Running an online business has always been a significant topic among internet users, especially among the users who want to earn online. For this, nothing can be better than the idea of owning an online store. Before doing that you will need to know the processes of doing so and also the pros and cons of different e-commerce systems so that you can choose the right e-commerce and fully maximize the flexibility of your store.
There are different ways of setting up one of your online or e-commerce store. One of them is using WordPress. WordPress is one of the most customizable platforms to work with. WordPress have different themes for creating your e-commerce site and two of the widely used e-commerce plugins for this purpose is called the WP E-Commerce and Woo Commerce.
Once you have WP E-Commerce installed on your WordPress installation, you will see the “Store” menu. From there you can choose what actions you want to perform. The options under Store basically every action you need for your e-commerce store.
Under “Products“, you can easily see your product list and the information that you entered for the products. You can also search for any of your products to check its status.
Adding product in WP E-Commerce is very easy. You just have to fill the field with your product information. You will also be able to add additional fields based on your needs.
Managing products after they have been added has never been easier. You will also be able to delete products if you want to.
As with most e-commerce systems there is an “Add to Cart” button for each of your products. It is very convenient way for your customers to add products to their carts.
- Video Tutorial for setup and installation
- Option to use own HTML & CSS
- Quick response via premium forum
- Modifiable templates
- SEO powered
- Google sitemaps & analytics
- Internalization support
- Shipping, checkout, catalog management, it’s all there.
WooCommerce is another great plugin for making e-commerce sites with WordPress. This plugin looks better aesthetically as compared to WP E-Commerce. It is popular for its stunning looks.
You can control everything on your store from the settings menu. It has different tabs for different purposes at the top to make it more convenient for you to access.
The product menu shows all the information of all the products of your store. You can make changes to the products from this panel. This options works exactly the same as posts for WordPress blogs.
You can input product information such as regular price, sale price, image and lot more options for your products.
Display for a single product choice looks like this. Customer can easily add the product to his basket by clicking the button “Add to Basket”.
This is how the grid looks like for multiple products. Customers can click on the product and go to the single product view option from here.
WooCommerce also offers an option for checking the sales report.
- Great Outlook
- Workable both in front and back end
- Statistics report for sales
- Built in Short Codes and widgets
- PayPal standard Gateway
- Google Analytics
- Local to International Delivery option
If we make a direct comparison between WP E-Commerce and WooCommerce, we will see a lot of variations in functionalities and outlooks. In my opinion, instead of thinking about which is better, we should think which is best suited to our needs. If you want a platform where you can easily manage your product it would be WP E-Commerce. Its options are very spontaneous which can be handled by anyone out there who wants to open a store.
On the other hand, if you want your products to look beautiful and clean WooCommerce would be the plugin for you. WooCommerce’s product management panel is a bit different which can be a bit tricky at first, but once you get the hang of it, it should be smooth sailing from there.
AS it stands as of this writing WP E-Commerce has had more downloads than WooCommerce but it does not mean one is better than the other. Below you can find the download links. Let us know which is your preferred e-commerce plugin and why!
