If you run an online store, you've probably heard of WooCommerce! WooCommerce is an e-commerce platform built on WordPress. With over 6.5 million active websites, WooCommerce is one of the world's largest providers in e-commerce. The platform has an open-source code and is very suitable for newcomers to e-commerce. It is highly adaptable, user-friendly, and flexible. They offer good features for warehouse management, secure payment solutions and shipping integrations.

What is a WooCommerce Plugin?

WooCommerce is a plugin for WordPress (LINK TO THE "WORDPRESS PLUGIN ARTICLE). It makes it possible to create and operate an online store directly in your WordPress website. Sometimes though, it's simply not enough to install WooCommerce and then expect an award for online store of the year. You´ll have to tweak, change, and improve your store or else you´ll risk having frustrated customers, low turnover and a poor marketing strategy. A simple way to do that is by installing plugins for your online store. It´s even better is you combine different plugins and integrations for WooCommerce and create something unique and highly functional. It can be plugins for payment services such as Stripe, plugins for various shipping options or an integration with Intellipush to optimize your marketing strategy.

There are many extensions available on WordPress to choose from – over 60.000 to be exact. Some of the options are free and can be easily installed without any programming skills. On the other hand, it's worth mentioning that free doesn't necessarily mean top quality, so choose your extensions wisely.

In addition, there are certain extensions that require an API integration (link to "What is an API?"), such as an integration with Intellipush. An API integration gives you far greater freedom and can be specially adapted to your needs. The disadvantage of an API integration is that it requires technical expertise to implement and is more time-consuming than a simple plugin.

Why should you use WooCommerce Plugins?

Your customers are more aware of the customer journey today than in any other time in history. On top of the list, you´ll find ease of use and simplicity. As an online store, you´ll have to cater to their needs or else you´ll be handing out customers to your competitors. If your customers have to refill their credit card information for every purchase, they´ll probably grow tired at some point. So, make sure that you have an integrated payment solution that makes the payment process easy and frictionless.

From a business perspective, I assume that you want to make it as easy as possible for you to run your business. Why not gather all the tools you need in one place? That way you won´t have to shift your focus, and all the manual work will magically disappear. You can start by integrating your marketing tools within your online store. With an Intellipush integration, you´ll have all your customer information available when planning out your marketing strategy. Your decisions about segmentation will become easier and based on actual data. This way it will be easy to send customized offers to customer based on their interests and purchasing patterns.

How does the integration work?

WooCommerce being a plugin for WordPress allows you to use the extensions in the WordPress extensions catalog to elevate your online store. With these extensions, the process is quite simple. You press "install now" and the extension gets installed. In some cases, you may want to check that the extension is enabled under "installed extensions". Occasionally these extensions require an update. You will be notified of this in the overview of installed extensions. You will have the option to see details about the new version and to carry out the update immediately. To install and maintain the extensions, you need little to no technical knowledge.

If you want to use an API integration, the process is a bit different. It is a good idea to ask for help if you do not have the technical expertise required to carry out the integration yourself. To be able to use Intellipush's API, you will need an API key and API secret. This information can be found under "API settings" in the menu on your page on Intellipush. The API is well documented and includes debugging- and developer tools.

If you want to integrate SMS directly into your WordPress site, we have skilled partners who can assist with the integration.