There are many many clever WordPress plugins, but did you know WP can be used as a dedicated ecommerce shopping cart? No? Well let me tell you it can! And to prove it, I’ll show you a working set up. All you need is a few plugins, some products to sell and an hour or two of your time and you too can have a working SEO’d and easy to maintain ecommerce site. The shopping cart plugin I am using is a paid for script from Tribulant Software. I know Antonie Potgieter – the plugin author – and he has many other very good plugins that are definitely worth a look at.

He wrote a plugin for me that powers this thumbshot of my ecommerce Car Torch website:

Car Torch
Car Torch is a website I set up to sell Car Torches – clever little rechargeable 12v LED torches that sit in your cigarette light power socket and are charged ready to go when you you need them. They come in a range of colours and have a range of accessories. And yes, the site is live and accepting orders, go on, you know you want one!

It’s simple to simple to set up, just start with a domain name

Think of a domain name and register it. (There you go, first bit done!) If you need more info read my article on domain name registration

Hosting and WordPress

Set up your hosting package and install WordPress. If you are at all unsure about where to host, my advice would be to use Hostgator. They have great customer service and they have a brilliant install app called Fantastico which will install and set up WordPress for you.

Install some plugins

For www.cartorch.co.uk I have used these plugins:

WordPress Shopping Cart Version 1.3 | By Tribulant Software CC | Visit plugin site

Google XML Sitemaps Version 3.2 | By Arne Brachhold | Visit plugin site

StatPress Reloaded Version 1.5.21 | By Manuel Grabowski | Visit plugin site

WP-Ads Version 0.2 | By Nick Brady | Visit plugin site

Contact Form 7 Version 2.0.7 | By Takayuki Miyoshi | Visit plugin site

Slideshow Gallery Version 1.0 | By Antonie Potgieter | Visit plugin site

The shopping cart plugin is obvious, the sitemap plugin is so you can register with your content with Google, StatPress is so you can monitor your traffic, WP-Ads is so you can place advertising on the site and Contact Form 7 is so your customers can get in touch. The Slideshow Gallery isn’t necessary but it’s what I did the animated header graphic with.

You might have your own favorite plugins so use those instead, and any others you feel you need, but you really don’t need many.

Start setting it all up

If you are an old hand at WordPress then you will know how to configure the initial settings, for those of you who need a refresher or have never configured WordPress, take a look at this article on How To Boss WordPress Around

Stock your shelves

The shopping cart is easy enough to set up, but I’d recommend starting on the Configuration page and going through the options carefully. One thing that I must point out here is if you are going to use PayPal, make sure you change your PDT and IPN settings as documented here. For any settings you aren’t sure of there is a docs section for the plugin on the Tribulant website.

You will pick up how the plugin works as you go along and it’s fun to mess with the settings and see howit affects the site. Go on have a play, but if you are doing a lot of testing (submitting posts/pages then updating them) it might be an idea to set your blog to:

I would like to block search engines, but allow normal visitors

In the privacy settings just in case you end up blacklisted for ping spam. Remember to undo this setting when you start adding product for real.

Does WordPress work as a shopping cart?

I have to tell you, hand on heart it does. We all know how good WordPress is at being indexed, and because the shopping cart creates posts or pages for the products Google will index the site very very well.

Can I prove it works? Yes I can, do a WHOIS look up for cartorch.co.uk and you will see I registered it in November 2009, just12 days ago as I write this post:

Relevant dates:
Registered on: 11-Nov-2009
Renewal date: 11-Nov-2011
Last updated: 12-Nov-2009

Now, take a look at the pages Google has indexed already:

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=site:cartorch.co.uk

I’m helping this along with a Google base feed:

Car Torch Google Shop

And (at the time of writing) I’m also running an Adwords campaign, this is just to try and capitalise on the Christmas rush and I may not keep it running all the time. An Adwords campaign isn’t necessary for search engine penetration, but will help your traffic in the early stages.

So off you go, set up your own WordPress store and see how easy it is, converting the traffic to orders… now that’s the hard bit!

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