As your business grows and/or becomes more digital, you may find it’s time to create an online store. In the B2B context, a B2C-style an e-commerce-like buying experience is already commonplace. Gartner’s research predicts that by 2025, 80% of all sales interactions will take place in digital channels [1].
Alternatively, if your entire business is based on e-commerce, ensuring your online store is top-notch in usability, converts efficiently, and is easy to maintain is critical for your success. The WooCommerce plugin for WordPress is an excellent choice for building e-commerce solutions, especially for medium-sized, content-driven stores. Furthermore, the platform can be expanded and customized extensively with various plugins and modifications as your business grows.
WooCommerce as Your Online Store’s Engine
First, let’s acknowledge that WooCommerce, like WordPress, is a cornerstone of the internet. WordPress’s impressive market share (nearly 50%) is remarkable, and WooCommerce, which complements it, also holds a significant portion of the e-commerce market. In Finland, its adoption rate is around one-quarter of the market [2].
This success is partly due to WordPress’s popularity, but it’s also worth noting that WooCommerce allows you to launch an online store quickly and affordably. Being an open-source platform, it doesn’t impose recurring costs such as license fees or transaction commissions, unlike major competitors like Adobe Commerce (formerly Magento) or Shopify.
Set Up a WooCommerce Store with Ease
Building a WooCommerce online store involves several stages, including but not limited to content creation, UX/UI design, implementation, and maintenance. While it’s theoretically possible to handle these yourself, it’s not a realistic approach for most businesses. Professional expertise is often sought to bring in technical skills, best practices, and new perspectives on usability and customer needs, as well as to adapt business processes to the digital environment.
Choose an Agency with eCommerce Experience
We recommend hiring a digital agency with a proven track record in e-commerce development and consulting. Designing an online store involves much more than creating an attractive and user-friendly interface.
Key considerations include search, filtering, and listing functionalities, product variations and configurations. browsing mechanics, and additional features like wish lists, comparisons, discounts, and pricing options.
It’s also crucial to understand WooCommerce’s structural limitations, which can affect the store’s layout and logic. An inexperienced designer might overlook these, causing issues later. For instance, cart and checkout sections play a critical role in the purchasing process, and their design must align with the platform’s capabilities.
Leverage the Power of Content
WooCommerce seamlessly integrates marketing content with product listings. For example, knitting recipes can directly link to the yarns used, enhancing the user experience and driving sales.
When planning your online store, consider whether it will feature only product descriptions or include broader content, such as guides, blogs, reviews, or videos.
Ensure your content’s themes, style, and goals align. Search engine optimization (SEO) is also critical—consider which terms you want to rank for and what traffic you hope to attract before starting development. Avoid relying solely on manufacturer-provided product descriptions, as this makes differentiation challenging.
There are many ways to build a WooCommerce online store
Since both WordPress and WooCommerce are open-source and license-free, many approaches to building with them exist. DIY implementations often involve using pre-made themes and numerous plugins, resulting in patchwork solutions that can cause issues from day one.
Professional implementations focus on minimizing external plugins and investing in custom features that help the store stand out, reduce manual work, and generate better business outcomes.
Investing in quality and avoiding shortcuts when building an online store ensures it supports your business growth and scales with your operations for years to come.
The price range for a WooCommerce online store is wide
The cost of designing and implementing a WooCommerce online store depends on many factors, such as the complexity of the features, required integrations, diversity of products, and the amount of content.
The cost of a WooCommerce store primarily includes setup and configuration expenses, in addition to the design and creation of layouts and customizations, which essentially depend on the time spent by experts. Like the WordPress content management system, the WooCommerce plugin is open-source and does not have any inherent cost (no licensing fees). However, since the platform is self-hosted and not SaaS-based, there are recurring expenses for hosting and various maintenance services.
In practice, the time and money required to create an online store depend entirely on the store’s goals, size, features, and scope.
The price for comprehensively customized WooCommerce projects typically falls between €60,000 and €80,000 (excluding VAT). In this price range, everything is handcrafted and generally includes a user-centric design process where buyer personas, customer journeys, wireframes, and interfaces are carefully designed and tested. The technical setup may include several customized features, such as customer-specific pricing, integrations (ERP/CRM, etc.), complex filtering and search functionalities, request-for-quote tools, calculators, or other custom-built features.
For projects in the €100,000–€300,000 (excluding VAT) range, the goal is to create something unique and entirely tailored to the company’s business needs. These implementations often involve fetching data from multiple sources through integrations, maintaining multiple overlapping databases, and providing users with app-like, fully customized configuration or self-service tools. In a B2B context, this might include customer-specific personalizations, such as tailored product selections or pricing. Additionally, the management side might feature mechanisms that streamline or automate maintenance tasks.
Simpler e-commerce projects can naturally be more affordable. For example, an investment of around €30,000–€50,000 (excluding VAT) can result in a highly functional online store with a unique design and several features, though it is unlikely to include extensive API integrations or deeply customized core WooCommerce functions. Nevertheless, this package may suffice for many businesses for several years. It’s important, however, to budget for future development work as the business grows.
Invest in Quality Maintenance
An online store is a critical part of any business. Even if it plays a secondary role, systematic and planned maintenance is wise to ensure smooth operation, even during traffic spikes.
Professional maintenance includes tailored hosting environments, automatic updates, backups, and advanced tools for developers. Continuous testing and monitoring ensure seamless user journeys and accessibility.
How we build WooCommerce Online Stores at Valve
1. Planning
When we start building a WooCommerce online store, we work closely with the client to carefully plan what will be done, why, and how it aligns with their business goals. Together, we clarify target audiences and determine the type of online shopping experience that best serves their needs. At the same time, we review the customer journey and sketch the visual design to ensure it resonates with buyers and aligns with the company’s brand and website.
Once the plan is clear, we test and explore prototypes to identify the best ways to create a functional and effective online store. This process ensures the store appeals to both the company and its customers. Testing is conducted collaboratively with our clients and the end users of the store, providing invaluable insights into what will make the e-commerce solution successful.
2. WooCommerce Implementation
When building a WooCommerce online store, we tailor it to meet the client’s needs and support their goals, configuring the necessary plugins along the way. During the implementation phase, we also establish clear tools and processes for managing products and orders, with or without integrations.
Typically, a range of custom features is created for the store, defined and planned during the initial project stages. In previous projects, these features have included ERP integrations, request-for-quote tools, multi-currency support, country-specific pricing, customer-specific pricing, hidden content or prices behind login, customized email notifications, alerts for new products, payment method customizations, and advanced product search and filtering functionalities.
3. WooCommerce Maintenance, Optimization, and Continuous Development
Once the WooCommerce online store is complete, we take care of its maintenance and updates in collaboration with industry-leading hosting providers. We also focus on ensuring the store’s longevity, development, and scalability by optimizing it in partnership with our clients. Collecting user feedback is an essential part of the process, enabling us to continuously improve the store.
A reliable maintenance and support service ensures the online store remains operational, secure, and resilient, even during traffic spikes. By outsourcing maintenance, you can focus on your core business while allowing a skilled partner to handle your e-commerce platform.
Maintenance and optimization costs vary, typically ranging from a few hundred to several thousand euros per month, depending on the scope of work required and the level of optimization or new functionality desired. Our support and maintenance services are available to our clients every business day.
Sources:
- Gartner – Future of Sales ebook
- https://northpatrol.fi/2024/08/22/suomen-suosituimmat-verkkokauppateknologiat/
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