E-commerce has been exceptionally successful in the past few years and the worldwide online retail spending is close to $2 trillion with a 6.6 percent growth as compared to 2014. The industry is growing fast and it is no surprise that more and more businesses are trying to capitalize on the tremendous market potential of e-commerce.
WordPress is the most robust, scalable, flexible and personalized Content Management System and powers more than a quarter of all websites on the Web. It is also the best platform to build powerful e-commerce sites that are capable of selling thousands of digital and physical products.
With the multitude of plugins available, it is not difficult to incorporate e-commerce into a website. You can also build an e-commerce site from scratch on WordPress and customize it suit to your unique needs.
Simply installing e-commerce plugin would not make you a top seller on the Web. Optimize your site using WordPress landing page plugins and robust search plugins to provide the best user experience. But the first step remains that you zero in on the most suitable WordPress plugin for e-commerce.
Here we list some of the popular WordPress plugins for a robust e-commerce site.
1. WooCommerce
WooCommerce has close to two million downloads and is the most popular e-commerce plugin as of now.
It helps transform a simple blogging platform into a beautiful store, easily customizable, scalable and highly extendable. You can showcase products, collect orders, offer discounts and safely secure payments.
There are several reasons why WooCommerce has grown to power more than 650,000 e-commerce portals. PayPal integration, full compatibility with WordPress themes, intuitive dashboard offering widgets and the ability to track sales, stock, orders and other statistics, Google Analytics support, multiple shipping options, and easy social sharing enabled by ShareThis and Sharedaddy are all features of WooCommerce.
The core plugin is free and for advanced needs you can purchase powerful extensions that can meet virtually any of your needs. You can also buy storefront themes and support as you scale up and expand.
2. Ecwid
Ecwid caters to companies that do not want to start a new website to sell online. This powerful plugin allows you to build an e-commerce system into your existing website without making any drastic changes to the site framework.
Ecwid WordPress plugin is free and integrates easily with your social media profiles as well. The free plan is fully capable of powering small and medium-sized e-commerce portals, can enable you to sell on mobile devices and syncs with multiple devices.
Ecwid allows you to mirror the site elsewhere and sell on multiple channels. A single dashboard will allow you to manage all the channels conveniently.
Paid plans start at around $15 per month and give you additional features like volume discount, coupon codes and stock management.
3. Jigoshop
Jigoshop is another free e-commerce plugin that is highly suitable for small and medium sized businesses.
Jigoshop features a robust and intuitive dashboard that allows you to manage all your e-commerce activities in a single place. You will be able to track the performance of your web store, compile sales reports and track inventory easily and quickly. All payments on this plugin are handled by the third-party processor and there are more than 70 free and paid payment gateway extensions available to choose from.
Order management, customer account area, search features, tax and shipping options and marketing capabilities are offered by Jigoshop. Sales reports and graphs, latest product orders and reviews, and inventory reports can be accessed and managed through the intuitive dashboard. It is also very easy to add new products, product descriptions, demo videos and images to your product page.
Jigoshop offers more than 30 high-quality themes that can be used to build e-commerce portals of any kind. You can get a professional and trendy site up and ready in no time using these themes, and they are also highly customizable.
4. Cart66 Cloud
Cart66 Cloud is an extremely popular WordPress e-commerce plugin that helps make your checkout page, product pages, and sensitive e-commerce data PCI-compliant, safe and secure.
Cart66 Cloud is highly cost-efficient and gives you an awesome deal where the core plugin that comes with additional features like inbuilt PCI-compliance for checkout process, customer data and billing information is free. You also get 70+ payment gateways, recurring billing options, and free storage on AmazonS3 enabling you to securely sell digital products in the package.
The powerful plugin connects your WordPress site to the customized super-secure Cart66 Cloud account. You get a fully functional e-commerce portal for less than what you would pay for a payment gateway add-on and an SSL certificate if you are setting up a web shop on your own.
With Cart66 Cloud, you get to set up and run a business entirely on your WordPress site. All your product pages will be in WordPress and you have the freedom to host your site wherever you want.
The plugin comes with a free 14-day trial period after which you will have to pay an annual fee of $95 per year.
5. Easy Digital Downloads
Easy Digital Downloads is a WordPress plugin tailor-made for e-commerce portals that sell digital files.
Easy Digital Downloads plugin is robust, feature-packed and powerful, yet lightweight and clean at the same time. The plugin is free and only has the basic and essential features to allow for streamlined, quick and efficient selling.
The plugin is super easy to install and set up and all that you need to do is enter your payment information, product data, and other necessary details, and you are ready to go. The plugin also helps you analyze sales and earnings with the help of simple and lucid sales graphs and data tables.
The WordPress plugin is developer-friendly and allows you to customize and build features according to your need. There are several payment gateway options and you can also choose from add-on gateways that are being constantly developed.
The plugin is extremely user-friendly and makes data export, discounts, coupons, and promotions super easy.