WooCommerce & Twispay | Your Quickest Path from Idea to eShop
WooCommerce is (and has been for quite a while) the most popular ecommerce platform on the web. 26% of the top million web shops out there are using WooCommerce and, by extending the count to every online store in existence, WooCommerce’s adoption reaches a whopping forty-two percent.
With hundreds of paid and free extensions, straddling a wide-ranging assembly of technical and logistical requirements, WooCommerce has sprung to the top of the global ecommerce platform market thanks mainly to a couple of valuable characteristics: ease of use and low operational costs.
Why Is WooCommerce so Popular?
Increasingly popular among store owners and eShop developers, WooCommerce is a free, open-source plugin designed and built to integrate seamlessly with WordPress. WooCommerce’s popularity owes a lot to its flexibility and to the fact that it offers instant access to a myriad of free and premium WordPress extensions.
We are well aware that WordPress is one of the most popular platforms for both publishing and ecommerce. Hence Twispay supports it wholeheartedly through our WooCommerce Payment Plugin.
To those who are familiar with the WordPress content management system, quick adoption and low maintenance costs make WooCommerce a tempting, if not ideal ecommerce platform. Consequently, as long as WordPress remains one of the most popular content management systems worldwide, WooCommerce will undoubtedly keep its edge on the global ecommerce platform market.
Key WooCommerce Features
The best news about WooCommerce is that you can design an online store on your own, with little or no help from savvy designers and developers.
A familiar brand to WordPress users, WooCommerce comes with virtually all of the functionality required to open and manage an online store, and it offers several advanced capabilities through its generous extension system. Here are WooCommerce’s key features and benefits:
It is entirely compatible with thousands of WordPress themes
It supports an unrestricted number of products, both physical and digital
It offers inventory management, payment and shipping solutions out of the box
It provides community assistance and world-class documentation and support
It is part of a hearty extension system, based on the WordPress plugin setup
It integrates easily with payment processing solutions and, most importantly, it integrates superbly with Twispay
Online Store Design
WooCommerce does not deliver any specific design features out of the box. It is purposefully conceived to provide users with the means to market and sell products and services online. The WordPress theme is the one that handles the design part entirely, but then again WooCommerce integrates seamlessly with most WordPress themes. Therefore, you can select almost any WordPress theme you desire, and it will work wonderfully with WooCommerce.
Nonetheless, if the design of your eCommerce store is essential to you, you should select a theme that is explicitly built for WooCommerce. One place to start is WooCommerce's default online store theme: Storefront. It is free, and it covers most of the crucial elements of a successful eCommerce store. If you are searching for something else, Theme Forrest provides access to over one thousand themes purpose-built for WooCommerce.
Related Operational Costs
WooCommerce is a free, open-source WordPress plugin. While the software plugin is free, you need to consider the additional costs entailed by creating and managing an online store.
Premium extensions are usually expensive, and some involve annual subscriptions. Aside from that, web hosting costs depend on the size of the online shop and the type of packages offered by the hosting provider.
The WordPress content management system is also free, but web hosting is not, and you must also consider the costs of an appropriate theme, a suiting domain name, additional extensions and the SSL certificate necessary to earn the trust of search engines and, most importantly, your customers’ peace of mind.
The Pros and Cons of WooCommerce
Before we wrap up, here are a few pros and cons to consider before jumping on the WooCommerce bandwagon:
WooCommerce CONS
WooCommerce works exclusively within the WordPress software ecosystem
Only WooCommerce-ready themes take full advantage of its features
Themes and additional extensions may add up to a sizeable annual charge
While it does not restrict the number of products you can sell, WooCommerce does not scale as smoothly as other ecommerce platforms, such as Magento
WooCommerce PROS
WooCommerce integrates superbly with third-party solutions via add-ons
Woo includes SSL support, but users must purchase their own certificates
Set up is free, apart from web hosting, themes, and extensions expenditures
If you are acquainted with WordPress, using WooCommerce is a breeze
Extensive documentation, tutorials, and support are readily available
Let’s Wrap Up
WooCommerce is an excellent pick for users with limited ecommerce and development experience, more so if their content management system of choice is WordPress. WooCommerce’s excellent documentation and abundance of tutorials make it one of the most, if not the world’s most user-friendly ecommerce platform solution.
As a European financial institution and payment gateway, Twispay integrates beautifully with WooCommerce. New and existing store owners can quickly accept credit card payments through our WooCommerce payment modules, crafted specifically for online shops.
Twispay's payment plugin for WooCommerce is easy to install and configure through an automated installer and configuration guide. You can make it your own by completely personalizing your payment page, and you get a complete overview over your transactions, enabling you to react faster and sell more.