There are many ways to take advantage of a website. But without a doubt, the best way is to turn it into an online store in which to sell your products. And with this, we mean anything from physical products to digital documents or even hours of your time.
If your website is an online store, you will be able to sell anything to an audience that is present all over the world, so the possibilities and the impact you can have are practically infinite.
Mount your online store in WordPress
Let’s see the most popular options to set up your online store in WordPress. There are many more options, but with these, you will have all your needs covered.
WooCommerce
WooCommerce is the most popular eCommerce platform nowadays (you just have to go see the statistics in BuiltWith ). It is a completely free WordPress plugin that transforms your installation into an online store with everything you need to start selling.
To install WooCommerce you just have to go to the Plugins section of your WordPress, search for it and install it. Once you activate it, an assistant will appear, which in a few simple steps will help you set up your online store.
You can define the payment methods that you allow, the configuration of the shipments and many other aspects to start the entire infrastructure of your online store. In addition to this, WooCommerce has a very complete and easy to consult the documentation on the WooCommerce website.
In addition, once you finish you will suggest that you install the theme Storefront, which is the official theme for WooCommerce with which you can view the products. Alternatively, you can find a lot of WordPress themes that have support for WooCommerce (both free and paid).
As it is such a popular plugin, there is a whole ecosystem of WordPress plugins around that extend the default features of WooCommerce. So in WooCommerce, almost anything is possible thanks to all the plugins that extend their features.
Among the most popular plugins to extend WooCommerce, we can highlight the official plugins that you can find directly from the menu of your WooCommerce.
There you will find information about Subscriptions, which is an extension to allow recurring payments; You will also see the existence of Bookings, a plugin so that your visitors can buy time slots in a calendar, something perfect for making reservations in physical stores, such as, for example, an aesthetic center; Finally, highlight the Membership plugin , to turn your website into a club where members have advantages over the rest, such as viewing private content or being able to access premium products.
As I’m sure you’re one of those who likes analytics, with WooCommerce you have reported on the performance of your store. Thus, from a simple glance, you will be able to know if your sales are working well with simple graphs that you can consult from your own WordPress desktop. With this, you have no excuse to start an online store and manage it from your own WordPress without needing anything more than a plugin and a little dedication.
Other options
If your needs to sell in WordPress are not too complex, it is possible that both WooCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads are too big. Maybe something simpler is enough for you.
If this is your case, there are plugins that allow you to add a payment button to your website so that when your visitors click they can pay you directly. This will be useful when you ask for donations or when you need single and simple payments in exchange for a digital product that the client receives through a hidden URL of your website.
An interesting option is to receive payments through PayPal. For this, you can use the PayPal Buy Now Button plugin, which allows you to add payment buttons through PayPal in your WordPress using shortcodes.
On the other hand, if you use FastSpring for your payment system you have available the FastSpring plugin for WordPress that allows you to configure your store and add payment buttons in the content.
Final summary
As you have seen, if you want to set up an online store in WordPress, you have several options available depending on your needs. If you are just going to sell a loose product, you do not have to complicate yourself too much and adding sales buttons will suffice. There are many plugins for it.
On the other hand, if you need a professional solution for your WordPress online store, you have WooCommerce as the most important e-commerce plugins. Everything will depend on whether the product you are selling is physical or digital. The good thing about this plugin is very easy to use, so I’m sure you end up managing them with ease.
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