2. Goals
• Evaluate our e-commerce requirements
• Planning your e-commerce store
• Evaluating third-party software and services
• Selecting an e-commerce plugin and a theme
• Discuss compliance and security
• Discuss outbound marketing
3. Why choose WordPress?
• Open Source content management
• Globally distributed and supported
• Easy to use
• Highly extensible through plugins and themes
• Powers 23% of the web
• Available in more than 70 languages
• Search Engine Optimized
• Native iOS and Android apps
• Fast, Simple, Flexible
4. Planning for success
• How many products will you have?
• How many product categories will you have?
• What type of products are you selling?
• Shipping
• Tax
• Payment processing
• DIY vs hiring a developer
• Third-party considerations
5. Type of products/store
• Physical products
• Variable products
• Digital / Virtual products
• Subscription-based products
• Bookings
• Membership
6. DIY vs Hiring a professional
• Collect your requirements
• Do your research
• Check the legal requirements
• Get advice
• Select the third-party providers
• Calculate cost vs time vs quality
11. PCI DSS compliance
• PCI DSS –
Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards
https://www.pcisecuritystandards.org/
• Governs that handling of credit card data
• Non-enforced but compliance is encouraged
• Card issuers may have penalties for non-compliance
resulting in a breach of card data
• Speak to your payment processor and hosting
company about compliance
15. eCommerce plugin extensions
• Payment processing extensions
• Shipping extensions
• Third-party integration extensions such as accounting
or inventory management systems
• Marketing
• Reporting
16.
17. Selecting a theme
• Compatibility with your e-commerce plugin
• Responsive mobile-friendly
• Not feature-bloated (shortcodes, options)
• Meets your goals for the look of your site and store
• Off-the-shelf or custom built
18. Security and SSL
• Security of an e-commerce site is essential
• Consider a VPS over shared hosting
• Use a good security plugin
• Purchase a domain-specific SSL certificate
• Enforce HTTPS on all pages
• Enforce strong passwords
• Keep your site up to date
• Delete spam comments
19. Marketing your store
• Email marketing
• Social media integration
• Promotions, discounts, coupons
• Reviews
• Affiliates
My name is Steve Mortiboy
I am the Sales Manager at Semper Fi Web Design
We are a Durham-based WordPress development company
We have been developing WordPress plugins and themes for over 8 years
We are the developers of some well-known plugins such as All in One SEO Pack which is one of the most downloaded plugins for WordPress
My role at Semper Fi is to help our customers get the most out of WordPress
The goal of this session is to help you get started with an e-commerce site on WordPress
We’ll cover evaluating your requirements, planning your e-commerce site, and evaluating third-party software and services,
We’ll discuss selecting an e-commerce plugin and a theme
We’ll discuss compliance and security so you can ask the right questions of professionals
We’ll cover marketing your store
So why should we use WordPress
WordPress has become one of the most popular publishing platforms for the web
There are lots of options available for building an e-commerce store but for a self-managed self-hosted store, WordPress is one of the best options
WordPress is open source and freely available to use by anyone
It is globally distributed and supported by a community that covers over 180 countries
It’s easy to use with the focus remaining on making the user interface simple and easy
It’s easy to extend WordPress through the use of over 34,000 plugins and over 3,000 themes
WordPress currently powers 23% of the web and is used by some of the most popular websites on the Internet
It’s currently available in over 70 languages
It’s optimized for search engines
It has native smartphone apps so you can manage your content from mobile devices
WordPress is fast, simple and very flexible
The first step in the process of creating an e-commerce site is planning
Start by considering how many products you’re going to have on your site, how many categories of products and what type of products you’ll be selling
Consider whether you’re going to be shipping physical products and whether you need to charge sales tax on purchases
Consider how you want to collect and process payments
Once you’ve collected this information you’ll want to consider whether to build the site yourself or hire someone to build it for you
Finally, you’ll want to gather a list of third-party providers and contact them to gather costs
As part of the planning process you’ll want to decide what types of products you are going to be selling
This is important because this will affect every aspect of the project
Some examples of different product types include:
Physical products – A typical product sold in a store and shipped to the customer
Variable products – This can be anything from an item of clothing that comes in different sizes or colors, to a product that can be customized by the customer such as an engraved item, a printed item like a business card or a gift box with variable options for the contents of the box
Digital or virtual products can include software, music, documents, online content or services
Subscription-based products can include recurring subscriptions for access to content or subscriptions for boxed items
Bookings can be for events or it could be for reservations
Membership can include distributor access to bulk discounted products or it could be membership to a club or access to content
There are more specialized plugins that can be used for these last two so it’s worth researching those if this is all you need
Once you’ve collected all of the information you need from the planning part of the project it’s worth considering whether you can do the work yourself or whether you need to hire a developer
It’s important to collect all your requirements and put them down on paper
Do the research yourself, paying someone to do it for you may be expensive and may result In incorrect advice
Check the legal side, speak to a professional who can advise on legal and tax concerns
Get advice from others who sell online and from experts
Gather a shortlist of third-party vendors and evaluate them
Finally, calculate the cost versus the time involved with creating the site. If you estimate it will take you 8-10 weeks to build the site yourself and you can place a value on that figure then you can compare it against what a professional will charge, how long it will take them and the quality of the completed work
Here is a list of third-party providers you may need
We’ll discuss a few of the more important ones in more detail
For each one, do your research, evaluate the vendors and costs, and create a shortlist
If you’re working with a developer ask their advice, they will have experience with different providers and can provide recommendations
A hosting provider will provide the server where you host your website and can provide additional services
The range of hosting providers and services can be overwhelming but here is a shortlist of items to consider when evaluating a hosting provider:
First and foremost is security, after all you’re going to be taking customer’s credit card information and you don’t want to have it stolen
Second is performance, if you’re expecting your store to take off then you don’t want customers to experience a slow site when trying to purchase from you
Support is very important, when something goes wrong is there a human you can call
Consider hosting providers that provide a range of different types of servers and that offer the ability to upgrade without outage to your site.
This means you can start with a lower priced server and then upgrade to something more powerful when your site takes off
VPS is by far the best solution for an e-commerce store, it strikes the right balance between price, security, speed and scalability
VPS stands for Virtual Private Server
It’s more secure than shared hosting, it has dedicated resources and it’s easy to upgrade and add resources
Make sure you get a managed service if you don’t want to be worrying about managing a Linux server
Make sure to ask the hosting providers about PCI DSS compliance, this is extremely important and we’ll discuss this in more detail
Finally, consider the price. Hosting can get very expensive but it’s worth it if the provider delivers everything you need and gives great support
A payment processor sits between the customer, you and your bank and collects and processes the card payments
Selecting a payment processor may be the most important choice you have to make so here are some things to consider when evaluating providers:
Are payments processed on your site or off site
An example of off site is PayPal where the customer is taken out to PayPal to enter their credit card
This is good because the card information goes through their site and is secure but many people don’t like the experience of being taken out to PayPal
On site payment processing is where there’s a credit card form on your site and the customer enters their payment information directly into your site
On site payment processing requires a significantly greater degree of security and will involve the headaches to do with PCI DSS compliance
If you’re taking payments from all over the world then make sure your payment processor can handle this, some have lists of countries they cannot process payments from
If you’re handling recurring subscriptions where card information is stored and processed on a scheduled basis then make sure to ask if the payment processor has a service to handle this
Always make sure the payment processor provides good phone support, when things go wrong you want to call someone for help
Carefully evaluate the fees, many providers charge a setup fee plus monthly fees plus a percentage amount on each transaction. They can also hold on to your money for a set amount of time so check this carefully
Finally, make sure you choose a payment processor that has integration with the e-commerce plugin you’re planning to use. Support varies wildly
Here are just a few of the most popular payment processors
PayPal is probably the best known of these
Authorize.Net is owned by Visa who are the well known card issuer
PCI DSS is a set of security standards agreed between the different card issuers including Visa, Mastercard, Discover and American Express
They govern the storing, processing, or transmitting cardholder information and are there to ensure card data is protected from theft
Whilst compliance is not mandatory, the card issuers may impose penalties on a merchant that does not comply or that has a breach of cardholder data
It is strongly recommended you research the PCI website and the PCI DSS compliance rules on the different card issuers sites and that you discuss PCI DSS with your payment processor and hosting company to find out how they can help and what you need to do
There are dozens of e-commerce plugins available for WordPress, ranging from the very simple to the very complex
E-commerce plugins tend to be very complex and the general rule is that the more complex the plugin the more important it is to select a quality plugin
For this reason we have used and recommend three plugins – WooCommerce, Shopp and WP eCommerce
Currently the best of these is WooCommerce and it’s what we use on all ecommerce sites we develop
WooCommerce is developed by WooThemes, one of the biggest WordPress development companies in the world
WooCommerce is the most extensible plugin, it has over 300 add-ons
All three plugins are free
They include all the basic functions you need to create a store
All three make money by selling extensions or add-ons that deliver additional features
They also make money by selling access to premium support and documentation
The premium support is well worth it, especially if you’re building your store yourself
All three of the e-commerce plugins we recommend can be extended through extensions or add-ons
These extensions add more advanced features
Some examples of e-commerce plugin extensions you can purchase and will likely need are:
Payment processing – we previously discussed selecting a payment processor and one of the things to consider when making this selection is whether there is an official extension for the e-commerce plugin you are using
Another popular extension is shipping. Whilst all three e-commerce have some basic shipping calculation included, if you want to use a service such as Fedex, UPS or USPS then you may want the official extension so that shipping can be calculated real-time against actual rates
You may also want extensions for third-party services such as QuickBooks for accounting or Mailchimp for email marketing
These extensions can cost anything from $49 to $149 each so this is a cost to consider during planning
Here’s the WooCommerce extensions page on WooThemes.com
You can see the different categories of extensions on the left hand side
As part of your e-commerce site project you’ll want to select a theme
The theme is what covers the look of the site so it’s important to choose one you like
It’s even more important to choose a theme that is compatible with your e-commerce plugin
WooCommerce is developed by one of the biggest theme development companies in the world and they have a large selection of themes that are built to work with their e-commerce plugin
Modern themes should be responsive, this will ensure your site is mobile-friendly which is extremely important these days
Themes can be bloated with features, it’s wise to choose a theme that isn’t overloaded with features
Finally, if you can’t find an off-the-shelf theme you like then consider having someone design and build a custom theme as part of this project. This will ensure you get a unique looking site that you like
Security of your site and store is very important
You’ll need to do all you can to minimize the risk of customer data being stolen
There are some basic things you can do, including:
Using VPS hosting instead of shared hosting
Installing a good security plugin such as iThemes Security
You must purchase and install a domain-specific SSL certificate and maintain it, your hosting provider should be able to help with this
Enforce HTTPS encryption on all pages and fix any HTTPS errors reported in the browser, seek help if you need it
Enforce strong passwords, most sites get hacked due to poor password security
Keep WordPress, all plugins and themes up to date, many updates include patches for security vulnerabilities
Delete all spam comments and consider using a solution such as Akismet for spam filtering, we’ve seen a significant increase in malware infections via spam comments
Once you’ve published your store you’ll want to market it and promote your products
There are a number of ways you can do this, you’ll want to consider these during the planning and development of the site
Here are some solutions to consider:
Email marketing using a service such as Mailchimp or Constant Contact is a good way to collect customer information and market to them
Ecommerce plugins such as WooCommerce have extensions for connecting your store to services such as Mailchimp so that this information is collected and can be used later for sending email marketing
Social media is a great way to build your following and promote your products
Plugins such as our All in One SEO Pack and Jetpack from WordPress.com can help with social media integration
Something to consider during planning is promotions, discounts and coupons
Most e-commerce plugins have some basic features but it’s worth looking at extensions that help you create more complex promotions and discounts such as buy-one-get-one-free offers, or half-off all purchases over $50 on Thursday, or free shipping Fridays
Customer reviews and ratings are a great way to get feedback and endorsements from verified customers
WooCommerce has this built in and outputs the star ratings in a way that Google will pick them up and can display them in search results
Affiliate programs are a good way to expand your network and let others sell your products for a commission
There are a number of affiliate plugins for WordPress and some have native integration with the top e-commerce plugins
This is something to consider during planning to help you select the right e-commerce plugin
I’m now going to take you through the settings of a typical e-commerce plugin
I’m using WooCommerce as the example because it has robust options and a simple user interface
I’m now going to take you through the settings of a typical e-commerce plugin
I’m using WooCommerce as the example because it has robust options and a simple user interface
