Creating Your Estore Using WordPress
One of the best ways to starting an ecommerce business is by creating the estore using wordpress.
You could easily install the wordpress, choose any theme that suits the purpose, with an ecommerce plugin and some extensions.
Using this you could build your online ecommerce store and include all the features that will be needed to sell your products and maintaining an excellent marketing experience.
We will consider all you need for your ecommerce store to be operational with WordPress, from the domain name and hosting payment to any additional features you might want to add to the store.
Although wordpress is absolutely free, some of the themes, plugin and extensions are not.
In building an effective estore with lots of the needed functionality, you will have to at least add some of the paid plugin and extensions.
This post is simply to let you know how to spend as little as possible to build the estore of your liking.
Remember! We are looking at building an effective functional estore while incurring minimum expenses using wordpress as the platform.
In this post the actual cost likely to be incurred right from getting a domain name and paying for hosting service for the wordpress platform, to getting all the recommended extensions that will be needed will be listed.
This is to help make it easier to plan for and build your own estore.
From Domain Name to Installing WordPress
Looking at installing wordpress as your estore platform, you could use any of the following to get both the domain name and hosting services. These are some of the best service providers online with minimum cost implications
Godaddy
Ipage
Namecheap
Cost: Hosting from $3.95 per month + domain name ($10)
Most web hosting service includes a free domain name, but it is preferred your getting your domain from another provider.
You do have lots of options to choose from but like we said in our ‘about us’ page, one of the objectives we have is to assist individuals hit the ground running and avoid spending ages going through the net for options. ipage is our recommended Domain and Hosting Service Provider
Ecommerce Theme
Ecommerce themes available for your wordpress platform are numerous but it is advisable to get a theme that is well supported and cared for by its creator.
That been said, there are lots of ecommerce themes that you could find to use but we do recommend a paid theme.
Investing in an ecommerce ensures a long shelf life and a support team if any problem arises down the line.
Usually we recommend starting with a free version of the theme and later upgrading to the premium version.
Cost: $50 to $100
WordPress Ecommerce Plugins
There are lots of free ecommerce plugins available for wordpress. Depending on what type of products you intend to sell. Two free ecommerce plugin are recommended.
WooCommerce for physical products
Easy Digital Downloads plugin for digital products
Cost: free
Brand Estore Logo
This is an important aspect of branding your business. It is essential to all businesses. With your online ecommerce store, you could simply place an order for your logo on Fiverr
A logo is necessary to portray a good image online of your estore to your potential customers.
Cost: from $5
Ecommerce Extensions
Getting the needed ecommerce extensions usually do incur cost.
Most of them do usually give the main core plugin for free but charge you for adding the extra features to your online store.
Most add-ons for ecommerce plugin are not free so it is not just peculiar to the wordpress platform.
WooCommerce Add-on is very popular and effective.
Getting the core WooCommerce plugin will allow you to accept payments for purchases of your products.
However the additional extension allows you to offer your customers the additional details of more payment options and it also streamline the checkout process.
This at the end of the day makes the whole process more users friendly and more professional.
Some add-on for the core WooCommerce plugin includes
Having this add-ons are to able you be able to add more payment options to your store and also be able to set multiply shipping rates based on the individual details supplied.
Adding the WooCommerce Recover Abandoned Cart is important. There are also add-ons which detect abandoned shopping carts and then emails the shopper to prompt them to complete the transaction. These plugins can help you recover what would otherwise be lost sales and revenue, making them a worthwhile investment.
Conclusion
From the above stated estimates in the various components of your estore, you could easily plan and start your ecommerce business spending very little capital. You could also decide and use shopify complete ecommerce business building package
The total cost for your shopify estore is $99