5 Tips for Building a Successful eCommerce Platform with WordPress

Ecommerce is a thriving industry, and it’s not just because consumers are more inclined to shopping online these days. The buying and selling of goods and services over the internet makes shopping easy, convenient, enjoyable, and hassle-free.

This isn’t just the case for the buyers, but also the sellers. In order to run a successful eCommerce business, the platform you’re using has to meet the high demands of your customers and clients. If it doesn’t, there’s very little chance of running a successful online business.

WordPress is an excellent tool to use, but that doesn’t mean it’s foolproof. You still have to put in the work to make your WordPress site a worthwhile eCommerce portal that your potential buyers are likely to use.

Here are a few tips to get you started:

Tips for Building a Successful eCommerce Website Using WordPress

Before we get into the tips on eCommerce and WordPress, let’s talk about the reasons to use WordPress for building your online store.

WordPress is an extremely powerful tool, which explains why nearly ⅓ of all websites are created using this platform. You can start using it for free, and there are tons of compatible add-ons and plugins for specialising and customising your site.

WordPress sites are flexible, adaptable, user-friendly, mobile-friendly, and tend to rank higher than the competition platforms thanks to all the SEO tools and functions. All in all, WordPress is the most popular website building tool, and it’s easy to see why.

Once you start using WordPress to build your eCommerce site, these tips will help you along the way:

1. Utilize the right plugins
2. Put effort into your site design
3. Use quality product images and descriptions
4. Ensure a quick and easy shopping experience
5. Keep your site maintained

Utilize the Right Plugins

WordPress isn’t specifically designed as an eCommerce site builder, so why do so many eCommerce professionals use WordPress? It all has to do with the platform’s ability to easily integrate with popular eCommerce tools and plugins.

The options for customizing your WordPress platform and dashboard are essentially endless, and it’s really easy to find a plugin that can handle both physical and digital sales. WooCommerce is the perfect example of this.

There are so many reasons to start using WooCommerce as your go-to plugin for all of your eCommerce needs on WordPress. Within the main plugin itself, there are literally hundreds of different add-ons for customizing your process of selling goods or services.

Put Effort Into Your Site Design

One of the best things to remember when implementing your digital marketing strategies is that design is a powerful thing. Choosing the right website design and theme can ultimately make or break your online store, so never underestimate the power of your site’s design.

You should be viewing the theme as the foundation of your entire website. Not only does it say a lot about your store’s branding, but it can affect the functionality of your site. Poor design choices can lead to poor user functionality, and that never ends well.

There are a lot of risks of using inexperienced WordPress designers, so this isn’t something you should be stingy about. You’ll definitely want to invest time, effort, and money into choosing the right theme and design.

Use Quality Product Images & Descriptions

When it comes to the products you’re selling, the photos (and descriptions) you use are worth a thousand words. People are coming to your site to buy things, so you need to feature those things – whatever they may be – with quality photos, descriptions, and product titles.

You should be optimising your product titles and descriptions using keywords that will help rank your site on search engines. This is one of the easiest ways to boost traffic to your store, which ultimately leads to more sales.

It’s also crucial that you’re using professional images to showcase whatever you’re selling. An amateur photo is a major turn-off for buyers, so make sure that each product image does a good job of representing not only the product, but also your online store in general.

Ensure a Quick & Easy Shopping Experience

Shopping online is all about convenience, so if your store’s buying process is challenging or time-consuming, that defeats the entire purpose of running an eCommerce business.

WooCommerce is a great tool for creating a smooth and seamless shopping experience from start to finish. It allows you to process default payments with Stripe, PayPal, bank transfers, cash, and check, but you can add additional payment options with add-ons.

No matter which tools and plugins you use, just make sure that everything from browsing the store to adding items to the cart to checking out is quick, easy, and convenient.

Keep Your Site Maintained

We can’t stress enough the importance of website maintenance. To make sure your site remains at the top of its game, you need to be testing and tweaking things on the reg.

That means performing tasks like speed tests, checking into site security, updating site content, keeping up with updates, removing outdated plugins, staying on top of SEO, and following modern website design trends (just to name a few).

Get in touch today to learn about SGD’s website services that can take your eCommerce platform to the next level. Whether you’re looking for WooCommmerce integration or general WordPress design, we can help!