In this podcast, we look at the common perceptions of eCommerce, and more specifically, WooCommerce. When you hear either of those, do you immediately think of selling physical products?

I chat with Zack Stepek from Mindsize about this perceptions surrounding  WooCommerce or entering the eCommerce space. We talk about:

• How most people think of only selling products when they think of  eCommerce.
• The top ways of selling with WooCommerce outside of physical products.
• Some of the least likely things you might consider using WooCommerce for.
• A few uses that fall between the most popular and least likely.
• What we might see in the future related to what people sell online.

Today’s transcript is brought to you by Liquid Web, WooCommerce hosting done the right way.

Bob: Hey, Zach. Welcome to the show.

Zach: Thank you, Bob, it’s good to be here.

Bob: I think that the best way to talk about this is to just dive into it and learn from your  experience because I know that you work with a lot of clients who use WooCommerce at different levels. When you mention WooCommerce to people, do you feel like in their brains right away they’re thinking, “Oh, that’s selling products.” Or do you think that’s changing in the space?

Zach: I think it’s changing a little, but the vast majority of the people that I talk to immediately regarding any e-commerce platform is selling physical products that they have to ship to somebody. I think that most of the time when people are looking at that, they’re thinking, “Okay, people are going to place an order, they’re going to go and we’re going to have to receive that order somehow and warehouse it and pack it into shipping boxes and figure out what to charge for shipping. And figure out how we’re going to ship in the first place, and how we’re going to get the best rates.” And all of these other pieces that go into the lifecycle of a physical product order. You can get started in eCommerce by selling things that don’t require all of those steps. I think that’s the big thing that I’ve been trying to share lately is that eEommerce isn’t just selling physical products, it’s anytime that you’re using a website to perform a transaction where you’re buying a good, whether that be a service or a booking for a website, or for a hotel.

When you book a room at a hotel on a website, that’s e-Commerce. You book a plane ticket, that’s e-Commerce. So, really trying to shift that perspective away from just physical product orders, and physical product fulfillment to e-Commerce within a larger ecosystem that consists of a number of types of businesses.

Bob: I think in one of my posts I actually put the definition of e-Commerce from I think it might’ve been Wikipedia or something like that. And in a nutshell, it was selling anything online. People do get tied into that product thing, and I think a lot of times that’s why they go, “Ooh, I’m not going to be doing that.” And a lot of people don’t even realize they’re doing e-Commerce—or actually have it on their site— until they start to dive into it or hear someone like you actually explain more clearly.

Zach: If we look at the most most people who are in the WordPress space, if you’ve