Do you offer services for WordPress? Then you can no longer ignore WooCommerce. The growing shopping market is an opportunity for all freelancers and agencies working in the open source environment. We'll show you what options and business models are available.

There are already numerous providers on the market who set up or administer online stores. But only a few of them have experienced developers in their ranks who are actually familiar with WooCommerce - this is your chance. Do you come from the WordPress community? And have already worked in it for a few years? These are the best prerequisites for adding online stores to your portfolio.

Note: You haven't worked with WooCommerce yet? Then first read our two articles on the advantages and disadvantages as well as the cost calculation for the store system.

WooCommerce: store system on the rise

Store owners repeatedly report that it is anything but easy to find good service providers and external employees. Developers for WordPress and WooCommerce are in demand. The relevant knowledge can therefore be marketed well and at realistic hourly rates. However, you should not underestimate the effort involved in setting up and maintaining an online store.

Hidden behind inconspicuous sub-menu items in the WooCommerce backend are functions that quickly cause barely recognizable errors. For example, incorrect calculation of taxes. If WooCommerce and its plugins are not configured correctly, the individual components will play off against each other. A few more link tips on this later.

My recommendation: Set up one or more WooCommerce stores of your own first - regardless of whether you actually sell the products they contain or whether it's just a demo. The best way to get to know the peculiarities of WooCommerce is to actually use it. If you don't know the underlying processes, you won't be able to develop plugins or themes for the store system.

Our tools for freelancers and agencies help you to maintain an overview during development. Among other things, with an easy-to-use staging environment, backups without a plugin and free WooCommerce hosting.

The next step would then be to take over the maintenance of a smaller WooCommerce store - including entering products. This will allow you to quickly learn more about associated functions such as order processing, shipping, payment and checkout.

No matter which path you choose: First find out where your strengths lie with WooCommerce and WordPress. Are you the typical administrator? Do you prefer development? Do you love web design? Or do you see yourself in the planning role of project management? In the shopping environment, there is sometimes very little overlap between these tasks. Because each one quickly becomes very complex. Experts are needed in eCommerce, not generalists. Your customers will quickly notice whether you put your heart and soul into your work or not.

Requirements for service providers

Operating an online store requires technical knowledge, but also expertise in the following areas:

• Online and tax law
• Logistics, accounting
• Usability (user-friendliness) and web design
• Online and content marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), performance measurement via Google Analytics and similar tools
• Distribution in the social networks

Your customers will therefore confront you with very different questions. Think carefully in advance about which of these packages you can handle yourself and which you would honestly prefer to work with other professionals on.

Below you will find some areas in which you can work with WooCommerce. You don't develop, but run an online store yourself? Then use the list to find out more about the quality of your service providers.

Maintenance of WooCommerce

Most store owners initially take on the maintenance of their portal themselves. However, many are quickly overwhelmed when

• The online store is run in parallel with a retail store that demands the owners' full attention
• No technical understanding is available - whether in dealing with WordPress and WooCommerce or in general
• The store is growing rapidly, many products need to be entered and updated at the same time, orders are getting out of hand (see our tips on high-performance WooCommerce hosting)

In all these cases, the operators are grateful for a service provider who takes over all or part of the administrative activities. Billing is usually based on time and effort, but a fixed monthly flat rate is also conceivable.

The first option is very convenient for your customers: high payments are only due if there is a lot of work to be done, which is ideally reflected in higher sales. With the flat rate, you as a service provider should specify in writing exactly which task packages are included and which are not.

Our tip: Don't accept an assignment without a written contract. Clarify important questions about the scope of your work, rights of use and liability. Your maintenance can lead to store downtime without this being foreseeable - for example when updating WooCommerce or a central plugin. And that can quickly become very expensive. Have every contract legally checked by a law firm.

Typical packages for content or technical maintenance are, for example:

• Creating products or importing them from external databases, including quality control
• Optimizing product images for the online store
• Selection of suitable plugins for new functions
• Updating WordPress, WooCommerce, existing plugins and the theme
• Checking existing and new functions in current versions of WooCommerce, troubleshooting incompatibilities
• Further development of the web design and the WooCommerce theme
• Continuous updates, restoring backups in the event of an error

With all these tasks, you will quickly be confronted with questions that go beyond technical issues. For example, about online law ("Is the proposed plugin GDPR-compliant?", "What exactly does the product page need to look like to avoid warnings?") or search engine optimization. You can either educate yourself here or work with suitable experts. Clarify the question of who is liable for what in each case.

Development of plugins

Developing plugins for WordPress requires some experience. This is even more the case with WooCommerce. This is because the little helpers quickly intervene deeply in the logic of the store system. One faulty line of code and the checkout doesn't work as desired. Or even worse: fees and taxes are calculated incompletely. If such errors are only discovered after a certain amount of time, and this is certainly the case from time to time in practice, then store owners have a lot of work to do.

WooCommerce developers therefore need a deeper understanding of disciplines such as accounting, tax law or logistics - depending on the specific solutions you are planning. Your customers rightly expect your product to be not only technically perfect, but also in terms of content. If you find it difficult to get to grips with the world of eCommerce, you should look for a different field of work.

But now to the opportunities for WooCommerce plugins. These are quite promising. Depending on the area of application, the market is not as large as it is for plugins for WordPress itself. However, you can expect the following benefits:

• The extensions can usually be sold at a higher price than WordPress plugins.
• Store owners earn money with their portals. That's why they invest more. In general, the proportion of professional operators is significantly higher than in the environment of classic bloggers.
• They often have no technical expertise. This means that they need tools even for straightforward use cases and do not develop them themselves.
• Security and consistency are particularly important to webshop operators. This is why license agreements often remain in place for many years.

For example, browse wordpress.org for plugins for WooCommerce. Based on the download figures, you can quickly see which topics are particularly popular with users. At the same time, read the associated support forums carefully. This will show you how complex the queries are depending on the subject area - and how much work you would have to do. This information must be included in your overall calculation and pricing.

Tools with added value or a unique selling point are typically found in the following areas:

• The connection to payment or logistics service providers that operate in a local market and have high or growing access figures there
• Interfaces to systems such as accounting, merchandise management, analytics or CRM
• Extensions to new legal bases such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which is particularly important for webshops
• Functions that are only required in certain target countries
• Advanced marketing tools from the areas of newsletters, cross-selling or SEO for WooCommerce

Finally, check which tools have a Pro version. After all, users are not prepared to pay for every application. This way, you can roughly calculate the market opportunities for your plugin idea. It also doesn't hurt to have the WooCommerce roadmap on your screen:

It makes little sense to develop a component that ends up in the core of the store system a little later. Unless you develop it further for a specific sub-target market.

Theme development

The same applies here as with the plugins. You will hardly be able to launch a WooCommerce theme that becomes very popular right from the start. It can be more effective if you focus on niches. For example, with a main theme and associated child themes for individual markets (one for food stores, one for online pharmacies, one for craftsmen, etc.).

However, research in advance how big the respective market is. For example: If online pharmacies are heavily regulated in your country, it makes no sense to offer products for this target group. Portals such as themeforest.net are a good way of finding out general sales figures for individual sectors. You can also use the support questions to find out which countries the majority of users come from.

The following points have proven themselves in practice:

• Offer themes that are consistently designed for WooCommerce. All-rounder templates usually perform worse here.
• Research which services the store system does not offer as standard that your theme can cover. For example, special subpages for showcases by artists and creatives.
• Test target groups or markets that do not belong to the classic stores but still sell products and services with WooCommerce. There may be less competition there. For example, event agencies, trainers, marketplaces and trading centers or subscription models.
• Place special emphasis on a user-friendly design of the product pages and on the topic of performance. Many classic store themes do not really perform well here.
• Make an effort with the theme documentation. It is your flagship and reveals a lot about the quality of your work.

In general, your theme needs as many unique selling points as possible, with the broadest possible target market. This will make marketing much easier for you.

Note: You should create your own portal on which you market your products - regardless of whether you develop plugins or themes. However, it takes time for your customers to get to know it. Especially at the beginning, you can also use marketplaces such as Themeforest or codecanyon.net for sales.

Online marketing for WooCommerce

Web stores sometimes require different online marketing measures than traditional portals. This starts with the SEO optimization of product pages and ends with services such as Google or Facebook shopping. Search engines, for example, usually have special rules for listing webshops. Subscribe to the Google Webmaster Central blog. It gives you first-hand tips on what is important when optimizing websites and stores:

WooCommerce SEO is still a small niche, but this could change as it becomes more widely known. There are also countless small webshops that are gradually becoming more professional. They have not yet recognized the need for optimization. But with increasing store competition, this is inevitable.

An online marketing package for WooCommerce could include classic SEO measures, for example:

• Optimization of product and category pages
• Development of a target-oriented category and keyword structure
• Avoidance of duplicate content
• Correct technical labeling of multilingual stores
• Increase loading speed etc.

However, this also includes the rather complex setup and maintenance of associated SEO plugins for WordPress and WooCommerce, such as Yoast WooCommerce SEO. See also our e-book on Page Speed & Performance. In it, you can find out which optimization measures ensure a faster WooCommerce store.

Takeover of complete store projects

Of course, you can also offer all the services described above in one. The main target groups are then:

• Companies that focus on sales but not on technical operations
• Traditional stores that want to generate additional sales but do not have the necessary expertise or time to do so
• Classic portals that already work with WordPress and require an additional sales channel (e.g. for e-books or webinars)

To be fair, however, you only offer such complete packages in an agency, not as a lone fighter. And only if you have specialized employees for web design, development, analytics, performance, SEO, etc. in your team.

As already mentioned, the individual disciplines are now so complex that it is impossible to combine them in one person. Many companies have had bad experiences with agencies. Mainly because they promise things that they can't keep afterwards. Experienced clients prefer you to name your strengths and bring in specialists for everything else.

In general, it will make it easier for you to get started if you network well with other freelancers or agencies that work in the WordPress and WooCommerce environment.

Important sources and WooCommerce Community

So far, people interested in WooCommerce have organized themselves in the WordPress community. The central contact points for this are the larger WordCamps and local user meetings called WP Meetups. Many of these meetings are published on meetup.com, where you can search for suitable events in your region. One place to go for German-language meetups is wpmeetups.de:

The first meetings purely for WooCommerce are now also being advertised. See the corresponding section on woocommerce.com.

Below you will find the most important sources relating to the leading store system - divided into international sites and references for the German-speaking market. You can also subscribe to our blog. In it, we regularly report on all innovations for WooCommerce. Follow it on Twitter, Facebook or via our newsletter.

International portals and forums

Official pages of WooCommerce

• Official WooCommerce website
• Plugin page on wordpress.org
• Extensions for WooCommerce
• WooCommerce developer blog
• WooCommerce user blog
• Documentation
• Developer documentation/API
• WooCommerce support forum
• Premium Support
• Slack Community

Other sources

• Getting Started" documentation
• Video tutorials "How to build a WooCommerce store"
• WooCommerce tutorials on YouTube
• Posts on WordPress.tv
• WooCommerce Podcast by BobWP
• WooCommerce plugins on wordpress.org
• GitHub Repository
• Free WooCommerce Themes
• Facebook group for beginners
• Facebook group for professionals

Portals and forums for Germany, Austria and Switzerland

• Posts in our blog
• Our newsletter
• Series of articles "Setting up WooCommerce" by MarketPress
• Tutorials from WooExpert
• Link list to WooCommerce from MarketPress
• WooCommerce Hosting
• WooCommerce specialist group on Facebook
• WooCommerce forum on wpde.org

You can find more tips on WooCommerce in our 70+ page e-book WooCommerce for professionals: Online stores with WordPress. It is aimed at freelancers, agencies, WP professionals and beginners.

We look forward to meeting you at a WordCamp - Raidboxes regularly sponsors camps and meetups in German-speaking countries. Do you have further questions about WooCommerce? Then feel free to use the comment function.

And now good luck with your WooShops!

Featured image: Marvin Meyer @Unsplash