Why You Should Hire WooCommerce Experts for Your Online Store

If you haven’t heard about WooCommerce before, you would be surprised to know that it powers nearly a third of all e-commerce websites today. There are an estimated 12-24 million websites operating today, and a significant majority of them are earning well. For instance, the number of online businesses that are not earning annual sales of $1,000 does not even reach 700,000.

There are probably more popular e-commerce platforms out there, such as Shopify and Weebly, for example. But you can chalk it up to aggressive marketing, which is necessary since these standalone site-builders are not free. In contrast, WooCommerce is a third-party plugin that can be activated using your WordPress content management system.

So, why choose WooCommerce?

Did you know that WooCommerce is free? The one misconception that mid-sized businesses have is free platforms are generally mediocre. People are all conditioned to believe that premium quality has a corresponding price.

After all, nothing in this world is free, right?

WooCommerce is an open-source platform that handles the e-commerce functions of WordPress. It is not an independent site-builder, which means you can’t use it without WordPress. So, if you are already using WordPress, the transition from a business website to an online store would be seamless.

Second, it is effortless to set up even without any help. By following the steps, you can immediately:

• Create cart and checkout pages
• Itemize products
• Set up payment gateways, which are already secure on the backend
• Calibrate shipping and delivery options
• Calculate taxes and levies

Those are the fundamentals of running an online store.

But if you can do it on your own, why should you hire WooCommerce specialists? Here are some of the reasons why:

Photo by Fikret tozak on Unsplash

1. You can optimize the features of WooCommerce

The one mistake that online stores make is that they settle. When they think that their website is operating, people can make orders, they can accept payments, and shoppers receive their products, then there really is nothing else to do. Without the right team, you are only utilizing a fraction of what the platform is designed to do. Think of it as owning a Ferrari, and since you have no idea of its true capability, you are only using it for grocery stops, making sure to keep under the speed limit in between.

For instance, you can utilize analytics and business intelligence to determine your sales data, customer profile, and behavior, as well as other key metrics. These baseline figures will allow you to find out your weak points so that you can make the necessary adjustments.

2. Save Money

You are in the business of making profits. To maximize your profits, you need to reduce your losses. You may think of hiring a WooCommerce specialist as an unnecessary expense, but it is an investment that would multiply the returns in the long run. When you run an online store, each second counts. According to the Ponemon Institute, the average cost of downtimes across all segments in e-commerce was $758,000 in 2016. Amazon, for instance, lost $5 million in only 40 minutes a few years ago. So, what happens when your e-commerce sites suddenly encounter a 404 Error message? You would be scrambling to check what happened. Meanwhile, you are bleeding money.

Instead, if you have WooCommerce experts on retainer, they will make sure that you do not experience downtime in the first place. If that cannot be avoided, they would resolve the issue before it spirals out of control.

3. WordPress Security

WordPress and WooCommerce are not immune to hacking or other malicious attacks. There is no such thing as an impenetrable website. With that said, the core structure of WordPress is already protected. The system auto-updates security patches to recognize the latest virus and malware. According to the Cost of Data Breach report by IBM, the average incident cost $3.9 million in the US in 2019 and takes about 279 days to resolve.

WooCommerce needed to be maintained by specialists to make sure that it is running smoothly alongside WordPress. They will sweep your website at regular and random intervals to make sure that no hidden scripts are embedded in the content and malicious ads.

As you might expect, if your customers suspect that your website is full of viruses, they will avoid your online business like the plague. That’s not all; your website will also be flagged by Google, which means you would not rank in any of the keywords in your specific niche.

4. E-commerce Customization

While you can definitely run your online shop using the generic features of WooCommerce, customization will allow you to scale your business, utilize third-party apps that are designed to enhance both user and customer experience. For instance, one of the core issues of WooCommerce is that it slows down your website. There are multiple reasons for this, but the most common is the bottleneck in the MySQL server, especially if you are using a shared host. The web designer would suggest that you use a virtual private host with a dedicated MySQL server. Pagely is a hosting company that is both affordable and scalable.

Other customization options include your very own newsletter, which can be directly mailed to each of your customers on file. Pop-ups are also great tools that can be added to your online store. Banners and pop-ups help increase engagement drive and promote your best deals. By adding limited-time offers on the deal, you will create urgency, which would be very difficult to refuse for the customer.

To conclude, WooCommerce is a free WordPress plugin that could rival, if not, surpass other more expensive e-commerce platforms. However, this is predicated on your ability to maximize all its features to boost profits, increase engagement, generate leads, and drive traffic to your website. If you already have a dedicated IT team whose sole purpose is to maintain and optimize your WooCommerce platform, then good for you. However, we are just one phone call or email away should you need to reach out to us.