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WooCommerce for Enterprise Level Businesses

28 January 2020
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Launching a successful e-commerce operation has become easier than ever before. With several off-the-shelf platforms available on the market, it’s perfectly possible to quickly turn a fledgling idea into an online trade business, with a steady stream of orders trickling in.

What’s WooCommerce?

First released on September 27, 2011, WooCommerce came to life as a WordPress plugin. Its main purpose was to give entrepreneurs a robust tool for creating e-commerce sites within the existing WP infrastructure.

Originally created by WooThemes, WooCommerce was acquired by Automattic, the creators of Wordpress, in 2015. On May 19, Matt Mullenweg, founder of Automattic, published a blog entry where he stated motives for the acquisition:

“At a WordCamp a few years ago, someone stood up and asked me when we were going to make it as easy to create an online store as we’d made it to create a blog. Everyone applauded; there’s long been demand for better ecommerce functionality, but it’s been outside the scope of what Automattic could do well”.

Nowadays, calling WooCommerce a mere WordPress plugin is doing it a grave injustice. With over 70 million global downloads, WooCommerce powers almost 28% of online stores in the top 1 million websites around the world.

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Why You Should Consider Using WooCommerce

Let’s make one thing clear. The magic e-commerce bullet doesn’t exist. There’s no “best” platform that would suit every type of business, but… WooCommerce comes pretty close and is a strong contender in the lineup of e-commerce solutions. Here are some of the reasons you should consider it for powering your operation.

It’s Flexible

One of the things that make WooCommerce outperform the competition is its ability to grow alongside your business. Since ‘Woo’ is essentially nested inside the WordPress infrastructure, it offers a matching level of flexibility and expansion capabilities.

Thanks to the substantial number of plugins and extensions (both paid and free), there is little risk that you’ll run out of functionality anytime soon. When compared to a more hermetic environment like Shopify, WooCommerce doesn’t seem to have a growth cap other platforms have to cope with.

Apart from the impressive repository of plugins and extensions, the platform comes packed with numerous integrations with popular services like MailChimp, Square, Stripe, PayPal, Facebook or Zapier. Integrations render it possible to handle different aspects of your e-commerce operation, like finance, marketing, analytics, or customer service, and make them work within one, centralised platform.

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Another great benefit to using WooCommerce is that it’s basically an open-source piece of code. The platform was built with developers in mind so it can be easily shaped according to very specific business needs. Your store needs a quick fix to quench a bug or add minor improvements? You can apply hotfixes and small upgrades when and where needed, without having to wait for developers to push an update when they see fit.

It’s Lightweight and Powerful

The long-term risk of growing an e-commerce business within a hosted platform is that it can eventually become sluggish. If, for instance, developers decide to introduce a resource-heavy functionality, there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it. You’re stuck with what you’ve signed up (and paid) for.

That is not the case with WooCommerce.

It’s up to you which plugins and extensions are installed so the platform is very stable and doesn’t waste resources on running features that are not required. You start with a clean slate and build your store from the ground up using just the tools you and your customers need.

The customisation options, however, are not limited to the existing plugins and extensions. If your store shall require a bespoke functionality that cannot be incorporated using available tools, it’s possible to code it directly at the store level.

It’s Built With Security in Mind

Business-wise, stability and security of an e-commerce platform are one of the major concerns store owners have to deal with. Interruption of service has never been kind to companies who suffered from it, but it can prove especially detrimental to a business where every minute of downtime can mean thousands of orders slip through your fingers.

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The difference between hosted e-commerce services and WooCommerce is that the latter grants full control over the store performance to its owner. Ultimately, you build the infrastructure from the ground up, choosing a hosting provider, establishing backup measures and applying updates when needed.

Although secure in its own right, there are many additional tools that can make WooCommerce even more hermetic. For instance, by installing the Jetpack plugin, you’ll be able to monitor downtime incidents, detect suspicious activity within the account, enable automatic backups of your store or stop SPAM in its tracks.

If you’d like to learn how to further boost the security of your WooCommerce store, check out this article for some additional ideas.

It Doesn’t Limit Your Selling Options

At some point, a store that has been exclusively into tangible goods may want to expand into offering e-books or online courses. Conversely, a software company selling digital intellectual property may want to open a merchandise section. Because why not? WooCommerce makes that possible within one platform.

Thanks to the variety of product types that can be incorporated into Woo, the selling capabilities are limitless. You can offer memberships, subscriptions and bookings or simply throw in a bag of mixed goods and leverage numerous payment gateways for a more accessible shopping experience.

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Scaling for Enterprise eCommerce.

As defined by Woo’s dev team, “scalability is the ability to grow without it negatively affecting the store’s performance.” From the perspective of a customer, this translates to speed (smooth and streamlined shopping experience) and reliability (store uptime and quality of service).

To address those aspects, WooCommerce version 3.5 introduced several changes aimed specifically at improving the performance of large SKU stores. Support for Custom Product Tables opened new scaling possibilities and brought a 30% increase in loading times for pages with a high number of products.  

Since the platform itself doesn’t have an upper limit for expansion, the performance of a WooCommerce store relies heavily on a store owner’s infrastructure.

Choose the Right Hosting

The first thing to address when scaling a WooCommerce store to enterprise level is to make sure that you use a trusted and reputable hosting service provider that is able to put the risk of critical events down to a minimum.

For example, if your store was to notice a major spike in traffic overnight, without the necessary bandwidth and support it would simply crash and lead to financial loss.

To prevent interruption of service,  check if your hosting comes with built-in protection against traffic spikes. Some hosting providers offer scalable infrastructure that allocates additional bandwidth and computing power when needed, without any changes to your current plan.

You should also look for providers that offer a hosting environment dedicated specifically for WooCommerce and including features like integrated Content Delivery Network (CDN), PCI Data Security Standard or additional layers of security against cyber attacks.

Add Functionality Through API Integrations

As your store grows, you’ll also need a bit of extra functionality in order to keep everything under control. However, since plugins and extensions are basically off-the-shelf solutions, they can only go so far once you’re ready to fully combine your back-end with WooCommerce.

A much better choice is to integrate your existing systems through WooCommerce REST API. REST API allows developers to interconnect independent 3rd party systems and make them exchange information with your e-commerce platform. For instance, you may want to feed data from your CRM, ERP or SCM platforms directly into your store or vice versa, and custom API integrations make that possible.

Looking for a hassle-free way to scale your e-commerce business? Let us handle the heavy-lifting for you! Reach out at +44 (0) 1423 313237 or hello@weareimpression.co.uk.

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