Mastering WooCommerce by Patrick Rauland is a print and digital book that’s just as useful for those new to WooCommerce and would like a step-by-step guide to building a store as it is for more experienced users who are seeking a detailed reference guide they can turn to when needed.
If you want to increase your knowledge of WooCommerce, whether you’re just starting out or you’re already familiar with this platform, then investing in Mastering WooCommerce would be an excellent purchase.
While there are many valuable WooCommerce guides online, you can’t beat a book when it comes to covering a topic in depth. Having a printed or digital book to hand that covers all the essentials, and more in one place can be a great alternative or accompaniment to the countless articles and other resources available online.
Also, with a book from a reputable author and publisher, you can be sure that everything has been checked for accuracy — something that isn’t always the case when consuming online content.
If that all sounds appealing, this review looks at the Mastering WooCommerce book by Patrick Rauland to help you decide if it’s a good option for you.
What Does the Book Cover?
The book Mastering WooCommerce: Build, customize, and launch a complete e-commerce website with WooCommerce from scratch, Second Edition by Mr. Patrick Rauland, consists of 20 chapters and 352 pages.
It’s available in print and eBook formats and aims to take the reader all the way from installing WordPress and WooCommerce through to creating plugins for WooCommerce and keeping a store safe and secure.
There are also chapters on marketing and optimization that cover SEO, building effective product pages, and creating landing pages. Therefore, if you want help making your store a successful business as well as one that is well-built and secure, this book covers all the relevant topics.
To give you an overview, the book is divided into the following parts:
- Exploring the Essentials of an eCommerce Store
- Managing an Online Store
- Customizing the Appearance and Functionality of Your Store
The parts are divided into many sub-parts, each illustrated with screenshots where appropriate.
You can view the table of contents here to see what’s included in each part of the book.
Who the Book Is For
Obviously, the book is aimed at anyone creating or managing an online store built with WordPress and WooCommerce.
Whether you’re starting a store from scratch or working on or taking over an existing WooCommerce store, the book has lots of useful content.
It definitely covers the basics, with information on how to install a plugin. But it also goes a lot deeper, with content on how to create a plugin.
Thanks to this, the depth and breadth of the content make the book ideal for anyone looking for a resource they can read in sequence to get from total beginner to expert, as well as more experienced WooCommerce users who want a reference they can turn to when they need to do something they’re unfamiliar with. This could include setting up a heatmap or adding 360-degree images to product pages.
As the book covers everything from configuring and organizing your products in WooCommerce to attracting traffic with SEO, there’s an extensive range of content included.
Also, as the book covers managing sales in WordPress admin as well as integrating your store with an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system, configuring a Point of Sale (POS) solution, and using fulfillment software, it’s equally suited to those running small WooCommerce stores that sell a few products a month online as it is to much bigger businesses that have physical locations and need to connect their store with many other systems.
Overall, if you want an accessible yet detailed and in-depth resource you can quickly turn to when working with WooCommerce, having Mastering WooCommerce on your physical or digital bookshelf is a great option.
What’s the Format Like?
As mentioned, the book is available in print (black and white paperback) and digital formats. The latter covers EPUB and PDF formats. This allows you to read the book on a Kindle or similar device.
While the print format is more expensive than the eBook version, you get instant access to a PDF copy whilst your print order is shipped.
Being able to get the book in physical and Kindle-friendly formats will appeal to anyone who wants to increase their WooCommerce knowledge while away from a computer screen.
When it comes to the actual layout and presentation of the book, the content is very easy to navigate and read.
The table of contents and the index of the digital version is fully clickable, taking you instantly to the relevant section of the book. You can also use the search of your reader app or device to jump to what you’re looking for.
As the parts are all broken down into many subparts, it’s easy to skip directly to the section of the book you want to access.
When it comes to the contents of the book itself, code examples are clearly formatted.
Screenshots are used throughout the book to provide more content to the instructions and examples. However, in the print version of the book, everything is printed in black and white rather than color.
Who is Patrick Rauland?
The author, Patrick Rauland, describes himself as being obsessed with WooCommerce. He currently works at Xero Shoes as a Senior eCommerce Engineer, so he certainly has the professional experience to teach others about this topic.
Over the years, Patrick has written multiple books about WooCommerce and created courses for LinkedIn Learning (formerly Lynda.com)
Before that, he worked for WordPress eCommerce plugin companies as well as creating content for eCommerceFuel.
His professional history demonstrates Patrick is someone you can trust when it comes to learning about eCommerce and that he can convey this information to an audience effectively.
If you’d like to know more about Patrick and experience his style of content creation, he runs the popular Speaking in Bytes programming blog, where you can find lots of eCommerce-related content.
Mastering WooCommerce Pricing
The Mastering WooCommerce book is available in print and eBook formats:
- eBook (DRM-free EPUB and PDF formats): $35.99
- Print: $44.99
You can also access the book and lots more content by signing up for a Packt subscription.
Packt is the site the book is available to purchase from. If you subscribe, you get access to a wealth of learning content covering web development, programming, security, and more.
The subscription is free for the first seven days. After that, it’s $19.99 per month, and you can cancel at any time. Due to this, you could try the book risk-free to see if it’s right for you.
Final Thoughts
If you’re using WooCommerce, then there’s a good chance you’re working on a site that needs to be properly set up and maintained.
With eCommerce sites, you need to worry much more about performance, data security, managing orders efficiently, and much more, compared to if you were simply running a WordPress blog. It’s fair to say that with online shops, there’s more at stake compared to a regular website.
When things go wrong with an eCommerce store, they have the potential to go really wrong!
Due to this, it’s well worth having a resource on hand that will not only help you build and manage the store correctly, but is also something you can turn to if you run into any problems.
That’s why a comprehensive book on this topic makes sense.
Also, as WooCommerce is such a vast topic, there might be a few areas of running a store you hadn’t even considered.
Sure, you can look things up with a quick Google search, but if you aren’t aware of the potential issues or recommended steps, you won’t know what to research.
However, if you have a comprehensive book like Mastering WooCommerce, you’ll probably get introduced and educated on topics you didn’t even know you needed to be aware of.
As you can browse the topics covered in Mastering WooCommerce, and with access to the book included within the Packt monthly subscription service free 7-day trial, it’s definitely worth purchasing if you are building or managing a WooCommerce store.
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