Overview of Shopping Cart Plugins
Over the years, the WordPress platform has become more flexible than ever. With continuous technological advancements, WordPress is no longer used just to set up blogging sites. With so many plugins available these days, a WordPress website can now be used for literally anything.
Table of Contents
The many available plugins enable the website owner to incorporate eCommerce applications in their WordPress-powered sites. This is why most people do not just choose WordPress for creating a website or blog they also prefer this platform for setting up their e-commerce stores.
These advanced WordPress eCommerce websites are equipped with several functionalities like memberships, subscriptions, recurring payments, digital downloads, and multiple payment gateways along with a user-friendly checkout process and several marketing features.
Of course, WordPress doesn’t have these options inbuilt and therefore, you would need to make use of the shopping cart plugins designed for WordPress.
Importance of the Shopping Cart Plugins
Similar to all other plugins, these plugins bring additional functionalities and features to the WordPress site.
With such plugins, you get the chance to add several product pages with the details create a cart that is integrated with the payment processing gateways, and help in tracking the transactions and the sale processes.
When you choose the advanced shopping cart plugins, you will get all of these features along with some more exciting ones.
By installing these plugins, you would be able to sell physical goods, and digital content, manage subscriptions and sales, invite memberships, and keep track of all your stock.
Therefore, in case you are planning to create an e-store on WordPress, consider using these plugins. We have listed below a few WordPress shopping cart plugins that would help you create a wonderful e-store.
Best Shopping Cart Plugins for eCommerce Store
Easy Digital Downloads
If you are looking for a complete eCommerce solution then Easy Digital Download is for you. This plugin has 60,000+ active installations. With the integration of EDD, you will be able to sell digital products on your WordPress website.
Without struggling more you will be able to sell songs, software, games, photos, graphics, documents, videos, or any other sort of multi-media files.
This plugin is provided with so many features that would help an eCommerce beginner to set up a completely new functionality on their website without sacrificing any other required functionality.
Some highlighted features of the Easy Digital Download plugin are Flexible and clean checkout forms, a frontend shopping cart, protected product files, complete customer management, discount codes, protected product files, and more.
WooCommerce
WooCommerce is perhaps the most popular choice when it comes to choosing a WordPress shopping cart plugin. With this plugin, you would be able to sell physical as well as digital goods.
The buyers would also get a chance of instant download. With this, you would get innumerable professional-looking themes for free that you can use as your storefront.
You also get the chance to add innumerable payment options from cash-on-delivery, bank transfer, and credit or debit cards to using e-wallets.
Selling of affiliate goods from the online marketplace is also supported. Premium and free extensions are also available to enhance the customers’ experience on the site.
The checkout process with this plugin is user-friendly, intuitive, and packed with exciting features like wish lists, cart saving, and much more.
With the add-ons of this plugin, you can add social sharing, Email marketing and much more without having to spend a lot.
WooCommerce Cart Abandonment Recovery
This is a premium shopping cart plugin designed for WordPress and can cost you somewhere around $5 for the single-site license.
This license is for the software and then you can further purchase extra plugins like the shipping modules, payment gateways, etc. You can even go ahead and purchase a developer’s license that is going to cost you somewhere around $299.
The reason why this plugin is so popular even though it is a premium one is that it has a lot of features to offer.
The features include shortcodes, a streamlined installation system, drag-and-drop shopping, widgets, flexible shipping calculators, innumerable options for payment, and the most crucial one: search engine optimization. All these would ensure that both you and the users have a great experience.
Ajax add to cart for WooCommerce
This plugin became so popular because is free but offers features that are quite similar to a premium plugin.
All kinds of business models are supported with this plugin from selling physical goods to digital products.
Offered by WPMU DEV, the plugin supports over 120 currencies and comes with 15 payment process gateways. The checkout process has also been made much simpler, more convenient, and quick with just one page of it.
This means that the users would no longer have to fill up page after page just to complete the payment process.
Setting up the E-store has also been made much simpler by the wizard features, several VAT and taxation options, features that allow calculating the shipment (UPS, FedEx, USPS, etc), and giving the chance to the users to use the discount and coupon codes.
With this plugin, you can also add sharing buttons for Twitter, Pinterest, and Facebook. The invoice can also be added in a PDF format.
The more advanced features include the display of the related products, automatic hiding of products that are no longer in stock, codeless customizations, and order management.
WordPress Simple Shopping Cart
This is a streamlined WordPress shopping cart plugin that integrates wonderfully with your WordPress sites. With this plugin, you get the chance to sell both physical as well as digital products in your E-store.
Some of the most popular option used for the payment is included here and in case you do want to add other options, you can do so by using add-ons and extensions. Many promotional and marketing tools like offering discount coupons and deals are also available.
The social media functionality is built-in to enable the sharing of information like milestones sales figures, purchases, etc. With this plugin, you get the chance to improve your –Commerce store’s overall performance and thereby make a profit.
The plugin can be downloaded for free but, you would need to buy a license which is somewhere around $50 for one site.
Shopping Cart & eCommerce Store
This is perhaps one of the most secure WordPress shopping cart plugins available. We can say this because it helps in ensuring that the online stores are PCI-compliant.
With this plugin, you would be able to sell both physical as well as digital goods. Users would get the chance to create an account when they are purchasing items from your e-store.
A recurring billing engine and over 100 payment gateways are also an advantage. You would get to include the discount or the taxes at the time of checkout.
The built-in Email center comes in handy to stay in touch with the customers. You can try this Plugin for free for 14 days and then purchase it for $9.99 a month.
Conclusion
While you are looking for a Shopping Cart Plugin, just make sure that it has an easy-to-use interface, is compatible with the chosen theme, and has suitable options for customization. If a plugin has all of these features, go ahead and take advantage of all the features that it has to offer.
Author:
Pawan Sahu is the founder of MarkupTrend. He is a blogger and marketing geek passionate about writing articles related to WordPress, SEO, Marketing, Web Design, CMS, etc.