What is WooCommerce? A Guide to WordPress E-Commerce

As the world of online sales and e-commerce grows exponentially, the necessity for online storefronts has been gaining more prominence among businesses. As of 2025, the number of e-commerce websites worldwide is expected to hit 28 million, with a 2.9% increase compared to the previous year. This denotes that between 2024 and 2025, an average of 2,162 e-commerce websites were started each day.

While there are many e-commerce platforms from which you can choose, WooCommerce stands tall as one of the leading e-commerce platforms worldwide. Based on a recent survey, 4,887,902 live websites use WooCommerce, making it a significant share. As one of the most popular solutions that helps build and manage e-commerce websites on WordPress, the plugin creates a buzz.

With features to sell physical and digital products, the WooCommerce plugin is largely customisable. Above all, WooCommerce is free to use. In this blog, let’s answer a few questions like: What is WooCommerce, its key features, how it works, setting up a WooCommerce store, and many more. 

In simple terms, WooCommerce refers to a free e-commerce plugin particularly built focusing on WordPress websites. It incorporates all the features you need to convert your website into an online storefront. It helps you add products, set up shipping and payment options, and more.

Additionally, you can use the user-friendly design features of WordPress and enhance your store’s functionality using WooCommerce extensions and compatible plugins. Users can download the WooCommerce plug-in from the WordPress plug-in directory. It also has a beginner-friendly interface where you don’t need expert coding to start.

Many stores run with WooCommerce, ranging from bookstores, retail stores, agencies, and many more. Launched initially in 2011 by WooThemes, this platform was later acquired by Automattic (parent company of WordPress)  in 2015.

This well-known e-commerce plugin has many great features that users can benefit from, as listed below:

1. Product Management

When starting an online business, the crucial aspect to figure out is the way to sort and manage the inventory across the website. WooCommerce has enabled this option to include categories and types for each product they sell, helping in product management. It also helps users to customise the product freely by including specific attributes like colour, size, various categories, etc. It also lets you offer special prices like promotions or discounts to lower the prices or stock for inventory management.

2. Shopping Rules

WooCommerce adds a shopping cart rule feature, helping to adjust and design as per the seller’s requirements and making it easier for customers to order products. This feature is beneficial in defining a buyer’s journey while purchasing from your store.

3. Order Management

The order management feature helps users easily track the orders sent by customers on the website. It also helps sellers to create offline orders manually.

4. Sales Report

WooCommerce has a built-in sales report. But, in case the report is too simple, the users can also add extensions. Certain report extensions help you export reports to CSV or Excel documents. It lets you analyse it further for your business development.  

5. Flexible Payments

WooCommerce also offers various payment methods like Cash On Delivery (COD), digital payments, bank transfers, etc. WooCommerce provides payment methods, completely compatible with different payment gateways like Stripe and PayPal.   

An e-commerce store should include various features to help you sell products online. The WooCommerce plugin has multiple features to help you set up a stunning e-commerce store. What is WooCommerce used for? Let’s understand this in detail:

1. Unlimited Product Listing

As an open-source plugin, WooCommerce lets you effortlessly modify and customise e-commerce stores to make them feel and look as you wish. Since you have complete control, it lets you add as many users and products as you wish and accept the number of orders you need.

2. Global Community

WooCommerce has a global community, which is one of its biggest strengths. With multiple users, contributors, and developers across the globe, you can gain access to thousands of ready-to-use themes and extensions, active tutorials, marketplaces, security patches, constant updates, and new features.

3. High Number of Extensions

WooCommerce has over 400 official extensions and multiple plugins accessible to users, ranging from marketing, accounting, payment, and shipping.

4. Compatible with Most Themes

Designed to work effortlessly with multiple themes, including WordPress’s default themes and other well-known themes, WooCommerce is highly user-friendly.

5. Blogging

With a built-in blogging feature, WooCommerce provides you with the flexibility to publish great content and build a reliable brand.

6. Organised Features

With tags and categories, buyers can easily locate what they need. You can offer attributes such as colour and size to let your customers find the products highly relevant to their demands.

7. Unlimited Product Images

Using the WooCommerce plugin, you can include multiple images in your online store to let your customers view your product from each angle. Nevertheless, you can also set featured images that portray the best photos of your featured products in the online store.

8. Built-in Payment Processing 

WooCommerce works with payment gateways like PayPal and Stripe. It lets you accept debit/credit cards and related transactions. It also allows you to enable options such as payment through direct bank transfers, checks, Cash on delivery, and payments.

9. Shipping Options

Using WooCommerce, you can offer different options to your customers, like picking up the order from a specific location, getting it delivered to the address, or even shipping the order to other locations. It helps you set custom shipping rates in terms of product or location, such as additional charges levied for heavy goods and distant places. You can also provide free shipping on your store for some products or some places, which is totally up to you.

10. One-Click Refunds

WooCommerce functions well with refunding products. It lets you offer refunds to your customers with just a click from your WordPress dashboard.

11. Related Products

One of the ideal methods of cross-selling is showing relevant products. In your WooCommerce store, you can display related products on cart pages and product pages as well. 

As you are familiar with the key features and benefits of WooCommerce, the next step is to understand how to get started. If you’re well aware of WordPress plugins, creating WooCommerce online stores will be generally easy. The WooCommerce dashboard has everything you need for your online store customisation due to its straightforward interface. As WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin, you should install WordPress on your web server. Now, let’s begin:

Step 1: Install WordPress

If you have WordPress already installed on your web server or hosting, you may proceed and skip to the next step to install and configure WooCommerce. WordPress installation takes only a few minutes, particularly when you use a web hosting provider. These services are usually accompanied by an auto-installer. With official documentation from WordPress.org that includes scripts and detailed instructions, you have to install it manually on your web server. After completing the regular WordPress installation, the subsequent step is creating a website and connecting it to the required domain address for the online store.

Step 2: Install WooCommerce

After you set up the website, the next step is installing and activating the WooCommerce plugin from the official WordPress plugin directory. Here’s what you should do:

1. Enter your username and password to log in to the WordPress admin area.  
2. On the left side of the WordPress admin area, head over to the Plugins menu.   
3. As the plugin page comes up, click the ‘Add New’ button.   
4. Type ‘WooCommerce’ in the plugin search field and click ‘Install Now.’  
5. Once the installation is completed, hit Activate.

After the activation process is completed, you should have the WooCommerce plugin installed on your WordPress website.

Step 3: Set up your WooCommerce Store

Once the installation process is complete, a welcome message appears on the screen along with a WooCommerce Setup Wizard tool. To set up your new store with WooCommerce, click the Setup Wizard button. If you skip it accidentally, go to the Help page and then click Setup Wizard.

In the first step, you need to fill in the store’s location details. Users will need to put their store addresses, postal codes, city, country, and admin email address.

In the second step, WooCommerce asks in which industry the store functions. It provides various options, ranging from health, fashion, electronics, beauty, and more.  

After you click Continue, the next step is to clarify the product types to list in the store. WooCommerce helps users sell physical products and downloads for free of cost. The subscriptions, memberships, bookings, bundles, and customisable products have their price breakdown as follows:

Subscriptions: $16.58/month  
Memberships: $16.58/month  
Bookings: $20.75/month  
Bundles: $4.08/month  
Customisable products: $4.08/month

Subsequently, users will be asked to fill up the business details. You will be asked about the number of products you wish to display in the store and if you sell them elsewhere.

Enable the option ‘Add recommended business features to my site’, and move to the last step, where you need to opt for a free theme for the ecommerce store.

Once you opt for a theme, WooCommerce automatically applies it to the website. You will be redirected to the homepage to explore more customisation options.

Step 4: Add and Manage Products

Now that the store is set up, the next step would be adding and managing the products you wish to sell. However, before moving forward, it is important to understand the product attributes, categories, and types of WooCommerce.

Let’s explain each item briefly:

- Product category: a way to classify products with similar features. You can create as many categories as required on WooCommerce and edit them anytime.   
- Attributes filter products based on colours, size, materials, and likes. You may specify attributes for each product or the whole store.   
- Product types describe the type of products users sell in their ecommerce stores. WooCommerce has many predefined product types.

Luckily,  adding and managing products on WooCommerce is generally easy, particularly if you’re familiar with the knowledge on how the WordPress dashboard functions.

You need to do the following here:

- Head to the Products menu located on the left side of the dashboard, and go to the ‘Create Your First Product’ or ‘Add New’ button.   
- Fill in the product title and include relevant product information in the description. Then, move to set up the Product data page.   
- On this page, sellers can define and customise the products as required. For example, goods can be classified as a Simple product type.

Let’s have a short explanation of every menu item in the Product data field: 

Fill in the necessary fields, include images to make the products attractive, and choose ‘Publish’ once everything is ready. On the products page, you can view all products and manage them. Edit, delete, copy, and highlight a product separately or using bulk action.

Step 5: Manage Discounts

Discounts are the best option to increase sales. Fortunately, WooCommerce makes it easy to set up coupons for the sellers. Go to the Coupons page. Here, sellers can view and edit coupons added to the store or add a new coupon.

Step 6: Manage Orders

Once every product is listed on the website, and you know how to set up discounts, the next step is to understand how to receive and manage orders for the store. On WooCommerce, sellers can view and manage the incoming orders by selecting the ‘Orders’ menu to the left of the WordPress dashboard. A new order appears on that page once the customer completes the checkout process after the purchase. You can also update the order status for the customers easily. Every order has a unique ID with details like: customer email, address, contact number, payment method, etc.

Step 7: Set up Reports

Sellers use WooCommerce ‘Reports’ feature from the left menu to understand more about the store’s performance. This page lets sellers track the number of goods purchased, gross sales, average daily sales, etc. You can also display statistics for individual products, categories, coupons, guests, customers, etc. For this, you can choose the period in which you want the report, and click ‘Go’ to display it. 

We’ll explore significant challenges WooCommerce store owners have been experiencing, offering insights to let you discover the complexities of running a successful WooCommerce store.  

1. Theme & Plugin Compatibility Conflicts: WooCommerce has a huge plugin ecosystem. However, ensuring compatibility among various plugins and your chosen theme can be tricky. Updating plugins or themes can break functionalities at times, demanding troubleshooting and causing downtime.

2. Performance Optimisation: WooCommerce is lightweight, however, extensive plugins and themes can cause the website to slow down. By optimising images, website data caching, and opting for a reliable hosting plan, you can ensure a high-end customer experience.

3. No Advanced Marketing Features: Though WooCommerce offers basic marketing features, it doesn’t hold advanced marketing automation or built-in email marketing tools such as dedicated e-commerce platforms. For this function, you need to depend on separate marketing tools or integrations.

4. Payment Gateway Constraints: WooCommerce supports multiple payment gateways. However, certain popular options might have greater transaction costs or limitations over dedicated platforms. International payment processing can also be highly complex to set up using WooCommerce.

5. Developers Required for Advanced Customisation: Extensive customisation often demands developers’ expertise. This could be an ongoing cost if you need frequent website tweaks or wish to implement unique features beyond what the plugins provide.

6. Security Vulnerabilities: As WooCommerce is self-hosted, it is necessary to stay updated with the advanced security patches. It demands continuous vigilance and technical know-how to prevent security breaches.

7. Data Backups & Recovery: The data backups and recovery-related responsibilities fall completely on the store owner. With a reliable backup strategy and disaster recovery plan, you can reduce the downtime in case of any server issues.

8. Customer Support: Unlike dedicated platforms with customer support teams, WooCommerce doesn’t provide direct support. Troubleshooting concerns might involve depending on community forums, theme/plugin documentation, or even hiring developers. 

WooCommerce is a robust plugin that transforms WordPress's functionality into an ecommerce store. With WooCommerce, you can sell physical or digital products of all types. You can integrate it with premium tools to sell services such as subscriptions. WooCommerce is highly customisable and user-friendly, offering a powerful e-commerce solution with high-end flexibility and features.

Planning to start a WooCommerce-powered online store? With the services from a WooCommerce development agency, you can build a feature-rich e-commerce solution to create and manage successful online storefronts for your business. WAC is a reliable WooCommerce agency, with a dedicated team of experts to offer WooCommerce development services for your business with specialised support to manage a customised ecommerce store.