UPDATE – 4 September 2011 – Someone recently ask me how do I set up an e-commerce website through WordPress platform. The email message I received from my reader was:
“Hi Nicola, I need to receive money from my blog. I just wanted to know if it’s a good idea to go ahead with the store idea. Can I integrate a shopping cart into my wordpress website? If so, what is the fastest way to go?”
Well, the answer is simple, the answer is yes, and in this article I will show how do that.
While in my recent article I mentioned that one of the reasons websites fails with e-commerce is due they do not have a good Payment system, today I want to focus your attention to one of the better, if no the better WordPress shopping cart plugin out there, for those who would to turn their WordPress blog or website into a profitable store online.
It is a great plugin that provides you useful information such as product details, tax prices, remove/edit items, shipping options and much much more.
How To Put A Shopping Cart On A WordPress Blog And How I Do Turn My WordPress Into An Ecommerce Page.
The WordPress Shopping Cart Plugin is a plugin for any wordpress blog or website that allows anyone blogger or webmaster to install an online shopping cart in a fast and simple way, and turn WordPress into a strong store online.
As you could see in detail below, the interface is very easy to use which allows you to set up your multiple products as add images to show, as list them into multiple categories as well.
One thing people has need to do when they choose a Shopping cart software to add to their blog, is to check up that there are many elements included within the shopping cart and checkout process.
Well, WordPress Shopping Cart Plugin have not any problems because includes several features for any needs, here’s I’ve put down some of these:
- Product Categories
- Digital Downloads (MP3s,PDFs)
- PayPal Gateway
- Credit Card (POS)
- Multiple Products
- Discount Coupon Codes
If you want to see all the features includes within the package, look here.
A WordPress E-commerce Moneybookers And Paypal
The best part of this plugin is that not only let you start an wordpress e-commerce moneybookers and Paypal from scratch, but it also provide to your customers multiple payment methods such as, 2CheckOut, First Data (Linkpoint & YourPay), Realex Payments (redirect), eMatters (HTTPS), Ogone PSP (Basic), Authorize.net (AIM), eWay (Shared), credit card (POS), bank wire and manual/custom payments.
So, you do not risk to have your potential customers lost due they can not pay your product through Paypal. Often, I saw on certain blog an ugly Paypal button placed below any products… Nothing more wrong. Why? The reason is simple, not all potential customers have an account with Paypal, so you need to give them the ability to choose the right payment system for them.
How Do To Installation It
- First at all, download the WordPress Shopping Cart plugin from the downloads management section in a ZIP archive (you may need to login to your Tribulant Software account in order to access your download).
- Once done, then extract the ZIP archive named wp-checkout.zip and you get a folder called “wp-checkout”.
- Upload the wp-checkout folder to the wp-content/plugins/ directory of your WordPress installation. If you are upgrading, overwrite all existing plugin files from an older version.
- Log into you WordPress dashboard, then access the “Plugins” panel and activate the “Checkout” plugin.
- Access the “Checkout ” administration menu item and the submenus to manage the plugin. This can be found on the left hand side of Your WordPress Dashboard
How To Use This Plugin
When you use these type of software into your website, remember that there’s nothing more annoying to have complicated page full of produtcs, as having to fill out an unnecessary amount of input fields in a form as well.
Well, once the WordPress Shopping Cart Plugin is installed you are able to set up the features you need, creating product categories and add products you want as well, and better yet setting the checkout process in order that become as easy as possible.
Below, I’ve put only some of the main feature, you can find with this plugin
Categories
When you create a new category will be createda WordPress post/page that display the category title, keywords, description and all the products with pagination.
Configuration Settings
If you go on your WordPress dashboard, then “Settings” section you can customize and configure your WordPress shopping cart plugin. You can set in particular:
- Checkout Appearance
- Discount Coupons
- Email Settings
- Extra Product Images
- General Configuration
- Payment Methods
- Product Settings
- Products Loop/Paging
- Shopping Cart
- User Related Settings
Manage Coupon Codes
The plugin also allows to activate the discount coupons feature. You can create unlimited discount coupons, each with a unique code/string and distribute these codes so that users/customers whom purchase products from your online shop can apply these codes in order to receive a discount on their order.
In my view, this is a cool features, people like discount and can be useful to increase your montly income stream.
Orders Sections
Through the “Orders” section of the WordPress shopping cart plugin you can manage all your shop orders. You have the ability to view orders, create new orders, edit/change existing orders and remove orders as needed.
In a nutshell you can check:
- Order Specific Details
- User
- Completion Status
- Shipped Status
- Sub Total
- Discount Applied
- Shipping Total
- Total
- Created Date
- Modified Date
Add Images
With the WordPress shopping cart plugin, you can also add additional/extra images to the current products in the plugin database in order to illustrate/demonstrate your products more efficiently to your users/customers.
Shopping Cart
In the “Settings” section, you can change the way the shopping cart works, and add: 1. Shop Logo; 2. Shop Name; 3. Product Details; 4. Product Options; 5. Product Price; 6. Quantity; 7. Product Total; 8. Selection Checkboxes; 9. Sub Total; 10. Shipping Charge; 11. Discount Coupons; 12. Order Total; 13. Update Cart Button; 14. Checkout Button; 15. Continue Shopping Link; 16. Discount Coupons
System Recommendations
- WordPress 2.9 or higher
- PHP 4.2 or higher
- short_open_tag On
- safe_mode Off
- MySQL 4 or higher
Price
If you want to turn your blog into an ecommerce site, Wordpress Shopping Cart Plugin has a lot more options and features to justify the non-free price. The plugin goes for $49.99 isn’t espensive if you want to turn your sit einto an e-commerce site. Consider it as an investment, that surely will bring an economic return.
Download WordPress Shopping Cart Plugin
That was really very useful and informative. I am not on WordPress but I will surely recommend this to my friends who have their blogs on wordpress. Thanks for sharing this info. Keep writing.
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Thanks for coming up with this nice tutorial. This plugin is a must for anyone who is serious about e-commerce business. However price may stop small players to go for it in the starting.
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Nice tutorial as usual bro! This will be very useful for those who are going to star E-commerce website!
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Very interesting article with detailed info brother.thanks for sharing..,
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Amazing plugin. Although customers now don’t need to register Paypal to pay for products, this plugin still offers more choices.
Thanks for sharing this information.
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I’ve used plugins like PHPbay but thats only for ebay. I think we can use this if we have our own products.
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Thank you very much. This really helped me with my work. I appreciate your help. Thanks a lot.
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What do you think concerning adding some more images? I’m not trying to offend anyone, blog is really nice. Just as I’ve heard humans acquire info much more efficient when they see certain useful images.
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Very detailed insights, unique writing style and the content is highly understandable. This is a refreshing article Nicola. Thank you.
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