Online shop with WooCommerce

Possibilities

There are several ways to realize B2B functions. Two of the most popular extensions is B2B for WooCommerce or the B2B-German Market solution specifically for the German market It is the most comprehensive, but also the most expensive plugin in the German-speaking area. With this software you can sell to B2B and B2C (Business to Customer) at the same time. With individual prices for different customers, VAT ID check at registration, graduated prices, extended discounts and some more functions.

Open source

WooCommerce is open source software. Thus, there are no additional license costs for the core functionality. However, the question is whether you can also realize extensive online sales with the help of the free WordPress extension. That means more products in the online assortment and more orders per time unit? As a WooCommerce specialist, I can clearly answer these questions in the affirmative. WooCommerce is designed to easily manage large amounts of data. The extension plugin Custom Products Tables plugin offers additional possibilities. It optimizes the database tables for MySQL servers, which significantly increases the performance of a webshop.

Clarify costs

Without knowing the details, the cost and time required to create and then run a WooCommerce store are impossible to estimate. This depends on numerous factors, e.g.:

• Does a technical infrastructure already exist (domain, web hosting or third party systems for accounting, shipping or customer management) or does this still need to be built up.
• How many and what types of products are sold through the shop
  Visitor volume per day, month and peak times - this is especially important for hosting.
• What technical and other knowledge is already available? Can the product range be distributed via standard sales processes, or are special solutions needed for personalized goods or industry-specific peculiarities. Can prefabricated themes for WooCommerce be used, or is a completely independent and distinctive shop design desired?

More points 

Who is responsible for the product installation?

• Are product texts and images already available, or do they need to be adapted or newly created?
  Is a data import from other systems necessary?
  Who is responsible for online marketing and search engine optimisation?
• Which social media channels are used?
  Who is responsible for online law and data protection? Depending on the industry but also the target countries, quite considerable resources are necessary for this, otherwise warnings and fines threaten.

Website availability is the time during which a website or web service is accessible to users in a given period of time. Although 100% uptime is the goal, in IT circles, 99.999% uptime is considered high availability. Every website experiences planned and unplanned downtime.

Every website provider wants to keep availability as high as possible - not without justification against the background of the competitive strength of the Internet. Decisive for the availability of an online store is the choice of a powerful provider. There are providers who specialize in the operation of WordPress stores and offer the appropriate service. Since a WooCommerce store generates a lot of dynamic content and requests that cannot be cached, a correspondingly strong server performance is required.

Depending on the size and popularity of your store, during peak shopping hours there may be tens of thousands of visitors on the store page at the same time, searching for products, filtering items by different product categories, filling their shopping carts, and making purchases. Selecting a suitable deployment architecture with a prepared development and test environment also helps to increase resilience. Suitable backup and recovery tools are also extremely important. This is because they can be used to get a store up and running again if necessary.

Side not possible

The maintenance of the basic content (master data, images, product descriptions) of the shop should not be underestimated. Say goodbye to the idea of running the shop "on the side". A good online shop system requires care, customer orientation and expertise. Good category descriptions and a small blog can contribute to personalization and enhance the shop.

Schedule initial installation

For small and new shops, which are initially operated by one or a few employees, the time factor is crucial at the beginning. Because especially in the start-up period, one is less concerned with the orders and shipping, but more with the initial creation of the article master and the preparation of the associated media such as images, videos or data sheets. 

Product maintenance required

The creation of products is the main task of product maintenance. When you set up a product, you enter all master data into the online shop. In addition to the product name, characteristics such as size and weight, and the sales price, you need to create particularly detailed product descriptions. Since the customer of your online shop is not able to check the product sensorially and habtically or to look at it more closely, you should go into detail about all characteristics, functions and specialties.