It still amazes me how many people that want to put together just a simple, minimalized ecommerce site to sell a few products, get stuck installing some heavy open source cart system like Magento or Zen-Cart or even worse end up paying for some expensive clunky shopping cart service such as Yahoo! stores. There’s got to be a better way people. Seriously!
If you’re willing to do a little work (or hire someone to do dev work for you) and planning, you could leverage a content management system that you are most likely already using. According to Wikipedia, 22% of all active websites on the web today run WordPress. Why not just build ecommerce functionality directly into your already existing WordPress site? The truth is that this is a great option regardless of what some experts may say, but there are a few things you should know. The following are the top 5 tips for building an ecommerce site with WordPress:
1. Don’t Use All-In-One Plugins
There are many premium plugins available that are pitched as "all-in-one" solutions. Unless one of these plugins meets your exact needs and specifications in great detail, I would recommend staying away from the "all-in-one" solution. 9 times out of 10 these plugins get you in trouble because they don’t give you flexibility and end up trapping you. Instead… leverage plugins that are more specific in nature if need be for example, a PayPal integration plugin or a Form plugin like Gravity Forms.
2. SSL Enable The Whole Site
There are many great tutorials online that you can find that help guide you through the steps of making your WordPress site fully compatible with your SSL. This simple step will solve a ton of headaches for you.
3. Leverage PayPal
While you can build in your integration to really any platform, I highly recommend leveraging PayPal. There are already dozens of plugins and hundreds of pieces of documentation to help you. And from a business stand-point PayPal just makes more sense.
4. Use The Tools WordPress Gives You
The biggest problems with ecommerce platforms such as Magento, is that they are great with Ecommerce but terrible with content publishing. WordPress is great at content publishing, something you’ll desperately need to better market your store. Leverage these great tools that WordPress gives you.
5. Get The Right Hosting
Some hosting providers, particularly shared hosting providers, simply don’t have the ability to help you serve a great ecommerce experience to your visitors. Make sure you get the right hosting service with the right amount of specs. Services like MediaTemple, Rackspace, and Linode are fantastic for this sort of thing.
My last tip is more of a recommendation than anything. WordPress is incredibly stripped-down and simplified in nature and your ecommerce/shopping cart should be no different. Do not over-complicate things with added little bells and whistles that won’t actually have an impact on conversion anyways. Focus on developing your WordPress ecommerce site with simplicity for the end user in mind. Doing so will not only give you high conversion rates, but you’ll save tons of money and time in development costs as well. A "win-win" if you will.
About the Author
Solomon Thimothy is a writer for ONEims, an ecommerce Chicago company that can help you create an image that will truly represent your company.
This is an original article from WP Cypher Copyright 2012
