Do you have a product or service you’d like to sell via your WordPress website? Whether you want to make your range of designer teeshirts, your industry eCourse or your online trombone tutoring services available, there is bound to be an online shopping cart to meet your needs.
A couple of weeks ago I posted about the ways in which you can monetise your blog, focusing on sponsored posts, advertising and affiliate income generation. These methods can prove lucrative for bloggers targeting the right markets – but what if you have your own product or service you’d like to sell online? How do you make it easy to connect your existing WordPress website audience with your digital and physical products?
There is an increasing number of dedicated ecommerce website builders available to online retailers and small businesses, including big names such as Big Cartel and Shopify. These platforms can offer fantastic ecommerce solutions for businesses and retailers who don’t already have a website, but for those who do have an existing site, adding an ecommerce or shopping cart plugin can offer a shopping experience which is just as seamless for users.
Below are five of the most popular dedicated WordPress shopping carts, ranging from free plugins offering extended premium features, to top-quality paid services.
Cart66
A well-established WordPress ecommerce plugin, Cart66 is designed to make it easy to add products to any page or post on your WordPress site. Offering recurring billing, secure cloud storage of all your valuable ecommerce data, social media integration, digital file selling capabilities and membership and subscription management, the range of Cart66 products is designed to fit a range of ecommerce needs.
Cart66 Lite is rated 2.9/5 stars by users.
WP e-Commerce
WP e-Commerce is one of the most popular and robust ecommerce plugins for WordPress, offering solutions to sell products, downloads and services online. Integrating with PayPal, Google Checkout and other trusted payment processors, this plugin is fully customisable with your own HTML and CSS and works with any standards-compliant WordPress theme.
WP e-Commerce is rated 2.8/5 stars by users.
WooCommerce
WooCommerce transforms your WordPress website into a thoroughbred ecommerce store, with more than million downloads to date. Offering a one-page checkout, social sharing discounts, smart product filtering, a convenient shipping calculator and more premium features, this plugin is one of the best available.
WooCommerce is rated 4.1/5 stars by users.
Jigoshop
Jigoshop is a feature-packed ecommerce plugin supporting downloadable and virtual products, variable-sized products, grouped products and affiliate products. Built upon core WordPress functionality, there is a range of premium extensions available, along with an active Jigoshop community for support.
Jigoshop is rated 3.9/5 stars by users.
Ecwid
Ecwid is a free, full-featured ecommerce solution that can easily be added to any blog in minutes. Supporting drag-and-drop functionality, social network integration, and lightening-fast shopping cart technology, Ecwid is an up-and-coming ecommerce plugin.
Ecwid is rated 4.1/5 stars by users.
You can view even more ecommerce solutions by searching ecommerce and shopping cart in the official WordPress plugin directory.
Already using a WordPress shopping cart? Share your favourite plugins with your fellow WordPress users here, or with WP Themes on Facebook and Twitter.
