If you have a business that sells products, it’s likely that you are wanting an e-commerce website. Nowadays people don’t just view products online, they want to purchase them online too as it is much easier and more convenient.

You can set up an e-commerce website in a few different ways, but WordPress is definitely the best alternative out there. WordPress is the most modern and best platform available to build from, as it is very flexible and versatile, even though it was originally built for blogging. The plugins available and the customizability of this platform are what set it above the rest, and the popularity of it just means it keeps growing and never falls short of new plugins with never-ending possibilities. The support for WordPress plugins is second to none and finding the right tools and support for building your e-commerce website won’t be so much of a challenge.

Here are some great features and tools available for customizing your e-commerce website and other resources that can help you.

The WordPress List Of Plugins Is Almost Endless.

WordPress in its basic form is a great platform to build a great website as it has many features built-in. For the times when you need a feature that the basic package doesn’t have, this is where the vast number of plugins come into play. You install these plugins to your website for additional features and functions.

For an e-commerce website, it is essential to use plugins. Some plugins will enable you to communicate with customers or manage your stock whilst others are fundamental for enabling you to construct and run an online store, it is also imperative to keep security in mind. The good news is the majority of popular e-commerce related plugins can provide a lot of these elements, so you don’t have to install multiple plugins for the functionality that you require.

There are plenty of e-commerce plugins so here are a few of the best ones to choose from.

• WooCommerce is the most popular e-commerce plugin available. This software can sell anything from subscriptions and appointments to digital downloads and physical products, there is no limit to what it can do, it is also audited by Sucuri which is an industry-leading security company. It is powered by the trust of its many many customers and built specifically for WordPress which runs almost 27% of the web with desktop and mobile responsiveness.
• Easy Digital Downloads is a WordPress plugin that is the best way to sell solely digital products, there are a lot of extensions that can increase functionality and customisation to mould it into your perfect digital store.
• Shopify is a cloud-hosted platform that enables you to easily set up and start selling your products online. You can sell Shopify products on any website whether its WordPress based or not as it is externally hosted from your website. If your business grew you wouldn’t have to worry about changing to a more capable hosting server, as it is dealt with on their side. All technical aspects like security and speed are taken care of for you, all you have to do is sign up and log in to add your products.
• WP eCommerce is the oldest e-commerce plugin for WordPress, it comes with a lot of features straight off of the bat but is known for bugs. It is regularly updated though which is great, and it integrates well with lots of payment systems, but people have been known to update to WooCommerce further down the line as it is less buggy and offers more features and extensions.
• MemberPress is the best digital subscription plugin enabling you to sell pay per view content, memberships and much more. You can also integrate it with WooCommerce stores and many other extensions. A couple of downsides are that it only supports limited payment options, and yearly pricing plans are the only available options when buying this plugin. It is definitely the best option if you have a subscription-based store and can be easily extended with addons.

Why WordPress is the best for your e-commerce website

1. E-commerce Supported Themes For You To Consider.

Choosing a theme will be the biggest initial definitive factor for how your website will look and how the sidebars and menus will work. It is imperative that you choose a theme that is either designed for use with an e-commerce store or is at least designed with features in mind that you want to use for your store.

There are some great options for themes nowadays, you will want a theme with a responsive design for desktop and mobile devices that is user friendly and a lot of options to customize it to your needs.

I would suggest doing a lot of research on which theme to choose from, but for now here are a few to have a look at.

• Flatsome is a great theme as it can offer users a very pleasant and easy shopping experience with its design capabilities and it is boasting over 76,500 sales. If your store is easily navigated, you are more likely to sell your product/service and grow your customer base. This theme is based on the WooCommerce plugin and it has a lot of options for customization and includes some optional plugins, one that adds a wish list for your users and another that infuses a live search across your site.
• Shopkeeper is another fantastic choice of theme for your e-commerce store, with over 23,500 sales this theme is a great place to start building from. It has options for turning off the e-commerce function so you can just use it as a catalogue and enable it again when you are ready to sell again so it goes beyond the basic needs of your e-commerce store. This theme is updated and supported regularly and is fully responsive, it has many design features and customizability options to explore and it has a quick and easy set up enabling you to get things done.
• The Retailer is a theme with many great extras, it comes with visual composer which is the most popular page builder plugin and it is free with this theme saving you some extra cash. It also has great mobile and desktop responsiveness, and the support is second to none. It is a great theme for setting up online products with variables like different shirt sizes for example or even digital downloads. The built-in payment methods are PayPal, credit/debit card, check and cash on delivery but you are not limited to only these and you can manage your store performance, track orders and stock with the built-in reports system.

2. WordPress support is everywhere.

WordPress powers nearly 27% of all websites online and absolutely dominates the CMS market (content management system) with a 76.4% market share, it is also older than Facebook and Twitter too as the original release date was May 27^th, 2003, (Facebook Feb 4^th, 2004, Twitter March 21^st, 2006).

It took an estimated 112 person-years to build it based on almost half a million lines of code, and the support is still continuously growing.

If you are in need of support for some troubleshooting or just some advice on how to go about something there are plenty of options around for you to choose from.

The first option would be to visit the wordpress.org support page where they have different pages and forums with plenty of community and professional support.

There are also dedicated forums for reporting bugs and queries on particular plugins and themes.

A great option is to seek help from WordPress blogs like ours, get in touch on our phone number in our header and see what we can do to help you. We offer training services and bits of handy advice.

3. Existing WordPress Sites That Will Provide Inspiration.

So many websites are using WordPress as a platform for their e-commerce store, in-fact 39% of all online stores are WordPress based. Everyone wants their own unique store to stand out from the rest, but a great way to start is by looking at your competition and also other e-commerce stores to look at the different features and take some ideas.

A great website to take ideas from is The Craft Can Directory, they have a great online store and offer coupons and discount codes and the ability to subscribe for offers.

The New Zealand All Blacks rugby team have a great online store built with WooCommerce, they offer a lot of features that are worth checking out.

Another great e-commerce store is Ghostbed, they have a lot of cool payment options including Amazon Pay and Apple Pay.

4. Security

Security is the most important feature of any website and even more so with an e-commerce website where people’s personal information and financial details are used.

The good news is WordPress has so many people working on it to perfect it that the core software is incredibly secure, and it is in continuous development to keep it safe for the future.

It’s a good idea to keep your WordPress version up-to-date in order for these security improvements to reach your website, and to take other measures like using an SSL certificate that encrypts data between the web browser and web server.

It is imperative to keep all security measurements up to date to protect you and your customers.

Final word on Why WordPress is the best for your e-commerce website

Don’t just take my word for it, research WordPress and how it has helped many people with building their e-commerce store.

An e-commerce website is a vital step into putting your product and brand out there and if you want it done you might as well do it right with WordPress.

You can see from this information above that it is the best choice out of all the platforms out there but if you can think of another reason why WordPress is the best solution then we would love to hear about it!