The ‘what’ and ‘why’ of brand refresh is very well articulated in Daniel Nieuwenhuizen’s post – Designing the evolution of the Woo brand identity. Worth reading that first. In this one, I’m will pick on a couple of points that I think are particularly relevant to smaller, ambitious WordPress businesses, which is 99% of us.
You may also want to read my piece in January making a case for brand marketing, and why WordPress businesses should invest more in it this year.
What the Woo?
I’ve always liked the Woo bit in the WooCommerce name. Just the sound of it is fun: Woo! It has a meaning, of course – to try to persuade someone to support you or to use your business (Cambridge Dictionary).
The meaning has evolved over time as their focus shifted from the original WooThemes offering towards Ecommerce, as explained by Mark Forrester, one of its founders, back in 2014:
That was the start of our adventure and the brand that has carried us on a significant journey. Over time, “Woo” turned out to be the acronym for “winning others over,” a slogan we rally behind.
Whether intentionally or not, WooCommerce worked well “architecturally” too. By this, I mean allowing other names to be constructed off the ‘Woo’ part. For example:
Considering all of the above, and even SEO considerations, the new slimmed down name is the evolution of a name that was both brilliant and established. That can confidently take on the Shopify, BigCommerce and the rest of the players in the Ecommerce space.
Bold, beautiful & unequivocally Woo
Let’s consider what makes a great brand name and to what extent Woo matches its characteristics. I’m going to score each out of 10 and share a total. Feel free to disagree in the comments.
- Distinctiveness – 8.5/10. I can’t think of one other brand that features ‘woo’ in its name. There are 430 if you search Trademarkia.com but most are of unknown entities, and a lot of them are dead or cancelled.
- Simplicity – 9.5/10. It’s one syllable long and uses two letters. It rolls off the tongue easily and is a word everyone can pronounce.
- Appropriateness – 8/10 – The connection between wooing and selling is there, of course. It’s not as obvious as BigCommerce or even Shopify, but originality gets you extra points.
- Flexibility – 8/10 – As already discussed, Woo works well for a portfolio of products and services. I also like how ‘Powered by Woo’ phrases sound. It’s easy to use in all kinds of copy and taglines.
- Sound Symbolism – 7.5/10 – This is about how a name’s phonetic qualities relate to the product and brand value. I think it’s a 10/10, but for someone who doesn’t know the brand, Ecommerce doesn’t spring to mind, so a little obscure.
- Cultural Sensitivity – 9/10. I asked Claude and only got this back from Claude AI: “In Korean, “우” (pronounced like “woo”) can sound similar to the word for cow/ox “소” and can be associated with crying/weeping “우는”. Considering the number of languages and dialects there are (in Claude, at least) that’s a very good result. They avoided a Chevrolet Nova-like blunder (which sounds like ‘Chevrolet doesn’t go’ in Spanish).
- Trademark Availability – 7.5/10 – Getting the trademark in the main markets if you’re not a multi-billion business is near impossible. In China, Woo is a brand management operation selling clothing products.
In total, Woo scores 58/70, which equates to 8.2 out of 10. A very good result.
A quick note about using Woo in the name of your own product or service
There are many plugins in the WordPress plugin directory that feature Woo in their name. I’m not a lawyer, but Automattic, owner of Woo, makes it quite clear that they shouldn’t be using it that way:
Do not use the name Woo or the Woo logo or any of the Woo Marks to sell Woo’s own products.
E.g., You can’t resell WooCommerce plugins or themes using the Woo Marks.
Given all the drama between Automattic and WPEngine over the use of the WordPress trademark, they should consider updating their name. Now that the name is short and sweet, any use of Woo is more likely to be confusing in the market. If in doubt, get in touch with Automattic.
Evolution of the Woo Logo
Under the How we got there heading of Daniel’s post, he explains the iterative process that lead to the new version of the logo – the one on the bottom right below. It’s an evolution, but the change is significant. What do you think?
The team had the added advantage of having Beau Labens on the team, who joined the team in 2024.
In those conversations, I was joined by Beau Lebens, Artistic Director of Woo, and we discussed not only the new brand, but our future plans for the product, community pain points, and what the community needs and expects from us to help them bring Woo to their customers. The feedback influenced our brand guidelines, social elements, and many other aspects of the update — which we’ll be rolling out in the following months.
What’s interesting here is that while the end result is perfectly balanced and polished, the various iterations are far from it. I can just imagine the Woo team of designers and brand experts screaming ‘nailed it’ in unison the minute they sketched out the winning logo. It’s 10X better than the rest.
Critiquing a design is subjective, but logos that work share some common traits: they are well-proportioned, subtle and use the right font, spacing, and graphical elements. Take Gong, the revenue AI platform, as an example. As a brand, it has a reputation for being playful and edgy. Their logo reflects that but in a considered way.
Another important point: The new brand looks less like it’s for a WordPress plugin and more SaaS-like.
The new Woo logo in the wild
There was a big queue at their stand at WordCamp Asia last month, which we can attribute to the swag they were giving away.
Their logo and branding was immediately identifiable given the audience, and really looked the part of an Ecommerce powerhouse.
Should you refresh your brand?
As mentioned, if you’re using Woo in your name you need to understand what the trademark implications are. You should also consider whether you want the market to always associate your business to Woo.
Apart from the legal aspect, a brand refresh is always a great opportunity to:
- Fine-tune one’s brand into a clearer and stronger representation on your business. Like Syde did last year.
- Tell them market you have grown up as a business. To look like a million dollars and not $10,000
- Introduce an architecture that works nicely across your portfolio of offerings
- Differentiate. Like Kinsta did.
Bearing in mind that it’s never an easy exercise and that it will cost you. If you can afford it, hire an agency like New Kind or Airlift, or a freelance brand strategist if you don’t have a couple of hundred thousand dollars to spare.
The Woo brand refresh was an in-house project:
The entire process was conducted by Woo’s internal design team — in parallel with all the other work they were doing for our products and business. It was a heavy lift, but the time and energy that they put into this project were well worth the effort.
If you’re thinking of doing the same, just be aware that brand development, and developing a visual identity are related but not the same thing. The latter is an outcome of the former, and the first question to answer is whether you need a refresh or not.
Giving Woo’s blog a new name too: Add to Cart+
I’m a big fan of businesses that give their blogs a distinct name and treat it more like a publication, than just ‘the [Enter Brand Name] blog’. It represents a commitment to better communications, and even as we enter the age of AI, it’s still an effective channel for content marketing, and something every business should do: own their media.
Add to Cart+ is a great name for it. It reminds me of AirTable’s blog – For the Record – so referencing a product feature or function. Also, it’s an opportunity to retain a reference to the old name: The WooCommerce Blog.
The name is clever, on brand and there’s good quality content underpinning it. But it’s not an exercise for everyone. Unless you have the time and resources to treat it like a separate publication, then you risk developing an additional brand that will never take off. It’s easy to come up with ambitious ideas (see mine for the WP Tavern, that it should be more like an inflight magazine) but always hard to execute them for the long term.
It will be interesting to see if Add to Cart+ is used for other content channels. I’ve just signed up for the newsletter half-expecting it to be branded the same way.
Final thoughts
The main story here is that Woo is setting itself up to challenge more aggressively other leading Ecommerce brands. This is good for the WordPress ecosystem as opportunities will trickle down, but also for the open source movement.
We can also learn from the exercise, and I’ll say it one more time (and it will not be the last time either): brand plays an increasingly important role in a company’s success. MarTech and AI have given everyone the tools they need to execute any marketing tactic at scale. Brand is what makes it effective.
