From the course: Building an Ecommerce Website with WordPress

Why use WordPress for your ecommerce website? - WordPress Tutorial

From the course: Building an Ecommerce Website with WordPress

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Why use WordPress for your ecommerce website?

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- There are so many e-commerce solutions available right now, Etsy, Squarespace, Shopify, these are all fantastic tools with great options. So why do I almost always recommend WordPress over these other tools? One of the most powerful and compelling features of WordPress are plugins. You can use plugins in almost any configuration to make the website, blog or shop of your dreams. WooCommerce, the most popular WordPress e-commerce solution, is a plugin, and many, many plugins are free. WordPress also provides more template, theme, and design options. With other builders, you may be limited to a dozen or so themes. With WordPress, the choice is almost unlimited. And with page builders, you can build virtually any design you want. When you use other site builders, your site exists within their servers, you often don't have access to source code, and if there is a security breach on their end, it may affect your site. WordPress sites are self-hosted, meaning the files are typically more easily accessible to you and can be customized at your discretion. And last, but definitely not least, WordPress is built to be SEO friendly, making your marketing and organic search goals much more possible, between SEO plugins and the easy blogging ability built right in. Using WordPress does have a few downsides, so if any of these are deal breakers for you, you may want to consider another platform instead. WordPress is not a specific or dedicated e-commerce solution. It's a content management system, and it was first built for blogging and then grew into a tool for building full websites. It just so happens that some of the content you create can be products, items, or services for sale. Just like you post a page, you can post a product and users can interact with that product by purchasing it. And luckily, as you'll see later in the course, there are many dedicated e-commerce solutions that you can use on top of WordPress. Another important thing to note is that WordPress is often considered more complex. Many other solutions require fewer steps and even do a lot of things for you, but are limited in terms of customization and flexibility. It is true that WordPress has a higher learning curve, but since you're here, I can only assume you're ready and willing to learn.

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