Loading...WordPress slogan speaks for itself – it is free and priceless at the same time. Initially developed for blogging WordPress now offers much wider options. It provides users with the ability to establish beautiful website for free. WordPress CMS also offers priceless opportunities to publish quality content and launch an online store. This makes WordPress one of the most popular solutions to set and manage eCommerce business.
It is simple in operating and thus is especially beneficial for eCommerce newcomers and non-technical merchants. However, can WordPress provide you with the first-class store management experience? Let’s have a closer look on the WordPress based shopping carts with
their pros and cons to answer the question. WordPress Plugins Peculiarities.
1. Easy start. All WordPress plugins are lightweight easy to download and install. If you are familiar with WordPress it will present no difficulties to set online store and in no time you will be selling online.
2. Affordable for everyone. You are not going to pay for hosting and additional themes or features are not costly as well. You will not have to hire programmers, as you will be able to handle store management on your own.
3. Keep up with the times. WordPress tries to keep up-to-date providing user with new updates. You will definitely enjoy easy integration with Woothemes which will provide you with modern and elaborate storefront look.
4. SEO friendly. WordPress plugins are optimized for search engines which will naturally help you to increase your sales and traffic rates.
5. As there is about 80 million websites based on WordPress it naturally has a huge community of users and developers who can be a reliable source of information.
Responsive support will help to solve more complicated issues. You will also be provided with powerful knowledge base including various guides, tutorials and documentation.
Shopp
Shopp is a WordPress commercial platform for online store establishment. It doesn’t have free edition, however offers a number of useful features for business development. Among them are multiple payment options, integration with Quickbooks, promotion and marketing tools.
Shopp will allow to control shopping experience and make store management effective. The opportunity to customize design themes via stylesheets and PHP is available. As with any WordPress plugin, with Shopp you will find a lot of documentation and get a helping hand from
community if necessary.
WP eCommerce
WP eCommerce is the WordPress pioneer in eCommerce. Thus, it has come through years of experience and a number of improvements. Now the merchants can enjoy stable platform functionality, numerous payment gateways and plenty of design themes available. WP eCommerce also provides freedom of design customization with help of PHP template tags, shortcodes, and widgets. And all of these you can get for free. Add to this high usability and ease of management and you will get the perfect eCommerce solution for setting online business. However, note that some of opportunities are limited with Wp eCommerce as it is a lightweight plugin with basic features. To extend functionality you’ll have to buy additional modules. WP eCommerc is not quite scalable, and is better for startups rather than big
enterprises.
WooCommerce
WooCommerce is what resulted from cooperation of WordPress with WooThemes design studio. The considerable platform advantages are that first of all- it is brand new, and second – its free. Both have unfortunately, the other side of the coin. As the WooCommerce cart is comparatively young player, some features are still in development. There are not enough localization opportunities. The number of payment gateways is also limited, and there is no support for the free version. The plugin is free, however to develop your online business you will have to invest as most of extensions are paid.
There are some more WordPress eCommerce plugins, however our aim was to give you the general idea on WordPress peculiarities in terms of establishing online store. Considering the advantages and disadvantages you’ll get with each WordPress platform – Shopp, WP eCommerce or Woo Commerce, you’ll come up with the right decision. Make your decision according to the business needs and personal preferences. However, keep in mind that WordPress promises it’s users “beautiful sites of any kind”.