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Are They Truly a Fit?

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WordPress was first released 15 years ago as a free and open-source content management platform. At the time, it was targeted mainly to bloggers. These days, though, it is almost perfect for every kind of website. However, do WordPress and e-commerce work well together? Let’s take a look and find out.

Did you know that WordPress is home to 60 million websites? What’s more, 31% of the top 10 million websites are based on WordPress. Astonishing isn’t it?

Meanwhile, WordPress rivals in the e-commerce sector continue to improve. The best-known among them are Shopify, Magento, and BigCommerce. Of course, there are many others. For an interesting read and to find out more, check out ecommerce stats. They will stun you.

 

Overall Reasons to Use WordPress

There are many reasons why you might use WordPress for e-commerce. The first reason would be the impressive statistics mentioned earlier. If so many people are already using it and their websites are successful why shouldn’t you use it? WordPress is entirely free and open-source. Therefore, tech-savvy people can easily edit it whenever they want. What’s more, it contains thousands of plugins and pre-made themes that are quick and easy to use.

WordPress is continually updated to improve functionality and security. Additionally, most hosting companies provide one-click WordPress install possibility. This makes it a quick, easy, and inexpensive content management system. What’s more, you can customize the appearance of your website through coding as well as by using intuitive drag-and-drop builders.

There are plenty more good reasons to use WordPress, whether you have a business website, a blog, or an e-commerce store. Nevertheless, let’s now analyze it as an e-commerce platform.

 

WordPress and E-Commerce: Still a Viable Choice

WordPress is still a viable platform not only for generic websites but also for e-commerce. Here are some of the reasons why:

Plugins

WordPress currently has more than 55,500 plugins. Of course, not all of them have been tested with the newest version of WordPress. Additionally, not all of them are necessary for an e-commerce site. However, when you enter “e-commerce” into the plugin search bar, you’ll get 110 pages of possible plugins for e-commerce sites alone.

One of the most popular e-commerce plugins for WordPress is WooCommerce. This plugin currently has more than 4 million active installations. It’s a powerful plugin that turns WordPress into a perfect platform for e-stores and similar businesses. For example, if you would like to sell clothing such as t-shirts, you might want to try this clothing design mockup generator. It is suitable for WooCommerce and WordPress.

There are also various other plugins that might be useful for an e-commerce website. For instance, you could use the CaptainForm wordpress forms plugin to collect customer feedback. You could also use it for customer inquiries or to collect email addresses. In this same vein, you might also want to try MailerLite, a plugin for newsletters.

Themes

There are currently more than 10,000 possible WordPress themes. However, not all of them are well-built. What’s more, some are suited only for specific niches. All the same, many of them are free to use as well as highly customizable.

Supportive Community

WordPress and e-commerce 2

Photo by rawpixel.com from Pexels

Another strong argument for WordPress is its community. There are multiple blogs and forums that will lend a hand if you encounter an error or a bug on WordPress. Likewise, there are lots of WordPress developers for hire on Fiverr or Upwork who can help you quickly. Some of them even work for fairly low rates.

 

Reasons Against Using WordPress and E-Commerce Together

Despite everything that’s good about WordPress and e-commerce, there are some arguments against using WordPress and e-commerce together. But never fear, you have plenty of alternatives to choose from.

 

RELATED ARTICLE: BEYOND WORDPRESS: CHOOSING THE RIGHT CMS FOR YOUR BUSINESS

 

Constant Need to Upgrade

You are probably going to have several plugins installed as well as a custom theme on your WordPress and e-commerce website. However, WordPress gets frequent updates, and this might cause you some issues. That’s because your current plugins or your theme might not be compatible with the new version of WordPress. For this reason, you should always keep a recent backup of your site at hand.

Theme and Plugin Updates

Most of the popular plugins are regularly upgraded with new features. Therefore, in order to get them you will need to upgrade pretty often. Whenever you do, you’re bound to get some errors and crashes on your site. Additionally, your new upgrades could override the changes and customizations you have made to your site previously.

However, as we mentioned earlier, you can easily and quickly repair any problems by keeping your backups up-to-date.

WordPress Popularity Could Put You at Risk

 WordPress and e-commerce 3

Image credit: typography images on Pixabay

Popularity does not always lead to quality and security. We already know that WordPress is superb in quality, but is it secure enough for e-commerce? The answer is mostly yes. However, due to the large number of WordPress installations, it is almost constantly under attack by hackers. Of course, since WordPress is continuously updated, real threats to your website are fairly rare. All in all, WordPress is about as secure as an online content management system can be.

 

Final Thoughts

WordPress was not originally developed for use with e-commerce websites, and it is still mostly used for online magazines and blogs. However, its later developments and program overlays gave it good e-commerce compatibility. So if you’re wondering if WordPress and e-commerce work well together, our final assessment is a resounding “Yes!”

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Learn to Price Jobs and Services at this Upcoming Event

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Contracting vs Full Time Jobs: 49% of Independent Contractors Say Their Work is More Secure

As a business owner, how you price jobs and services will dictate the long-term success of your company.

Job costing is the process which tracks the actual costs to deliver the jobs and services you provide.

The webinar Scott Gregory will be hosting on Nov. 6, 2018, will give you a basic understanding of job costing in QuickBooks Pro, Premiere, and Enterprise.

Gregory is an industry expert who will bring over 20,000 hands-on hours working with the application and 30+ years of experience with job costing on QuickBooks.

Some of the topics Gregory will be addressing at the webinar include QuickBooks fields for tracking information unique to the job; buying materials for a job/tracking job-related expenses; using inventory for a job; creating a job estimate, and much more.

After the webinar Gregory is going to hold a Q&A to answer any questions you might have about this particular functionality of QuickBooks

The webinar will go on from 11:00 AM to 12:30 PM (EST), and if you want to save on the event you can use Coupon Code “20Off” by clicking the red button and registering.

 

Register Now

Featured Events, Contests and Awards

Job Costing Basics for QuickBooks Pro/Premier/EnterpriseJob Costing Basics for QuickBooks Pro/Premier/Enterprise
November 06, 2018, Online

Trying to figure out the basics of using jobs and job costing in QuickBooks Pro/Premier or Enterprise? If so, this webinar is for you! We’ll cover the basic setup, usage, and reporting of jobs in the Pro/Premier and Enterprise versions of QuickBooks. Topics include the difference between customers vs. jobs, adding a job, QuickBooks fields for tracking information unique to the job, creating a job estimate, buying materials for a job / tracking job related expenses and much more.
(Coupon Code: 20Off)

More Events

  • Webinar: Employee Time Tracking and Analytics 101 for Managers
    November 08, 2018, Online
  • nopCommerce Days 2018
    November 08, 2018, Las Vegas, Nev.
  • DigiMarCon Africa 2018 – Digital Marketing Conference
    November 08, 2018, Johannesburg, South Africa
  • TECHSPO Johannesburg 2018
    November 08, 2018, Johannesburg, South Africa
  • DigiMarCon Asia Pacific 2018 – Digital Marketing Conference
    November 08, 2018, Johannesburg, South Africa
  • DigiMarCon Dubai 2018 – Digital Marketing Conference
    November 08, 2018, Dubai
  • DigiMarCon Asia Pacific 2018 – Digital Marketing Conference
    November 08, 2018, Johannesburg, South Africa
  • EventTech 2018
    November 12, 2018, Las Vegas, Nev.
  • 2nd Responsible Business Summit West 2018
    November 12, 2018, San Diego, Calif.
  • DX 2018
    November 13, 2018, Online
  • Small Business Expo 2018 – ATLANTA
    November 15, 2018, Atlanta, Ga.
  • Open Mobile Summit 2018
    November 27, 2018, Burlingame, Calif.
  • Artificial Intelligence & Big Data Conference & Exhibition USA Nov 2018
    November 28, 2018, Santa Clara, Calif.
  • AI Conference & Exhibition North America (28-29th NOV 2018)
    November 28, 2018, Santa Clara, Calif.
  • 3rd Annual Blockchain Opportunity Summit – New York City – Dec. 4 – 5, 2018
    December 04, 2018, New York, NY
  • National Workers’ Compensation and Disability Conference – Las Vegas
    December 05, 2018, Online
  • XLIVE 2018 Event Tech Conference in Las Vegas – December 9th-12th
    December 09, 2018, Las Vegas, Nev.
  • Small Business Expo 2018 – HOUSTON
    December 13, 2018, Houston, Texas
  • Women In Cloud Annual Summit 2019
    January 26, 2019, Redmond, Wash.
  • Recruiting Trends and Talent Tech LIVE! 2019
    February 20, 2019, Las Vegas, Nev.

More Contests

This weekly listing of small business events, contests and awards is provided as a community service by Small Business Trends.

You can see a full list of events, contest and award listings or post your own events by visiting the Small Business Events Calendar.

Image: Shutterstock

This article, “Learn to Price Jobs and Services at this Upcoming Event” was first published on Small Business Trends



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Advertising on Amazon: What SMBs Can Gain From the Transition from Google

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There are a growing number of signs pointing to a shakeup in how marketers are allocating their digital advertising budgets.  Now to be sure Google and Facebook are still the top destinations for those ad dollars. But more and more you’re hearing about big brands beginning to switch as much as 50-60% of their budgets to Amazon.

With Amazon having a lot of momentum in the digital ads business, I had to pull in my Watching Amazon partner and ecommerce expert John “ColderIce” Lawson to talk about what he’s seeing in this area, how teens shopping is changing the digital ad spending equation, and what impact this shift might have on small businesses.

Below is an edited transcript of our conversation.  To see the full convo check out the video or the embedded SoundCloud player below.

Small Businesses Can Gain From Coming Transition to Advertising on AmazonSmall Business Trends:  It really looks like, and I’ve seen a couple of different reports around this, it looks like Amazon is starting to make a dent when it comes to digital ads, so much so that people are saying Facebook and Google are going to have to look out because Amazon is number three, but they’re number three with a bullet.

John Lawson: The deal is, Amazon is where people go to buy. When they start shopping for buying, they’re starting to go to Amazon to look, and if they’re there and they’re seeing ads now, obviously, the ads are converting. Look, it’s not enough to have an ad network, but an ad network that’s converting massively is really a threat.

Small Business Trends:  Yeah, a couple weeks back, kind of along the same lines, specific big digital ad spenders, big brands, I heard as much as shifting 50% of their digital ad spend away from Google to Amazon. That’s huge.

John Lawson: So they’re shifting the money.

Small Business Trends:  Yeah, it’s not net-new spending

John Lawson: Right, that’s crazy.

Small Business Trends:  It’s just shifting, which, that’s got to make Google feel a little antsy, and Facebook feel a little antsy.

John Lawson: Yeah, yeah. It’s like they’re cheating on me.

Small Business Trends: Kind of. But I think a couple years from now, this will get to be real big news because, as you know I like to talk about-

John Lawson: Oh, God.

Small Business Trends:  With Amazon Alexa, and the devices, and more interactions, and more attention spans being placed on these devices, Amazon stands a great chance of figuring out the best way to monetize and change the ad model to fit that. If it’s already starting to penetrate the traditional… voice search is going to be a big part of it. People already doing their product search for information – about 50, 60% starts with Amazon. But just think about if they change that model to fit these new smart devices, and the attention that people are spending on those. That could really accelerate the process.

John Lawson: I think it could, but it’s also going to accelerate the cost, which might slow the process. Look, if I’m asking for, if I’m doing a product search on a device, I’m not going to want ten results.

Small Business Trends:  Yeah, so Amazon is going to have to change the way the ads are displayed.

John Lawson: Yeah.

Small Business Trends:  They also have to change the way reviews and ratings work with all that.

John Lawson: Right.

Small Business Trends:  But they stand the best chance to make it work.

John Lawson: Right. They do. What I’m saying is, the number one spot [on search results list] is going to be so competitive.

Small Business Trends:  Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

John Lawson: You know what I mean? That is going to be kind of expensive at some point.

Small Business Trends:  It’s going to be real expensive. Does that price small businesses out of the market, you think?

John Lawson: Not right now. Here’s the key, small business, the advantage small business always has is being nimble.

Small Business Trends:  First mover advantage.

John Lawson: First mover advantage. Get in there now, guys.

Small Business Trends:  Start thinking about it.

John Lawson: Cool.

Small Business Trends:  Alright, so this kind of leans to the second one we want to talk about.  I saw this survey, and it’s posted on the Watching Amazon site, around sites that teens like to shop-

John Lawson: Yup.

Small Business Trends:  Online.

John Lawson: Number two was Nike.

Small Business Trends:  At 5%.

John Lawson: Number one was-

Small Business Trends:  Amazon.

John Lawson: At?

Small Business Trends:  47%.

John Lawson: Do you see that? Number one’s here, number two is, you can’t even see it on the screen.

Small Business Trends:  It’s like, yeah. It just goes down from there.

John Lawson: Yeah, everybody’s getting one or two percent.

Small Business Trends:  I think, like you said is, you have a generation of folks that don’t know how to shop any other way.

John Lawson: Yeah. When they think of shopping online, the only thing they think about is Amazon because that’s all they’ve ever heard.

Small Business Trends:  Those numbers just pointed out, that’s a tough road to hoe if you’re anybody else.

John Lawson: Right. If you just think, the way social media has grown. The first group of social media freaks were on Facebook, and we’ve grown with Facebook over time, even though other new things came up. I think this early adoption by these teens are going to expand as they grow. It’s not going to necessarily change that experience. You kind of hang onto what you know well.

Small Business Trends:  You think about what we just talked about. These advertisers are already starting to switch. Teens have already … They didn’t even need to switch because that’s all they’ve known.

John Lawson: No.

Small Business Trends:  So, as these teens, their spending power gets more and more, and greater and greater, that advertising shift is probably going to accelerate because the advertisers are going to want to make sure they’re connected with these teens.

This is part of the One-on-One Interview series with thought leaders. The transcript has been edited for publication. If it’s an audio or video interview, click on the embedded player above, or subscribe via iTunes or via Stitcher.

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