So, you own a WordPress website, and you are on a lookout for that one plugin that can help you in turning your website into a full-fledged online storefront. You don’t have to be a worrying stick as this can be easily done with the help of WooCommerce.
Whether you are into selling a few products or a retail startup with plans to flourish your business, you can use WooCommerce to add all the important eCommerce features to your WordPress website.
Setting up and running your WooCommerce store along with a basic shared hosting plan is easy, but WooCommerce specific hosting will fuel, with features and support, you need to expand your business and to build a brand.
Let us move forward and acquire more knowledge about the WooCommerce plugin.
What is WooCommerce
As we write, WooCommerce is powering more than 40 per cent of the online businesses. It can be accessed from the WooCommerce plugin directory, and you will gain the knowledge of all the basics of setting up an online business selling physical or digital goods. Besides, the plugin can also help you in running affiliate sites, or it can be used to handle drop shopping for the printables and various other custom products.
The plugin also comes with payment and shopping cart functions, and it also supports an extensive range of options using which can set up exclusive events, products, and landing pages.
Why WooCommerce Plugin is so popular
There are many reasons why WooCommerce plugin is one of the most famous & preferred WordPress plugins. This plugin serves commercial purposes well. What adds to the immense popularity of this plugin is the fact that it is flexible when it comes to customization options. On top of the built-in settings, developers, across the globe, have built a community around it and also created extensions.
Key Features –
- Apt for commercial purposes.
- Flexible in terms of customization options.
- Make online selling as smooth as possible.
- Selling both physical and digital goods, right from the website, are simple.
- Adding product variations is possible.
- Extensive payment & shipping methods.
- Offer a wide range of features through extensions.
Features of Woocommerce
The main features of Woocommerce are as follow:
It’s Free
Essentially, WooCommerce by WooThemes is just another free WordPress plugin. However, you would be extremely hard-pressed to find a similar plugin which holds the same level of potential. The open-source platform provides users with a feature extensive, yet hugely user-friendly experience, making it perfect for eCommerce startups to get a feel for online business in a way which is easy to digest, and doesn’t cost an arm or a leg. WooCommerce is completely free to download, right now. Yet, despite being free and open-source, WooCommerce offers extensive features out of the box, whilst also being extremely flexible both by nature and via the additional of extensions, which I will mention later.
Huge Flexibility
Perhaps one of WooCommerce’s biggest benefits to eCommerce newcomers is that merchants using the platform can exercise a whole lot of flexibility with their products, without having to know too much about the technical side of things.
Products can be categorized, given sale prices, independent attributes, and more. Additionally, WooCommerce stores are capable of selling physical, virtual, downloadable and even affiliate/external products.
More Than Ecommerce
WooCommerce doesn’t force users to go beyond their comfort zone when building their online store, yet at the same time, it readily opens the door for more than just eCommerce.
For example, WooCommerce users can build a fully functioning store within a professional website, alongside an integrated blog. All of these dimensions of a business’ online presence are harnessed in one place and presented together seamlessly, and it’s all thanks to WooCommerce being a WordPress based platform.
Familiar Friendliness
Speaking of WordPress, the hugely popular CMS supports over 51% of the top million websites currently in existence, and so it would be fair to say that many eCommerce startups will have had the pleasure of using WordPress, for similar, or unrelated online project.
With WooCommerce being a WordPress plugin, past users of the platform will benefit from being able to recognize the user-friendly WordPress interface. That kind of familiarity when building an online store could easily save time and confusion, whilst bolstering creativity.
Analytics Made Easy
A core tool used by any website owner is their analytics tool. Many eCommerce startups may not know how to apply an analytics system to their website, nor will they know what statistics need focused analysis. Thankfully, WooCommerce has such merchants covered.
The built-in analytics system makes a wide array of statistics crystal clear. Figures like total sales, sales by date, average order totals, individual customer statistics and much more are all neatly presented via graphs, without the user ever having to leave their admin panel. It’s that easy.
Room for Growth
As simple as WooCommerce is as an eCommerce platform, it also allows you to exercise some growth and expansion in terms of how you manage your store, products and customers.
For example, modifying templates is made easy whether users want to do so directly via the theme files, or whether you use the many hooks & filters. WooCommerce also has various APIs ready to be used for building extensions, along with an extensive documentation library, so that users can get to know how WooCommerce works, inside and out.
Is WooCommerce Safe ?
All the websites, backed by a CMS platform, mostly use WordPress. Of late, the platform has entered the business arena with its eCommerce plugin known as WooCommerce. With the rising popularity of the platform, it has become more comfortable for hackers to infringe cyber boundaries.
This, understandably, makes a beginner precarious about the authenticity of the platform to host an eCommerce solution. At this point, let us get to know how a WooCommerce website can hack.
We live in a time where the threat to the security of the consumer has emerged as one of the key issues that have plagued the businesses across the globe. It has become easier than ever for hackers to hack websites, mainly host by WordPress.
These hackers gain illegitimate access to these websites, and they carry out data theft, host malicious content, and cause significant losses to the eCommerce businesses.
How to make out a hacked WooCommerce website ?
Hackers use some of the creative and illegitimate methods when it comes to hacking WordPress and WooCommerce websites. While there are no apparent signs of making out whether your website hack or not, tracing some of the common WordPress hack signs will help. Following are some of the common signs:
- Unauthorized redirection to another URL.
- Inappropriate content on the website’s homepage.
- Restricted access to the Admin dashboard.
- An unusual decrease in traffic.
- Errors in the browser.
- An unexpected increase in website registration.
What are the types of vulnerabilities in the WooCommerce plugin
With over 4 million installations, WooCommerce is, undoubtedly, one of the foremost eCommerce plugins. Since the plugin efficiently handles the customer payments, it is an easy target for the hackers, the websites support by the plugin mainly stores customer’s personal and payment details.
Besides, being one of the popular eCommerce plugins, it is also one of the most vulnerable plugins as well. Some of the common vulnerabilities in the core WooCommerce plugin are –
- XSS (Cross-Site Scripting)
- PHP Objection Injection Vulnerability
- File Deletion Vulnerability
Now, let us discuss the vulnerabilities mentioned above in detail.
XSS (Cross-Site Scripting)
Topping the list is XSS (Cross-Site Scripting). The plugin is susceptible to a cross-site scripting vulnerability. The key reason behind this is the inability to sterilize the input provided by the user aptly.
A hacker may take this opportunity to execute malicious script code in the browser of an unwary user. This will help the hacker offer free access to pilfer cookie-based confirmation credentials and initiate other attacks. If you are using WooCommerce plugin version 2.6.3, then you may be the victim of this vulnerability.
Further, Cross-Site Scripting is of two types –
- WooCommerce Tax Rates Cross-Site Scripting
- Seizing a Customer Account with a Crafted Image
- WooCommerce Tax Rates Cross-Site Scripting
This particular vulnerability occurs because the tax rates of WooCommerce has falsely processed the data provided to the user. The hacker, while sitting in a remote location, tend to outwit the WooCommerce administrators to upload a malicious CSV file that supplies tax rate details for a particular nation or area.
This particular file further injects malicious code into the application, thus activating an XSS attack. Through this attack, the hacker easily gains full access to the webserver.
This vulnerability affects all WooCommerce versions before 2.6.9.
Conclusion
WooThemes themselves are the best reason for the growth and popularity of the WooCommerce. As simple as WooCommerce is as an eCommerce platform. It also allows you to exercise some growth and expansion in terms of how you manage your store, products and customers. It is popular due to security vulnerability features. If you are looking for best web development agency, the select company from the listing of Topxlisting according to your requirements.
