it using both themes and extensions.

You can think of themes as being a little like templates. There are themes designed for selling everything from sports equipment to toys and games.

Extensions, meanwhile, are add ons that add extra functions to your site. For example, there are extensions related to payment options and shipping.

Since there are more than 730 of these extensions and themes to choose from there are millions of different ways you can tailor your site to your needs.

1. You can use it to sell anything

The beauty of WooCommerce is that it’s not limited to selling physical products.

Below are just a few of the non-physical things can you sell using the platform…

• Accommodation bookings

• Memberships

• Tickets

• Subscriptions

• Gift cards

• Vouchers

1. It’s built on WordPress

WordPress is one of the world’s most popular content management systems and WooCommerce has been designed to run in partnership with this CMS.

This means that it’s easy to add content to WooCommerce websites.

We’re not just talking about product descriptions and About Us pages, either. You can publish blogs that include shortcodes to products listed elsewhere on your site, too.

1. It’s quick to set-up a site

WooCommerce is intuitive and easy to use. This means you can set up the bare bones of your site quickly then invest your valuable time in populating it with on-brand product descriptions and landing pages.

1. You can run your store from everywhere

WooCommerce also comes with a mobile app that lets you do everything from creating products and processing orders to checking-in on your conversion rates on the go.

1. It makes it easy to manage customers as well as sales

The creators of WooCommerce have thought about what customers want from an online shopping experience as well as what store owners need.

So, you can do the following through the platform:

• Approve refunds in a single click

• Send templated emails to customers to confirm their order statuses

• Send birthday emails to customers

• Attach manuals to products

• Add product enquiry forms to product pages

• Show low stock levels to customers

• Add minimum and maximum order quantities to products

• And more

1. It’s constantly developing

There’s a big community of experts and developers linked to WooCommerce.

This community is constantly working together to develop the product and provide resources to help others make the most of it.

WooCommerce also hosts 80 meetups worldwide every year where those passionate about the platform can meet and share knowledge.

1. Support is readily available

You can find how-to guides, advice, educational videos and technical documentation on all of the below and more in the resource section of the WooCommerce website…

• Setting up a new store

• Email marketing

• Selling during the holidays

• How to use WooCommerce extensions

• How to customise a store

• GDPR

• Shipping tips

• Marketing strategies

1. It’s extremely secure

WooCommerce is regularly audited by Sucuri – an industry leader in cyber security.

1. You can get some amazing deals on extensions

The basic out-of-the-box version of WooCommerce is free and so is WordPress.

However, if you want to make your site the best it can be, you’ll probably be interested in adding a few of the paid-for extensions.

Some of these extensions can cost as much as £100 a time.

However, there’s a secret to getting your hands on a suite of extensions for less.

At tsoHost, we include £4,000 of premium WooCommerce extensions for free in our WordPress Ecommerce Hosting plans.

The collection includes extensions for:

• Cart & checkout

• Marketing

• Merchandising

• Payment options

• Products

• Services

• Shipping

• Store management

To find out more about exactly what’s included with the plan visit our product pages.

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