Many small businesses have chosen WordPress as their platform for creating their online store. It has become the go-to platform for this purpose because it has hundreds of plugins that make it easy to setup and start selling.

If you want to have an online shop and you know how you want it to work, WordPress should be your choice. Keep in mind that the platform doesn’t come with eCommerce feature preinstalled, meaning that you will have to add the plugin yourself. Luckily, there are quite a few plugins available for setting up an online store. They have everything you might need, from shopping carts to payment processing.

Finding the right eCommerce plugin might take some time, but in the long run, it will be worth it. The problem is that there are many WordPress eCommerce plugins, making it harder to choose the right one.

First, let’s focus on what you need to know about these websites.

What exactly is eCommerce and how it works?

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eCommerce or eBusiness is a term incorporating all websites used for selling products or services online.Furthermore, it also includes any action that involves the transfer of data and funds between two parties online. This term is used for any kind of shopping that is done on the Web.

This term is commonly used for a new breed of portals that enables visitors to find the products and services they need faster. In the past, any kind of shopping on eCommerce websites had to go through phone calls or emails, but now a person can buy anything in just a few clicks!

What is a WordPress plugin?

A plugin is an extension for WordPress developed to add features to an existing website based on this platform. These plugins are written in the PHP language,and they work only with WordPress.The idea behind these extensions is to enable people who don’t know how to code to add new features to their websites, without the need to hire a developer.

How to know what WordPress eCommerce plugin is right for your website?

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Choosing one of many WordPress eCommerce plugins that are available can be quite tricky.

Here are things that you should consider:

What product or service you plan on selling?

No one plugin can do it all. Some are better when it comes to handling digital products like music or eBooks, while some are better with physical products.Furthermore, if you plan to sell accommodation, then you will have to find an eCommerce plugin that enables bookings.

What is your preferred method for payment?

What payment methods are the best for your business? Cash on delivery or credit card? Depending on what’s your answer here, you will have to find the plugin that supports the method you plan on using. Keep in mind that there are some third-partyoptions if you can’t find one plugin that supports all the payment methods you would like to use.

How is your online shop going to look?

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If you have settled on a design for your online store, make sure that the plugin you’ve chosen supports it. It is essential that both the theme and the plugin reflect your brand.

Are you going to need some special features?

While most of the WordPress eCommerce plugins have lots of functions, if you need something special, you might have to install it yourself. It would be best to figure out all the features you are going to need and then based on that choose the plugin that suits your needs.

Are you willing to pay for a plugin?

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What could make it easier for you to choose the plugin is how much you plan on spending on it. Many WordPress eCommerce plugins are free, but they come with limited functionality. You should be prepared to invest some money if you want the best possible plugin.

Here’s a list of the most popular WordPress eCommerce plugins:

WooCommerce

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This is the most popular of all WordPress eCommerce plugins online. By adding it to your website, you will be able to sell both physical and digital products. The plugin itself is free, but there are hundreds of extensions (paid and free) that you can use to add more features. Furthermore, you can even hire WooCommerce developers to take your online store one step further.

This plugin comes with support for PayPal transactions, cash on deliver and BACS. If you need more payment options, some extensions can help you.

What is good about WooCommerce is that it comes with lots of documentation to help you build the perfect online store. Also, you can rely on their forums for support.

WP eCommerce

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Considered to be the best alternative to WooCommerce, this plugin is a good option for all those who are looking for an easier to use option. In many ways, the two plugins are identical – the installation process is similar. Also, both are free to install and have practically the same dashboards.

You can also choose to install additional extensions later to WP eCommerce,or you could decide to purchase a Gold Cart extension. This is like a premium version of the plugin, with many features and functions that the basic version doesn’t have. However, some people consider it to be quite expensive – $99 is a license for a single website. For that one-time payment, you get live search, grid view for items and premium payment gateways.

Ecwid eCommerce Shopping Cart

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Ecwid is another plugin that has similar installation process like WooCommerce, but the two are different in one crucial way.This plugin can be installed on any website you have, not just WordPress. You can use it on Drupal, Facebook or Tumblr. By using this plugin, you are not limited to only one content management system.

Furthermore, Ecwid has excellent reviews and a simplified interface. Just like others, you can install it for free and later decide whether you need the paid version. If you need some features like multiple sale channels (which are paid extra on WooCommerce), you should go with Ecwid.

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Shopify

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Shopify is one of the few plugins here that is hosted on a cloud. This makes it easy to use this plugin on any website you have, not just WordPress. However, you should know that there is no native support for this plugin since it works a little different than others.

Where Shopify excels is the process of getting started. This is where it beats other solutions. The only thing you need to get your store online is to sign up for an account. Another great thing about Shopify is that it is a cloud-based solution. What this means for you is that there will never be problems if you have more traffic than you expect.

BigCommerce

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BigCommerce, just like Shopify, is hosted on a cloud server. This is one of the WordPress eCommerce plugins that works best for small and medium businesses. What separates it from the rest is that it comes packed with features and functions right out of the box.

This plugin also comes with lots of preinstalled responsive templates, so you can choose which one is best for your online shop. Furthermore, it comes with features for discounting, making it easy for you to offer promotions to your customers.

BigCommerce can also be entirely integrated into your WordPress website. What this means is that you can manage both BigCommerce and WordPress from one account. If you ever need more server space on WordPress hosting, you can always move sales requests to BigCommerce account.

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MemberPress

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Unlike other plugins we mentioned earlier, MemberPress can be used only to sell digital products and services online. One interesting feature that it offers is a functional WordPress membership tool. You can use it to charge your users access to your products or services.

Subscription-based services are more popular than ever and have become a great way to ensure recurring income.

If you still need a regular online shop, you can integrate MemberPress and WooCommerce. You can use MemberPress for subscription-based sales and WooCommerce to sell regular products. However, these are not the only features that this plugin offers. You can also use Stripe, PayPal and Authorize for payment and create forums on your website.

Ninja Shop

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One of the newest plugins on this list. It aims to enable you to have an online store in under 5 minutes. It was first developed in 2013, however since Exchange.wp acquired it, it was renamed to Ninja Shop. The installation process is great because this plugin has a wizard that guides you and helps you set up the shop to your needs.

Easy Digital Downloads

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The name of the plugin gives you all the info you need – it is easy,and it helps to sell digital products. The majority of users find that the Easy Digital Downloads works best when you are selling downloadable products. WooCommerce is a great plugin for selling digital products, but Easy Digital Downloads does it better. This plugin should be your choice if you are selling PDF files, videos and eBooks.

It is free to use, so you can install it and start selling right away. When you add your digital products, you can immediately set up different pages and add coupons. It offers some interesting functions like customer activity tracking and file access control.There are even some exciting themes to make your store look better for your customers.

The shopping process is completely simplified. When a user pays for a product, they immediately get an email with a product code or a download link. Easy Digital Downloads also comes with Checkout page and Shopping cart, saving time to you and your users.

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Jigoshop eCommerce

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This plugin comes with support for many different products, from digital to physical goods. Of advanced features, there aretools to manage your stock, detailed reports and great styling tools. Users have found that this plugin is much easier to use than WooCommerce or other similar extensions.

Another thing that makes Jigoshop great is that the add-ons are cheaper than those offered by its competitors.

WP EasyCart Shopping Cart and eCommerce Store

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The EasyCart is not among the most popular plugins out there, but it has been slowly gaining the attention of WordPress users. Sometimes, even the plugins with the best reviews do not offer all the features and functions users need. The WP EasyCart Shopping Cart and eCommerce Store just like its name says – it is easy to set up and use. It doesn’t boast that it has hundreds of features, but it is great for first-time WordPress users.

This plugin has lots of features like B2B, promotions, coupons and subscriptions. There’s even a plugin to make a website ideal for small retailers and entrepreneurs.

We have chosen the top WordPress eCommerce plugins. It should be easier to choose the one that is right for you and start working on your online store today.

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The post WordPress eCommerce plugins you should consider appeared first on Be Theme Blog.

Our support team has been listening to the suggestions of the design community, and we are responding to those suggestions.

We have launched four exciting pre-built websites this month to address the needs of web designers working in the following niche categories:

• BeFireplace – a delightfully beautiful shop for firewood sales;
• Betraining – a pre-built website destined to professionals and businesses in the training and consulting sectors;
• BeCouturier – a modern, chic pre-built website ideally suited for fashion designers;
• BeSurveyor – destined to those in the surveying profession.

Be Fireplace – Keeping that Cozy Fire Ready for Winter

Fireplaces on homes are quite common these days. Many older homes have them, and the trend in newly-built homes is for the owner to engage the services of an interior designer for the express purpose of adding an interior or exterior fireplace.

Since we identified with what appears to be a growing trend, we felt companies selling firewood would benefit from the launching of this cozy-looking pre-built website.

This pre-built websites video header nicely conveys the beautiful and cozy experience of watching the fire.

We wanted to find the best way to express this type of business. We decided that a video, such as the one used here, was all that was needed. Since the video is customizable, you can choose whatever one you want, to best satisfy the needs of your client.

This pre-built website is e-commerce optimized, so we added a gallery of available products right after the header to give the user an easy and satisfying UX.

A high level of clarity, as displayed in the product page, greatly simplifies the user’s shopping experience.

Be Training – Helps Trainers Get More Visibility Online

When we built BeTraining, our approach was to present a clearly structured pre-built website that used only the basic pages, such as programs, an event calendar, an about page, and a contact page. We also created BeTraining with the objective of providing professional trainers and consultants, along with training agencies and larger institutions, an opportunity to increase their online visibility.

If the format of this versatile pre-built website suits your web design objective, well and good. You can of course customize it for any professional or agency that offers training, coaching, classes, workshops, etc.

            This homepage provides a quick look into the most recent event section articles.

Scroll down the home page, and you’ll find an area the explains the services offered, a section about the business and its owner or owners, and a section that provides contact information, including a map. Additional sections could easily be customized to present images of from the workshop or training facility, or to describe and illustrate offline events.

Showing the trainer’s services, always an important section.

Be Couturier –  Where Fashion Meets Web Design Coolness

A couturier website should convey uniqueness and a feeling of luxury. We created BeCouturier because of our awareness of the rising trend in the number of people opening tailoring businesses. This is in response to a growing consumer demand for unique and attractive custom made clothes. As you would expect, our pre-built website conveys this same sense of uniqueness and luxury.

Notice how the white space helps the user focus on the header images, while at the same time conveying a feeling of relaxation.

As you examine BeCouturier in detail, you’ll see how we generously use white space to transmit a feeling of elegance. The offer, together with other items of clothing, are on display, plus there is a section about the professional tailors that you, as a client, could be working with.

The pre-built structure also features a page destined to the fashion studio itself, where photos can be added along with the studio’s story. A gallery with realizations, a page communicating the offer, and a contact page, complete the picture.

                     Clothes made in the couturier’s studio are highlighted in the gallery.

Be Surveyor – A corporate presentation pre-built website

At first glance, this pre-built website’s content would appear to cover all aspects of the surveying business quite well. There are however, many different ways in which the services of surveyors and surveying companies are rendered.

Consequently, when we designed and built BeSurveyor, our approach was to make it easy to transform and customize the branding and content, to be certain it will be easy to use for the entire spectrum of surveying business clients.

On the home page, you will see the areas that communicate basic information about the company and its services. Past and present clients and testimonials are features many business will want to include, and these could easily be incorporated if desired.

The menu includes the about page, the services page, a certificates page, and a contact page. The services page makes good use of modern icons and white space while providing the basic information a potential client might be looking for.

A certificates page is an especially important feature for businesses operating in the surveying domain. In this case, the user can open a PDF file to display any of several certificates. The contact page nicely presents all the information a potential client needs – including a map, telephone number and address, and an e-mail form.

            Custom, domain-oriented icons helps to convey a corporate, yet friendly, atmosphere.

The post November – The Latest Pre-Built Websites appeared first on Be Theme Blog.

Big or small?
It does not matter!

If your client runs a small business, and that client asks you to create a website that will attract customers, you will want to know a few things about the type of business it is. In fact, to make sure your client will be satisfied, you need to know quite a bit about the business. You might also wish to share with your client your ideas as to how you can design a website that will give visitors a great first impression.

There are three specific areas you must focus on to ensure your client will be a happy one

A website must:

• Have well-written, clear, crisp content.
• Make good use of attractive images – preferably the client’s own.
• Be a responsive website. The client certainly will need to cater to the mobile crowd.

All you need is the right tool to make everything happen; and one that is perfect for the job is ready and waiting.

Pre-Designed Websites that Work for Businesses

There’s one more thing to take into account when designing a website for a small business. The website will be much more successful at keeping a viewer’s interest and drive sales if it tells a story. The story it has to tell needs to have a great introduction however, if it is to capture a viewer’s interest. Each of these 10 predesigned website examples will get a business’s story off to a great start; another way of saying that first impressions count.

If, for instance, your client represents a design agency, images are all important. So is a sense of professionalism. The home page of the agency’s website needs to address both if a viewer is going to want to do business. The home page is important, the following pages are important, and a professional portfolio is all important. Pre-designed websites can serve as excellent conceptual designs for all three.

For creative business

This is where Be Theme really shines! It is the best design tool and source of pre-built websites on the market for designers of business-oriented websites.

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For food industry

The popular hamburger is rarely thought of as being classy or elegant in appearance; but using the right image in the right place might just change your mind.

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This pre-built website sends out a powerful message, and it delivers a great first impression for anyone who likes good food – which will include most viewers. A business’s unique value proposition can be its name, its logo, an announcement, or an image like a burger that says nothing, but speaks volumes.

• Using images effectively is always a good marketing technique.
• Images win hands down over descriptive text when it comes to attracting customers.
• Images have a powerful effect in a visually-oriented culture.
• A stock image rarely conveys a message as well as a business’s own image does.

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For entertainment

This pre-built website gives a great first impression. It also invites the viewer to explore more deeply, and it implies the business it represents is trustworthy.

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This example is rich in atmosphere. It provides a call to action. It makes you want to visit the establishment, or join the club. It tells you that life is to be enjoyed.

For adventure and lifestyle companies

These two examples powerfully illustrate another way to enjoy life – if you like intense activities.

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Any business will love a website that will attract like-minded customers; in this case, customers who love outdoor or sporting adventure.

For education

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This pre-build website addresses several themes; care of small children, education, and having fun. It does so in a somewhat whimsical matter, and features a powerful call to action – “Take a Tour.”

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For production business

If you have more than one product to sell or service to render, you don’t all have to cram everything on the same page. Keep things simple. Invite the viewer to sit back and thumb through your offerings.

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For hotels

This example is an illustration of how a hotel’s a website can be rich in information and imagery, but still have a crisp, clean look. It makes it easy for a visitor to navigate to important information, and it also shows an effective use of sliders.

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Designers Love Pre-Designed Websites, and Their Clients Do Too

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The good news is, you can take any one of these Be Theme examples and customize them anyway you want. Even better news is that this WordPress theme’s selection of pre-designed websites presents more than 170 choices. Virtually every business theme topic you can think of is represented, and for any given type of business, there are many different examples to consider.

At the outset, we stressed the importance of great first impressions and the difference they can make. We also made note of the fact that, given a great design, you need the right tool in order to take that design and put it to practical and powerful use. Be Theme is that tool.

Be’s many features include two powerful page builders. The recently-released and state-of-the-art Muffin Builder 3, and the popular Visual Composer. Be’s Layout Configurator and Shortcode Generator are among the 40 core features that make website building faster and easier than many web designers thought possible. You can even start from scratch by creating your own layout from a blank screen, and still build an awesome website in record time.

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The post 10 Business Website Examples that Give Powerful First Impressions appeared first on Be Theme Blog.

The truth is, many of these shops underperform; sometimes significantly. The reason? Website builders don’t abide by certain practices that allow eCommerce stores is to meet what should be their fundamental UX objectives; make it easy for a customer to find a product and make a purchase.

How is this accomplished?

• By keeping navigation simple
• By making certain every page is well-organized.
• By designing an attention-getting home page.
• By creating great first impressions, throughout the site.
• By presenting information in a way that builds trust.

These five rules are not difficult to understand. Neither are the means of implementing them, but only if you have the right tools to do so.

What are the Right Tools, and How Are They Applied?

Here are several examples of tools you can use to create a highly successful online shop. These tools serve as conceptual designs, they encourage beauty and simplicity in website design, and since they are customizable, they are perfect for creating outstanding user experiences.

These Be Theme pre-built websites are productivity tools. They are huge time and money savers, and you will experience higher-quality results.

Be Theme Shop

This product page is not complicated, yet it has what you need to start shopping. There’s the product photo, a unique value proposition (Global Sale) that jumps out at you, prices, a menu, a shopping cart icon, and more.

This page offers a powerful first impression, but you have to follow through to turn a viewer into a paying customer. Product descriptions need to be carefully written. Product images need to show products in their best light. Your visitor must have easy access to size information, color options, stock levels, wish lists, a streamlined payment process, etc. On your side, you should be careful with inventory management, besides the main worries that you have.

Be Cosmetics

This home page coveys a feeling of luxury. If you look closely, it’s more of an advertisement than a home page, but you can still navigate to any part of the shop. The image is clean, clear, and inviting; like one you expect in a beauty magazine. Note the “Ambassadors” page. This is an important element in shops specializing in beauty care. Its inclusion shows the designer and the client know their respective businesses well.

Beauty and personal care shops are taking up an increasingly large share of the eCommerce sector:

• Nearly half of those purchasing beauty products do not know ahead of time which brand they are going to buy; something a client can profit from.
• 43% of online shoppers will visit four or five different shops before making a purchase. This highlights the need to create an eCommerce site that outshines the competition, and stresses the need to pay attention to practices that will effectively maintain customer engagement.

Be Store

This theme features a pair of chick, yet elegant designs. One page shows the impact of properly used of white space. The other illustrates how background imagery can convey a greater sense of realism.

Our society is an image-centric one. Images play a crucial role in online marketing, and   you need to make the best possible use of them

1. An article with images receives twice as many views (94%).
2. A photo or video in a press release receives nearly half again as many views (45%).
3. Add an image to a search result; the average number of views increases by 60%
4. Two-thirds of online shoppers say that images are important in making their selections.
5. Shoppers believe they get more useful information from images than from write-ups, ratings, or reviews.
6. On Facebook, photos have a 37% higher engagement rate than does text.

eCommerce Web Designers and Their Clients Love Be Theme and Its Pre-designed Websites

You’ve been shown three outstanding, very different pre-designed websites for three eCommerce businesses. Assuming you have another type of online store in mind, it’s natural to ask if there is a similar pre-designed website that would work for you.

You will find your answer in Be Theme’s selection of more than 170 pre-designed websites, and that answer of course is yes. There are multiple choices for whatever eCommerce theme you may have in mind. Whichever one you select will be fully customizable, so you can focus on the concept, and not only on the details. Many of these pre-designed websites are multipage affairs, which can make building an online shop even easier and quicker.

Select the one you want, install it with a single click, and you’re ready to start your page building activities. Be Theme gives you a choice of two powerful page builders, Muffin Builder 3 and Visual Composer (you can use both if you want). There is never a need for coding, and features like the Muffin Options Panel, the Shortcode Generator, and Be’s Grid, Header, and Layout options will make your design task as easy as can be.

Choose Be Theme to build your eCommerce shops, and you’ll find yourself creating user experiences your competition will not be able to match.

Further reading:

• How to Start an E-Commerce Business in 6 Steps
• 8 Great B2B eCommerce Sites

The post 5 Rules on Having a Successful eCommerce Website appeared first on Be Theme Blog.