How to use WooCommerce for high-volume inventories

April 27, 2023

Can you operate your business on WooCommerce if you have a high-volume inventory? In short, yes! It seems like a common myth that WooCommerce can’t handle large inventories – but this couldn’t be further from the truth. 

There are many examples of online stores with massive inventories that run on WooCommerce. Just to provide a few examples of online stores that have over 10,000 products:

  1. Inter-Shop
  2. Tarox
  3. The Spectator
  4. ISC

So how do they pull it off?

WooCommerce itself is extremely lightweight, and the WooCommerce team has said that when it comes to scaling, “Sky is the limit,” and assures us that some of their users have upwards of 100,000 products with thousands of transactions a minute.

WooCommerce itself is acclaimed for its flexibility – WooCommerce can basically accomplish anything, and that includes scaling to accommodate thousands of products and transactions. It’s everything else that comes with WooCommerce that can lead store owners to experience scaling issues – hosting, themes, extensions, and site code are all factors that can influence your performance and scalability.

Here are a few of the biggest factors that determine your scalability, and how to ensure you make the most of them achieve the highest-performing WooCommerce store possible.

Hosting

Your choice of web hosting will have a huge impact on your site’s performance and scalability. How do you choose the best hosting?

-Avoid shared servers. Although they are less expensive, sharing your server will definitely slow down your site. Instead, opt for a virtual private server (VPS) or a dedicated server.

-Make sure the hosting provider has the latest versions of PHP and MYSQL.

-Make sure your hosting provider doesn’t have any limits of resources such as bandwidth or disk space. If they do, it will be difficult to scale your site.

-Always check reviews to see what other site owners have to say.

Themes and Extensions

Your WooCommerce theme and all of the other plugins and extensions on your site can take up a lot of space on your site. Every time a visitor loads your site, their browser has to send a request to your server. The more requests their browser has to make, the slower your site will be. 

Minimize the effect of plugins by:

-Making sure your theme and plugins have optimized code

-Only keeping the plugins you really need 

-Keeping everything updated always. An outdated version of WordPress or any of its plugins can lead to problems. You can opt for automatic updates with a plugin like Jetpack.

-Troubleshooting your plugins to make sure they all interact with each other properly and aren’t causing problems on your site.

Caching

We just talked about the length of time it takes for visitors to load your site due to plugins. A great way to increase your site speed for visitors is to employ a caching plugin. And yes, we know we just told you to only use the plugins you need – but you definitely need this one. 

A caching plugin, such as W3 Total Cache, will save a copy of your site on your visitor’s browser. Next time they visit your site, the saved, pre-loaded version will save their browser from having to load every file from scratch again.

Plugins that will help you manage your bulk inventory

Oliver POS

Oliver POS is a WooCommerce point of sale that can handle unlimited products and unlimited transactions. In fact, most Oliver POS users are operating stores with bulk inventories, and are selling online and in-store with Oliver POS with no problem. 

Oliver offers multiple registers and locations and is coming out with a multiple inventory feature, so you can manage separate inventories with ease.

Bulk Stock Management

Bulk Stock Management is a WooCommerce extension that helps you manage bulk stock levels. It lets you filter products by type, bulk edit stock status, quantity, SKU, and more. 

ATUM Inventory Management for WooCommerce

This free plugin helps you keep track of your inventory, suppliers, prices, and more from your dashboard. 

Veeqo

Veequo offers advanced features such as warehouse management, product management, advanced shipping rules, and more. It also helps you sell from global marketplaces such as Amazon and eBay with just a simple click.

To learn more about inventory management plugins for WooCommerce, click here.

To learn more about scaling your website, you can read more here

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