The WordPress platform makes it easy to set up an online store, either as your primary business or to complement your physical small business. In addition to thousands of templates, there is a massive library of plugins designed to simplify and automate your online sales.
Below are ten of the best WordPress plugins for eCommerce that you can use to enhance your website and create a smooth, hassle-free online shopping experience for your customers.
WordPress Plugins for eCommerce
WP e-Commerce
A popular and long-standing plugin that was one of the first eCommerce options offered by WordPress, WP e-Commerce comes with a wide variety of functions and features. The fully-featured free download works great out of the box and comes with flexible coupon codes, discounts and free shipping options, cross-page promotion, a New Products widget single-page checkout, integration with popular e-commerce payment and third-party platforms and much more.
You can also purchase add-ons and upgrades to customize this plugin and add even more functionality, like extra payment gateways, slider carousels and additional shipping options.
WooCommerce
A fully functional free plugin with a vast library of premium upgrades available, WooCommerce is easy to use for both vendors and customers. Free features for this plugin include complex coupon campaigns, product and inventory management, order management, sales reports, a customer account area, control over shipping and tax charges and more.
Jigoshop
With detailed reporting, widgets and shortcodes, one-page checkout, inventory tracking, product imports/exports, related product displays and more, Jigoshop has everything you need to run an eCommerce store. It’s free, with a nice library of free extensions, and you can also purchase premium themes and extensions for added functionality.
eShop
More than half a million people have downloaded the free eShop plugin, an easy-to-install shopping cart that is fully compatible with WordPress and can create product pages from WordPress pages, posts or custom posts. Features include customer accounts, multiple options for products, selling downloadable content, sales data, sales tax, stock control, discount options and more.
Quick Shop
A super-simple, “fast and dirty†eCommerce plugin with a surprising level of functionality, Quick Shop comes with built-in support for PayPal and email, and uses WordPress sidebar widgets to continuously show shoppers what’s in their carts. With this plugin, you can add products instantly with a TinyMCE button, create drop-down lists with product options and more.
Cart66
This plugin offers a professional, paid version at $25 per month and a slimmer, free version called Cart66 Lite. Billing itself as the only WordPress eCommerce solution with PCI compliance built in, the Cart66 professional version includes everything you need to run a clean, richly featured WordPress store with no additional plugins or add-ons.
With the free version, you get basic eCommerce features that include promotions, tax and shipping charge control, order management, support for multiple currencies, customizable reports and more. You can use either version to sell products from any page or post on your WordPress site.
Shopp
This popular premium plugin works out of the box with any WordPress theme and comes packed with features. Shopp is built to work with WordPress and includes things like short codes, dashboard widgets for quick views of sales and product histories and theme widgets that let you easily drop products and elements into pages.
Additional features include standard eCommerce tools plus multiple product/variation images, multi-category inventory management, promotional tools, native and plugin support for a wide variety of payment gateways, email notifications, a shipping calculator and more.
Ecwid
A free, full-featured shopping cart, Ecwid is incredibly user-friendly and can be set up in five minutes or less. You can add this plugin to your WordPress site or your Facebook page, and even set it up for use on mobile devices – and the mirror function lets you manage the cart on many sites from one central dashboard.
In addition to free plans with all the standard eCommerce features, Ecwid offers premium plans starting at $15 a month that come with volume discounts, coupon codes, inventory management and more.
Easy Digital Downloads
If your eCommerce store sells digital content like eBooks, audio, video or images, Easy Digital Downloads is the best WordPress solution. It’s also the cheapest at the low price of free.
Features of this simple, powerful plugin include discount codes, sales reports, user purchase history, file download logs, a wide selection of payment gateways and more. There are also nearly 200 extensions to improve the functionality of your download storefront.
WPdeposit
Offering a unique alternative to traditional eCommerce plugins, WPdeposit lets you set up a credit system, similar to stock image marketplaces like Shutterstock and iStockPhoto. With WPdeposit, shoppers buy prepaid credits, which they can use to make purchases on your site.
The plugin supports multiple gateways, with the option to add your own. Widgets and shortcodes show users their balances on your site, and add-ons let users subscribe to or advertise on your site in exchange for credits.
eCommerce Photo via Shutterstock
Article source: http://smallbiztrends.com/2014/01/wordpress-plugins-for-ecommerce.html