WordPress is the most popular CMS used by millions of webmasters worldwide. Its increasing popularity and user friendly features make it favorite for bloggers, website owners and for online store owners. You can easily create an ecommerce website with WordPress without any hassles.
If you are planning to use WordPress or already have a blog or website on WordPress, you can have your live store by installing plugins to run a fully functional e-commerce store.
One of the advantages of using WordPress is that you also have a blog that will help you with additional SEO and other benefits.
Important: The following information is useful for creating a self-hosted WordPress site as plugins mentioned here will not work for sites hosted with wordpress.com.
Create your ecommerce website with WordPress by following these three simple steps:
1. Buy a domain and hosting
You need to buy a good domain name. Godaddy is the world’s no.1 registrar to purchase domain of your choice. For creative domain name ideas, visit: Business name generator.
After purchasing domain, you need a good web host. DreamHost is a great choice. It also offers a free domain with annual hosting plan.
RELATED: List Of Reliable And Inexpensive WordPress Web Hosting Providers
2. Install WordPress
Next, install WordPress. Any good web host have a one-click WordPress installation feature. Once you install WordPress, you are ready to have a live online store with all blogging features.
3. Install E-Commerce Plugin
Go to your WordPress dashboard to install plugins that offer features to build a world class online store. There are amazing plugins in WordPress to choose from. Here, we will talk about the best ones that smoothly integrate into WordPress site.
Best paid solution:
Best Free open source:
Main Benefits of installing Shopify:
- No technical and design skills are required.
- You don’t have to worry about security and maintenance.
- 24/7 customer support.
Shopify eCommerce Plugin – Shopping Cart
Shopify is the world’s best and most popular SAAS platform to create online store.
- Open an account with Shopify.
- Choose the ‘Buy Button’ plan for $9/month.
- Go to the WordPress dashboard of your site.
- Install ‘Shopify e-Commerce Plugin’.
Read this step by step guide.
WooCommerce
It’s an open-source free platform with tons of premium plugins. Storefront is a free theme you can use but to have more functionality, you can purchase premium themes.
Officially recommended by WordPress, DreamHost offers the best managed WooCommerce hosting service with pre-installed WooCommerce.
Though WooCommerce is best suited for small and medium enterprises, it’s your responsibility to ensure security and maintenance of your store. Moreover, you need to have coding knowledge or may have to hire a developer.
So, if you are a non-tech and don’t have coding knowledge or experience in web development, paid solutions like Shopify are ideal to create e-commerce website with WordPress.
I hope this information would be helpful. For any suggestions, please post in comments below.