If you’re running a business or looking to start one, chances are that you’ll be interested in building an eCommerce website. Businesses now want more than just their company information on their website. They want to enable visitors to directly purchase their products and services directly from their website. If you want to take your business online, then you must’ve wondered which eCommerce platform is the best option for you.
Since 2012, an increasing number of people buy things online and, today, there are over $1.92 trillion eCommerce sales worldwide. The coronavirus has also forced a lot of businesses to provide eCommerce solutions since the physical sale of goods has become difficult. Nowadays, customers prefer to shop from the comfort of their homes instead of going to physical stores. And businesses must adapt to the changing environment!
There are many ways to set up an eCommerce store, but WordPress is easily one of the best solutions. WordPress is a dynamic, flexible, and powerful software that can be modified with plugins and themes to create the perfect e-commerce website.
In this article, we’ll find out why you should use WordPress for eCommerce, and what makes WordPress the best eCommerce solution out there.
Most Popular Ecommerce Platforms
There are a few eCommerce platforms that are at the top of their game when considering their frequency of use across the web. The undisputed leader is WooCommerce for WordPress, occupying 27% of the eCommerce market, followed by Shopify (14%) and, Magento (7%).
WordPress is the most popular CMS platforms out there, powering over 37% of all websites, and by over 63% of websites using a CMS. It is clearly the market leader when it comes to building and managing websites, eCommerce or others.
What makes WordPress better than other eCommerce platforms?
Launched in 2003, WordPress was just a blogging platform back in the day. Over time, it became more and more complex and feature-rich. Now, it has become so versatile that you can use it to create and manage any kind of website that you can think of. So, using WordPress, you can create an eCommerce site and use it for something else also like creating a blog. The functionality and convenience provided by WordPress are unparalleled.
WordPress lets you have complete control over your site. Besides the fact that you can combine your online store with any other purpose, such as blogs, portfolios, corporate pages, etc., it provides thousands of plugins, tools, themes, and integrations with plenty of modern online services. WordPress is highly compatible with external resources. Depending on your budget, you can choose free, freemium, or premium services and tools.
WordPress is really easy and friendly to use, so everyone can handle it pretty well. WordPress has a short learning curve, as it comes with a very intuitive interface.
Using WordPress for your eCommerce store sounds like the best option. Yes, it will cost you some bucks if you want the best stuff, but you’ll surely have full control over your site. Moreover, there are as many free services and tools as there are paid ones. You will only have to pay for a couple of things, if at all.
Reasons why you should use WordPress for Ecommerce
1. Easy to use and Incredibly Versatile
Building a site on WordPress does not require you to have any knowledge of programming languages or web development. It provides a simple, out-of-the-box solution for designing beautiful, responsive websites.
Since WordPress is open-source, it has a large community of developers who are constantly coming up with new plugins and themes. WordPress is made infinitely more powerful by the thousands of plugins providing every functionality that you can think of. A lot of these plugins are even free of charge!
2. Low cost to Implement
WordPress is versatile. You can use it to build a basic website with a barebones budget or build a feature-rich, stylish website with all the bells and whistles. WordPress is happy in all kinds of situations.
You can buy a domain for $10 to $12 for a year and hosting for around $15 to $30 a month. WordPress is free! Once you have bought a domain and a hosting, you don’t need to spend a penny more to build your website if you don’t want to.
WordPress is undoubtedly the most cost-efficient platform for building your own website.
3. Stable and Highly Scalable
Over the years, with constant updates and improvements, WordPress has become extremely stable and reliable. By scalable, we mean how WordPress adapts to your site’s growth over time. WordPress is also highly scalable and will continue to work perfectly no matter how much your site grows.
As long as you scale your hosting to handle the traffic on your website, WordPress shouldn’t have any problem handling the load you put on it. A lot of popular websites like Udemy, CNN, Etsy, TechCrunch, TED use WordPress.
4. A Huge Library of Plugins
WordPress is a comprehensive software that comes with most of what you’ll need to build a beautiful website. But, many people find they want to add specific features and functionalities that aren’t available in the core product. This is where plugins come in. They are smaller bits of software that can be uploaded to WordPress to expand its functionality.
Plugins are invaluable to an eCommerce site, and you’ll need at least one. Some plugins will enable you to build and run an online store, while others will help with managing inventory, communicating with customers, providing support, and ensuring security. Fortunately, many popular e-commerce plugins perform several or all of these functions, so you don’t need to install individual tools for each element of functionality you want to add to your store.
One such do-it-all eCommerce plugin for WordPress is WooCommerce. It is the most popular eCommerce platform out there with over 17% of WordPress websites using it.
5. Wide variety of Ecommerce themes
WordPress has a large and active community. This active community constantly puts out new themes and plugins with newer features and functionalities.
A theme is a software package that determines your website’s styling. It determines what your website looks like, how it’s laid out, and how various features like menus and sidebars work. Your theme is integral since it determines how your site appears to users. It also affects how easily they are able to find information and make purchases.
Fortunately, there are hundreds, if not thousands of free and premium themes available. You can check out the free themes on the official WordPress theme library, or you can check out more feature-packed premium themes at ThemeForest or TemplateMonster.
6. Solid Security for your Website
WordPress is built to be fundamentally secure. The platform protects you deep down within its core code, and it’s easy to enhance your site’s security even further.
For example, you can quickly set up a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificate with your host. You can also install security-focused plugins, like Wordfence Security that’ll provide malware scanning, firewall, and other security features.
7. Easily get the Unique look you want
WordPress has definitely had a hand in evolving the design of the internet as a whole. WordPress websites once looked obvious, which usually meant a big header with navigation, a sidebar full of ‘widgetized content‘, and a blog template focused on readability.
But, the platform has since outgrown these early stylistic standards, and can now be customized extensively in terms of appearance and layout. This is made simple thanks to the vast number of themes and plugins that are available.
By changing your theme and using the page builder to design your web pages with drag and drop elements, you can create a truly unique look for your website. Today, it’s easier than ever to create beautiful user experiences on WordPress!
8. Mobile-Friendly by default
WordPress websites, by default, are highly responsive and mobile-friendly. Since over 50% of online shopping is done on a smartphone, it’s best to build a mobile-responsive eCommerce website by default. Providing a good user experience is important to improve your conversions and increase traffic. Websites that are not mobile-friendly will also find it difficult to rank in search engines. This makes WordPress the ideal choice for eCommerce websites.
9. SEO-friendly
WordPress’s codebase is built on solid SEO practices. It takes into consideration a lot of search engine ranking factors. So, building your website using WordPress can take your content marketing efforts to the next level. You can search engine optimize every aspect of your website and get it to rank well on search engines.
Of course, your search rankings depend on a lot of factors like the quality of your content, and your on-page & off-page SEO efforts but WordPress always facilitates it and never comes in the way of you trying to improve your rankings.
10. Strong Community Support
Setting up a simple blog on WordPress is easy, but running a successful eCommerce website takes some work. There are a lot of options and features to sort through, and you might run into some technical information you’re not familiar with.
However, if that happens it will never be difficult to find help. As we have mentioned before, WordPress has a big, active community that is always evolving and learning together. There are many people out there willing to help beginners.
To get assistance, you can check out the official WordPress Support, the WPBeginner youtube channel, WooCommerce plugin support, or just simply Google the issue you’re facing. In all likelihood, you’ll find the solution to your query in some forum or support group.
Final Words
Building an eCommerce site for your business is your stepping stone into the vast online marketplace. You’ll want a web store that is attractive, professional, gives customers what they want, and runs itself as much as possible. That’s where WordPress comes in. It’s impossible to find a more flexible, customizable, and well-supported platform.
By this point, you must have a solid understanding of why WordPress is the best solution for e-commerce and why you should use WordPress for eCommerce.
Did we miss anything important? If yes, then we’d love to hear about it. Let us know in the comments below!
Want to know more about WordPress eCommerce solutions? Get in touch with us today and we will help you out!
