WooCommerce Plugin Review : A Free e-Commerce Solution for WordPress
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- WooCommerce Plugin
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There are more and more small businesses, store fronts and creative people realizing that getting online is going to give them a wider audience and more exposure. However, a lot of them get stuck on the price of setting up an e-commerce site, setting up products and sales funnels.
But what if it was as easy as writing a blog post? I am sure we would have more of those sites, which would be better for everyone – us customers would get lower prices caused by more competition and sellers would get bigger exposure for their products.
Well, it is almost as easy as writing a blog post. And it gets better – it is FREE!
Using WooCommerce free WordPress plugin will let you build a full blown e-commerce sites fast.
Let me go over some of the best characteristics of this plugin and show you how to use some of its features.
How to start with WooCommerce plugin?
You can install the plugin directly through your WordPress dashboard. Once installed, the plugin will ask you to install Pages. If you want everything done as fast and easy as possible, install it, it will all be done automatically.
This will add certain pages to your blog, like Cart, Checkout and Track your order, for example.
When the plugin is installed, you will have two new tabs on the left hand side of your WordPress dashboard.
The plugin has a lot of options which is its strong point and the best way to get yourself familiar with them, is clicking each link and seeing what is offered. That will also help you decide which options you will use, since you probably won’t need them all.
Here are just some of my favorite options this plugin includes, when it comes to “Settings” dashboard and the plugin possibilities:
#1 General
- You can choose countries that you are selling the products to.
- You can allow people to shop without registering for an account.
- You can choose the plugin’s CSS, which makes your pages look even better.
#2 Catalog
- Possibility to put the dimensions of the product.
- Customizing how the pricing looks.
#3 Pages
- Setting variety of (pre-written) pages that will serve the purpose of the sales funnel pages (cart, checkout, payment, thank-you, etc).
#4 Inventory
- Let’s you choose if you want to show “low stock” message.
#5 Tax
- Extremely useful feature considering that even States in America have different taxes, let alone countries of the world.
#6 Shipping
- Again, very useful feature, since you can have very different shipping expenses for shipping your products to different countries and you probably want to make sure you get that money back.
#7 Payment gateways
- You have a variety of payment options, and we all know, the more you have the better the chances are for people to purchase your products.
#8 Emails
- Be notified of all the orders so you can deal with them fast.
#9 Integration
- Easy integration with Google Analytics, all you have to do is add the ID from your GA account. Perfect for tracking traffic on your product pages.
- Adding ShareThis is very easy and lets you have sharing buttons on your products.
As I said, these are only some of the features I really like in this plugin. There are many more!
Woo Extensions and Themes
If you installed the plugin, added some products and realized there is a feature you really need but don’t see, there is a solution for that as well.
WooCommerce has a lot of premium themes and extensions that make this free plugin even better. The best part is, if you only need a few features, you will still be paying less than another full e-commerce system.
WooCommerce Extensions
When it comes to extensions, you can add features like shipment tracking, display shipping prices from certain countries and companies (USPS, FedEx, Royal Mail), import products and their variations from a CSV file, implement a wide range of payment processors, allow previewing of video and audio files (if that is what you are selling), serve products through Amazon S3, convert currencies, bulk manage products, sales and more.
WooCommerce Themes
Apart from these extensions I just mentioned, there are also themes available that will enhance your e-commerce site and make it look even better. These will turn your blog into a professional looking shopping site with different galleries and sliders to display your products.
What to do after you set it up
After you set up the plugin, it is time to add your products and start selling. When adding your products, make sure to write nice descriptions and use some of the keywords you want those products to be found for. Adding a nice image will enhance the product page. Here is a quick video to show you how easy it is to add a product:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdKVGetDwd4]
Once you have your products set up, all you have to do is promote them and see the money coming in!
Conclusion
As you can see, WooCommerce plugin is a must have for those who want to sell their products but can not invest in expensive e-commerce systems.
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