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WordPress hosting has often been the platform of choice for many businesses looking to start building their own online store. Part of that is because of the extensive plugins that WordPress has to offer.
Whether you realize it or not, choosing the right eCommerce plugin for your WordPress website is absolutely crucial for your business if you want to create more opportunity for growth and profit.
Out of the thousands of plugins currently available on WordPress, we’ve narrowed it down to 20 of the must have WordPress plugins for an eCommerce website!
A quick search for an eCommerce plugin at WordPress will net you hundreds of results. For beginners and new website owners, it might be a bit overwhelming trying to find the perfect plugin for your website.
Here’s the thing, there is no such thing as a perfect plugin as some might have the essential features that you would want while others might not.
For example, if your website mainly sells digital goods such as music, podcasts, digital eBooks, etc., then you might need an eCommerce plugin that specialized in selling digital products. Conversely, if you’re selling physical goods, then you need an eCommerce plugin that includes features such as shipping and inventory management.
Other factors you need to consider are plugins that support payment gateways by default and the ability to add more. You also need to check whether the eCommerce plugin comes with WordPress themes that compatible with each other.
Basically, you need to know what the focus of your online business will be in order to know what features and plugins you’ll need to install.
It’s no secret that eCommerce website tends to be resource hungry. Because of that, it’s important that you opt for the best WordPress hosting that fits your budget.
Those looking for an affordable option can start with hosting sites such as Hostinger or SiteGround. Hostinger, in particular, offers plans that are optimized for eCommerce websites with features such as SSL Certificates for secure payments, a dedicated IP, and a dedicated support line.
If you have the budget and want to have the best performance, you can look to Kinsta who specializes in WordPress eCommerce website.
Also, if you haven’t done it yet, you need to decide on a domain name for your eCommerce website. If you need help, you can use a domain name generator for some ideas.
Once you’ve got your website in order, then it’s time to look at the WordPress plugin you must have for your eCommerce business!
Quite possibly the most popular WordPress eCommerce plugin, WooCommerce is a great plugin to build your digital storefront from scratch on WordPress.
Ever since Automattic (the team behind WordPress.com blog hosting) acquired them in 2015, WooCommerce has been adding more themes and features that are optimized for an eCommerce WordPress website.
Building a WooCommerce store?
See our step-by-step guide on setting up a WooCommerce store on WordPress.
It’s important for any business owner to have a way for customers to contact them in case they have any feedback or questions. WPForms is a plugin that lets you set up a contact form quickly on WordPress with a beginner-friendly interface.
Using their drag & drop functionality, you can easily create contact forms, order forms, payment forms, email subscription forms, and more with just a few simple clicks.
For those wanting more advanced options and functionality, you can sign up for their Pro version, which has more customizability options and features.
A popular conversion rate optimization software, OptinMonster helps you convert your abandoning website visitors by prompting them to become email subscribers. It’s also a great plugin if you want to build up your email subscription list and increase your outreach to your loyal customers.
Veeqo is one of the best options to take care of all your WooCommerce inventory management needs. The software is an all-in-one ecommerce solution that allows you to manage your WooCommerce store(s), as well as other channels such as eBay, Amazon and Etsy from a single platform.
By using Veeqo you can manage orders, keep inventory synced in real time, edit product listings, buy from suppliers, manage your picking, packing and shipping, and much more.
The software helps retailers avoid out-of-stocks and overselling, creating a more streamlined and efficient business.
For online stores, having a gallery is very important to show your products to your customers. While WordPress does let you create an image gallery without the need for a plugin, it’s still fairly basic.
Envira Gallery helps you create a responsive and beautiful gallery easily in WordPress. With the plugin, you can set up multiple galleries, create albums, open images in lightbox popups, and so much more.
Formerly known as WordPress SEO by Yoast, Yoast SEO is a popular WordPress plugin that optimizes your website for search engines and improves your website’s visibility to key audiences.
The plugin comes with plenty of features beyond adding meta tags, to help you improve your website’s SEO ranking. If you’re unfamiliar with SEO terms, it might take some time getting used to. Thankfully, their interface is quite user-friendly and easy to use.
Security is absolutely important for any businesses, doubly so for an eCommerce website. A reliable form of security is to have a backup ready in case you lose all of your customer’s data due to a hardware failure or an attack on your host’s servers.
Setting up a backup for your website should be the first thing that you do and we recommend using BackupBuddy as they are not only reliable but also easy to set up and to restore your WordPress website.
Better yet, store your backup in offsite cloud storage for extra layer of protection. BackupBuddy provides the conveniences to set things up easily.
When it comes to making purchases on an online store, having a professional and simple checkout page will definitely help improve your chances.
The Ecwid WordPress plugin creates fairly simple checkout pages that include all the necessary features you’ll need for an eCommerce website. They also support over 40 international payment gateway options, real-time shipping integration, and 45 languages.
With MemberPress, you can build a membership option for your eCommerce website using one of the best WordPress membership plugin available.
You create special subscriptions and exclusive content for your members to entice other users to sign up. A great thing about MemberPress is that they are also compatible with all sorts of payment gateways and with online store plugins such as WooCommerce.
Want to get your online shop started and need an instant solution? JigoShop WordPress plugin lets you do that as they have all the required options you’ll need to create a fully featured eCommerce website.
You can take payments with PayPal, upload all of your products, use Skrill/Moneybookers without having to install any external or additional tools. They also offer premium extensions which you can use on your WordPress website.
WP eCommerce is a great solution for businesses who need a simple yet comprehensive eCommerce plugin on WordPress. Using this plugin, you can create your online store from scratch to sell digital or physical products, services, or even create a membership site.
You can customize the plugin any way you want by CSS and HTML. Managing your orders and catalogs can be done with their powerful built-in tools.
If you’re solely focused on selling digital goods, then Easy Digital Downloads is a great plugin that works well with WordPress eCommerce websites.
It’s an easy-to-use plugin that has plenty of extensions for different payment gateways, platforms, and services. While they work with any WordPress themes, Easy Digital Download also has their own beautiful themes that are built specifically for the plugin.
One of the fastest growing eCommerce platforms, Shopify is more than just a platform, it’s an all-in-one solution that’s hassle-free and easy-to-use.
With Shopify Connect for WooCommerce, you can now connect both Shopify and WooCommerce systems together. You will have the benefits of WordPress such as flexibility and customizability. At the same time, you can sell directly on social media platforms such as Facebook and Pinterest with Shopify connections.
LearnDash is a great LMS (Learning Management System) plugin that you can use to create and sell digital courses on your WordPress website. It’s great for people who want to start a tutoring website or to teach specialized topics such as digital marketing or social media techniques.
You can easily and quickly create lessons, quizzes, assignments, and more to build up your online courses using their user-friendly drag and drop course builder.
For some eCommerce website, having an FAQ section whenever you’re launching a new product or service will be helpful if your customers are not familiar with the product itself.
Quick and Easy FAQs lives up to its name by letting you add FAQ pages in a relatively quick and easy manner. Adding the FAQ section will also help to reduce customer support overhead and improve conversion, so it’s definitely a good plugin to have.
Another great eCommerce plugin for building an email list and to send emails to your subscribers is the Constant Contact plugin for WordPress.
As one of the most beginner friendly platforms to use, you can have your email marketing up and running in no time using their quick and easy setup. Plus, with built-in tools to create signup forms and the ability to work with lead generation tools such as OptinMonster, it’s definitely a plugin you need to have.
Tracking your analytics is a great way to understand what works for your audience. MonsterInsights lets you connect with Google Analytics so that you can learn more about your visitors by tracking where they were coming from and what they do while on your website.
While the plugin is free to use, their advanced features will require you to purchase their Pro version, which will give you more insight and options to customize your data.
Themes on WordPress rely on CSS for the visual appearance of your website. In order to change or make customization to your theme, you need to be able to do so in CSS. And learning it can be time-consuming.
With CSS Hero, you can customize your WordPress theme without having to write a single line of code. All you need to do is just install the WordPress plugin and you can start customizing your themes immediately.
Or, if that’s too much for you, you can always go for premium WordPress themes.
A CDN (Content Distribution Network) helps your load your images and other static content on your website faster for your users. For eCommerce websites, having fast loading pages is absolutely important for the user experience.
A reliable CDN plugin, MaxCDN works and integrates easily with WordPress to help make your website load even faster without having to move to a new hosting company. Plus, it’s super easy to install and get started!
In the eCommerce market, it’s always a good idea to keep track of how your competitors are doing. With SEMRush, you can check how your competitors are ranking, along with their paid keywords and their organic traffic.
Using these pieces of information, you can build and optimize your own content and marketing strategy effectively to get ahead of the competition.
A great way to boost sales is to put your products on sale for a limited time. Product Countdown WordPress Plugin lets you easily create a product countdown option on your online store and encourage customers to grab those deals before they disappear.
It’s a simple and effective tool that you can use to boost sales on your eCommerce website. Plus, it works great with WooCommerce.
So there you have it, 21 WordPress plugins that you need for an eCommerce website. Do you have any other plugins that you think we should include? Let us know about it.
Got a website but need help building your online presence? Then check out our awesome guide for building on online presence!
Jason is a fan of WordPress and technology. He is also a marketer - Jason likes to read news related to startups and internet marketing. You can connect with him via Twitter.
