5 Reasons to Establish Your E-Commerce Store Using the WooCommerce Platform

Over the years, WooCommerce has built a reputation as one of the best solutions to use for business owners who have built their websites on the WordPress platform and are wanting to set up an effective e-commerce store on a budget. But why exactly does the WooCommerce plugin have so many passionate advocates in the Philippine community of startups and SMEs (small- and -medium-sized enterprises)? In this short guide, we’ll look at a few reasons why you may want to use WooCommerce as your online store’s e-commerce solution:

1) WooCommerce Offers a Rich Plugin Ecosystem

Itself a plugin for the WordPress platform, WooCommerce has enjoyed a widespread appeal that can be attributed to its core offering being both free and open-source—and also to the fact that it has an extensive range of extensions and additional plugins. Though you can go into a WooCommerce site’s backend to customize it however you want, its vast plugin library makes this mostly unnecessary. In most cases, you can get the functions you need simply by downloading the right plugins. For example, if you need a custom payment gateway, WooCommerce offers a dazzling selection of ready-to-use, geography-specific solutions on its ever-expanding plugin library. Whatever functionality you need, you’ll always find a plugin that will do the job.

2) It Lets You Add Locally Relevant Payment Gateways 

When doing general online searches for payment solutions, Philippine WooCommerce site owners will often be directed to the WooCommerce Stripe payment gateway which, while excellent, won’t facilitate purchases made through locally popular digital wallets. Fortunately, its plugin library also includes the Maya Checkout Plugin for WooCommerce. This plugin seamlessly integrates a WooCommerce payment gateway Philippines-based buyers can use to process payments through local digital wallets like Maya.

3) WooCommerce Is Backed By a Massive Developer Community

Let’s say, hypothetically, that your newly installed WooCommerce payment gateway is conflicting with another plugin on your site. Thanks to WooCommerce’s highly active community of developers, there’s a good chance that someone has already documented a robust fix for your exact issue. Whether you need help with the basics or need advanced technical assistance in setting up your payment gateway, WooCommerce offers a passionate community that will give you the answers you need.

4) It’s Free

Many WooCommerce alternatives provide users with drag-and-drop site-building experience, making them good options for business founders who don’t have coding skills or access to development teams. This is very convenient, although it sometimes comes with a monthly fee that many starting businesses might not be able to afford yet.

While you may have to pay fees to get the domains or plugins you want, WordPress and WooCommerce themselves are free to use, making them a good choice for budding e-commerce businesses with limited operating capital. Best of all, unlike some competing platforms, WooCommerce doesn’t take a cut out of transactions, which is a nice perk for businesses keen on growing as fast as possible

5) WooCommerce Inherits the Strengths of its WordPress Framework

If you have web design and development skills, WooCommerce’s open framework offers an infinite world of possibilities. Like its parent platform, WordPress, WooCommerce is customizable down to the last detail, making it the best choice for emerging startups and SMEs that want to make a splash without over-tapping their limited operating capital. 

WooCommerce sites also benefit from WordPress’s SEO (search engine optimization) and analytics features. While maximizing these attributes does have a learning curve, once you master them, you can effectively leverage organic searches to reduce your customer acquisition and sales costs.

Boost Your WooCommerce Site’s Potential with the Maya Plugin

WooCommerce has emerged as the go-to e-commerce platform for small businesses, thanks to its open, democratic framework and the overwhelming popularity of WordPress as a content management system. Its low operating costs and friendly community of developers have also done much to endear it to business owners the world over.

If you do choose WooCommerce for your next e-commerce site, be sure to integrate the Maya Plugin for WooCommerce. The Maya Plugin is specially designed to help Philippine-based small businesses facilitate the digital payment methods that matter to Filipino consumers. To enjoy the benefits of the Maya Plugin, simply create a Maya Business Manager account and follow these steps to integrate Maya Checkout into your WooCommerce site.

Creating a Maya Business account gives you more than just access to Maya’s payment solutions—it also lets you accelerate your business’s growth through promos like Maya 1-2-3 Grow. Maya 1-2-3 Grow is an exclusive product bundle that entitles you to a 1% merchant discount rate (MDR) for QR Ph transactions made through Maya Business solutions like the Maya Checkout plugin for WooCommerce. 

With Maya 1-2-3 Grow, you get to enjoy a merchant discount rate of 1% on all QR Ph sales, which will allow you to save a substantial amount of money that you can use toward growing your WooCommerce-based business. As a component of the bundle, having a Maya Business Deposit account as your settlement account also lets you enjoy free fund transfers via InstaPay and PesoNET, as well as a generous 2.5% p.a. interest on your account. This translates to PHP 25,000 in earnings on a PHP 1 million deposit. What’s more, the Maya 1-2-3 Grow promo also qualifies you for a Maya Flexi Loan of up to PHP 2 million in just 3 months, giving you extra funds to expand your business. Create a Maya Business Manager account today to take advantage of payment solutions like the Maya Checkout plugin for WooCommerce, as well as bundles like Maya 1-2-3 Grow.