WooCommerce is one of the better choices for business owners and merchants, who want to sell their products online. Contrary to what most believe, WooCommerce is not a separate CMS for e-commerce websites. It is rather another plug-in the endless repository of plug-ins that WordPress offers to its users. It runs on a WordPress engine, and it is compatible with several plug-ins that can enhance your store experience for the target users.
Why should you try WooCommerce?
As of the 2018 market reports, about 2.24 million websites use this WordPress plug-in. A total of 0.6% of all existing websites and the top 3.7% websites use WooCommerce. It is the unequivocal favorite of e-commerce site owners and brand managers because of its high flexibility and the wide range of functions it offers. However, the most attractive feature of this plug-in is its cost-effectiveness. In fact, the restricted version of this plug-in is free for all users! You can “unlock” the premium features and functions by paying for them.
Right now, there are over 300 extensions for your e-commerce site on WooCommerce.com and over 1000 e-commerce extensions on the official WordPress plugins directory. In fact, approximation places the number of WordPress plugins around the web at around 50,000 right now! That is quite an imposing number, and their increasing levels of perfect compatibility simply multiply the possibilities of expanding your e-store for new customers and new markets.
What WooCommerce plug-ins should be a part of your website database?
Today, we are here to give you a list of the must-have WooCommerce plug-ins for 2018 that will improve your site performance and enhance your site UX.
Product Add-Ons
This is a plug-in for the premium WooCommerce users. This unique set of codes enables the implication of certain rights for you and your customer.
- Your customer can access checkboxes, drop-down menus, and input boxes to customize their product shopping experience
- You can add these changes across your entire store or only on certain products
- This offers highly personalized customer experiences. For example – you can include gift wrapping, engraving, personal note and donation options along with your shopping options.
The main aim of this plug-in is to create a memorable and personalized shopping “trip” for your customers.
WooCommerce Subscriptions
This is another plug-in for the premium users that enables a store owner to start new subscription offers. This is a brilliant way to introduce new products and to stay in touch with your potential customers.
- The WooCommerce subscriptions offer the options of recurring payments to your customers.
- You can offer some subscription offers to your customers in the form of white papers, PDFs, newsletters or monthly sample of your products.
- You can access ready-to-sample billing packages by weekly, monthly or yearly subscriptions.
- It is compatible with at least 25 popular payment gateways, and this allows even the new websites to compete with much older ones that have been catering to a dedicated customer base.
Ask any reputed ecommerce design company, and they will say that the WooCommerce Subscription plug-in is a wonderfully effective way to generate an accurate estimation of the residual revenue your business generates.
WooCommerce Product Filter
If you have a robust inventory and a considerably large site, can you imagine how much pain your visitors would have to go through to find the correct product? Imagine an Amazon without a filtering option. You are getting the picture! The Product Filter is an essential feature of a website that allows the users to look for specific brands, product features and browse specific price ranges.
- It introduces advanced filters to your e-commerce website.
- This new plug-in for WooCommerce can fit every responsive template design.
- Advanced filters help customers find the correct products within seconds, and it boosts cross-selling and upselling strategies on e-commerce platforms.
The WooCommerce product filter has increased customer satisfaction level in the past by making the shopping process a lot easier and less time-consuming.
WooCommerce Table Rate Shipping
The options for shipping rate and shipping offers for any e-commerce website depend a lot on their logistics partner. For any new site, the offers can become quite limited due to their limited budget and shipping packages. However, the most critical aspect of any shipping plug-in should be its ability to determine the correct shipping rate as per the price, weight, location and item type.
- The Table Rate Shipping plug-in provides a wide variety of shipping options.
- It boosts customization options for all WooCommerce stores.
- This plug-in can add several rate tables depending on shipping zone, weight, price and number of items.
The Table Rate Shipping plug-in allows the customers to customize their shopping rates. This is a unique product from the WordPress repository that takes customer comfort to another new level.
One-Page Shop
The One-Page Shop plug-in for WooCommerce allows your customers to check out your entire collection by scrolling through one page. Checking out a website’s product gallery is becoming easier than ever before with the new WooCommerce plug-in.
- It simplifies the check-out process by fitting everything into a single page.
- Your customer can add all products to their cart on a single page.
- Your customer can choose the view options as per their category page, product page or shop page cart visibility and check out CTA options.
This is unique all-in-one visibility boosting and SEO friendly plug-in that can improve your conversion rate without you spending a fortune. This single-page checkout system can act as an organic traffic magnet immediately after installation and activation.
WooCommerce is an unparalleled WordPress plug-in for setting up e-commerce stores. This open-source platform has made customization and personalization a lot easier for all developers across the world by offering around the clock community support. This is a community of developers and designers, who have been using WordPress, WooCommerce and the WooCommerce plug-ins for months, if not years. Many of the plug-ins for WooCommerce are free, although the ones we have mentioned here are the paid versions for premium WooCommerce. Professional website developers always prefer premium plug-ins since they offer better security and cleaner codes.