WooCommerce is an open source ecommerce plug in for sister company WordPress. WooCommerce was initially released in 2011 but was acquired by Automattic in 2015. Automattic also owns WordPress.

WooCommerce quickly became popular for its simpleness in installation and customization. It is also a free product. Its most recent update, version 4.5.2, is a stable edition that was made public on September 2020.

With the rapid acceleration of ecommerce growth worldwide, WooCommerce has kept in step with it by facilitating 39 million downloads as a plugin and is currently powering more than three million online merchandising sites. As of 2018, WooCommerce was the most popular ecommerce platform.

For 2019, the market share of WooCommerce kept growing as it is being used by 22% of the top 1 million ecommerce websites.

WooCommerce is free, but you should expect other expenses, which include hosting, a domain name, and security software. But one thing going for WooCommerce (aside from having no monthly subscription fee) is easy  installation.

Could WooCommerce be used without WordPress? Since it is a WordPress plugin, WooCommerce cannot operate without it. Your objective always for your selling site is to make the buying process simple for your customers. Remove all the unnecessary menu items that don’t help in making a sale from the sidebar and the online portal. That way, all the customer sees is a streamlined site with only the WooCommerce options visible.

Can Shopify be integrated with WooCommerce?

Yes it can! The Shopify Connect for WooCommerce plugin enables you to merge your Shopify products with your WooCommerce merchandise, together on your WooCommerce store shelves. But the products that will be sold will be sent through their original Shopify source, but with WooCommerce as your catalog. Plus, the other free features of WooCommerce like reviews, linked products and others will still be there on the site available for your customers’ use.

Technology is so very needed this year to make Bopus work well for merchants.