By using an E-Commerce or shopping cart WordPress plugin you can turn your WordPress blog in to a full-fledged online shopping store. In this post I will discuss about some of the best e-commerce plugins for WordPress:
1) WooCommerce: WooCommerce is a free WordPress e-commerce plugin. The best part of this plugin is that there are many extra plugins and themes available which can be used for increasing the functionality of your online store. It is highly secure and you can easily manage you online shop from the admin section. You can also generate detailed reports about the performance of your shop. Special care has been taken to make the plugin SEO friendly. You can also add shipping rates in WooCommerce and integrate different payment options with WooCommerce plugin.
2) Jigoshop: Jigoshop is a free WordPress plugin which has been quite popular among bloggers for creating an online shop using WordPress. It is a lightweight and flexible plugin. There are plethora of themes, widgets and shortcodes integration options available with Jigoshop. You can also increase the functionality of your eCommerce site by adding extra plugins. For Example: Creating a product slider in Jigoshop.
3) WP e-Commerce: WP e-Commerce is yet another free WordPress plugin for creating an e-store in WordPress. It is highly customizable and they have designed the plugin in such a way that a transaction will happen with minimum steps. This feature is useful for a quick transaction. For Example, if a customer wants to buy a product from your store then the steps in between the “Add to Cart” to Checkout will be minimal. The idea is why to let the customer hanging in between a lot of steps when he’s already made up his mind for buying a product. There are many themes which are compatible with WP e-Commerce. You can easily manage your orders and crate a catalog for you products from the plugin admin section. Other features includes integration with Google Base, newsletter modules, campaign monitors, Intense debate comments, and maps.
4) Cart66: Cart66 is a premium WordPress plugin fo creating an online store. It is beneficial if you wish to add pro features in your e-shop like SSL certificates, gateway add-ons, dedicated IP address, security scans, etc. This plugin is useful for people who do not want to add many separate plugins and themes. Buying this plugin makes sense because if you are use many plugins in your WordPress install then it would use a lot of memory and resources and with Cart66 you get all the common eCommerce plugins in one package. Today, pro blogging is all about speed and using many plugins in a WordPress install is not a great idea.
5) Shopp: Shopp is a premium WordPress shopping cart plugin. You will get all the common features of a E-Commerce WordPress plugin with Shopp. They charge $55 for a single site (one domain only) and if you wish to have a developer option (for installing in multiple domains) then it would cost you $299.
6) Ecwid: Ecwid is a free WordPress plugin for creating an online WordPress shop. Basic service is free, however, if you want advanced features you need to take pro plan.
7) eShop: eShop is a free shopping cart plugin for WordPress. It has all the regular features of an E-Commerce plugin. However, you won’t find many extra plugins as you would for WooCommerce or Jigoshop.
Thanks. You have mentioned many plugins which I was not aware. This is worth sharing. Thanks once again. Other E-Commerce plugins I mention on my templatetoaster blog are these Easy digital download, WP eCommerce, MarketPress, iThemes Exchange.
You are very welcome, Davis!