Let’s go shopping
For small to medium sized online shops or shopping carts WordPress can offer a really cost-effective solution to get an online shop up and running. Currently we recommend and prefer to work with the superb WooCommerce plugin from WooThemes.
WordPress + E-Commerce = WooCommerce
As WordPress is the CMS of choice here at Stomp Box, we were very excited to see the release of the WooCommerce ECommerce plugin for WordPress, in September 2011.
WooCommerce transforms WordPress into an online shop with product management, stock control, integrated shopping cart and checkout, coupons and much more. And WooCommerce is free to use. WooThemes (the creators of WooCommerce) develop and sell a number of specially designed themes and extensions for WooCommerce. These add features such as support for additional payment gateways, advanced shipping options, image zoom and more.
While E-Commerce on WordPress is not right for every project, this new software is well conceived, easy to use and low-cost to set-up and maintain. As ever, customisation work and additional plugins and development can extend your online store to suit requirements, but right out of the box WooCommerce provides the tools to get a professional, easy to use ecommerce site online very easily.
For a WooCommerce-powered WordPress website you need:
- WordPress – that’s easy – and free.
- The WooCommerce plug-in – that’s free too!
- A WooCommerce compatible theme – buy one or have us build a custom one!
- You may well need some of the premium extensions for your WooCommerce store
WooCommerce Themes and Extensions
There is a growing library of beautiful WooCommerce themes available directly from WooThemes. Any of these themes can be customised to match your design requirements, brand and corporate image. If you’re store needs extra payment gateways or other premium features, there are loads of great extensions, and more are being released each month.
Note that WooThemes do not hold a monopoly on producing commercial WooCommerce themes and we are already beginning to see some fantastic WooCommerce-ready themes appearing on ThemeForest.
See the WooCommerce website for full details on the WooCommerce features, themes and extensions.
If WooCommerce just doesn’t work for you for some reason … we’ve also some experience working with the WP-ECommerce GetShopped.org plugin.
Other E-Commerce Platforms
And if WordPress E-Commerce just isn’t right (which happens), there are excellent hosted solutions like Shopify.com or the power-house open-source self-hosted Magento.
