Woocommerce is an open-source plugin for WordPress that provides you with everything you need to create your online store. What’s not available out of the box can be easily added to this platform, making it one of the most powerful and robust options for eCommerce. With a little bit of customization, there’s little that can’t be done. Whatever your vision for your online business is, chances are WooCommerce and a good developer can help make it a reality.
But, before we get into the benefits of Woocommerce and the customization possibilities it offers, let’s start with the basics. Let’s take a look at how WooCommerce works.
How Does WooCommerce Work?
WooCommerce is one of the many eCommerce platforms available. You can get it as a free WordPress plugin. It allows you to turn a WordPress website into an eCommerce store with products, customer accounts, checkout functionalities, and payment gateways.
The features of WooCommerce can be modified in many ways using extensions and custom code. This makes it one of the most flexible platforms and is ideal for store owners with a specific vision in mind. With a little bit of creativity and tech knowledge, you can create a personalized online store.
If you are looking for the best custom Woocommerce development services, read on. We will guide you on how to select a custom WordPress development service provider with ease.
Who needs WooCommerce Custom Development?
There are endless WooCommerce extensions in the market. That being said, one can’t help but wonder, with so many extensions and plugins out there, why would you invest in custom development?
In some cases, the features and improvements you have in mind have not yet been created, leaving you without any viable options. Other times, even when you can find plugins providing the features you seek, these solutions do not meet 100% of your requirements in practice. That’s where WooCommerce custom development comes in.
What is WooCommerce Custom Development?
There are many types of projects and services that fall into the realm of WooCommerce development. Let’s take a look at a few:
WooCommerce Custom Desing and Theme development
We all know WordPress and WooCommerce platforms have many themes and templates readily available, but these are already being used by thousands of eCommerce stores. Therefore, these options simply won’t cut it if you want to give your store a different, unique, and attractive look.
What you need is to have a customized theme and design elements that match your branding and make your business justice. You can obtain just this by investing in WooCommerce theme development and custom design work.
At WooNinjas, we tackle these projects through a systematized process, which initially starts with a discovery phase, followed by the creative phase resulting in a Figma prototype. Once revisions are made and the design is approved by the client we proceed to develop the website by fully implementing the final design.
WooCommerce Plugin Development
If you’re looking to add more features to your WooCommerce store and can find no ready-made plugins that get the job done, custom development is your best bet.
Development work can vary across development partners or agencies, but we can tell you a little bit about how our team gets the job done. Our developers will get to the heart of your requirements during a discovery phase, during which we get familiar with your site, the issues you are experiencing, and your desired outcomes. Next, we formulate a roadmap for your plugin development project, making sure to employ resources as efficiently as possible. Our projects range from tweaking an existing plugin to building one from scratch.
Once a roadmap is approved, we move into the development phase, during which our WooNinjas put their coding skills to the test. Once their job is done, the customized plugin moves into the hands of our Quality Assurance team, which tests the plugin and its features in all relevant scenarios in a staging environment. After we make sure everything is running smoothly, the plugin is delivered and deployed.
We keep assisting our clients through deployment to make sure they are satisfied with the results.
WooCommerce Maintenance.
Like any other website, if not more, your online store will require some maintenance. Running an online business is not for the faint-hearted and will involve continuous work and monitoring from your (or your maintenance partner’s) end. In order to keep your site running smoothly and bug-free, you have to be willing to put the work in.
WooComerce developers can help you monitor your custom code, update all of your site’s plugins, run back-ups, and when necessary perform bug fixes to keep your site healthy year-round.
At WooNinjas, we have simplified the maintenance process by creating three different maintenance plans. A maintenance plan means you’ll never have to worry about your website’s upkeep and always have a WooCommerce developer on board in case something comes along.
Optimizing your eCommerce Site
WooCommerce optimization is another area where working with an agency of WooCommerce experts might come in handy. It is a process of improving the performance of an eCommerce website. As such, it involves improving many different aspects of your site, from load time to conversion rate and everything in between.
Most of the time, WooCommerce optimization is done by developers and designers unfamiliar with the WooCommerce plugin.
Moreover, WooCommerce optimization happens when you combine several different tools and plugins to improve your eCommerce store’s performance on various platforms like desktop, mobile, and tablet devices.
There are many different types of optimizations available for WooCommerce sites, including:
SEO Optimization
It includes all aspects of search engine optimization (SEO), such as keyword research, on-page SEO, and off-page SEO.
Technical Optimizations
It includes caching, minifying CSS and JavaScript files, and server and security configurations.
Image Optimizations
It includes image resizing and compression, image optimization (JPEG vs. PNG), mobile menu design, and responsive design.
Security Optimization
It includes elements such as choosing the right hosting, and passwords, prevention of malware attacks, and more.
Make sure to also check out the complete WooCommerce Optimization guide to learn more about these services.
Other Things WooCommerce Custom Development Services Can Help You Achieve:
- Develop a WooCommerce plugin for you to solve a specific problem or to sell as a business.
- Integrate your WooCommerce store with your CRM software, making it easy to track interactions with your customers.
- Help you troubleshoot any issues you’re having with your online store operations.
- Add new features to any part of your online store, be it products and inventory to checkout.
- Integrate your WooCommerce store with third-party apps.
- Integrate your WooCommerce store with your accounting software
- Optimize WooCommerce for security and improved performance.
- Improve design and shopping experience.
- Create a personalized loyalty program fro your online customers.
How does WooCommerce custom development work?
Custom WooCommerce development is all about ensuring your website is set up to do exactly what you want. That involves meeting standards in design, performance, security and function.
The best way to get started with your WooCommerce website development project is to work with your WooCommerce Custom development experts in putting together a smart and specific development plan, which consists of:
An overview of the project
Describe the motivations behind the project, including its goals, objectives, constraints, and stakeholders. This should paint a clear picture of what the developer should be trying to achieve and why.
Scope
Clearly define the project schedule, including deliverables, milestones, and tasks. A clear plan allows you to keep track of whether a project is moving away from its intended results and where it might be falling behind schedule.
Action Plan
Break down the work to create a clear structure and describe the details surrounding the project. For example, how you will perform quality management and risk assessment tasks. You’ll also need to consider resource management, your budget, stakeholder management, and anything else that’s relevant to your operation.
Why should your business invest in Custom WooCommerce Development?
There are several ways to build a WooCommerce store. One option is to use premade templates and layouts and maybe install some add-ons and use them out of the box.
The second option is to use a custom approach to building your online store, with a personalized design and unique features coded from scratch. Furthermore, there is a third option, where you use a mix of both ready-made solutions and custom code to build a hybrid platform.
Woocommerce is highly customizable, and with custom WooCommerce development, you can personalize the website based on your business needs. If you want your business website to offer a tailored experience to your target audience and stand out from your competitors, a cookie-cutter website is not enough.
A bespoke e-Commerce site can significantly improve the user experience by catering to the requirements of your customers and your business in the most functional way possible.
Truth be told, not every business owner will require custom WooCommerce development. But, those that do, can suffer greatly from not going the extra mile on their business. Ultimately, most business owners have to ask themselves: will custom development be worth the investment?
Custom WooCommerce Development brings many benefits to the table.
It makes your website stand out.
WooCommerce is one of the most popular e-commerce plugins for WordPress and powers over 5 million active websites. The number of active stores has been growing rapidly and is expected to reach 7 million by the end of 2022. Now it can be difficult for your E-commerce to get the limelight if it has a generic appearance and functionality.
When you invest in a unique website, your online business will look unique and professional, which will help in generating a positive first impression.
Customized checkout, single product templates, and plugins enhance the existing appearance and efficiency of the website, something that will instantly catch your user’s eye.
More leads and conversions
A bad online store results in a poor shopping experience, which in turn results in fewer sales and fewer earnings.
When your site, which serves as an income source, isn’t working its best, it’s going to cost you dollars. With a generic e-commerce site, users might simply skip and move on to a better offer.
However, with Custom Woocommerce Development, you can retain the attention of your users and visitors by offering an optimized user experience and a visually appealing storefront. Development experts can also help you solve anything that isn’t working its best in your design, user experience, and checkout, to avoid losing customers.
Expert Advice
When you hire a WooCommerce developer, you are enlisting an expert to take a look at your site and build it up to its full potential. If you are working with a reputable development partner, you’ll be adding an expert with years of experience to your team. They’ll work with you to get your business where you want it to be in the most efficient way possible.
Choosing a WooCommerce Custom Development Partner
Confused about which WooCommerce developer to choose? Choosing the right development partner is key to successfully building an online business. Creating the online store of your dreams requires an expert technical team to handle the infrastructure and development of your website.
What To Expect From Your WooCommerce Custom Development Service Provider?
Whatever the size and scope of your project, at a minimum, you should expect the following from the agency assisting you with Custom WooCommerce Development:
- Reliability and experience
- Excellent price-performance ratio
- Guarantee that your project roadmap will be respected
- Great communication in general.
- Responsiveness in case of problems
Bottom Line
Working with an experienced WooCommerce development partner is the best option if you want to provide a unique and positive shopping experience for your users. With the right team of experts on your site, the process of building a functional, conversion-minded site is easier than you might think.
