In the case of online shops and e-commerce, you’ll often find owners of these websites stating that they used sophisticated e-commerce software to build their websites. A lot of them wouldn’t even think of using WordPress for their e-commerce website for a variety of reasons. They’ll say that WordPress is meant for personal blogs and that isn’t a big enough platform that can handle a lot of traffic. Then people would also say that WordPress does not have enough e-commerce features that can support sales reports and inventory management. Other reasons include that WordPress is vulnerable to third party hacking programs and that it also cannot support ERP integration. The list regarding why people think WordPress isn’t a great platform for e-commerce goes on and on but these people have failed to see the good side of making a WordPress e-commerce website. But given all of those alleged disadvantages, how does it actually become better than other e-commerce software?
WordPress For E-commerce
When creating an e-commerce website, you only want the best for your online shop. It is natural considering that an online shop is an investment, no matter how much money and effort you put in it. There are many people who spend a lot of money on their online shop because they believe that a sophisticated and new e-commerce software can provide them with all the e-commerce plugins and features that their website will need. Many people are not aware that WordPress works just as great as complicated e-commerce software programs.
WordPress and Traffic – Because of its simplicity, many people are under the false notion that the WordPress platform is too basic and simple to handle a large amount of traffic entering their website. This is actually far from the truth since WordPress handles many famous websites such as Gizmodo, Techcrunch, and SmashingMagazine. These websites receive over a million visitors every day and yet they hardly crash, which just goes to show that WordPress can indeed handle the pressure of getting a lot of traffic per day.
WordPress Doesn’t Have Enough Features For e-commerce Websites – Just because you’ve seen tons of personal blogs hosted by WordPress doesn’t mean that blogs are the only thing that WordPress can support. For over 2 years now, several people have opened a shop with WordPress because the platform now has a content management system (or CMS) that allows its users to create classified sites and directories. In fact, people can even create their own social network using WordPress and WordPress plugins like WPMU and BuddyPress.
As for the features that can support e-commerce, WordPress has tons of features and WordPress plugins that you can install to improve your online shop. These plugins and features vary and some are offered for free while some will require you to buy them first. E-commerce for WordPress is currently improving because WordPress now has a lot of features that you can use for your online shop. For instance, a sales and inventory chart, multiple payment gateways (this includes CCAvenue, PayPal and 2CO), multi-image support feature, affiliate marketing system, multi-currency handling feature for the payments, debit card/credit card/net banking direct integration, and publish shopping cart/save cart/share cart feature for social platforms. With all these e-commerce plugins and features available within your reach when you choose to open a WordPress shop, how can people say that WordPress doesn’t have the system to support online shops?
Secure Platform
The reason why many people think that WordPress can be easily hacked by a third party program is because it is an open source platform. Indeed WordPress is an open source platform but WordPress is also one of the biggest communities on the Internet. This means that a lot of people send reports about bugs and issues every single day. Of course, the guys at WordPress don’t just read these reports. They actually act on these customer issues leading to a WordPress core that is updated frequently by the admins. Because of the large community at WordPress, you can easily advertise your online shop to other WordPress members.
Easy to Modify
One of the biggest challenges for online shop owners is editing and modifying the look of their website. You can always hire a professional website design team to do all the work for you, but sometimes these web design companies can charge you a lot even for some minor alterations in your website. This is where another benefit of e-commerce for WordPress comes in. While WordPress is very flexible, its interface is very easy to maneuver and you can change the design and your e-commerce web template with a few clicks.
Can Be Optimized
Advertising is a big problem for all business owners. How many times have you paid a lot for the advertisement of your shop? Advertising your online shop can be just as expensive as publicizing a real shop. But another good thing about opening an online shop through WordPress is that the WordPress platform supports SEO. SEO or search engine optimization is an affordable way to have your website or online shop advertised and gain more traffic every day. Making an online shop with WordPress may seem hard at the start but the good thing is that you don’t have to spend a lot on the modifications of your online shop since WordPress itself will help you along the way.