Next up in our 30 Days of WordPress world series, we have Kai asking about using WordPress for an ecommerce store.
Kai’s Question
I’m curious about using WordPress as an e-commerce store. Are there e-commerce plugins out there other than WP e-Commerce? Outside of SEO and analytics, what areas do you recommend focusing on for deploying a WordPress e-commerce store? Do you have any recommendations for WordPress store themes free or paid?
I saw this post on Hackernews. Thanks!
My Answer to Kai
The last time I had to work on an ecommerce solution for WordPress was a few years ago, so I my experience may be a bit outdated.
What I found at that time was that most of the e-com solutions available for WordPress were bandaids on a big gaping wound… they worked for a little while, but I wouldn’t leave them unattended for long.
It appears that there are some new entries into the growing market of people using WordPress for e-com. A plugin called Shopp looks promising, but I don’t have any experience with it so I can’t say for sure.
So what would I do if I were going to create an e-commerce store but loved WordPress? I’d let e-commerce software handle the heavy lifting but use WordPress as a front-end.
What I mean by this is draw an invisible line in your mind between the functions that you’d want from e-commerce and give those responsibilities over to magento, yahoo, or any other cart software you like. Then use WordPress and all of its ease-of-use, SEO beauty, and plugins as the front end that people see before they place an order.
Focus on These, Too
And to answer Kai’s question about:
Outside of SEO and analytics, what areas do you recommend focusing on for deploying a WordPress e-commerce store?
I would say to work hard at fine-tuning your pages with split-testing and you could also consider getting reviews of products and hosting those on your site too. I’ve never run an e-com site before (only affiliate sales which don’t require fulfillment) so I can’t give you much advice beyond those two. But don’t underestimate the value of split-testing.
Thanks and Best,
Brad
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