10 WooCommerce Plugins, Reviewed
Image Credit: Amazon.com
Guest Post by Common Orchid (who prefers to keep his identity private).
I've been using WooCommerce for just about 5 years now for my store (we sell software, digital/download only), and over that time we've gradually integrated plugins - both officially sold by WooCommerce itself, and 3rd party ones.
Some have worked great and helped us solve important problems! Others, not so much. Here's a rundown of 10 and my brief thoughts on each.
Facebook for WooCommerce
(currently using) We use this for retargeting and other dynamic Facebook ads. Basically it allows Facebook to pull product data from our shop and display it to the right people. It works fine. It's not particularly customizable though, and we've had some sync problems in the past. If there's a better solution I'd love to check it out, but for now it does get the job done.
WooCommerce Cart Notices
(previously used) We used this plugin to display dynamic notices on the cart page. These notices can be based on order amount, deadline, or certain products/categories in the cart. It works fine.
It's useful if you're running limited-time promotions and want to make sure people see it before they check out. However, we don't use it all the time because it's not relevant unless we have something we need to say. You have to be careful with too many notices also, as it might distract people from finishing their checkout.
WooCommerce Checkout Add-Ons
(previously used) If you have any kind of extra order options not directly related to shipping and not related to any specific product, this lets you display them on the checkout page. For example, say you have some bonus items like USB keys, stickers, or other branded items of relatively low value.
You could have these as a low cost add-on with this plugin. Once again, we're not using it at the moment because we don't currently have any offers like that, but when we do, it works well.
WooCommerce Coupon Exclusions
(previously used) This is a 3rd-party plugin that adds some much-needed logic to WC's coupon system. Namely, the ability to have certain mutually exclusive coupons. For example, say you have three coupons: A, B, and C. You want A to be usable all the time, but allow only B or C, and not both. This logic isn't normally possible with WC's coupon logic (even Smart Coupons!) So, it's quite effective. The only issue is that it can slow down the coupon editing process in the backend. This is going to be fixed soon - or so I'm told - at which point we'll re-enable it.
WooCommerce Force Sells
(previously used) Say you have product X which requires product Y to use. You can order product Y by itself, but you don't want to allow customers to buy only product X, as they wouldn't be able to use it. You can write glaring notification text until the cows come home but I guarantee people will still mess up and order X by itself. That's where this plugin comes in. You can set product X such that product Y is added to the cart when X is added to the cart.
That's a basic example, but it can handle some more advanced logic as well. At the moment we don't have any products that need this. However, previously we had some software that did work exactly like I described, and this plugin solved the problem perfectly.
WooCommerce Name Your Price
(currently using) Not a great idea if you're selling physical items, but for any kind of digital goods this can be very helpful. Maybe you have a free app, course, musical album, or video that you want to be completely free. (This can be a good way of getting email signups!)
But, you don't want to lose money on bandwidth and other overhead. This plugin allows you to set a 'suggested' price which customers can then change.
We found that adding a simple $5 pre-filled suggested price for our free downloads helped bring in a non-trivial amount of extra revenue (enough to pay for hosting and bandwidth every month.) A great plugin!
WooCommerce PDF Invoices & Packing Slips
(currently using) A boring but useful plugin. There's really not much to say; some people want an actual invoice with their purchase. Their PayPal/Stripe and store receipt aren't enough, for whatever reason. This plugin generates invoices which can be accessed via their account area, among other ways. Simple, works well, recommended if you need this functionality.
WooCommerce Product Bundles
(currently using) This is a pretty solid way to set up bundle functionality in your store. You create separate bundle products with their own pricing, SKUs, etc. Then, you simply select all the products that are part of that bundle. When people add the bundle to their cart, it adds all the items in the bundle, grouped under a single bundle price. Very useful!
WooCommerce Multi-Currency
(currently using) By default, your store can only be in a single currency, such as USD or Euro.. and normally, this doesn't impact much. People in other countries can still shop at your store and pay with their local credit card or PayPal account without issue.
Where we ran into a problem is that we wanted to add some payment methods specific to certain currencies and popular in certain countries, such as SOFORT (Germany, Austria, Switzerland) or Bancontact (Belgium).
Depending on your payment processor, you may not be able to use these methods unless your store is set to the correct currency.
Since this is otherwise impossible, you need a plugin like this one to allow for currency switching. This also lets you either dynamically or manually set exchange rates for when people view products in their native currency.
WooCommerce Free Gift Coupons
(previously used) This is now absolutely, completely pointless! The idea of this plugin is that customers could enter a certain coupon code, and receive a free product in their cart if their order met the right criteria (minimum cart total, category, etc.)
But... this functionality already exists in stock WooCommerce now. You can set coupons with a wide range of criteria/restrictions that add things to your cart for free. I can't see any reason why anyone should pay for or use this plugin anymore.
