WooCommerce: The Newcomer in Enterprise E-Commerce Platforms
When you’re looking for an enterprise e-commerce platform, it’s easy to get overwhelmed with the choices. But, there’s a new kid in town you should consider: WordPress with WooCommerce as an enterprise e-commerce platform.
WordPress as Enterprise E-Commerce Platform
WordPress, the world’s most popular blogging platform and content management system (CMS), is used by over 60 million websites. While some business owners and entrepreneurs are under the impression that WordPress is only a suitable CMS for small organizations, the reality is that an increasing number of the world’s largest corporations are choosing WordPress as their preferred platform. For example, prominent corporations such as The New Yorker, Sony Music, Xerox, and Time Inc. use WordPress, and many other dominant brands are embracing the platform with open arms.
In fact, more than 20% of the world’s most visited websites are using WordPress and the number is constantly increasing. This phenomenon is increasingly apparent in the world of e-commerce, where WordPress has never been more ubiquitous than it is today. Although it was not originally released with e-commerce in mind, WordPress has adapted into becoming the optimal platform for owners of online stores.
WooCommerce: The Newcomer
This evolution of WordPress into an enterprise e-commerce platform is especially noticeable when you consider the explosive growth experienced in recent years by WordPress plugins for e-commerce stores. WooCommerce, the most popular WordPress plugin for e-commerce stores, was first released in September of 2011. Since then, the free plugin has been downloaded more than 4 million times and continues to grow at a steady pace.
It’s particularly relevant that enterprises of all sizes are contributing to the rapid growth of WooCommerce, and that it’s not just small scale companies that are downloading the plugin. On the other hand, while it’s important to appreciate the potential of combining WordPress with WooCommerce, your online store will best be served when you customize these tools to fit your specific needs.
Tweaking your Online Store
In order to maximize the potential of using WooCommerce with your WordPress powered store, it’s essential that you take advantage of your ability to customize your store. Since WooCommerce is open source, you have a tremendous amount of leeway in personalizing the plugin to meet your organization’s needs. This is exactly what famous brands such as Entrepreneur and Cosmopolitan have already done, and you’ll be able to do the same for your online store.
A customized e-commerce store that is fully tweaked will have complete functionality and establish your brand as dominant. Moreover, you’ll be able to design a brand that is entirely unique, so that your website will function smoothly and impart positive first impressions on your visitors. Without customizing your store, it will be extremely difficult to separate your brand from the competition, which usually serves as an immediate turnoff to consumers.
The small investment of customizing your online store will pay off dividends far greater than your initial costs. You’ll have a full-featured online store that is flexible to adapt to your business’s changing needs, while keeping management of your operation as simple as possible. Put simply, utilizing WooCommerce with WordPress can be an extremely profitable combination, but in order for to truly capitalize on the synthesis it’s vital to customize your store’s website.
