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

1. E-Commerce ready theme (you can use any theme but E-Commerce ready makes life easier) *
2. E-Commerce plugin that will manage the shopping cart process *
3. Payment Processor that will allow your site visitor to purchase products *
4. Affiliate plugin that will allow others to drive sales to your products for commission
5. 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.

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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.