On 19th May, one of the most popular e-commerce WordPress plugins – WooCommerce becomes officially part of the WordPress family.
Some fast facts on WooCommmerce as of May 2015.
- Founders: Mark Forrester & Magnus Jepson
Number of Employees: 55
Downloads: 7 million with approximately 1 million active installed base
Market Share: 30% of All Online Stores Worldwide (In comparison, my favorite e-commerce platform OpenCart has about 7.13%)
Acquisition Cost (Speculated): USD30 million (Source: recode.net)
It’s Automattic’s biggest acquisition so far. With WordPress backing up WooCommerce, we know that:
1) e-Commerce is important to bloggers, and to Automattic.
2) Plug-ins development can be a lucrative business model.
3) Besides banner advertisements and sponsored posts, you can monetize your content on WordPress by selling physical goods
I have personally not used WooCommerce, only got around installing it 3 years ago on one of the blogs I manage. I didn’t like the interface and I had a difficult time convincing myself how a plug-in could turn WordPress into a full-fledged e-commerce platform- equipped with invoicing, payment, inventory and logistic features. Call me an old fart, but I am in the camp where if you try to do too many things, you start to compromise on your real strengths.