For online retailers, having a powerful and user-friendly website is essential for both the shopper experience and the seamless flow of your business operations. But the real secret to a great website is the CMS, or content management system, that lets you create, manage and publish digital content. Every time you add product images or descriptions to your online store, there’s a good chance you’re using the system.
WordPress, which is a popular CMS that began as a blogging platform, has evolved into a robust system that powers nearly 40% of all websites on the internet and 3.7% of the top one million ecommerce sites. While it may not be the first platform that comes to mind for ecommerce, WordPress offers a variety of features and plugins that make it a compelling choice for online stores. But is WordPress actually good for ecommerce? Yes! Keep reading, and we’ll tell you why.
A Brief History of WordPress
WordPress was first released in May of 2003 as a blogging platform created by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little that quickly gained popularity due to its ease of use, flexibility, and open-source nature. Over time, WordPress evolved into a full-fledged content management system with the ability to power all kinds of websites, including ecommerce stores with the release of its plugin, WooCommerce.
WordPress has come a long way since its early days, with significant updates and improvements released regularly. The platform’s popularity continues to grow, and it’s currently used by millions of individuals, businesses, and organizations around the world. Today, WordPress is one of the most widely used CMS platforms, with a vibrant community of developers and users who contribute to its ongoing development and support.
WooCommerce Statistics for 2023
WordPress released WooCommerce, its plugin designed to power online stores, in 2011 and subsequently opened the floodgates to a whole new crop of users. In essence, WooCommerce offered robust features, endless customizations and a community of developers who could add even more to it — everything a seller could want.
Now, as one of the top ecommerce platforms, WooCommerce has a whole lot of impressive statistics to back it up. Snack on this impressive list of WooCommerce statistics we’ve compiled to learn more!
- WooCommerce powers more than 6.5 million websites worldwide. (BuiltWith)
- The WooCommerce plugin has more than 211 million downloads to date.
- As of July 2022, WooCommerce held the largest market share among ecommerce platforms, accounting for 36.68% of the global market. It’s followed by Squarespace Online Stores and Woo Themes, with 14.49% and 14.42% of the market share, respectively. (Statista)
- One out of every five websites built on WordPress uses the WooCommerce plugin. (Hubspot)
- WordPress offers more than 980 WooCommerce plugins to extend the functionality of ecommerce websites. (Wordpress Plugin Directory)
- The official WooCommerce site offers 770+ extensions for the platform.
- The WooCommerce plugin is downloaded at a rate of at least 30,000 times per day from WordPress.org. (BuiltWith)
- Around 12,639 WooCommerce websites have generated more than $100,000 in sales revenue.
- Roughly 8,400 WooCommerce websites in major countries efficiently manage more than 10,000 products.
- As of October 2022, WooCommerce is the leading ecommerce platform with 25% usage among the top 1 million sites, followed by Shopify with 19% usage.
Once you dive into the numbers and see the potential of WordPress with its CMS and ecommerce supertools, it would be surprising if you weren’t at least a little bit interested in what the platform has to offer.
Why Use WordPress for Ecommerce?
Sure, there are millions of users and thousands of online stores seeing success with WordPress, but you may not know the exact features and capabilities that are so irresistible to online retailers. Here’s a quick look.
- Flexibility and customization: WordPress offers tremendous flexibility and customization options, making it easy to create a unique and professional-looking ecommerce website. With thousands of themes and plugins available, sellers can easily customize their site to match their brand and meet their specific needs.
- Cost-effective: As a free, open-source platform, WordPress provides a cost-effective way for retailers to establish an online presence and gain momentum with their ecommerce business. With a low initial investment, retailers can build a fully-functional site that allows them to sell their products online and reach a global audience.
- SEO-friendly: WordPress is designed with search engine optimization (SEO) in mind, making it easy to maximize the opportunities for search engines to find your ecommerce site. By optimizing your site for search, you can improve your site’s visibility and drive more traffic to your store.
- Community support: WordPress has a large and supportive community of developers and users who are always willing to offer assistance and share knowledge, so online retailers can find help and support when they need it.
- WooCommerce plugin: With WooCommerce, retailers can easily manage their products, orders, and payments, making it easy to set up and manage an ecommerce store.
WordPress Plugins We Love
You already read about the extensive WordPress Plugin directory that has thousands of extensions to help customize and manage your website, but how do you sort through the noise? We’ve handpicked a few plugins we love that can help you streamline your operations and supercharge your ecommerce business.
MyWorks QuickBooks Sync: The MyWorks QuickBooks Sync takes the hassle out of bookkeeping by syncing your data between your WooCommerce store and QuickBooks accounting software. Rather than manually entering bookkeeping information for every purchase, MyWorks automatically populates essential data, including customer information, sales data, payment details, inventory changes, transaction fees, and more, into QuickBooks. This automated process eliminates the need for manual data entry, reducing the risk of human error and ensuring consistently accurate bookkeeping.
AutomateWoo: AutomateWoo offers automation for the tedious marketing tasks that sellers need to capture new customers, but its standout feature is automating abandoned cart recovery. Considering cart abandonment costs online retailers a whopping $4 billion annually, this is a particularly beneficial inclusion that can immediately help sellers increase revenue and improve ROI. AutomateWoo also helps you engage new and existing customers with coupons, send SMS messages and collect reviews and feedback.
ReadyCloud CRM: To gain insight into your customers and enhance your relationships with them, you’ll need a comprehensive understanding of their journey. This is where ReadyCloud WooCommerce CRM comes in handy. Though not technically a plugin because it’s a cloud-based solution, ReadyCloud CRM connects with your WooCommerce, Amazon, and eBay sales channels and creates detailed customer profiles based on their ecommerce order activity. With a detailed order timeline (including shipping, tracking, and returns), customer-oriented notes, an event calendar, integrated tasks and team management, and premium plugins such as shipping and returns software, you can get a better understanding of your customers.
For a more in-depth look at our favorite WordPress plugins, don’t miss our related guide.
The Answer Is Yes!
In conclusion, WordPress and its various integrations and plugins offer a powerful and customizable ecommerce solution for anyone who’s selling online. With its extensive feature set, easy-to-use interface, and growing community of developers and users, WordPress has become an enormously popular ecommerce platform, with millions of websites using it worldwide.
From automating marketing tasks to syncing data with accounting software and providing insights into customer behavior, WordPress and its plugins can help retailers streamline their ecommerce business and improve the overall customer experience. Whether you’re just starting out or looking to grow your existing online store, WordPress can help you achieve your goals.
