Coming up to 7 years of working very closely with the WooCommerce platform (WordPress plugin technically), we’ve come to some conclusions. We’re going to go through a few of the pros and cons here. Our case study is Green Water Sports, the number 1 inflatable paddle board retailer in the USA.
Background
Launching on WordPress and WooCommerce back in 2012, Green Water Sports used WooCommerce almost from the day they launched. Now WooCommerce is actually a part of WordPress (owner by Automattic also) and is fairly seamless in it’s integration to WordPress with a lot more features.
Pros
- Seamless integration and functionality with WordPress
Owned by the same parent company means (mostly) everything works out of the box and seamlessly
- Abundance of WooCommerce add-ons and plugins
If you want a certain feature or function, chances are someone has made an add-on or plugin for it
- Customisation options are endless
Want to move your button on the checkout page? Adjusting templates and layouts, hooks, functions is very easy with some technical know how
- Open source and free
No surprises, no contracts, a lot of cummings support
Cons
- Having to rely on add-ons and plugins for certain functionality leading to code bloat
To get the best features, you need add-ons and plugins which leads to a lot of code needing to execute slowly down the site. If content is kind, speed is queen these days.
- WordPress and WooCommerce are now very popular platforms which can make the code a target for hackers resulting in a lot of updates
While staying secure is important, some of these updates deprecate functions or re-name past functions meaning constant management is required
- Needing some technical know how
To take full advantage of all the options WordPress and WooCommerce offer, you do need some technical skill, or have a web designer/developer handy.
Do you need a website or WooCommerce expert? Contact us today.
