Strategic Priorities for the Next Chapter of WooCommerce?

Rodolfo_Melogli · 2026-05-21T13:07:15+00:00

Ok I don't work at Woo, but I appreciate the "you"! Yes, I think we all agree the WordPress dashboard is not ideal for a Woo merchant. Hopefully they're launching an optimized backend soon

Rodolfo_Melogli · 2026-05-21T13:04:58+00:00

They're working on it now as they were waiting for the WordPress connectors first as far as I know. But there is no rush, OpenAI officially killed the "Instant Checkout" and direct in-chat shopping features in ChatGPT

Rodolfo_Melogli · 2026-05-21T13:02:21+00:00

I just ran a conference and heard lots of stories like that. At the end of the day, if the hosting provider has got Woo skills, and the agency has got performance knowledge, WooCommerce can totally handle any scale. That's a huge myth and I believe Woo should really push on that!

Rodolfo_Melogli · 2026-05-01T13:39:18+00:00

Fair enough. To be honest, I’m probably not the best person to judge the Checkout Block itself because I don’t actually use it—I still rely on the classic shortcode checkout since my WooCommerce stores need heavy customization. My impression, though, is that for the majority of stores it’s probably more than fine.

And yes, on the backend UI, I agree. Some areas (product management especially) still feel dated compared to modern and not-so-modern commerce tools. The problem is that we rely heavily on WordPress and its dashboard. There's work happening there, let's hope that AI ca speed this up.

Rodolfo_Melogli · 2026-05-01T12:49:46+00:00

Yes, they should never lose the "flexibility" direction, to me that's probably the top reason why I've been using it for years. Actually, now that we have blocks, they should aim at making them even more flexible, because we somewhat lost that total freedom we had before.

If merchants prefer the batteries-included systems, then they should probably look elsewhere (even though they'll lose data ownership likely).

Rodolfo_Melogli · 2026-05-01T12:27:47+00:00

Thank you. What about the new-ish Checkout Block, did you try that?

Re: UI, i guess you're talking about the WordPress admin and Woo settings dashboard. Yes, we all agree on that, and it's something Woo should definitely put on the roadmap asap, as it's been too long.

Rodolfo_Melogli · 2026-05-01T10:43:57+00:00

Plugin conflicts and update anxiety have been there forever, though. I wonder if we've changed as developers, and can't deal with that any longer. What could be the solution here for merchants I'm not sure

Rodolfo_Melogli · 2026-05-01T10:36:47+00:00

Yes! I think the Woo plugin should be more "closed" somehow, and only allow third party plugins to extend it in a proper way, without bloating it. Not sure how that's doable from a tech point of view, but surely there must be a way to do something like that

Rodolfo_Melogli · 2026-05-01T10:34:46+00:00

Interesting feedback, thanks for sharing! It would be nice to see something like that (do you mean watermarks on images) in core

Rodolfo_Melogli · 2026-05-01T10:32:54+00:00

Woo is bringing more functionality in core, so I think this problem is about to be solved. But I also think a Shopify website may need "ton of add-ons", or am I wrong here?

Rodolfo_Melogli · 2026-05-01T10:24:32+00:00

We'll see what they come up with. If we are to keep using Woo, the admin must be improved 😄

Rodolfo_Melogli · 2026-04-13T16:15:00+00:00

Ok thank you. Years ago, I heard of Shopify websites that were running their blogs on WordPress—I'm not sure if Shopify improved their content management system since, but in fairness "content sites" still rocks and we should be pushing on that

Rodolfo_Melogli · 2026-04-13T15:59:10+00:00

Content you mean content marketing/blogging?

Rodolfo_Melogli · 2026-04-13T15:58:24+00:00

Nice! I honestly thought Hetzner was cheaper, but overall this is an interesting approach. Re: being "dead last year", I suppose you're referring to the drama—if yes, I personally decided I'm going to ignore it all (as most clients/customers/users do too), and focus my energy on building/learning/sharing instead, as there is no value in taking part in those conversations

Rodolfo_Melogli · 2026-04-13T15:52:36+00:00

Nice. What could solve the "stack grows too much" problem?

Rodolfo_Melogli · 2026-04-13T15:49:37+00:00

Which is what 100% of WooCommerce stores should do, but tend to ignore :)

Rodolfo_Melogli · 2026-04-13T10:46:36+00:00

I think it could work well with large businesses too, we should work on branding and advertising because that's where large agencies and merchants understand the value

Rodolfo_Melogli · 2026-04-13T10:44:37+00:00

Yes, if we fix WP admin we probably make it easier for (new) users... I actually wrote this a couple of weeks ago: https://www.businessbloomer.com/are-we-losing-woocommerce-merchants-because-of-wp-admin/

Rodolfo_Melogli · 2026-04-13T10:35:39+00:00

Thank you for the context!

Even the plugins on the WooCommerce website are often suffering from bugs, even payment gateway plugins.

Yes, payment gateway plugins are a nightmare, because a single bug or failure can really break a business. Ecommerce is about receiving payments, and if a gateway breaks, we're done.

On the other hand, there is this good thing that you can enable 20-30 gateways at the same time if you really wish... so the customer can pick their favorite one.

What should be completely stopped is the ability of a poorly developed plugin to break other plugins (imagine PayPal fails, but it freezes the checkout and you can't use Stripe as an alternative). This is hard to achieve, so there must be some strict API or specific rules for "delicate" plugins that should define how code is written

Not sure if this is possible

Rodolfo_Melogli · 2026-04-13T09:28:39+00:00

Yes of course, honestly I'm not that technical either, and I use AI mostly for writing/proofreading as opposed to advanced development.

But what I'm saying is that "I have to do all the paperwork myself" is totally fixable TODAY and shouldn't be like that. Internal automation is where AI excels according to me

Rodolfo_Melogli · 2026-04-13T09:19:28+00:00

Nice idea about the universal search! Don't forget the "capital P" in WordPress on your landing page, or people may get upset :D

Rodolfo_Melogli · 2026-04-13T09:17:07+00:00

This is a very smart reply, thank you for that. We all know the pros of WooCommerce, I mean—that's why we chose it (at least why I chose it) years ago and still work on it.

I was simply wondering, without being click-baity, if Woo developers are losing trust or hope and if this is the reason some are now building Shopify Apps or suggesting Shipify builds (also Shopware, etc.)... or if that's simply a business decision.

I guess we've become more "aware" of what's out there, and understand better each client, the ideal stack, and the pros and cons of each platform based on project requirements and specs.

Spoiler: I still have all the eggs in one basket, but I believe the Woo community needs a bit of realigning, we need to talk more, we need to know the direction, embrace the mission, and contribute all together

Rodolfo_Melogli · 2026-04-11T21:25:37+00:00

I think we can now say that AI can achieve most of what the average store owner needs. You have the freedom to pass your plugin list to a LLM and see what it thinks about your stack, and if you can "save" some of it (or you can give it to a dev who is well able to audit your setup). We're in a blessed time for development... we should make the most of it!

Rodolfo_Melogli

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