The Internet is an amazing place ? not just for information and entertainment but for serious business as well. In fact, it is rapidly becoming de facto platform for buying and selling products of services. Whether you are paying your utility bills, booking an airline ticket, managing your bank account or purchasing a new pair of sneakers, online shopping is the most convenient and quick way to shop. Online shopping not only eases the life of shoppers but also opens immense opportunities for businesses and service providers. I cannot imagine visiting my bank for transactions anymore or going to my service provider for paying my Internet bill ? something that nobody had imagined only a decade ago.
The game is changing rapidly just to open more opportunities not only for conventional but for many niche businesses as well. Look at Etsy (selling art and craft), airbnb (offering short stay residences), Skill Share (offering study sessions) and Local Harvest (selling organic food)? these e-Commerce sites are doing very well in their own niche domains.
These are only a few examples from hundreds and thousands of e-Commerce website and shopping portals proving that fact that future of shopping is e-Commerce. Therefore, putting the business online is logical choice of many large as well as small businesses. Fortunately the options to sell your products or services online are plentiful. All you have to do is select the right components and put them together correctly. That seems to be an oversimplified statement but this short guide to setting up your own e-Commerce website will justify the statement.
Before we start, let?s take a quick picture of what we are aiming at. The idea is to set up a simple website to showcase your products, allow website visitors to purchase products and pay online. So here are three major components that function together to make an e-Commerce website: A website: This is your own web property which consists of your unique URL and introduction of your business. Products Showcase: A product showcase presents your products/offering on your website. Option to Purchase Products (Shopping Cart): This has a lot of stuff under the hood. You need to maintain complete listing of your products, manage inventory, track sales, special offers etc. Online Payment:This requires integration with a trusted payment gateway such as PayPal.
Setting up WordPress Website
To get started with your own e-Commerce, the first thing that you need to set up is a WordPress website. Why WordPress? Because it is a nice, if not the ultimate, platform. It is easy to set up and maintain, and comes with tons of useful plug-ins and themes. It is consistently updated to present better security and functionality. If you do not have a WordPress website, set up one. Most website hosting providers allow a single-click installation of WordPress. However, if you want to do it yourself, it takes less than five minutes to set up your WordPress site.
Build Your Product Showcase
Setting up a product showcase is quite easy with WordPress. There are a number of free WordPress themes that allow you to build your product showcase. Some of them also provide out-of-the-box integration with payment gateways. Here are a few well-known WordPress themes that you can use to build your product showcase. Balita WordPress e-Commerce Theme?? A decent WordPress theme that gives you product showcase, shopping cart, facebook integration and much more. Twenty Eleven e-Commerce Theme ?? Twenty Eleven e-Commerce is an e-Commerce child theme for the default WordPress theme Twenty Eleven. Twenty Eleven e-Commerce inherits all the virtues of Twenty Eleven and it adds specific functionality for e-commerce. If you are looking for some premium e-Commerce themes, the choice is endless.
Facility to Purchase Products and Pay
If your WordPress theme does not allow showcasing your products, there are tons of useful WordPress plug-ins that serve this purpose. Most of these plug-ins would create product gallery, and allow customers to purchase products from your website and make online payments. Some popular e-Commerce plugins for WordPress are: WP e-Commerce is one of the most popular e-Commerce plug-ins for WordPress. It supports multiple payment gateways such as PayPal and Google Checkout. It also comes with a variety of ready-made themes, but still fully supports the creation of your own custom themes.If you are looking to quickly launch an e-Commerce site while avoiding a large time commitment or financial investment, WP e-Commerce is a fast and free, yet feature-rich solution. Jigoshop is free WordPress plug-in that comes with a long list of impressive features including inventory control, coupon, support for multiple currencies, tax collection, PayPal integration and various localization options. For those who do not want to take the hassle of installing and configuring an e-Commerce plugin, a number of third-party integrations are available. These third-party tools allow you to run a complete online shop without having to install and configure anything on your website. One popular option is Shoplocket that allows you to sell your products from your website, your facebook page or your personal blog. Also check out Yakaboo and HighWire.
Conclusion
All of the options mentioned here should be quite sufficient for establishing a decent e-Commerce solution for a small or medium business. These options are easy and free. However, if you are looking for something like Amazon, you should probably think beyond WordPress and consider e-Commerce platforms like Zen Cart, or Shopify.
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Source: http://www.egrappler.com/how-to-set-up-e-commerce-site-with-wordpress/
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