Welcome! If you’re looking to sell products or services online, you’ve likely heard of WooCommerce. This is my professional WooCommerce Online Store review, based on over a decade of experience building websites for myself and my clients. I’ll break down what it is, who it’s for, and the key things you need to know to decide if it’s the right platform for your new online shop. For those who prefer watching, I have a video tutorial as well.
Prefer to Watch a Video?
What is a WooCommerce Online Store?
WooCommerce is not a standalone website builder. It’s a free WordPress WooCommerce plugin that transforms a WordPress website into a powerful and fully functional eCommerce shop. Because it’s built on WordPress, you get all the content management benefits of the world’s most popular website platform, combined with great selling capabilities. This means you own and control your entire website and store data, which is a major advantage.
Key Features: Crazy Domains WooCommerce Online Store Plan
- Easy Management You can start publishing your products quickly
- Guided Store Creation Step-by-step guidance on setting up your online store to start selling within minutes
- Caching & CDN you may want to sell globally, if so, these become important and they are ready and available in this plan
Key Features: Self Hosted and Installed WooCommerce Store
- Complete Control of Code You have full control of your WordPress site and data
- Highly Optimizable You can fully search engine optimize every aspect of your website
- Cheaper You do not need to pay nearly $40 per-month, economy Linux Plan is a great starter that will cost only around $100 bucks per year
Who is WooCommerce Best For?
In my experience, WooCommerce is an excellent choice for Australian small and medium-sized businesses that want full control over their online presence. It’s perfect for you if you already have a WordPress site or are willing to set one up. It gives you the freedom to grow without being locked into a subscription plan where costs increase as you become more successful. If you want to build a unique brand and not look like every other online store, WooCommerce provides the flexibility to do that.
What to Consider Before Starting
While the WooCommerce plugin is free, running an online store has costs. You will need a domain name and web hosting. For my valued Australian clients who do not want to spend too much money, and also when they do not want to touch the backend of WordPress. I often recommend the specialised WooCommerce Online Store plan from Crazy Domains, as it’s optimized for speed and security right out of the box ready to start creating and selling your products.
What if you are tight on budget but still want to build your successful online store? Then, I recommend using Linux Web Hosting Economy Plan because WordPress is already installed as staging site, then, it is just matter of installing WooCommerce Plugin and setting your shop up manually.
Video Tutorial: How-to Setup WooCommerce Settings and Products Manually
You would choose this option if you do NOT go with WooCommerce Online Store plan, as you can see, it could be cumbersome for beginners, however, if you are willing to learn, and have basic technical experience, then, you can easily setup Woo on self-hosted WordPress site.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is WooCommerce hard to learn for a beginner?
WooCommerce is quite user-friendly, especially if you have some experience with WordPress. There is a learning curve, but the setup wizard makes it easy to get started. Plenty of tutorials, including my own on YouTube, can guide you through the process.
Can I use Australian payment gateways like POLi or Afterpay?
Yes, one of the biggest strengths of WooCommerce is its huge library of extensions. You can easily find and install plugins that integrate with most Australian payment gateways, including major banks, POLi, Afterpay, and Zip Pay. Do keep in mind that WooCommerce is partnered with Stripe Payments and makes accepting secure payments on your website a simple process.
Do I need to know how to code to use WooCommerce?
No, you do not need coding skills to build or manage a WooCommerce store. You can control almost everything through the WordPress dashboard, themes, and plugins. Knowing some basic HTML or CSS can be helpful for minor customizations, but it is not required.