I’m a part-time web-site designer/developer – these days, mostly I manage this web-site but every now and then will get asked to help on another project. The last time I worked on a store for a web-site was probably back in 2009.
Prior to 2009, I had done some web-hosting reselling where I had buttons setup on my web-site that would take customers through to PayPal where they could sign up for a recurring monthly payment. So if the hosting plan was $5 per month, they would be setup on a $5.00 recurring invoice through PayPal.
That was the extent of my e-commerce knowledge when I was asked to help configure Magento in 2009. It was a terrible experience – I was reading documentation, getting up very early in the morning (3:30 am) to work on it before I went to my real job, and I’m not sure I ever figured it out – it was a failure.
Recently I was asked to help build a web-site for a family member to sell some of her artwork and other things. I was hesitant because of my past experience with e-commerce. But, I decided I would get started and work through the issues and see what roadblocks I ran into and maybe learn something in the process.
I might’ve Googled “easiest way to build an online store” and pretty quickly found WooCommerce. I’m very familiar with WordPress and the fact that this was essentially just another plugin made it appealing. The start-up price of free was also appealing. The initial configuration was easy, setting up the products was easy. It just might be the easiest way to build an online store.
We’re not all the way up and running yet – and we’re a ways away from completing a first sale, but I have been so pleasantly surprised with setting it up. It was the total opposite of my last experience 12 years ago.