Various ways to sell stuff online
- With a PayPal buy now button on a page on your site
- With a plugin on your site
- With an entirely separate system that sits on a subdomain of your site
- With a hosted system embedded in your site
- With a hosted system separate from your site
- With an eCommerce ecosystem separate from your site
Advantages of Using WordPress to sell your products
- It is inexpensive
- No monthly fees
- No % of sale
- Plugins are cheap
- Relatively easy DIY
- Solution can match the condition – no need to learn a complex system to do something simple
- Intended for regular users – not programmers
- Simple mechanisms for customizing
- Good learning resources
- Maintain control
- Not dependent on the vendor raising prices or going out of business
- Don’t risk vendor shutting down your store
- Full control over the look and feel of the site
- WordPress is everywhere
- lots of support
- lots of innovation
- easy to find consultants
- Highly customizable
- Easy access to styles
- Most plugins have some style options
- Most plugins will allow custom templates
- Many plugins have APIs that allow a programmer to extend them
- Many “off the shelf” solutions
Disadvantages of using WordPress to sell your products
- Things are always changing
- Routine compatibility issues
- Plugin to theme
- Plugin to plugin
- Plugin to host
- Not “Set it and forget it” solution
- Manage and figure out complex things
- SSL
- Testing
- Shipping
- Taxes
- Need to be a hands on type of person
Types of Ecommerce Sites
- Sites can be classified by what they sell
- Digital download
- Physical products
- Intangible/virtual products
- Memberships/subscriptions
- Deposits
- Reservations
- Tickets/vouchers
- Serial numbers/license keys
- Donations
- Sites can be classified by their size and organization
- Simple sites with few products – does not require a product catalog
- 1 – 10 products
- No product categories
- Browse products only, no sorting or searching
- Typically won’t use the plugin to display the product, only to process the transaction
- Larger sites with many products – requiring a product catalog
- 11 – 100 products
- Use product categories and or tags
- Uses catalog pages based on category
- May include sorting products and product searches
- Very large sites requiring multifaceted product catalog
- 100+ products
- Uses product categories and subcategories
- Uses “department” pages to display categories first
- Uses sorting of catalog pages
- May include drill down by attribute
- Simple sites with few products – does not require a product catalog
- Need to match the plugin’s capabilities with stores need
- The products it can sell
- The way it can display them
Criteria for Choosing an eCommerce Plugin for WordPress
- 6 types of criteria
- Product definition criteria
- Product display criteria
- Order processing criteria
- Order fulfillment criteria
- Marketing
- Customer Management
- Product definition criteria
- Types of products
- Digital download
- Physical
- Serial Numbers/license keys
- Subscriptions
- Donations
- Other intangible
- Product variations
- That affect price
- That affect inventory
- That affect shipping cost
- That can include both physical and digital
- Product attributes
- Short description/excerpt
- Product images & image management
- Buyer input
- Free products
- Types of products
- Product display criteria
- Catalog page – display by product categories & sub categories
- Catalog page – display by product tags & custom taxonomies
- Sort products on catalog page by
- Price
- Popularity
- Recency
- Ratings
- Narrow product results by attributes
- Catalog page display style
- Product Grid
- Product List
- Can the purchase be made directly from the catalog page
- Is a product page automatically created?
- Product image display
- Related Products display
- Featured Products
- Digital previews
- Multi lingual support
Order Processing & Fulfillment Criteria
- Payment Gateways supported
- The big ones
- PayPal standard
- PayPal Pro
- Authorize.net
- Major players
- Google Checkout
- 2Checkout
- Amazon Payments
- Others
- Woo lists 150 different gateways
- The big ones
- Order processing criteria
- Shopping Cart or Buy Now
- Out of stock items
- Shipping calculated onsite
- Taxes calculated onsite
- Number of steps in the order process
- Order Fulfillment Criteria
- Digital Products
- Amazon S3 or other CDN support
- Encrypted expiring links
- Automatic delivery via email
- Automatic redirection to download
- Individual files of bundled products
- Pay per view
- PDF security stamp
- Intangible Products
- Subscription management
- Physical Products
- Manual status codes in the dashboard
- Automatic status codes in the dashboard
- Automatic emails
- Automatic email follow ups
- Detailed fulfillment management
- Shipping label handling
- Types of shipping supported
- Free shipping
- Flat rate shipping
- Tiered rate shipping
- Integration with shipping services
- USPS
- UPS
- Fedex
- Canada Post
- Royal Mail
- DHL
- Inventory controls
- Variations
- Bundled Products
- Inventory Reports
- Inventory Alerts
- Customer product input
- Text input
- File upload
- Digital Products
Marketing & Customer Management Criteria
- Marketing Criteria
- Integration with email marketing services
- AWeber
- MailChimp
- Constant Contact
- Get Response
- Sell products from within emails with HTML links
- Product bundles
- Combined physical & digital bundles
- Bundles that affect shipping costs
- Bundles that affect inventory
- Coupons/Promotions
- Coupon codes
- Automatic discounts
- Social Networking Integration
- Insert the product image when sharing with facebook, pinterest
- Automatically includes sharing buttons on product pages
- Product Reviews
- Automatically include reviews
- customer only reviews
- moderated reviews
- Integration with Affiliate marketing system
- Google Analytics integration
- Integration with email marketing services
- Customer Management Criteria
- Allow customer account creation
- Save shipping info
- Display all purchase history
- Display product download links
- Creates a WordPress user
- Require customer account to purchase
- Retain abandoned/expired shopping cart information via a cookie
- Allow customer account creation
Session 1 Q&A
WordPress Shopping Cart Plugins (eCommerce Plugins)
- Compare 5 plugins
- General Characterizations
- By content type
- By exstenability
- By theme compatibility
- By order fulfillment
Overview of WP eStore
- Intro
- Paid plugin by tips and ticks hq
- Cost $49
- 1 year of support
- Unlimited sites
- Extensions
- Free extensions
- 1 paid extension – for other payment Gateways
- Excels at digital products – it is designed for this.
- Widest range of functionality
- Highest digital security
- Large ecosystem
- Affiliate
- Membership
- PDF stamper
- Biggest Weakness
- shipping
- taxes
Overview of MarketPress
- Intro
- Paid plugin by MPMU Dev
- 19.95 per month
- Unlimited sites
- Extensions
- My extensions
- Paid plugin by MPMU Dev
- Best for simple physical products
- Built in integration for more payment gateways & shipping systems
- Large ecosystem
- Biggest weakness
- Product variations
- Product bundles
Overview of WooCommerce
- Intro
- Free plugin by WooThemes
- Cost 0
- 1 year of support – with paid extensions only
- Unlimited sites
- Extensions
- Free extensions
- Paid extension
- VERY full featured.
- Large ecosystem of themes and extensions
- Biggest Weakness
- Limited digital security
- Highest cost
Overview of Shopp
- Intro
- Paid plugin by shopplugin.net
- Cost $55 per site
- 1 year of support for each paid site
- Unlimited sites
- Extensions
- Free extensions – none
- Paid extensions
- VERY full featured.
- VERY customizable
- Biggest Weakness
- Bugs
Overview of Cart66
- Intro
- Paid plugin by Cart66
- Cost $89 per year
- 1 year of support
- 1 site
- Extensions
- None
- Very Easy to set up
- VERY limited features
- No ecosystem
- Biggest Weakness
- limited feature set
- variations
- bundles
Choosing the Right Shopping Cart – Start with a Plan
- Type of store
- Small store that sells only digital products
- Small store that only sells physical products
- Small store that sells both digital and physical products
- Large store that sells only digital products
- Large store that only sells physical products
- Large store that sells both digital and physical products
- Product Definitions
- Types of products
- Role of variations
- Customer input
- Product Display
- Product catalog
- Individual products
- Order Processing
- Buy now buttons?
- Inventory control
- Shipping
- Taxes
- Order fulfillment criteria
- Digital products
- Security?
- Subscriptions
- Physical products
- Detailed fulfillment management
- Shipping methods
- Customer input
- Digital products
- Marketing
- Integration with Autoresponders
- Sell products from emails
- Social networking integration
- Product reviews
- Customer Management
- Customer accounts
Compare Your Criteria with the Plugin’s Capabilities
- Download the checklist & the plugin comparison
- Fill out the checklist
- Compare
- Verify the most important things
Choosing a Plugin for a Sample Project
- General Description
- Fill out the plan
- Fill out the checklist
- Compare the 5 WordPress Shopping Cart Plugins