Of all the websites online across the entire globe, WordPress is the Content Management System (CMS) which powers a full 27% of them, and that should give you some idea of the dominance that WordPress has as site management software. But that’s not the only reason you should choose WordPress as your eCommerce site – If you are about to build an e-Commerce site, there are numbers compelling reasons why WordPress should be your website CMS, and why it should present your online store to the rest of the world.
Reasons to Use WordPress for eCommerce
1. The leader in eCommerce
The uncontested leader in eCommerce websites in WooCommerce, at 21% of all eCommerce sites. The next closest contender is Shopify at 18% and Magento come third at 12%, so it’s easy to see that there is a substantial lead involved for WooCommerce. If you weren’t aware of this fact, WooCommerce is the eCommerce extension of WordPress, and that accounts for its extraordinary popularity in hosting online stores.
Given the fact that there are so many WordPress sites around the world in the first place, it’s only natural that many of these websites would choose to begin an eCommerce business, and that leads directly to WooCommerce. However, it isn’t the leader by some kind of default status. WooCommerce actually provides some terrific services and some very powerful features that help make online shopping a wonderful experience for all visitors. You can actually create your WooCommerce online store within a few easy steps. In addition to all that, it’s very easy to manage and it’s free, so the cost of running your online store is no more than the cost of establishing your WordPress website.
2. Outstanding security
Anyone engaging in eCommerce must have complete security for themselves and for their customers. WordPress has been constructed right from the very first step to be as secure as possible. All of the codings at the core of WordPress has been included with security in mind. Given the fact that your WordPress database will store login credentials, payment data, and a whole catalog of other sensitive information, it is absolutely essential that you have rock-solid security on your system.
On top of the built-in security measures included in WordPress, you can also set up Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) technology, so that all exchanges between you and customers are encrypted. In addition to all this, there are a number of plug-ins you can add on to your WordPress site which provides for even greater security.
3. Scalable and reliable
If your e-commerce business should be fortunate enough to experience rapid growth, you will be glad to know that WordPress is extremely scalable and reliable to accommodate that kind of growth. Whatever size your online business might grow to, it can be managed easily by WordPress without a lot of tinkering or modification to your website.
If you didn’t have that kind of scalability, you would be obliged to either make site modifications yourself or to hire a web developer to do them for you. If you happen to experience several such growth spurts, it could end up costing you a lot of money to keep modifying your website. Fortunately, with WordPress, none of that will be necessary, and your WordPress eCommerce site will grow right along with your business comfortably.
4. Open source code
One of the reasons that WordPress is free is that there are literally thousands of individuals in the WordPress community who contribute their time and efforts to keep it updated. If WordPress were proprietary and were kept up by paid developers, there would undoubtedly be a cost associated with it, and any updates would be relatively few and far between.
By having open source code, it’s not necessary to rely on any single company for financing, which means your online store can continue running regardless of any other company’s finances. One of the huge advantages of open source code is that developers all around the globe are always coming up with improvements and enhancements which can make WordPress better, and which can make operation easier.
When you compare this to other hosted eCommerce platforms, you’ll find that they simply don’t have the vast numbers of contributors that WordPress does, nor can they do it at the same competitive price. Because there is literally an army of WordPress contributors constantly devising new and better methods for the software, you will be able to run your eCommerce site just the way you want to, at just the right price.
5. Additional functionality
As a kind of extension to the previous point above, you will have a staggering amount of additional functionality available to you when you have a WordPress eCommerce site. No matter what kind of needs you may have for your online store, there is undoubtedly already a plug-in which has been developed for that express purpose, and which can help customize your site to perform exactly as you want it to.
One of the great appeals of WordPress is that you can customize it endlessly to fit your circumstances, and you can add in an enormous number of plug-ins such which will help you achieve exactly what you want and strengthen your site security. Because WordPress itself is so popular, there is literally an endless number of designers and developers who work at making contributions to the software, and who are developing code for the platform. That means the number of plug-ins and other features available to you is virtually limitless, and there is no end to what you might do on your eCommerce website.