Setting up an online store has never been easier, and with so many options to choose from, it's easy to get lost in the maze of plugins that developers launch every day.

So what are your WordPress options? What should you pay attention to when setting up a WordPress e-commerce website? Below I review some possible solutions and the specific features that make them stand out.

WordPress E-Commerce Solution

WooCommerce

First, we have the WooCommerce plugin developed by the WooThemes team. It is without a doubt the most popular plugin to date, with over 3 million downloads. This open-source plugin provides users with a wide range of features, making it easy for e-commerce startups to easily set up an online store at almost no cost.

The most unique feature of this plugin is the flexibility it offers users: without having to know the technical details of setting up an e-commerce website beforehand, you can do it easily with this plugin. Through its WordPress-centric user interface, you can easily configure many aspects about your e-commerce business, including pricing, currency, shipping, email, and even tax options.

The dashboard offers a variety of options to handle all different types of business, allowing you to choose the one that best suits your type of business.

Probably one of the best things from a developer's perspective is its vast array of customization options: you can choose from a variety of free themes available on the developer's website and adjust the preset CSS to Tailored to your taste and preferences. Independent WordPress theme developers with a large number of users are also working on themes with this plugin as the basic core functionality, providing end users with a variety of themes to choose from.

You can also extend the functionality of the plugin by purchasing third-party extensions to make the plugin even better. Visit the official website to know more details about WooCommerce.

Easy Digital Download

With just over 300,000 downloads and a user star rating of 4.8/5, Easy Digital Downloads is an e-commerce plugin that caters to a specific market. This plugin is built to cater to e-commerce websites that focus on selling digital products.

Instead of including all features in a complete e-commerce plugin, the developers chose to provide specific features that make selling digital products easier.

Main functions include:

• Shopping cart system for purchasing multiple downloads
• Multiple files per downloadable product

• Complete Promotional Code System

• One sale of bundled products

• Full revenue and sales graph report for your website

• ...there are more

The plugin is open source and can be downloaded directly from the WordPress plugin repository or the official developer website. Like most open source plugins, you can pay to purchase all extensions in order to achieve all possible functionality.

Shopping

Get Shoped is one of the first WordPress e-commerce plugins released. To date, the plugin has been downloaded by over 2.7 million users. Although the plugin faces many challenges as user complaints are increasing day by day and has a user star rating of 2.8/5, it has many features and tools required for an e-commerce website.

Having been in the market for quite some time, over time it has proven its maturity as a WordPress e-commerce platform over other new plugins that are shaking the market. Some of its features include:

• Marketing: You can set pricing and discount rules and offer some specific products you are selling.
• Shipping: This plugin integrates real-time shipping rates from UPS, UPPS and Australia Post, if you want to use FedEx you have to purchase the premium extension.

• Manage Orders: You can configure the plugin to generate email notifications when customers place specific orders and receive all reports about your store in CSV format.

• Payment Options: With the free download, you get PayPal (Standard, Pro and Express) and Google Checkout as standard payment gateways. You can get additional payment gateways by purchasing extensions.
• Checkout: Get Shoped allows guest checkout, giving customers the option to purchase products without registering on the site, and the option to create an account at the beginning of checkout. Customers have exactly what they need to see on one page, which also includes shipping and tax options.

There are so many WordPress eCommerce plugins that it would take more than an article to dive into them all, but there are a few that stand out.

For example:

• Cart 66
• Jiggo Shop
• shop
• Ecwid
• ...there are more

Before concluding this article, it is important that I mention some key things you should consider when choosing an eCommerce plugin for your WordPress website:

• What type of products do you plan to sell? For example, if you only plan to handle digital downloads or credit deposits, it would be wise to choose a solution that caters specifically to these needs for this niche, as it may offer better options and be easier to set up quickly.
• What is your level of technical knowledge? With a plugin like WP-eCommerce that is created with WordPress technology in mind, this particular solution is best tuned by someone with more than just business knowledge. WooCommerce, on the other hand, comes from a background in WordPress themes, and users with basic WordPress knowledge will probably find their way around it. Assess your skills and your needs before choosing a specific plugin.

• What's the fare? It is important that you consider how much you are willing to spend on a solution, plugins that require you to spend a lot of money on extensions and add-ons can be expensive or even difficult to put together. Assess and anticipate your exact needs when your store is up and running, and choose a solution that meets most of your needs with just a basic setup.

• Support, user reviews and updates. Solutions with a good support base will help you solve the difficulties that arise when opening a store. It can be seen from the user reviews what kind of support he can expect when using a certain solution, for example WooCommerce is praised as a solution that has an incredible support base from the developers themselves . Updates are key to website scalability, so before choosing a plugin find out when it was last updated and how often the developer makes updates

in conclusion

It’s obvious that the WordPress platform has a lot to offer in the e-commerce space, and some plugins are more popular than others, but really it comes down to customer preference. Share some of your experiences using this or other plugins.

In the next article, we will explore some of the challenges faced when using WordPress as an e-commerce solution and how to overcome them.