WordPress E-Commerce: April 2014 meetup
We talked about WordPress E-Commerce at our April 2014 meetup: digital products, physical products, membership subscriptions, and events. We started with general considerations, then talked about specific plugins and platforms.
If I missed anything, please leave a comment, and I’ll add to the post.
General e-commerce considerations
Payment gateways
- Most common: Stripe, PayPal, Authorize.net
- Stripe
- Brian’s favorite
- Great for devs
- Has an iframe option, but people are less likely to trust it because the browser doesn’t show a padlock
- Easy to test
- Faster transfers to your bank account than PayPal
- PayPal
- Brian’s not a fan
- Poor documentation
- Some have experienced delays or holds on funds
Taxes
- You must charge for physical goods if selling to MI buyers
Shipping
- Most plugins provide flat rate
- You can use APIs to get shipping rate tables from shippers
Analytics
- Major plugins support Google Analytics, and have extensions for other analytics systems
Plugins
WooCommerce
- Example site: WPSessions
- If selling only 1 item, set cart page to the checkout page, so when buyer adds item to cart, they go straight to checkout. Note: this prevents the from editing their cart.
- Product Data
- Simple: standard product
- Variable: variations like size, color. Can attach different thumbnails to different variations
- Virtual: not physical
- Downloadable: not physical, but also downloadable
- A product can be downloadable but not virtual. Example: combo ebook and physical book.
- Linked Products
- Up-sells: additional products shown on product page
- Cross-sells: additional products shown in checkout
- Grouping: create bundle
iThemes Exchange
- Least configuration necessary
- Can drag and drop product images
- Includes editable customer info
- Invoices add-on
- Custom URL Tracking add-on
Easy Digital Downloads
- Very easy
- Many add-ons
- Only digital products, and great at it
- User History extension: displays buyer’s path and analytics
More plugins
WooCommerce
- E-commerce themes
- Extensions
- Genesis Connect for WooCommerce
- Payment Gateways
- Example site: Carolyn Stich
- WooCommerce > Settings
- Products > Inventory
- Tax
- Checkout
- Shipping
- Emails
- Integration
- Products
- Shipping Classes
- Attributes
- Edit product
Easy Digital Downloads
- Extensions
- Example: Empowerment Institute (incomplete, and all products currently free)
- Downloads > Settings
- Payment Gateways
- Misc
s2Member
- Example site: School Communicators Network (in development)
- How to restrict page. Show redirection.
- s2Member
- Quick-Start Guide
- General Options
- Restriction Options
- API / List Servers
Event Espresso
- Free version
- Add Ons
- Example site: Carolyn Stich
- Event Espresso
- General Settings
- Event Overview
- Calendar Settings
Gravity Forms and PayPal Add-on
- Example site: Flowerland
- Gravity Forms can be more flexible than e-commerce plugins, because it lets you create all the fields you want.
- Dynamic Population lets you pass values to Gravity Forms using query strings or other methods.
