There will be an estimated 1.92 billion global digital buyers in 2019.
That’s an incredible amount of potential customers. If you look at it, the world’s population is 7.7 billion people, meaning that almost 25 percent of the world’s population will be shopping online.
Now is the time to act. Whether you’re just launching your online store, or simply thinking of expanding your current site.
Are you thinking of adding a shopping cart to your WordPress site? Here’s a guide to the best WordPress eCommerce plugins.
What Is an Ecommerce Website?
Think of the product or service that your business currently sells. You most likely have a physical warehouse, storage facility or shop that is open to the public. Walk-ins can purchase your items, or enquire by telephone or email.
eCommerce is the next revolution. It takes almost that entire process digital. Your store becomes your website, the changing of money and delivery of items is all performed on the internet. eCommerce is an electronic business.
Simply put, an eCommerce website is the online shopping platform as we know it.
You’ll treat your online store just the same as a shop. You’ll want your website to generate leads, have an attractive design, user-friendly and supported by an incredible backend.
WooCommerce
WooCommerce is arguably one of the most popular eCommerce plugins for WordPress. It’s a comprehensive solution that covers most of your eCommerce requirements.
WooCommerce enables you to sell digital and physical items on your WordPress website. There are free and paid extensions within WooCommerce, which makes it super easy to pick and choose which can build and which can enhance your online store.
It comes already partnered with PayPal, so your store will be able to accept PayPal as well as the standard credit card transactions, cash on delivery or BACS.
Veeqo
Veeqo is a great plugin to assist in taking care of your WooCommerce inventory management needs. It’s a one-stop-shop eCommerce solution which will integrate your inventory across your online store in WordPress as well as eBay, Amazon, and Etsy.
In Veeqo, you’ll be able to manage orders, edit your product listings, purchase from suppliers, sync your inventory in real time as well as manage your packing and shipping.
This plugin will assist in avoiding out-of-stock errors and overselling which can assist in creating a streamlined store.
Yoast SEO
In order for your online store to be successful, it needs to be found.
Yoast SEO is the platform that will get you there. It’s the most popular WordPress plugin for optimizing your website for search engines and will radically increase your visibility to not only potential buyers but the right key audience for your product.
This plugin boasts many features to improve your website’s SEO ranking. The interface is very user-friendly and easy to navigate with a checkbox style usage that allows you to easily see gaps in your SEO.
One of the great things about Yoast SEO is that they’ve partnered with WooCommerce to create an SEO plugin that works specifically for online stores, making search rankings increasingly successful through targeting Google shopping searches and more.
Ecwid
The Ecwid eCommerce Shopping cart has excellent ratings.
Ecwid is not only compatible with WordPress but across many other websites as well, which opens you up to other content management systems. One of the advantages of Ecwid is that the monthly premium is pretty standard, and there are no hidden costs so your monthly budget wouldn’t fluctuate.
This plugin comes with a standard, free core plugin which comes with more built-in features than your standard eCommerce plugin. This means that you won’t have to shop around for third-party plugins to complete your online store.
Another advantage? Ecwid gives you a mobile responsive shopping cart.
JigoShop eCommerce
JigoShop eCommerce is a great plugin to turn your WordPress website into a dynamic eCommerce store from start to finish.
It is one of the oldest WordPress eCommerce plugins, launched in 2011. Fret not, since then though there has been extensive development and rebranding updates.
JigoShop supports a wide range of product types such as digital products, variable products, simple products, and physical goods. The administrator is also able to draw detailed reports, use intuitive styling tools and even create an area for managing your stock.
It’s a super intuitive plugin and simple to use.
Added advantages?
- JigoShop eCommerce is reported to be more affordable than other plugins due to the extensions being cheaper than those of their competitors.
- The theme store boasts a large and beautiful collection of templates for many different industries.
- There’s a very large online community of JigoShop users and developers, so help and advice are never very far away.
WP EasyCart
The best thing about WP EasyCart Shopping Cart and eCommerce Store is one thing, and one thing alone. It’s one of the plugins that is completely focused on small business owners.
This means that the plugin is tailored to those who don’t have so much expendable time in their daily schedules to sit and learn complicated plugins and tools. WP EasyCart is built for small business owners who want to create a beautiful online store in the simplest and most efficient way.
WP EasyCart is easily integrated with other software that small business owners might be using already such as Quickbooks and Mailchimp, to name but two.
With WP EasyCart you will have full control over your site with WordPress and your own hosting. The features are advanced in the free version already, with ongoing support for products, shipping calculators, and other product variants.
The shortlist of advantages for WP:
- There is a free plan is available with unlimited products and several tools.
- The premium plans offer quite a bit for small business, and they don’t break your budget.
- The extensions are clearly made for small business websites.
- Free customer support.
- WP EasyCart supports the sale of all different types of products.
- Most of the advanced add-ons from WP EasyCart are more affordable than on other eCommerce plugins.
- WP EasyCart has one of the simplest, most user-friendly interfaces for small business owners.
Product Countdown Plugin
With the right countdown plugin, you can create flash sales with the right discounts for a certain period of time. The Sales Countdown Timer for WooCommerce is one of the best plugins to each a ‘sales countdown’ vibe in your online store.
It obviously integrates with WooCommerce.
Here are the pro’s of Sales Countdown Timer for WooCommerce:
- Countdown bar
The countdown bar in the product page can make the customers know about the rush in the sale of that particular product, so when the customer lands on the page there is a message telling them about the sale immediately. - Countdown Timer
This feature creates a sense of urgency with the customer. Visitors on your website will be convinced to purchase quicker as the timer counts down the time available of the promotion. - Sticky header and footer
You’re able to place the header and footer information for sale anywhere on your page, and you can opt to have the promotional information ‘stuck’ to the top or bottom of your page for constant viewing.
MarketPress eCommerce
MarketPress eCommerce has a free, Lite version of its plugin available which is the first advantage. Obviously, the free version doesn’t have all the capabilities and features of the premium version, but it’s still a great start.
Membership to MarketPress eCommerce also gives you access to 134 other premium plugins and their high-quality themes.
MarketPress eCommerce seems to be a complete eCommerce solution. You don’t need to spend tons of money on extensions or add-ons which makes the plugin rather affordable to use. Plus, it boasts many eCommerce functionalities, most of which aren’t included in all the other plugins and only come in the form of extensions.
This plugin is extremely easy to use, and you can use it to sell anything from physical products to digital goods. You can also add stylish galleries for interesting ways to display product variations. The checkout process is very simple to navigate and use for your online store shoppers and includes 16 different ways for payments built into the plugin.
Easy Digital Downloads
Easy Digital Downloads is a simple, very intuitive plugin which assists in managing and selling your digital products. Easy Digital Downloads is focused on the sale of digital products and the interface on the backend is clean and simple.
This is the plugin to use if the products you are selling are items like eBooks, PDF Files and even audio clips. The core plugin itself is free, so once installing the plugin you basically already have a digital sales platform.
You’ll get features like discount codes, activity tracking, and file access control. EDD also supplied galleries and many different themes to choose from. All the plans on the EDD plugin include customer support, licenses and all necessary updates, which is great for avoiding hidden costs.
A Quick Overview of the Advantages of EDD:
- It is the best option for selling digital downloads, hands-down.
- The Extension Library has dozens of add-ons at your disposal. Which means you can create a super advanced online store if you wanted to.
- There are plenty of options for choosing your own payment gateway.
- The primary plugin is completely free.
- Easy Digital Downloads boasts a very active community of bloggers, developers, and enthusiasts, meaning advice and help is never more than a forum away.
- The main features include a full shopping cart, customer management, discount codes, and data reporting. Your store will also receive tools for refund tracking, affiliate systems, and mailing lists.
iThemes Exchange
iThemes Exchange is the right plugin for you if usability is your top priority. iThemes boasts a streamlined, simple interface which makes launch time minimal with zero-to-no complications.
The core plugin is a free download but fully extendable through extensions and add-ons. Although the core plugin is pretty basic, the cost of the Pro Pack is super affordable for any size business and for the price of the premium package you get access to all 22 extensions that this plugin has to offer.
These include:
- Variable shipping rates based on a number of factors.
- Adding unlimited variations of a single product on one page.
- Customize your buy buttons and drive more conversions.
- Convert your website into a fully functional membership site.
- Collect recurring payments easily.
- Integrate your online store with your email marketing.
The best thing, however, about this plugin is that the core functionality is more than enough to get your store up and running, while you figure out which extensions you might need.
BigCommerce
BigCommerce is a cloud-based plugin which can get your online store running quickly. Completely focused on small to medium-sized stores, this plugin packs a punch with its offering.
Before now, combining your WordPress website with BigCommerce wasn’t possible, but now the plugin makes this possible for people or businesses with existing businesses, as opposed to having to move your entire site to a new platform.
BigCommerce shoots right out of the starting line with an insane amount of features, which means no costly add-ons or extension fees to start with. The amount of themes available is also large, which can sometimes be overwhelming to a new user but great if you want to be spoilt for choice.
To name another advantage, BigCommerce comes with great bundled discounting options and segmentation tools so you can offer great, seamless promotions and successfully increase your sales.
So Why Is BigCommerce One of the Best WordPress eCommerce Plugins?
- You can combine the greatest content management system with one of the top eCommerce platforms in one easy integration.
- BigCommerce offers great credit card processing rates due to its partnership with many processing companies.
- Because the eCommerce and content are driven in different parts of this plugin, your website and online store should be much faster for a visitor.
- You can run the BigCommerce system on multiple sites, not just WordPress.
The Best WordPress eCommerce Plugins
It’s very overwhelming to start your journey with a list of the best WordPress eCommerce plugins that is so comprehensive. Make sure that you do your homework.
Write up a list for your business of the sales goals and achievements that you want to reach, and cross-check this list with the features and benefits of each plugin. This way, you’ll know that you’re truly getting bang for your buck.
Alternatively, spend some time loading the free, basic version of each plugin and see how easily you can navigate it, this might be how you make your final decision.
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