Building a WordPress E-Commerce Website The Right Way
WordPress is extremely powerful and can be developed to sell your products online. If you have never done this, you may be in for a treat and allot of trial and error because there are allot of road maps to building an E-Commerce site using WordPress. After almost 7 years of working with WordPress and spending more time then I would like to mention researching plugins and testing functionality, I have come up with the best way to include all the elements needed to make it the right way.
Let’s start by defining the ingredients needed to complete a WordPress E-Commerce site. Now keep in mind that some of the following items I will list are not mandatory to use in your E-Commerce development but will make it more successful and MORE MONEY! My list below already assumes that you have a great host for your website and a SSL certificate installed to secure the connection in order to process payments directly on your site. A secure connection means that instead of the URL address being http it would be https.
This is what you will need: * REQUIRED
- E-Commerce ready theme (you can use any theme but E-Commerce ready makes life easier) *
- E-Commerce plugin that will manage the shopping cart process *
- Payment Processor that will allow your site visitor to purchase products *
- Affiliate plugin that will allow others to drive sales to your products for commission
- Members Only plugin which will allow you to create premium content pages that require membership purchase to access
Now let’s say for the purpose of this post that you will be using all the elements in the list above because you want your online store to be the da bomb diggity. It is very important that you find the right plugins and themes that will all work together an integrate into one another. THIS IS SUPER IMPORTANT. So in order to make sure you do it right and save you the hours of research and or massive headaches, I have laid out below what you need and where to get it. Total investment in these items is $176 – $206.
1. E-Commerce Ready Theme ($30 – $70)
Splashing Pixels
Splashing Pixels is a theme development company who specializes in e-Commerce related themes for WordPress. At the site, you will find beautifully crafted themes that are forward thinking and incredibly intuitive. All our themes show special attention to detail and user friendliness. On top of that, it is backed by our own Splashing Pixels theme framework which you will find very easy to use. Don’t be shy, stop by and take a look at our demos!
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Storefront Themes
Storefront Themes designs all their themes EXCLUSIVELY for the WP-e-Commerce platform and offer more WP-e-Commerce themes than any other theme shop. They offer first-class support, high-def video tutorials, and an optimized theme framework. They continually push the boundaries of what the WPEC platform can do by producing unique themes, some of which integrate with BUDDYPRESS, use RESPONSIVE layouts for mobile devices, and cover a wide variety of niches with features like music players, custom widgets and ajax functionality.
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2. E-Commerce WordPress Plugin (FREE)
WP e-Commerce Plugin
WP e-Commerce is a robust WordPress plugin suitable for anyone who wants to start selling products, downloads or services online. Whether you sell 10 or 10,000 products, we make it easy to add a WordPress e-Commerce shopping cart to your site. Best of all it is easy to manage. Quickly add products and organize your catalog using the familiar WordPress interface. Our WordPress e-Commerce Plugin boasts more than 1.7 million downloads – that’s quite an endorsement. But don’t take our word for it. Browse our showcase to see the remarkable e-commerce websites our users have built using the WP e-Commerce Plugin developed by the GetShopped community.
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3. Payment Processor WordPress Plugin ($40)
Gold Cart Plugin
The WP e-Commerce Plugin is a shop owners dream, with such intricate WordPress integration it is possible to do anything. The Gold Cart Plugin is our Premier Plugin that opens up a mixture of new functionality and provides customers with 1 support token that they can use for requesting help setting up their shop.
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4. Affiliate WordPress Plugin ($47)
Affiliate Plugin
The Affiliate Plugin makes it simple to sign up and manage affiliates. You can easily set the payout amount (flat rate or % of sale) per affiliate, add custom banners and text links with unique tracking codes, view stats and more.
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5. Members Only WordPress Plugin ($49)
Member’s Only Plugin
The Members Only Plugin is a perfect way to create pay to view subscription sites. This Plugin is a completely new WordPress Membership Plugin and comes packed with plenty of useful features and a nice user interface to boot.
Full Details
Please take note that the above items work hand in hand with each other and has been tried, tested and proven to sell the HECK out of your products online. I look forwards to any comments you have on this post and I am always here for your questions.
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Hello all. I will be updating this post very soon. WPEC is dead to me.
Good! gives me lot of knowledge about how to make your ecommerce website using wordpress . Keep it up.
Hello, I would like to know is it possible to create an ecommerce wordpress website that will allow visitors to register and then add their own products to the store. It would have to be customizable because people would have to fill specific forms which will contain details about their product (price info expiration date picture etc).
Example: http://www.njuskalo.hr/ (there is no english version but just for example to show you what I mean of).
Thanks.
I would use Magneto for this type of project.
I don’t have any website building experience or coding things etc. Will this work for me to start my own website. I want my clients to be able to sign in with facebook, twitter or their email address. I need for my customers to be able to upload their own products, price etc. Will all of this work for me. please reply ASAP i’m desperate to get this site of mine off the ground. Thank you, Brenda.
This will not work for that type of site. Allow visitors to upload their own products requires custom scripting.
Thanks a ton Jarrett… You have listed out the theme and respective plugin modules in a nice way.. it has made my work very easy… and also your post on responsive WP themes is very helpful..
Thanks so much!!!
The Word press is an awesome publishing platform which is utilized everywhere these days. You will find Word Press development from to In this 1st article of 1 E-Commerce week, we will learn how to create a website which has online store’s.
Great post Jarrett. I know for a fact building e-Commerce website is so expensive. Thanks to wordpress, these features and resources make things much easier and affordable. Are you going to post about Responsive web design anytime soon? Since everything is mobile based these days :)
Thanks Yusuf. I did a post a few weeks ago on my top 10 Responsive themes. Check it out. http://orangecountycustomwebsitedesign.com/top-10-responsive-wordpress-themes/
Fantastic post Jarrett!! Wp ecommerce is definitely my preferred plugin. This post is going to save some headaches for a lot of people.
Thanks Josh. I really spent mad time researching this post.
Nice job Jarrett. I haven’t used WP e-Commerce before, but I’ll try it out if you recommend it.
Thanks Frank. I have been using Shopp.net for several years as well as Woo Commerce but for the complete package of the affiliate and membership elements. WPEC is the best way.
There are also tons of FREE add-ons that you can check out at http://getshopped.org/fpt-plugins/
Once again I must commend you on providing some of the best information on WordPress and web design! Of course I have shared this throughout my social media. Thank you!
Brenda
Always appreciate your support Brenda. You are part of this team. Would love to see a full review post on using Director Press for promoting local business. Sound like a good idea?