E-commerce site? What should you use?

So you want to build an e-commerce business, a website. What are your options?

WordPress of course.

WordPress does come to the mind of many, many people as the defacto website platform to use and for a blog, it is a great choice.

The Benefits of WordPress

The benefits of WordPress are many, which help make it a great tool for blogging. Some of those benefits are as follows:

• Ease of use – Admittedly, the newest versions of WP are quite user friendly
• Quick & Easy installs – A small caveat here, we are talking about using WP for your business (www.yourblog.com) not as a subdomain of the WP site (www.yourblog.wordpress.com). With that said, most, if not all, hosting services will have an install tool which takes about 5 minutes to install WP for you.
• Security – The reality is that if you are the web, you are at a security risk. But, WP is known to be pretty secure.
• Plugins – Plugins are a great way to expand your WP site without knowing any programming in order to get your social media integrated with your site/blog.
• Lots of support – WP is an open source platform, that means that no one person or organization owns/controls the code and that if you do have some programming language skills, you can manipulate the code to do whatever you want it to do. On top of that, there are hundreds of WP How To books and thousands and thousands of online communities, groups and help if you come across an issue you can’t figure out.
• Updates – Another benefit of the Opensource code is that WP is constantly being updated and improved upon.
• Customization – WP is very customizable from their themes (which you can use as is or edit them as well) to editing the actual code for WP itself.

The problems with WordPress

The issues with WordPress as an e-commerce site are many fold. Some of the biggest issues are listed here:

• It’s a big target for hackers – While it is secure, it’s popularity with the hacking community can be an issue. Here is an example of hackers hacking WP.
• Can be slower than other platforms – Because of all the “extras” you need to add in order for your site to be an e-commerce site and others, i.e., plugins, your site can get quite weighed down and slow. There are fixes for this, but it is still something to watch for.
• Major updates suck – When there is a major update from one WP level to another, say from WP 2.5 to WP 3.0… it will reset all of your settings. Again, there are workarounds, but you have to be mindful of this.
• A plugin may break your site – It does happen, you add a plugin and it does not play nice with other plugins and your site crashes. Now you have to find out which one is the culprit because you may uninstall the most recent plugin and it does NOT fix the break.
• More plugins – You need a plugin for almost everything, social media, eCommerce, page layouts, and on and on. Yes, some other options will need some sort of plugin, but many platforms built for e-commerce will have the basics built in.

What are some options?

Many people have heard of Squarespace, Wix and Weebly, all of which can or are e-commerce sites, but they each have their own issues such as high fees, generic templates, the inability to move to a different host if needed, just to mention a few.

What we will cover today are true e-Commerce platforms that are flexible, templated, opensource and self hosted (you need a host like Host Gator, Blue Host, etc.)

The options

OpenCart – A great opensource option for creating a store. Simple interface, lots of templates and great community support.

PrestaShop – Another great opensource option for creating a store. Simple interface, lots of templates and great community support.

X-Cart – This is one that I have no personal experience with. BUT, it has a free version (with everything you need to get started) and paid versions with extras you may or may not need. It also has a self-hosted version and a hosted version.

Zen-Cart – This is one of the oldest e-Commerce platforms in the list… and it does show. The templates for Zen-Cart are pretty generic. The great thing from these guys is ease of usability. It is known as one of the easiest to learn for folks with absolutely no technical knowledge.

For the Tech Savvy

Magento

Drupal Commerce

Joomla

In conclusion

If you have a simple blog or even a sophisticated blog or you just need a website to promote your non-ecommerce business then WordPress may be a good choice. But, event then there are many other options for these needs as well.

So, do you have any thoughts, opinions pro or con about WordPress? Let us know in the comments.

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