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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
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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
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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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