WooCommerce has taken its place in the list of firm favourite ecommerce systems out there; not surprisingly, given it has had 48,780,874 (and counting) downloads since its launch in 2011. The ease of use and wide scope for plugins that WooCommerce gives businesses of all sizes has been a massive contributory factor to its popularity, allowing business owners to grow their online sales at the touch of a button.
WooCommerce allows site owners to use official extensions to further extend their reach and enhance their marketing. There are many to choose from, spread over 6 primary categories, and it’s always best to read reviews where possible (especially for paid extensions), although there are some you’ll recognise on name alone (such as PayPal Checkout and Amazon Pay).
Marketing Extensions
The Marketing category is again split down over 4 sub categories at present and covers Email, Social, Reporting and Promotions. Popular extensions include MailChimp, Google Product Feed and WooCommerce Google Analytics, but it’s worth looking through the list in more detail as other, lesser known extensions may also be the answer (without the fee of premium versions).
Irrespective of the marketing extensions you choose, it’s essential to have a marketing arm of your online store, as this increases your brand reach and exposure. You may choose just one avenue or several to market your business, but it is important to ensure the extensions you choose support your marketing plans, with an analytics package backing up your data for analysis and ongoing marketing.
Store Management Extensions
Store Management includes categories such as Accounting, Admin and Point of Sale, with extensions including PayPal Checkout, WooCommerce Tax and Square, designed to help make the admin and accounting easier for the website owner. A bit boring perhaps but essential, having even just the basics covered will make ongoing maintenance and admin easier all round.
Shipping Extensions
A necessity for most ecommerce sites, extensions that help with shipping are a priority! With 3 subcategories of Carriers, Delivery & Shipping Options and Inventory & Fulfilment, there are plenty of extensions that should cover the majority of needs. Big brands such as UPS, United States Postal Service and FedEx have official WooCommerce extensions here, as well as Paypal (of course), WooSubscriptions and WooCommerce Dropshipping.
Enhancement Extensions
Not so much an essential but worth a look through, you can enhance your eCommerce site with extensions such as WooCommerce Product Search, Checkout Add Ons and Product Add Ons, all designed to aid customer journey and improve customer retention/sales.
Enhancements exist for pretty much every stage of a customer journey, so be sure to check through each subcategory; Cart, Checkout, Merchandising, Products and Search/Navigation.
Payment Extensions
Designed to encourage sales and make the payment process as easy as possible, extensions in this category include the big names once again (PayPal, Stripe, Amazon Pay and Sagepay to name a few) as well as lesser known payment gateways.
Product Type Extensions
The last category to explore in the WooCommerce store at present is Product Type – the extensions here are designed to enhance individual product types and include options for products/services such as taking bookings, product bundling, memberships, subscriptions and taking deposits. All of these again are designed to help you increase sales/members/downloads etc and grow your business in this way, so may not be applicable to all markets, but well worth a look through!
