WordPress has come a very long way as a fully integrated shopping cart system, and there are so many options available once you decide that you want to sell something from your website. In this session we will look at the different types of shopping cart solutions from plugins, hybrids, lightweight plugins, to hosted carts. What solution might be best for you/your customers/your clients. We will look as some of the more popular plugins, assessing needs, and how we decided on some of the solutions we use on some of our sites.

1. Shopping for a
Shopping Cart Solution
WordCamp Boston 2012

2. A little about me...
✤ Started doing video for web in 1999
✤ Remember Media Player or Quicktime?
✤ We were putting video on the web before that
✤ Started making websites around 2000
✤ TRB Design, Inc. 2002

3. A little about me...
✤ 2004 Started
GymSmarts (yikes!!)
✤ needed a shopping
cart!!
Thanks wayback machine, I think
(www.web.archive.org)

4. There are plenty of Shopping Cart
Solutions for the web

5. Been there, done that...
1. 2003 - Miva Merchant 2. 2006 - 1Shopping Cart

6. Why WordPress for eCommerce?
✤ Started working with
WordPress about 5 years
ago
✤ Building simple sites for
clients
✤ Moving our sites, and others
website to WP

7. Why WordPress for eCommerce?
✤ Two years ago started looking for
a new solution for GymSmarts,
✤ tired of paying monthly fees
✤ wanting the flexibility of WP
as a CMS

8. Why WordPress for eCommerce?
✤ Plenty of 3rd party
shopping carts, both
premium and free
✤ various features
✤ from simple point
solutions to robust, full
featured platforms

9. What do you need?
✤ Products: Do you have just a few products?

10. What do you need?
✤ ...or hundreds, thousands?

11. What do you need?
✤ Do you have variations of products?
Image from http://shop.nordstrom.com

12. What do you need?
✤ Membership, subscriptions, reoccurring payments
✤ Are your products digital or physical products
Subscribe

13. What do you need?
✤ Payments: How will you process payments?
✤ PayPal, Google, Merchant Account?

14. What do you need?
✤ Payment Gateway
Image from: http://websitedevelopmentarticles.blogspot.com/2012/05/payment-gateways-hazardous-thing-in.html

15. What do you need?
✤ Some carts require you to have SSL - Secure
Socket Layer
A protocol for
encrypting information over
the internet
www.namecheap.com
is a great place to purchase SSL
Image from: http://nrupentheking.blogspot.com/2011/07/ssl-and-tls-attacks-weak-ciphers.html

16. What do you need?
✤ Shipping:
✤ do you need it?
(e-books, downloads
only- no)

17. What do you need?
✤ Shipping, if yes:
✤ Where will you be sending/selling to
(US, Canada, worldwide?)

18. What do you need?
✤ Shipping, if yes:
✤ Shipping methods? (USPS, UPS, FedEx)

19. What do you need?
✤ Shipping, if yes:
✤ Will there be handling
fees, shipping fees added to
cost?

20. Shopping Solutions
✤ Shopping cart plugins**
✤ Shopping cart hybrids (themes
with shopping cart functionality)
✤ Lightweight shopping carts
(good for selling just a few items-just
one type of payment processing)
✤ Plugins to integrate with 3rd-
party carts (1Shopping
Cart, Volution)
** this is what we will focus on today :)

21. Standard Shopping Cart Features
✤ Product Catalog

22. Standard Shopping Cart Features
✤ Inventory management

23. Standard Shopping Cart Features
✤ Order
management

24. Standard Shopping Cart Features
✤ SEO friendly

25. Standard Shopping Cart Features
✤ Shipping
✤ Per product
✤ Weight
✤ Handling Fee

26. Standard Shopping Cart Features
✤ Tax estimates - International VAT?

27. Standard Shopping Cart Features
✤ Payment gateway
WP e-Commerce

28. Advanced/Premium Features
✤ Product Variants

29. Advanced/Premium Features
✤ Discounts and promotions
✤ Banner ads
✤ Coupons

30. Advanced/Premium Features
✤ Affiliate options
✤ Template tags & short codes
✤ Support & Documentation
✤ Developer API [catalog]
Short codes make it easy to put
products on pages you want.

31. WP Shopping Carts: Free
✤ Some of top major ones:
✤ WP e-Commerce (GetShopped.org)
✤ Cart 66 lite
✤ Jigoshop
✤ WooCommerce

32. WP eCommerce
✤ One of the original WP
shopping cart plug-ins
✤ Great SEO

33. WP eCommerce
✤ Many Features
✤ 100% customizable
✤ shortcodes and template tags
✤ many payment gateway options
✤ coupons, quantity discounts, cross-sell
✤ international support
✤ many shipping options (flat rate, table, weight)

34. WP eCommerce
✤ Premium upgrades/plugins
✤ Gold Cart, grid module, drop
shop, slider, membership/subscription

35. WP eCommerce
✤ Extensive Documentation
✤ videos, forums, premium help

36. Cart66 Lite
✤ Simple, clean eCommerce
✤ No store front (okay for small amount
of products) - no catalog
✤ Product management & backend
✤ Standard features
✤ Only PayPal & off-line on free
edition

37. Jigoshop
✤ Nice integration of cross-
sell, up-sell, related products
and product reviews
✤ Uses post tables to store
product data - not good for
large amount of products
April 2011

38. Jigoshop
✤ Extensive
documentation
✤ Localization (lang)
✤ Can “group” products

39. WooCommerce
✤ Based on Jigoshop
✤ Flexible, easy-to-use templating
engine
Sep 2011

40. WooCommerce
✤ Lots of free and premium add-ons
and themes
✤ Great support

41. WP Shopping Carts: Premium
✤ Top major ones:
✤ Cart66
✤ MarketPress (WPMU Dev)
✤ Shopp

42. Cart66
✤ Single site License ($89) - 1 year prem
support, access to forums
✤ Robust recurring payments
✤ Robust model for memberships &
subscriptions
✤ Live UPS, USPS, FedEx shipping rates
✤ Third party integration with Google
analytics, Constant Contact, Gravity
Forms, etc.

43. MarketPress
✤ Monthly membership ($79)
($419 for 1 year)
✤ WPMU Dev plugin (site offers
a variety of plug-ins/themes)
✤ WP e-Commerce importer

44. MarketPress
✤ Lots of features: multiple payment gateways,
easy translation into any language, shortcodes)
✤ Flexible API Shortcodes and themeing

45. Shopp
✤ Single site access: $55
✤ Lots of free and premium
add-ons
✤ Robust theme & dev API’s
✤ Seamless WP integration
✤ Good customer service &
documentation

46. GymSmarts v.3-Shopp w/iFeature
theme

47. considerations
✤ Shop by coach, shop by category
✤ Details and Specs section (could standardize for
all our coaches)

48. considerations
✤ Video on product page
✤ ability to add handling charges

49. Carolina Gym WP eCommerce
w/Storefront Echo (themeforest)

50. considerations
✤ Started site 3 years ago
✤ Launched last month
✤ Client wanted orders to
be requests for quotes
because many items
large
(Site prior to June 2012)

51. TRB Design

52. TRB Design

53. TRB Design

57. Other thoughts
✤ Most e-Commerce solutions will work
with most mobile plug-ins and themes
✤ Mobile support/integration (e.g.
WPTouch)
✤ Social Commerce (e.g. Facebook) some
solutions have plugins for embedding
store in Facebook

58. Themes
✤ Many themes will work with shopping carts
✤ iFeature Pro for GymSmarts:
www.cyberchimps.com
✤ Theme Forest: www.themeforest.net
✤ search for responsive and e-commerce - got 5
results - chose Echo Storefront - support was
great

59. Themes
✤ Be wary of themes that have shopping carts built
into them
✤ There are discussions on themes vs. plugins
✤ Lines getting blurred
✤ If you want to change theme, you loose that
functionality

60. BIG Thank you to...
✤ James Coletti, Kurt Eng, Jon Bishop for
Boston WordPress Meetup
http://meetup.bostonwp.org/
✤ Jon Bishop & Brian Piccolo
(@amp_agency) for their presentation
on Ecommerce at April WordPress
Meetup

61. Linkedin Groups...
✤ WordPress
✤ WordPress Web Designers
✤ WordPress Problem Solver
✤ WordPress sans SPAM

62. contact me...
✤ Twitter: Reikob
✤ Linkedin: ReikoBeach
✤ Reiko@TRBDesigns.com
✤ phone: 781.987.1655
TRBDesigns.com TheToolboxInc.com