There’s never been a better time for becoming an online retailer than now. There’s no better platform for eCommerce than WordPress.
But, there are ‘dedicated’ eCommerce platforms, which are surely amazing for selling online? Yeah well, if you just want to sell, you can do it on eBay or Amazon or Aliexpress too. What WordPress gives you is a versatile, super-flexible, easy to manage website that is also capable of selling products and receiving payments.
Although it’s not included in the core just yet, developers have created and availed free tools (and accompanying eCommerce-ready themes) that can add a fully functional shopping cart and related features to any WordPress website.
Why, here’s a list of the top 5 eCommerce plugins for WordPress. All of them can be found at WordPress.org Plugin Repository (because they’re free… Told you WordPress is The Best).
1. WooCommerce
WooCommerce was acquired by WordPress’ ‘guardian’ company Automattic this time last year, which is brilliant for every entrepreneur eyeing eCommerce for easy success.
The core plugin is free, so in addition to a highly customizable and brilliantly done shopping cart, you get assorted all basic store management features – product/ inventory/ order management, customer profiles, shipping, etc. for free. Of course, since it is modular, you’ll be spoilt for choice by the endless array of great add-ons (called WooCommerce plugins or extensions) that can enhance your WooCommerce store.
It should be noted that once installed, the admin/ store-owner needs to take care only to install WooCommerce compatible themes and general WordPress plugins (not related to stores, like social buttons). Thankfully, developers haven’t been slouching in that department, so you’ll always have thousands of themes, plugins and widgets to choose from.
2. Easy Digital Downloads
Pippin Williamson is easily my favorite developer, simply because he’s one of the people responsible for the beauty that is EDD.
Easy Digital Downloads does what it says on the tin. It lets you sell ‘digital’ (read: downloadable) products from your WordPress website. It’s the perfect plugin to have on portfolios of graphic designers, photographers, developers, writers, et al.
The free plugin (sensing a pattern here?) can be extended with premium add-ons. But even for low, low price of nothing you’ll get a state-of-art shopping cart, a fully functional (and lovely) promotional code system, integration with a wide variety of payment gateways (complete with payment history), re-download option for verified purchases (user history), bundled products (marketing!), multiple-files per product, invoice, receipts, etc. and of course, the easy management of complete store.
3. WP eCommerce
Justin Sainton’s WP eCommerce is in no way as flashy as, say WooCommerce, but it’s definitely not wet behind the years when it comes to features.
The plugin gives you simple but feature-packed eCommerce functionality on WordPress websites, complete with built-in shipping features, marketing tools, SSL secure checkout, and multisite compatibility.
The coup de grace of this plugin is its API and extensibility, and I don’t mean in the form of extensions (although it does have those too). WP eCommerce is an ardent developer’s fantastic dream come to life. It’s highly customizable and very open to integrations with any number of payment gateways, and it can sell digital + tangible products.
It’s not very glamorous, but it packs a punch.
4. Ecwid Shopping Cart
This isn’t a plugin, it’s more like a service that integrates with WordPress using a plugin.
Ecwid can be had for free, but you will want to get premium features right away. It’s a PCI DSS Level 1 validated service provider, which means a lot to your customers in terms of sensitive data security.
The store you create with WordPress and Ecwid will be responsive on all fronts – Simply get a responsive eCommerce theme for the users and use Ecwid’s mobile or iPhone apps to manage the store on the go at the back end. The free plugin is capable of integrating your store to your Facebook page for even better sales.
It has real-time shipping integration and highly flexible payment options to suit anyone.
5. Jigoshop
Another all-time eCommerce solution for WordPress is Jigoshop.
The endlessly extensible and free core plugin itself comes packed with complete store management features, integrated payment gateways (Paypal, Skrill, Moneybookers, etc.), support for all product types (and variants) along with affiliates, and stock management features of the type you usually expect only from dedicated eCommerce platforms like Shopify.
Of course there are extensions, and they can be found everywhere. It’s another non-flashy, minimal, user-friendly shopping cart solution that does what it was intended for, splendidly.
Endnote
There are others, of course, but I’ll leave it up to you to discover and compare them with the 5 eCommerce plugins listed here. Let us know how they fared in the comments section below.
Tracey Jones is a web development professional for HIreWPGeeks Ltd. a renowned firm in the field of developing PSD to WordPress theme. She is also a passionate blogger who loves to share her knowledge with others on the web.
No comments:
Post a Comment