woocommerce | The Blog Pros

March 21, 2019

Spotsy

Spotsy.me is a web service that allows any Instagram user to create a website in less than 5 minutes. Besides having immediately a fully customizable and cool website, users will be able to make money by adding links to their Instagram posts. On the most basic configuration this website will have only one page with a brief user description on the header, Instagram posts with custom info and links and a footer with some basic info an optional Mailchimp subscribe form.

The post Spotsy appeared first on WeLoveWP.

March 14, 2019

How to Create an Online Marketplace using WordPress

Do you want to create an online marketplace using WordPress? An online marketplace website allows users to buy and sell items by setting up their own mini-stores within your eCommerce platform.

It allows you to make money by sharing your online marketplace platform. Due to low overhead costs, it has become a popular online business idea.

In this article, we will show you how to easily create an online marketplace using WordPress without spending thousands of dollars.

What Do You Need to Start an Online Marketplace using WordPress?

First, you need to make sure that you are using the right website platform, and since you’re reading this article, you’re in the right place.

There are two types of WordPress available: WordPress.com vs WordPress.org. One is a limited blog hosting service while the other is known as the self-hosted WordPress which you’ve likely heard tons about. See the full comparison between WordPress.com vs WordPress.org.

We recommend using WordPress.org because it gives you the freedom and access to all WordPress features out of the box.

You will need the following items to build an online marketplace website using self-hosted WordPress.

A domain name (For example, wpbeginner.com)
Web hosting account (This is where your website’s files are stored)
SSL Certificate (To securely accept online payments)
WooCommerce (best WordPress eCommerce addon)
Online marketplace addon

The entire setup can take up to 40 minutes, and we will walk you through every step one by one.

Ready? Let’s get started.

Step 1. Setting up Your Ecommerce Platform

The first step is to buy a domain name and a web hosting account. You don’t just need a web hosting, but you will need a service that specializes in WooCommerce hosting because this is the software that we will be using as our eCommerce platform.

Typically a domain name costs $14.99/year, web hosting 7.99/month, and SSL certificate 69.99/year.

Now, this seems like a lot of money if you are just starting out.

Fortunately, Bluehost an officially recommended WordPress and WooCommerce hosting provider has agreed to offer our users free domain + SSL and discount on their cloud WordPress hosting.

Basically, you can get started for $6.95 / month.

→ Click Here to Claim This Exclusive Bluehost Offer ←

Once you have purchased hosting, then follow our step by step tutorial on how to start an online store for complete setup instructions.

You would now have a WordPress website with WooCommerce installed on it.

However, by default WooCommerce assumes that your website is a single vendor website, so it is not possible for other users to add their own products and services to your website.

Let’s change this.

Step 2. Turn Your WooCommerce Site into an Online Marketplace

First, you need to install and activate the WC Vendors plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

WC Vendors is a marketplace solution for WooCommerce. It simplifies building a marketplace website by turning WooCommerce into a multi-vendor platform.

Each vendor can sell their products while you keep full control of the website as the marketplace owner. You can choose your own business model, payment methods, product types, and more.

Upon activation, head over to WC Vendors » Settings page to configure marketplace settings.

First, you will see the general items. You need to make sure that the ‘Vendor Registration’ box is checked to allow users to sign up as Vendor on your website.

You can review other items on the page and then click on the ‘Save Changes’ button to store your settings.

Next, you need to click on the ‘Commission’ tab to set a commission rate for vendors across your website. This is the amount you’ll pay to the vendor for each sale.

Note: The global commission rate can be overridden for individual vendors and products.

Next, you need to click on the ‘Capabilities’ tab to set sitewide rules for vendors. This part of settings comes with three sections.

The general capabilities include allowing vendors to view and edit products and orders. The default options would work for most sites.

Next, switch to the ‘Products’ section and from here you can select which type of products vendors can add. For example, you can limit vendors to only add digital downloads or a physical product.

You can also select which data Vendors can see and use on the ‘Add Products’ page.

Lastly, switch to the ‘Orders’ section under ‘Capabilities’ to select what information vendors can see about the orders.

After setting up the capabilities, it is time to set up marketplace related pages on your website.

Switch to the ‘Display’ tab under plugin settings to set up pages. You can simply go to Pages » Add New to create a new page for each item and add the shortcode displayed in the settings to the page’s content area.

After creating all the pages and adding shortcodes to them, you can select them here.

Below the pages, you will also find ‘Store settings’ option on the same page. This where you can select a prefix to use in Vendor shop URLs, allow them to set custom headers for their shop pages, and use HTML in shop description.

Next step is to set up payments for your vendors. Most marketplace websites set a minimum threshold for their vendors and pay them on a monthly or weekly basis.

We recommend using manual payments to vendors as this gives customers enough time to request refunds or give feedback about the products.

However, if you want to payment withdrawal system for vendors, then you can buy premium add-ons. WC Vendors has add-ons available for Stripe, MangoPay, Escrow, and Manual Payouts.

Depending on the payment gateway you choose, you will need to set up a payment gateway by entering your API keys. Don’t forget to click on the ‘Save Changes’ button to store your settings.

Now that WC Vendors is ready, let’s set up WooCommerce for a multi-vendor environment.

Step 3. Enable Account Management in WooCommerce

First you need to visit WooCommerce » Settings page and click on the ‘Accounts’ tab. From here you need to check the boxes next to customer registration option.

Don’t forget to save your changes.

Step 4. Setting Up Navigation Menus

Now that your multi-vendor marketplace setup is finished. It is time to make it easy for your users to find their way around your website.

To do that, go to Appearance » Menus page. From here you need to add your user account and checkout pages to the navigation menu.

Don’t forget to click on the ‘Save Menu’ button to store your changes. For more detailed instructions, see our guide on how to add navigation menus in WordPress.

If you don’t have a My Account page, then simply create a new page in WordPress and add the following shortcode in the post editor
.
[woocommerce_my_account]

Step 5. Testing Your Marketplace Website

Your online marketplace website is now ready for testing. You can visit your website in a new browser window and create a new account by clicking on the My Account link at the top.

From here, both customers and vendors can log in to their accounts as well as create a new account.

Once users create a new account, you will receive an email notification. If you are unable to receive email notifications, then take a look at our guide on how to fix WordPress not sending email issue.

You can also view new vendor applications by visiting Users » All Users page. You will see all new vendor requests as ‘pending vendor’, and you can approve or deny applications by clicking the link under their username.

Once approved, these vendors can log in to their accounts and add their products by visiting their vendor dashboard. They can also view their orders and sales reports.

The first thing your vendors need to do is to set up their shop settings by clicking on the ‘Store Settings’ link.

Depending on the payment methods you set up, they will need to provide their PayPal or Stripe email address to receive payments. They will also be able to provide bank account information for direct manual payments.

Once a vendor adds a new product, you will get a notification email and see an icon next to the products menu. You can then edit a product, approve it, or delete it.

Your shop page will clearly show the products sold by vendor’s shop name.

Step 6. Growing your Online Marketplace Website

First, you may want to choose a design for your marketplace website. WordPress comes with thousands of free and paid themes but not all of them are eCommerce ready.

See our pick of the best WooCommerce themes to find a suitable theme for your marketplace platform.

After that, you would want to add new features to your website. For example, making it a multi-vendor auction site or a membership community.

You would want to track which products are getting more traffic and which vendors are bringing more users. For that you will need to enable customer tracking in WooCommerce on your website.

The biggest hurdle in growing any eCommerce website is abandoned cart sales. Learn how to recover abandoned cart sales like a pro to increase your profits.

We hope this article helped you learn how to create an online marketplace using WordPress. You may also want to see our ultimate WooCommerce SEO guide to get search traffic to your website.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Create an Online Marketplace using WordPress appeared first on WPBeginner.

February 22, 2019

Ecwid E-Commerce Plugin Adds Gutenberg Support, Focuses on Small Businesses to Compete with WooCommerce

Ecwid’s e-commerce plugin for WordPress is now fully integrated with the Gutenberg editor. The cloud-based store builder, pronounced “eck-wid,” is short for e-commerce widgets, but the service has fully embraced blocks in its latest releases.

The new default Storefront block comes pre-installed and embeds the entire Ecwid store on a page, including product listing, filters, navigation, and checkout. It provides a quick way for a new seller to get everything working without having to do anything besides add the plugin. Inside the block sidebar, the seller can tweak the storefront’s appearance, including thumbnails, page layout, colors, and other settings. The short screencast below shows the block in action and part of it was featured during Matt Mullenweg’s State of the Word address in December 2018.

Ecwid also has a new Single Product block with a buy now button. It enables sellers to select a product and display it as a card with an image, title, and buy now button. This is convenient for using inside a blog post without having to open the whole storefront.

The team behind Ecwid is working on adding more Gutenberg blocks, despite having only a small fraction of their customers using WordPress. The company has more than 1.5 million customers running stores in 175 countries, but only 1.3% (20,000) are using WordPress. Even with so few active installations of the company’s WordPress plugin, Ecwid has its sights set on competing with WooCommerce, the most dominant player in this spacee. Last year at WordCamp Moscow, Ecwid Product Manager Matvey Kuritsyn gave a presentation titled “Why does anyone need a WooCommerce alternative?” Much of the company’s strategy is outlined in the slides from that presentation.

“We are focusing on small businesses and resolving their problems — where WooCommerce is weak,” Ecwid Marketing Manager Kseniya Pinkova said. She identified a few ways that Ecwid is working to differentiate itself from competitors:

Ecwid is easy-to-use. Developers can set it up very quickly, but also the end users can do that themselves. 75% of Ecwid installations on WordPress are made by the end users, not developers.
With Ecwid, everything is in the cloud, which means we handle updates, security patches, backups, huge loads ourselves (with no actions required on the user side).
Ecwid is secure, it’s PCI DSS Level 1 certified – a bank level of security.
Ecwid works with any hosting (even the cheapest and crappiest ones) even if you have 10,000 products in your store.
Ecwid provides customers support by email, chat, and phone.

This level of security, support, and maintenance is only available for WooCommerce via a managed solution like WordPress.com or Liquid Web, but sellers may still struggle with setup and customization due to the vast number of options and integrations available. Ecwid is focusing on its strengths as a SaaS-only solution to target small businesses in the WordPress space, instead of trying to replicate all the features that the dominant plugins already have.

The company started in 2009 and has a distributed team of 160 people who work in development, IT, operations, support, content, and business development.

“The WordPress plugin is technically a separate application (because Ecwid is a cloud solution, SaaS), and it appeared in 2009 as well,” Pinkova said. “But everything is interconnected — when a new featured is released in Ecwid, WordPress plugin users see it appear in their stores as well and can use it even without updating their WordPress plugin. For example, we rolled out new in-house Product Filters last week and they are now available for all Ecwid users, including those using WordPress. Some other features touch the WordPress plugin code — for example, some SEO enhancements involve both robust cloud part (API) and changes on the plugin side. The Gutenberg block is a good example of a third kind of Ecwid feature — it mostly resides in the plugin and it’s great to see how it improves the experience of our WordPress user base segment specifically.”

Ecwid’s roadmap for 2019 includes tighter integration with Facebook and Instagram, an in-house multilingual catalog, and marketing features to help small businesses find their customers. Because the WordPress plugin essentially hooks up the cloud-based solution, many of the features and improvements on Ecwid’s general roadmap for all platforms will be automatically available whenever they roll out.

“Regarding our WordPress plugin, the main thing for us is Gutenberg,” Pinkova said. “We’re very excited about it, we’re looking forward to new features Gutenberg is going to provide, and working on our plugin to make sure we’re making those available and easy-to-use for Ecwid sellers.”

January 31, 2019

How to Choose the Best Products to Sell Online (Beginner’s Guide)

You want to make extra money on the side, so you looked into several online business ideas and decided that creating an online store is the way to go.

The next step is where beginners often struggle the most: choosing which products to sell on your online store.

In this ultimate guide, we will explain how to easily choose the best products to sell online by following our step by step process.

1. Basics of Choosing Products to Sell on Your Ecommerce Store

Before you start looking into products that you can sell, there are some basics that you need to keep in mind. Let’s look at some of the most important ones first.

1. Choosing Your Ecommerce Platform

First you need to choose a platform that you want to use to sell your products.

Choosing the right eCommerce platform is important because it would affect your choice of products and how you do business.

WooCommerce is the most popular eCommerce platform in the world. It is easy to use, and you can use it to sell all kind of products while accepting payments using multiple payment gateways. See our guide on how to start an online store to get started with WooCommerce.

However, WooCommerce is not the only platform out there. There are some great WooCommerce alternatives that could be better for you depending on what you are trying to sell.

If you lack technical skills and want a quicker way to build an online store, then you may want to look into Shopify. It is a fully hosted solution that takes care of all the technical stuff. The catch here is that you will be paying a little more, and your costs will grow as you make more sales.

For a side by side comparison, see our article on Shopify vs WooCommerce with the pros and cons of both platforms.

2. Shipping

Shipping has a huge impact on the success of an eCommerce store. A study conducted by Business Insider discovered that higher shipping costs are the #1 cause of all abandoned shopping carts online.

You would obviously want to select products that you can ship at lower costs or for free. If you only plan to sell digital products (music, video, software, ebook, etc), then you don’t have to worry about shipping because the products will be downloaded by customers online.

3. Inventory

Do you want to manage inventory and keep products stocked? For that, you will need storage space and inventory management through your eCommerce software. Keeping products in stock will increase your cost of business.

On the other hand, drop-shipping solves this problem. You can select products that are shipped directly by the manufacturer or supplier.

4. Price

You’ll need to find products where you can offer a competitive price to your customers. If the product you are selling is more expensive than your competitors, then obviously that would discourage many first time buyers.

2. Types of Products That You Can Sell Easily

There are many different kinds of products that you can sell in your online store. Let’s narrow them down into two major sections.

1. Commoditized Products

These are products that everyone needs and are sold by many small and large stores without any difference in quality. For example, everyday products like soap, detergent, cereal, and more.

These products are made by some of the largest brands in the retail industry and are available widely with little to no difference in price.

This makes it harder for you to compete with giants like Amazon, Walmart, Target, etc. They can offer those products at lower costs, free shipping, and other perks.

This rules out a large number of products for you.

2. Niche Products

These are products that are unique or hand-made, available in limited stocks, and from specific suppliers. Think of home-made soaps, novelty t-shirts, ceramics, gift items, software, and countless other products.

Since these products are not widely available, they give you a competitive advantage.

There are even unique platforms like Etsy stores where you can find small vendors who make beautiful products and would love to partner up with other stores.

You can also find suppliers abroad using websites like AliExpress or Alibaba.com. These suppliers can make those niche products to your specifications and deliver them to you.

Niche products are available in almost any product category imaginable. You’ll find tons of unique ideas as you do your product research.

This brings us to our next tip.

3. Doing Product Research On Your Own

Don’t use your best guess to select products you sell online. Back it up with data so that you know there is a demand for these products and customers are looking for them.

The first tool you are going to use for your research is Amazon.

It is the world’s largest eCommerce store with thousands of products. Luckily, it is also a treasure trove of free data that you can scrap and make your decisions.

Go through different product categories to find out top performing products in each category. Keep narrowing down your search to sub-categories to find targeted sub-niches of products.

Let’s suppose you wanted to sell kid’s toys, narrow down your search to very specific toy categories. This excludes popular products, and you get a very focused set of products as you filter through.

Switch to the ‘Bestsellers’ view to find the top performing products on Amazon under each category.

SEMRush is another great tool that you can use to gather data from competitors or any eCommerce store you want.

It shows you where those eCommerce stores are getting most of their traffic, which products they are promoting through paid advertisements, what are their most viewed products, and more.

It also shows your competitor’s product listing ads from Google. You can see their best performing product listing ads, keywords, and other data.

Here are some other tools you can use to gather product data from other websites.

Ahrefs – A powerful competitor research tool that will show what’s popular on the websites of your competitors.
AdPlexity – A popular eCommerce research tool that helps you collect eCommerce data from across the web, from competitors, or any other website.
AmazeOwl – It is an Amazon product reseach tool available as a free desktop application.

4. Use Customer Personas to Find Product Ideas

A customer persona is a fictional profile of an ideal customer that you want to target. You create this profile by answering simple questions about an ideal buyer.

This is your target audience and personifying them helps you understand them better when you are doing product research.

If you have an existing store, then you can use eCommerce tracking in Google Analytics to build an ideal buyer persona.

If you are just starting out, then use your best guess to build a customer persona. This exercise helps you understand your customer’s needs, questions they may have, and what kind of products they would like to buy.

To learn more about buyer persona, see this guide on creating a concrete buyer persona with ready-made templates and examples.

5. Find Products You are Passionate About

As career advisors say, ‘Choose a job you love, and you’ll never have to work a day in your life’.

Similarly, choosing products that you are passionate about helps you sell them more effectively.

These could be products that you personally love and passionately recommend to your family and friends. These could be products related to a hobby or activity that you are passionate about.

Nothing drives more passion when you build something useful and want others to use it.

Following your passion allows you to look deeply into products and find ideas that offer real value to your customers.

We hope this article helped you learn how to choose the best products to sell online. You may also want to see our article on tips to grow your business online without spending a lot of money.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Choose the Best Products to Sell Online (Beginner’s Guide) appeared first on WPBeginner.

January 22, 2019

WooCommerce Launches New Mobile Apps for iOS and Android

This week marks the first public release of WooCommerce’s new mobile app for Android and the improved version for iOS. WooCommerce began beta testing the Android app late last year and the original iOS app has been updated to offer the same features.

This first release should be considered a basic start that is mostly useful for tracking store performance with detailed stats and getting alerts for new orders and product reviews. Users cannot add or edit products and the app does not yet allow for switching between stores. The first release offers basic order management and fulfillment but does not include the ability to change order status. The mobile apps don’t yet live up to their tagline of “Your store in your pocket,” but it’s a good starting place.

According to the Google Play Store, the WooCommerce app has been installed more than 10,000 times and the response from users has been mixed. The app is averaging a 2.5-star rating after early reviews from 45 users. The iOS app has received similar responses. Many of the negative reviews are due to connection/login issues and the requirement for stores to use Jetpack.

“This has promise, but get rid of the need for Jetpack,” one reviewer wrote. “There are other secure ways of syncing up. Other apps have done it for years. This app has been long overdue, but is poor in execution when you need to install a plugin that tends to bog down your site and that most don’t need. Give an alternative means of syncing and allow us to edit at least the basics of a product on the go.”

WooCommerce marketing representative Marina Pape explained the Jetpack requirement in a post announcing the mobile apps’ launch:

The Jetpack plugin connects your self-hosted site to a WordPress.com account and provides a common authentication interface across lots of server configurations and architectures.

Both Apple and Google only allow a single trusted sender for pushes for security reasons (read more), making Jetpack the best way for us to give you modern mobile app features like push notifications.

In order to connect sites with the app, Jetpack creates a shadow site on WordPress.com’s servers and syncs quite a bit of data. Although this list of data is transparently outlined, the Jetpack requirement is a deal breaker for some users. They either object to sharing their data or believe the plugin will slow down their stores. Until the app’s features are more compelling than the detriments users perceive in Jetpack, it may lose a few users based on this requirement.

According to BuiltWith, WooCommerce is now the most popular shopping cart technology used by 22% of the top 1 million websites, with competitors Shopify and Magento not too far behind at 17% and 13% respectively. Having a new mobile app should help WooCommerce remain competitive, but the team needs to keep iterating on the app to make it more useful for those managing stores on the go.

January 16, 2019

WooCommerce Blocks is Now a Feature Plugin, Version 1.3.0 Introduces 6 New Blocks

WooCommerce Blocks 1.3.0 was released yesterday with six new blocks. Previously, the plugin allowed users to display a grid of products by category. The new version introduces a Featured Product Block with design options for customizing nearly everything about the display, including color overlay, price and description, text alignment, call-to-action button, and the product photo.

Version 1.3.0 also introduces a Hand-Picked Products block that displays a grid of manual selections that can be ordered in different ways. Other new blocks include the following, which display as a grid and can be filtered by category:

Best Selling Products block
Top Rated Products block
Newest Products block
On Sale Products block

WooCommerce Blocks is also now a feature plugin, which means that after it is more polished and tested, the plugin can be considered for merge into WooCommerce core. WooCommerce Blocks 1.4 is expected the last week in January with improvements to the Featured Product block and a new Products by Attribute block.

In December 2018, WooCommerce published usage data that indicates 40% of users who could be considered “established business owners” also have a brick-and-mortar location, and 27% host events in physical locations. This means that many WooCommerce store owners have multiple channels for selling their products. The data also showed that large stores don’t always turn to big companies to handle their website development needs.

Based on that usage data, blocks have the potential to greatly improve the site management experience for many WooCommerce store owners who want to market to different audiences beyond their physical stores. Blocks enable them to easily swap out featured products and customize promotions on products that are selling well in their stores. All of these actions are quick to configure inside the new editor with a live preview. The sooner this feature plugin lands in WooCommerce core, the easier it will be to make these kinds of quick updates. Store owners with sites running on WordPress 5.0+ can take advantage of these blocks now by installing the plugin.

July 12, 2017

Best WooCommerce Alternatives for WordPress

WooCommerce has become the most installed eCommerce platform since Automattic purchased it in 2015. Are there any alternatives that even compare to WooCommerce? Let’s find out…

One of my favorite things about WordPress is when you find a reliable theme or plugin developer, you realize that the search for high-quality website-building tools is over. The only thing is, nothing changes faster than technology, especially in today’s digital landscape, where new platforms get launched, existing ones get acquired, and older ones go bust on an almost daily basis. Should you put all your eggs into one eCommerce plugin basket?

WooCommerce – The eCommerce Market Leader

As of writing this article, WooCommerce powers over 3.3 million websites and has over 30% of eCommerce market share, making it the most popular eCommerce platform on the web.

eCommerce Usage Distribution stats — WooCommerce is the most popular eCommerce platform on the web. (Source: BuiltWith.com)

WooCommerce also states on its website that the plugin has been downloaded over 75 million times. According to technology monitoring sites like WTechs.com and BuiltWith.com, between 5%-6% of the top 1 million websites use WooCommerce.

WooCommerce usage stats — WooCommerce is used by 6% of the top 1 million eCommerce sites. (Source: BuiltWith.com)

Finding an alternative to WooCommerce is getting harder for WordPress users, but it’s not game over yet. Some eCommerce plugins developed for WordPress early on still have legions of loyal users, so let’s explore other options.

WooCommerce Alternatives

If you’re concerned that other eCommerce plugins just won’t fit the bill, then let’s settle this once and for all today. Here are some other eCommerce plugins for WordPress to consider.

Cart66
If security is a major concern for your eCommerce store, then the Cart66 plugin is one you must look at. This plugin not only focuses on security, but it also comes chock-full of sales-enhancing features.

One thing to note about Cart66 is that it offers two subscriptions. The first one comes with the standard highlights mentioned below. The second one costs significantly more but offers more in the way of being able to manage the entire shopping experience from start to finish (like mailing labels, drip campaigns, etc.)

Highlights
- PCI-compliant hosted payment portal
- Built-in CDN for additional security
- Secure hosted payment page.
- Includes over 100 payment gateways
- Sell digital or physical products
- Advanced shipping and tax rate calculator
- Coupon integration
- MailChimp integration
- One-click Buy Now links for your other marketing platforms (e.g. email, social)
Interested in Cart66?
Details
Easy Digital Downloads
One of the very few eCommerce plugins for WordPress that’s available for free, Easy Digital Downloads is a great option if your site is in the business of selling digital products like software, ebooks, and images and if you need a simple store setup. Anything beyond creating products and adding discount codes will require a paid extension or upgrade (but that should be expected with a free plugin anyway).

Highlights
- It’s free
- Works with most major payment gateways, like PayPal and Amazon
- Create digital product pages the same way you’d create anything else in WordPress (which means it’s super intuitive)
- Discount code creation
- Built-in reporting system
Interested in Easy Digital Downloads?
Details
eCommerce Product Catalog Plugin by ImpleCode
This free eCommerce plugin is great for creating and managing a physical product catalog, which is made even more easy with its drag-and-drop catalog builder. Now, while you could spring for the premium extensions that give you access to things like quote forms, product reviews, and a shopping cart, you may be best off using this in conjunction with a safe and secure payment gateway instead.

Highlights
- It’s free
- Drag-and-drop builder
- Customize your design or use pre-made templates
- Works with over 150 currencies and four price formats
- Build a catalog for up to 100,000 products
- Granular product catalog organization based on categories or tags
- Control shipping options
- SEO-friendly: includes metadata as well as separate catalog sitemap
- Includes breadcrumb functionality
Interested in eCommerce Product Catalog Plugin by ImpleCode?
Details
WP eCommerce
If you’re looking for something that is a step up from a free eCommerce plugin but not quite as robust as a premium one, you may be interested in the WP eCommerce plugin. They keep it simple in terms of setting up a new store but have also built this plugin with the developer in mind, offering a number of APIs to extend the functionality of your online store.

WP eCommerce uses the same model as WooCommerce… the eCommerce platform itself is free, but they offer limited extensions and add-ons that you can purchase.

Highlights
- Integrates with reliable payment gateways like PayPal and Stripe
- Manage tax and shipping rates
- Coupon management options
- Configure for recurring billing, processing refunds, and more
- Includes on-page marketing options, like “Share This” and “User Who Bought This”
- Monitor sales from within the tool
Interested in WP eCommerce?
Details
WP Easy Cart
Another free eCommerce solution to consider is WP EasyCart. This plugin is easy to install on your existing site and adds a straightforward shopping cart. You can sell a variety of products, both physical and digital, and play around with the settings to achieve the look you want. It is compatible with most themes and can be set up within minutes.

Highlights
- It’s free
- It comes with several widgets, menus, and more to manage features like store search, vertical and horizontal menus, price and manufacturer filters, categories, specials, and more.
- Payment gateway integration, internationalization & live shipping
- Advanced product settings (tiered pricing, B2B pricing, featured products, etc)
- Coupons and promotions
- Google Analytics integration
- Social sharing
- Administrative software
Interested in WP Easy Cart?
Details
NinjaShop
NinjaShop touts itself as “the quickest way to start selling on WordPress!” but doesn’t give much more information than this on its website. Most of the information about this plugin can be found in its documentation section.

When we installed the plugin to test it out, it installed nicely with a clean and simple interface that guides you through the process. It is not for novice users, as customizations require good knowledge of editing CSS, and the plugin seems to be in development with some documented features still lacking and few user downloads.

Highlights
- It’s free
- The plugin is very light
- It uses the store’s inbuilt pages (you can also create and use your own pages).
- It has features and options that can be turned on or off so you can enable only what’s needed.
- Product image zoom feature.
Interested in NinjaShop?
Details Documentation

Other eCommerce Platforms That Integrate With WordPress

There are other options you can use to build an eCommerce site with WordPress. These include using other platforms that integrate with your WordPress site, like the ones listed below.

Shopify
Shopify generates a buy button code you can copy and paste to add products to your WordPress site. Once you drop the Buy Button into place and choose the product you’d like to feature, a standalone mini-storefront is created on your WordPress blog or website that connects directly with Shopify’s secure shopping cart platform to display product images, details, and prices automatically. This can be a good option for those who already have an existing WordPress site and Shopify shop.

And the benefits of using Shopify? Many are similar to the WordPress plugins, such as a secure shopping cart, various payment gateways, controlling taxes and shipping, and the ability to use CSS and HTML to build and style your website to match your brand’s look. It also lets you choose from over 100 professional themes and present your shopping cart as mobile or tablet-ready.

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BigCommerce
BigCommerce provides scalable headless commerce on WordPress via a plugin.

The plugin allows you to link to your BigCommerce account and display products with embedded store images within your WordPress site on the front-end while handing things like catalog management, processing payments, and managing fulfillment logistics on the back-end from BigCommerce.

This is a good option for a standalone eCommerce site if you’re not too familiar with CSS and HTML, as the plugin supports WordPress’ standard method of overriding template files so you can modify out-of-the-box designs, customize product cards, lists, and cart without risking plugin updates that will undo your changes. Big Commerce gives you full catalog access, allows you to choose a theme, and use the point and click design features to make it your own. It’s also got built-in marketing and SEO tools, so you don’t need to be an expert in this either. Your site will be securely hosted, PCI compliant, and you’ll get a CRM to communicate with your customers.

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Should You Switch From WooCommerce?

There are options available for WordPress users that don’t want to build stores or an eCommerce business on WooCommerce. Thanks to its long-standing presence as the top eCommerce plugin on the market, however, WooCommerce has the leg up on the competition, especially in areas like developing extensions and add-ons to deliver new features and functionality to the platform.

Like all businesses, web developers are driven by economic factors and will gravitate toward servicing growth markets and this will have a direct impact on your eCommerce setup. Your choice of platform, therefore, will affect key areas of your business like:

Adapting quickly to changes in technology, customer preferences, or the economy,
Growing your store with new features, and
Receiving reliable support when you need it.

If these areas are important to you, then you should think carefully before choosing to go with a WooCommerce alternative. Also, if you haven’t built your eCommerce site yet, make sure to read our comprehensive guide to planning an eCommerce store with WordPress.