Isn’t WordPress primarily for blogs? What’s the point of going with a content management system that isn’t specifically built for eCommerce?
Your search to find the ideal platform to launch your new online store is certainly important, considering you need an option that’s scalable, secure, customizable and user-friendly. You have various options to choose from, including the following:
- Shopify
- Magento
- Bigcommerce
- Volusion
- Squarespace
They all have wonderful features for managing your products, uploading media, setting up shipping requirements and more. So, how does WordPress compare? Is WordPress a more desirable platform for running your online store?
It definitely has an edge in plenty of areas, so keep reading to learn about the benefits of choosing WordPress for your online store.
The customization options are endless
The primary reason companies go with WordPress is because of the ability to customize however you want. WordPress provides free and premium themes and plugins for designing a beautiful frontend store and enabling a simple backend store management system.
With other platforms like Squarespace, you’re limited to the built-in features, while thousands of WordPress plugins are available for activating an eCommerce store, along with adding site-expansion plugins for things like social media sharing, media support, email receipts and more.
Themes are another part of the puzzle. Although systems like Volusion and Shopify have theme stores, WordPress is an opensource platform, meaning that anyone can make a theme that suits your needs. Make a quick Google search and you’ll locate thousands of themes, each of them rated and commented on for you to make a wise decision.
Scaling up your business is rather easy
When generating an online store with tools like Bigcommerce and Volusion, you are restrained to the scaling options they provide for you. The companies offer cookie-cutter plans for a certain amount of storage, traffic and product uploads.
This is fine, but as your site traffic grows, you’ll have to pay more and more, and with some of the platforms you get stuck with whatever limitations they have set. Not to mention, it’s hard to hire a developer to truly customize your site.
That’s not the case with WordPress, since it you can expand based on the amount of visitors that are coming in. In short, you can start with a smaller hosting plan, graduate to a content delivery network, like Cloudflare, then even run the site on your own dedicated server.
You can start a blog for improving SEO
Companies like Shopify provide blogging systems for you to set up and share valuable content, however some other solutions either don’t have any blogging integration or they don’t work all that well.
WordPress is built for blogging. It’s the most powerful option you can choose, and it has search engine optimization tools built-in for moving your site up the ranking lists. You can even install various SEO plugins to improve your website ranking.
WordPress is the most popular and user-friendly CMS
Over 74 million websites are run on the WordPress CMS, meaning that the community is huge, and millions of other companies are using it to post products, manage shopping carts and accept payments.
Wanna see some cool Infographic with 14 Surprising Statistics about WordPress usage? Click the image bellow
One of the primary reasons for this popularity is because WordPress is extremely user-friendly. Most hosting companies provide one-click WordPress installations, themes and plugins take just a few seconds to install, and the WordPress dashboard has a beautiful toolbar for navigating around, creating products, generating blog posts and more.
If you’re a complete beginner, WordPress is extremely easy to learn, and if you have development experience, it also provides tools for implementing your own code.
Sell both digital and physical products
This all depends on the themes and plugins you install on your WordPress site, but the best online store themes provide support for both physical and digital products.
This means that you can have a page for selling hats, along with an area that peddles audio downloads or eBooks. Even if your theme doesn’t support digital downloads, you can use the free Easy Digital Downloads plugin to solve that problem.
Integrate dozens of payment gateways
Once again, it all relies on which themes and plugins you select, but a good example is the Cart66 plugin, which provides over 100 payment gateways for you to choose from, including Authorize.net, PayPal Express Checkout, 2Checkout, Stripe and Merchant Warrior.
Payment gateway flexibility is a key feature, considering you may already be working with one that you like, or there’s a chance you want to complete some research to find the most cost-effective solution for your business.
Even build your own multi-seller marketplace
A multi-seller marketplace is like Etsy, where artists or creators can make accounts on your website and sell their products to other people. When buyers come to the site, they can add as many products, from different sellers, to their cart as possible. It’s a wonderful way to make money online.
The WordPress community is vastly larger than competitors
Shopify and Volusion have their forums, but nothing compares to the knowledge and support you can find online from the WordPress community. Since WordPress is open source, anyone can contribute themes, modifications, plugins or advice.
When you encounter a problem with your WordPress site, there’s a good chance that someone else has encountered the same thing, and the question has been answered in the WordPress Forums. If not, open your own thread to address the issue.
WordPress is super affordable
How affordable is WordPress? How does free sound? That’s right, you don’t have to pay a dime for the WordPress system, even though it’s the top content management system in the world.
Keep in mind that you will have to invest some money in a domain name, hosting, a premium theme, and maybe some plugins, but these are a fraction of the price of hiring a developer or paying for a monthly plan with other solutions.
Tools for implementing an online store on WordPress
The first step in building an online store on WordPress is grabbing a domain and hosting account. Consider Bluehost, or take a look at other options with a Google search. After that, download and install WordPress to your hosting account. It’s always a good thing to look for additional resources, like Marco’s guide to launching a website that will help you run an eCommerce website on WordPress.
What are some solid themes for an online store?
What are the best plugins for an online store?
Here is a great resource with detailed reviews of top 7 free WordPress eCommerce plugins.
Over to you…
From customization options to affordability, WordPress is one of the best tools you can have on your side when making an eCommerce store. Have you tried WordPress for selling online? Let us know in the comments if you have any questions about the benefits of choosing WordPress for your online store.
Margaret Gilliland
22 Jul 2015Great post!! Thanks for updating, it is effective in e-commerce service based projects in terms of visibility and business in the high rated competitor’s marketplace.
John
27 May 2016When I started my blogging journey then my first question was, Why I should choose WordPress and not other CMS softwares.
I searched a lot about it on Google at that time and I found that everybody is recommending to use WordPress and I started doing the same.
Now today I know that why people should choose WordPress. Because WordPress is an independent and easy to use content management system.
The best thing about it is, We can bring any feature in our website with just using a single plugin. That’s really good. 😀
I am using WordPress since last 3 years and I loved it. 😀