You’ve decided you want to add an e-commerce section to your website this year. Awesome! Now how to implement that.
Well, if you’ve got a WordPress site already, you’re basically halfway there. The WordPress ecosystem is vast, and it is definitely not lacking e-commerce plugins for you to use.
The only problem is that there are so many for you to choose from. It’s pretty easy to get choice-paralysis, especially if you’re not a web person.
So, if you’re looking for an e-commerce plugin for your website, here are my recommendations.
WooCommerce
WooCommerce is hands down the best e-commerce WordPress plugin out there. And probably the best platform on the market period. Google “WordPress e-commerce plugins” and it pops up as the top result every single time.
And for good reason too. It’s a very powerful plugin that does a lot for you. It’s free to start out with payment gateways, shipping rates, customer emails and so much more. And that doesn’t mention the obvious quality display of your products.
Plus, there are a ton of add-ons you can purchase and use to extend your store even further. And if you want a fully compatible theme, they offer those as well.
There are a couple of downsides though. First, it’s owned now by Automattic, who also owns Jetpack, so if that’s not your cup of tea, it might be a problem. Plus because it does a lot, it can add bloat to your site. Plus, some of options can be a bit complicated. And some regular themes might not initially work correctly with WooCommerce.
But I think those are fairly minor concerns and the good really outweighs . If you’re wanting to open up an e-commerce section to your website, WooCommerce is the way to go.
Tell the Story of Your Small Business With a Website
Every small business has a story. And every small business needs a website to help tell it. A website allows people to find you online, serves as a home base for any marketing effort and can help you tell the story of your business. So if you’re ready to give your business its first website or are ready to take your site to the next level, let’s get started on making that happen.
Let’s Get Started on Telling Your Story With a WebsiteEasy Digital Downloads
Now, if you’re just selling online-only items, like say WordPress plugins and themes, Easy Digital Downloads is definitely the way to go.
EDD is essentially the digital goods version of WooCommerce. In fact, having set up both, they feel almost identical in a way. But EDD is simpler in the fact that you don’t have to worry about shipping or inventories. And I’ve found that it works well with well-built themes right out of the box, so there’s no worry about how it will look on your site.
And like WooCommerce, the EDD ecosystem has a lot of add-ons to really make your digital store powerful.
I really don’t have too many negatives to use for EDD. It obviously doesn’t work if you’re trying to ship goods. But other than that, it’s a very powerful plugin that gives you a great online store to sell digital goods.
WP eCommerce
I’ll be honest, I’ve never used WP eCommerce before, but I’ve heard good things about it, so I’ll through it up on this list.
Like the other two, WP eCommerce is free out of the box. It’s not quite as extensive as WooCommerce is, but that means a simple set up process and less bloat on your website if that type of stuff matters to you.
It also has add-ons for purchase and use; however, the available of add-ons are lacking in number compared to the other two, which kind of stinks.
But other than that, I don’t know a whole lot about it, other than I’ve heard other folks say they like it a lot, so that for what you want.
So, if you’re looking at adding e-commerce to your website’s functionality this year, these are the plugins you’ll probably want to look at. Each of them serve a purpose, and they serve that purpose extremely well. I really don’t think you can go wrong with any one of these.
