WooCommerce shared its vision for the future and key areas of focus for the upcoming year in a post entitled, WooCommerce in 2025: Building a platform for the future. I'll highlight the posts key points below:
- WooCommerce's new High-Performance Order Storage (HPOS) system demonstrates 5x faster order processing and 1.5x faster checkouts, freeing up developer time spent optimizing custom database solutions.
- Their new block-based checkout gives merchants more control over their checkout experience, similar to Shopify's Checkout Blocks.
- WooCommerce is bringing more commerce capabilities directly into the core product, such as the addition of built-in brand management functionality, which lets merchants create and manage brands for stores and assign them to products.
- This example is part of WooCommerce's “more in core” shift, which is aimed at giving merchants a fully-integrated set of functionality out-of-the-box without having to rely on plugins and custom functionality solutions.
- The “more in core” movement includes plans for making its payment, shipping, and tax services more native to WooCommerce core.
- WooCommerce is developing an MVP for Cost of Goods Sold (COGS), which allows merchants to calculate profit margins for products and orders.
- They are also planning to develop Back in Stock Notifications into the core product.
In other Automattic / WordPress news this week…
A group of WordPress contributors, including long-time core committers and community leaders, issued a call for changes to the governance of the open-source project, urging Matt Mullenweg to work with the community instead of continuing to act unilaterally.
In an open letter entitled Dear WordPress community: We stand with you, the contributors raised objections about governance, transparency, and decision-making processes of the organization, highlighting concerns about “double standards,” including Mullenweg’s lack of accountability under the project’s Code of Conduct and the executive director’s direct employment by Automattic.
The open letter follows an order by a California District Court judge for Automattic to stop blocking WP Engine's access to WordPress.org resources and interfering with its plugins. If you're out of the loop on what's going on between WP Engine and Automattic, TechCrunch has an article entitled The WordPress vs. WP Engine drama, explained that offers an up-to-date account of the beef between the two companies.