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“Let’s learn, from the hand of Teresa Alba, the 11 essential plugins for our eCommerce, go ahead!”
Although WordPress began as a platform for , over time it has evolved into a complete CMS to develop all kinds of web pages.
There are many companies that use it, even to create an eCommerce for online sales. And it is that, along with Prestashop, it is one of the simplest and most complete tools to create this type of online store.
WordPress has evolved over the years, among other things, thanks to the work of many professionals who have developed different WordPress plugins.
There are all kinds of them, and they are specially designed to solve the problems that any webmaster can find in their day to day.
Among the more than 50,000 plugins that currently exist, there are many user-oriented. development of an eCommerce; you can find them in free or premium versions and even try beta versions that are still in the development phase.
Today I want to talk to you about 11 WordPress plugins that I find totally essential to be able to develop a good eCommercethat is easy to use and also offers a good user experience.
HOW TO CHOOSE THE BEST PLUGINS FOR YOUR ECOMMERCE?
The different professionals in the sector recommend some plugins or others based on their experience and what they have experienced with their own eCommerce or those of their clients.
Of course, there are tools that are more popular than others, and this is because they are indeed good and solve the problems that companies face.
However, the fact that they work in a specific case does not mean that they are the best option for you.
There are certain aspects that you should take into account when choosing plugins that you need, not only for eCommerce, but for any type of website.
Let’s see what things you should consider when deciding to install one or another option:
- Type of product: Selling services is not the same as selling physical or digital products. Therefore, you do not need the same tools to sell one or the other.
For physical products or services, you’ll need an eye-catching catalog that encourages purchase, but for digital products you’ll also need to make it easy to download.
- Memberships or private areas: You may only want to sell products or services in your eCommerce, but if you also want to create a private area for users and offer them extra products, exclusive content or the option to pay for Premium services (for example), you will need plugins of membership that allow you to do all this.
- Type of payment: Today there are many options when making a payment for an Internet purchase.
You can pay by bank transfer, credit or debit card, Paypal, cash on delivery, virtual currency, or even through mobile applications. Depending on what types of payments you accept, you will need some plugins or others.
In addition to these technical aspects, many other things also come into play.
For example, the ease you have managing the website and the difficulty of managing the plugins, the availability of guides or tutorials, the space you have available on the server, the time you can dedicate to it, etc.
11 WORDPRESS PLUGINS FOR E-COMMERCE
There are more or less cheap WordPress plugins, even in free versions, more or less easy to install and with multiple different options to manage the website.
Despite all those options, there are some plugins that are more popular than others and most recommended by professionals in the sector. Let’s see what are the essentials to develop an online store.
WORDPRESS PLUGINS TO CREATE THE ECOMMERCE
The first thing you need is itself. In other words, a tool that helps you create the catalog of products or services that you sell and that allows you to integrate the rest of the functionalities that you want for your eCommerce.
It is the WordPress plugin for eCommerce par excellence and the most popular. Therefore, it is the one that has evolved the most in recent years, both in terms of users and features and functionalities.
Currently 28% of the world’s online stores work with this tool.
It is free, although it also offers Premium services to get more advanced options, and has hundreds of paid extensions that will allow you to customize your online store as much as you need.
Among its extensions, the most outstanding are those that allow you to integrate the Amazon payment gateway, those that allow users to customize a product before buying it, as well as those that allow you to offer specific discounts and offers (for certain periods and that facilitate direct management with the shipping company).
In addition to these features, WooCommerce has a wide selection of templates among which you will find the design that suits your needs.
It is one of the WordPress plugins that has grown in parallel with WooCommerce. They started with the same base in terms of code development, but little by little they have been separated each one to cover different aspects.
JigoShop has much less options than WooCommerce, but it is the best option if you are looking for an online store with an outstanding loading speed. Also, its interface is very good and easy to use.
Although the other two have evolved much more than this one, the eCommerce-specific WordPress plugin has been on the market since 2006.
This specially designed for stores with a catalog of physical products and it is quite simple to use.
It is a good tool for small businesses that do not require a wide-range product catalog.
Nevertheless, you should think about the scalability of your business; If you have plans to greatly expand the online store, this may not be your ideal plugin.
WORDPRESS PLUGINS FOR DIGITAL PRODUCT DOWNLOADS
Once you have created the eCommerce base, if what you sell are digital productsyou will need to install tools that allow direct download.
You can also limit the store to the payment gateway and send the products to the customers yourself, but it is not the best option. This would involve a lot of logistical work on your part, and users could be suspicious of how the store works.
To speed up the procedures, facilitate the navigability and the purchase process of the usersthere are several plugins that can help you.
It is one of the most popular WordPress plugins for online stores that require a download after purchase..
There are even physical product stores that use it so that users can download the instructions or any type of online content that they offer when making a purchase of another type of product.
It has 139 extensions and themes that allow you to fully customize it. User reviews give it 4.9 out of 5!
Its popularity has been growing in recent years, so developers have been able to respond just as well to users by creating more and more features.
More than to sell digital products, it is designed to give access to certain content of a web page or blog (upon payment by the user).
In addition, it supports creating payments from 2 cents to the maximum amount you want. It is very simple to use and install.
WORDPRESS PLUGINS TO CREATE MEMBERSHIPS
If you are going to create a membership section for users within your eCommerce, the first thing you should know is that most of these plugins are Premium.
Although they all have free features, as soon as you need to link them to payment gateways you will need to buy a higher version.
Of course, every euro invested will be worth it, since they cover many options and allow you to fully customize the private area from your store.
It is one of those fantastic WordPress plugins to create memberships that stands out for its ease of connecting with other platforms. It allows you to unify your online store with Paypal or with emailing tools.
This is fantastic for cross-checking your store’s databases and managing the sending of newsletters.
It has a system of rules that you can configure so that work within the private area is practically automatic and logistically efficient. Furthermore, it is a tool that It supports very well the peaks in which the traffic to the private area of the online store is very high.
Memberpress also presents an area of statistics and analysis with which you can always be aware of everything that happens in the store.
This plugin has a big drawback, and that is that its interface is not particularly intuitive. The developers have focused on the technical features, neglecting the intuitive design, which makes it a bit more difficult to handle.
However, with time and patience, you will be able to configure it to your liking and you will see that it is completely worth it. Of course, my recommendation is that you first try the free version and see how easy or difficult it is for you to use it.
It is easy to integrate in all types of stores and compatible with the main tools used in online stores.
Contrary to the previous case, Paid Memberships Pro is one of the WordPress plugins very simple and easy to manage. It has a very intuitive interface and greatly facilitates the work of all webmasters.
In addition, it works with a module system similar to that of WordPress widgets, which allows you to configure different functionalities in your online store.
Therefore, it is easily linked to the payment gateways and the rest of the eCommerce plugins.
WORDPRESS PLUGINS FOR PAYMENT GATEWAYS
Whatever you are going to sell in your eCommerce, what is clear is that you need a payment gateway so that the economic transaction can be carried out.
The plugins to create online stores have their own extensions to install this functionality, but they also give the possibility of connecting with other plugins specialized in this topic.
This tool is the one that allows connect online stores with the digital payment gateways of different banks. It opens a window in the browser that leads the user to pay on the platform of the bank they use.
It is a very easy to configure WordPress plugin that allows you to manage payments in a very secure way. It is solid and robust, and handles high spikes in user connections well.
Is about the most used payment platform in Spain and does not have pre-established conditions for the store. The commissions and other economic aspects are negotiable between the store and the bank with which you normally work.
Offer a payment gateway to integrate PayPal into your online store. It allows you to install multiple different templates for the payment box and…
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