Why WordPress is the perfect solution for many to start an online store

Have you ever thought about creating a professional online store ? If the answer is (yes), I think you are now looking for a suitable platform to create your online store; Good. Have you ever heard of (WordPress) for building online stores?

There are many systems that allow you to create an online store from scratch, among these systems is the WordPress system for creating electronic stores, which is the most suitable option for many to start an online store.

And since there are other online store creation platforms that are almost as efficient as what you’ll find on WordPress, you might be skeptical! Why choose WordPress specifically?

This article was written especially for you, as we will tell you about all the advantages that WordPress offers you when creating an online store, and after reading this topic, you will be aware of all the reasons why WordPress is an excellent choice for many and perhaps you as well.

Why WordPress is the perfect solution to start your online store?

WordPress is one of the Content Management Systems or CMS, which allows you to build all kinds of websites and control them completely, and besides blogs and regular sites, through WordPress you can create an online store to sell products in an easy and simple way.

Among the advantages of creating an online store on WordPress is the ease of building the store, ease of use, flexibility and scalability, and many many more advantages; This is why a lot of users prefer WordPress over other online store creation platforms like Shopify and OpenCart .

Here are all the features that made users prefer creating online stores on WordPress:

1. WordPress is free and open source

WordPress allows all users to create an online store for free, and it is an open source system ; This means that the main owner of WordPress provides the basic code for the program for free.

This, of course, provides the ability to modify it according to what suits each user, and this feature is useful in fixing errors, discovering gaps, and introducing new features in your online store.

2. Ease of use

Without the need for programming experience or agreement with a team of programmers, WordPress enables you to create an e-commerce site with ease.

3. Search engine friendly

Do not forget that your store is nothing more than a website in the world of the Internet, and in order to reach the largest number of customers, your store must appear on the first pages of search results.

Here comes the importance of WordPress in facilitating this step, as your WordPress-based online store will have a lot of features and technical features that contribute significantly to its top in search results.

4. Freedom to customize

WordPress gives you the absolute freedom to customize your online store, you are in control of the design of store pages, side menus, the way products are presented to customers, marketing methods, customizing the payment system and method, controlling new additions in the store, and many more variables that you can control according to your requirements .

5. Thousands of Themes and Thousands of Plugins too

WordPress allows you to create a professional-style online store without prior programming and design experience; This is because it contains nearly 8000 templates, some of which are paid and some are free.

And in case you are a programmer and want a template of your own making, WordPress provides you with dedicated template design tools known as WordPress Page Builder Plugins, such as: Elementor and Visual Composer.

As for the add-ons, beside the add-on responsible for building the online store – which we will also explain its features – you will find many add-ons or tools that add great features to your store, including payment tools, communication tools, marketing tools, and others.

6. Possibility to add store related contents

The content of the online store is a free service provided by the store owner to customers, such as creating a blog to publish articles related to the store’s products, and this is provided by WordPress in an easy and simple way and without more costs.

Here are three types of content that can be added to your online store:

• A series of videos explaining the features of your products, how to use them, and everything related to them.
• Blog to write articles related to the store field, to review products and how to benefit from them.
• Chat and customer communication services, which can be easily added to your WordPress store.

7. Low operating cost

Compared to other e-commerce platforms , WordPress is inexpensive, and does not require large amounts of money as in other platforms.

All you need is good web hosting such as Bluehost store hosting , whose price does not exceed ten dollars per month, in addition to a domain name , which you will give him free Bluehost hosting when subscribing to one of its packages.

What are the main steps for creating an online store on WordPress

We did not dedicate this topic to how to create an online store on WordPress, but rather to answer the reader’s question (why WordPress is the perfect solution for many to start an online store?), and to open the way to talk about the plugin responsible for building your store.

Now, we will talk briefly about the steps for creating an online store on WordPress, which are:

1. Owning a WordPress website: If you have already created a WordPress website, you can skip this step and start from the next step. If you don’t have a WordPress website, you have to create the site first.

2. Installing the WooCommerce plugin: After owning a website on WordPress, we come to the important step, which is to install the plugin responsible for turning the site into an integrated online store. You can access this plugin through the Admin Panel on your WordPress site.

3. Start preparing the pages and menus of the online store: You can use the (WooCommerce Wizard) to learn about the steps of setting up the store and preparing it to start selling products.

What is WooCommerce and what are its advantages?

WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin that was designed in 2011 to make the WordPress site work in the system of large and small online stores.

This program has become widespread and used by a large number of online store owners because of its simplicity of installation and ease of handling, and WooCommerce is a free and open source program like WordPress.

WooCommerce is used to build online stores by more than 36% of all e-commerce sites on the Internet, according to Statista.

And the numbers below show you how popular WooCommerce is among users:

• Active installs: +4 million downloads.
• Rating: 4.5 (based on over 3000 reviews).
• Available languages: 54 languages.
• Price: Free.

Here is a summary of the most prominent features of WooCommerce, which made it widespread among users:

1. Free add-on

WooCommerce is a 100% free plugin and it is open source – like WordPress – once you pay for the website you don’t have to pay any additional fees.

2. Quick activation of the tool

After owning a WordPress website, simply go to the Plugins section, search for the WooCommerce plugin, download the plugin and activate it on the site, and start configuring your online store settings.

3. WooCommerce is easy to use

You will not need any prior experience while adjusting the settings of the home page, store side menus and site structure, and if you encounter any difficulty in adjusting these settings, you can use the (New Store Owners Guide) that explains how to use, you will find this guide directly after downloading WooCommerce.

Note: Although WooCommerce is easy to use, there are much easier options for building an online store such as using Shopify.

Read also: How To Get More Free Traffic To WordPress Site

4. Offer flexible and secure payments

Unlike most online store building platforms that suffer from payment methods problem, you will find WooCommerce offers you many flexible and secure payment methods, such as: credit cards, checks, bank transfers, payment on delivery, and a number of electronic payment platforms, such as:

• PayPal.
• Stripe.
• Amazon Pay Amazon Pay.
• Google Pay Google Pay.
• Apple Pay Apple Pay.

5. With WooCommerce you can sell anything

WooCommerce enables you to create an integrated online store and sell everything that can be sold to customers, whether you want to sell physical products or digital products.

A physical product is a physical form in reality, which can be shipped and delivered to customers, such as: all kinds of appliances, tools, furniture, and many others.

As for the digital product, it is what is traded – digitally – over the Internet, such as: e-books, educational courses, selling services over the Internet…. etc.

6. Get support

WooCommerce’s tech support forums help you answer questions, troubleshoot errors, and fix issues with your WooCommerce store, and it’s worth noting that WooCommerce lacks live support, which is one of the very few flaws you’ll find in WooCommerce.

7. Expand the scope of work

WordPress developers are keen to make it a comprehensive and global platform, so WooCommerce was introduced as a multi-lingual and multi-currency platform. WooCommerce works in more than 54 languages, and supports different types of currencies; This is to make your online store more convenient for customers from different countries of the world.

8. Extensions for developing your online store

WordPress developers are interested in creating plugins for WooCommerce, which help develop and enhance your online store, and there are dozens of free and paid plugins.

Here are examples of free plugins:

a) WooCommerce Blocks Extension: With a click of a button, it allows you to add more categories and components of your store, such as (best selling products) or (newest products), and other components.

b) WooCommerce Tax Plugin: This tool saves you the trouble of adjusting product prices and adding taxes to them if your store is in a tax-charged country, as this plugin automatically calculates the tax and adds it to the purchase invoice.

c) Facebook For WooCommerce Extension: It allows you to link your online store to your business page on Facebook or Instagram alike, to easily export your products to the page, and also allows you to add a buy product button on Instagram or Facebook directly.

Tip: You can access WooCommerce plugins in two ways: the first is through the official WooCommerce website after activating WooCommerce, and the second is through the WordPress dashboard from the Plugins section.

Read also: How To Add A WordPress Website To Google News

9. Compatible with all shipping companies

Perhaps one of the most important features of WooCommerce, as most international shipping companies support the delivery of WordPress store products, allowing customers to follow up on their purchases directly until they are delivered.

10. Quick response

The WooCommerce extension is very responsive compared to other platforms, and it doesn’t cause any speed issues no matter how many products there are in the store.

Comparison of WordPress and Shopify

In order to better answer our question (Why is WordPress the best solution for many to start an online store?) In this section, we will present a simple comparison between the two most popular platforms for building online stores: WordPress and Shopify, considering three comparisons.

Here comes the question, why compare WordPress to Shopify specifically? Shopify is one of the most widely used platforms after WordPress in creating online stores and one of the most prominent competitors to WordPress, with Shopify using about 10% of online stores, based on Statista statistics.

Shopify, unlike WordPress, offers an integrated system in one platform to create and manage online stores without the need for any other tools, in exchange for a subscription amount paid on a monthly basis.

Here are the main comparisons between WordPress and Shopify:

1. Cost: In Shopify, you will need to pay a monthly amount as a subscription value for what you get from an integrated solution to build, manage and host your store, in addition to a professional support service from those in charge of the platform.

In WordPress, you will virtually get everything completely free, except for the web hosting that you will subscribe to independently to host your store.

But in practice, there are other expenses that may appear if you want to enhance your store, such as subscribing to one of the paid add-ons, or getting more paid features in the WooCommerce extension called extensions.

In any case, the winner in this part of the comparison is WordPress, but only on the surface, as we explained above.

2. Ease of use: Dealing with WordPress and Commerce is not difficult, and you can discover it and learn it yourself, and if you encounter any difficulty, the explanations on YouTube are many.

In the case of Shopify, creating an online store is very easy and convenient, and this is what Shopify is particularly interested in, and by setting up a Shopify customer service, here the winner in this part of the comparison is Shopify and deservedly.

3. Flexibility and scalability: Since Shopify is a self-hosted, closed source platform; This means that the store owner will find it difficult to modify it to suit the increasing volume and number of sales, and he will have no choice but to upgrade the subscription package; Which means more cost and that’s a downside to Shopify.

We’ve mentioned over and over again that WordPress is open source, and that applies to WooCommerce as well, and since you’re fully in charge of and modifying your online store, this means that there are limitless options for modifying and developing the store, along with thousands of free and paid plugins that you can download to upgrade the store’s performance. mail.

From here, it becomes clear to us that WordPress is superior to its counterpart Shopify in terms of flexibility and store scalability.

Conclusion

Using the WordPress platform with WooCommerce is an excellent and ideal option for many who want to start an online store with the lowest costs and the highest level of flexibility, but of course this does not necessarily mean that it is the ideal option for everyone.

In this article, we share with you everything you need to know about WordPress as a platform for building online stores, what are its advantages, and what are the most important aspects in which it excels over its biggest competitor, Shopify.

We hope that the article was useful to you, and we are waiting for your participation in the comments, or if you have a question or inquiry.