The 5 Top WordPress E-Commerce Plugins

Wordpress might be simple, but it is certainly not short of functionality. Many people are of the opinion that it is a platform to build blogs. This view does a great injustice to the immense capabilities of Wordpress especially in fields such as ecommerce. Its versatility is evidenced by its wide range of capabilities that allows customers to go live with a well-designed and secure online store while saving much on costs as well. 

 

This article looks at 5 of the top Wordpress plugins and their specific functionality, including area they could improve upon. 

 

1. WP eCommerce

Though now surpassed by the Woocommerce plugin, WP eCommerce still offers a wide range of features and is used by a large number of people all over the world. That WP eCommerce has a huge community and is led and driven by it is a great advantage though some of its features still have limiting conditions.

2. Woocommerce

The official No.1 in the league, Woocommerce has cemented its position as the default plugin for Wordpress. The Wordpress themes shop WooThemes maintains Woocommerce and the plugin ia actively supported by its developer community. The only disadvantage of this plugin is that it is priced quite high with just a 1 year license. 
                                                                     But people still think it’s worth paying for its sheer 
                                                                     ease-of-use!

3. Shopp

Feature-rich and packed with immense configuration capabilities, Shopp combines a free plugin with paid support. Almost all of its features have strikingly different features from what you would have seen elsewhere. Coupons is a case in point. With a good add-on price and a detailed feature-set, Shopp is definitely up there with the best plugins Wordpress has on offer. Now, if only it had a few more payment providers!

4. Cart66

You must have heard of this plugin owing to its price. But do you know that it also offers features free for which others charge a fee? Cart66 (Pro, not its Cloud counterpart) is a Wordpress plugin that gives you total value for money on the security front. On the payment front too, Cart66 stands head and shoulders above the rest. Its compatibility with almost any Wordpress plugin and its rich-feature set have fuelled its rise to the top.

5. MarketPress

MarketPress is a Wordpress ecommerce plugin that differs from the rest in that it allows you to run multiple stores yourself. With stock notification for different products, coupon tracking facility, and even giving third-party vendors the power to run your store, MarketPress is a plugin that is immense in its versatility. Coming to the price tag ($19), though it might seem very low, you actually need to pay much more for supports and upgrades!

A Look at How B2C is Influencing B2B eCommerce

With businesses looking to get a share of the mindspace of the customer, it is B2C ecommerce that attracts the most attention in the eye of the media. But across the world, it is B2B ecommerce that is driving sales. But the explosion of B2B ecommerce has meant that some quintessential B2C characteristics have spilled over to the B2B market as well. This article takes a look at both these models and some of their commonalities.

The B2B space

In the one to many B2B ecommerce business model, companies have their own online B2B store in which customers can purchase goods. This is a simple model but requires a well-oiled, sophisticated supply chain infrastructure to back it. 

 

B2B online sales isn’t going anywhere, it is here to stay for the long run. And the growth of B2B ecommerce is mainly going to come from the surge in mobile phone buying across the world. This has set off a race among companies to put out mobile versions of their products as the smartphone era has got people buying and selling with abandon at the touch of a screen.

The B2C impact?

In the many-to-many model, many companies join to form an extensive private network, or a marketplace that is open to suppliers of all hues. Now, this is administered by a third-party who has the expertise necessary to see it through. 

 

Studies have shown that B2B companies can greatly reduce their costs if only they guided customers to an online ecommerce environment that is self-service oriented. But the crucial difference between B2B and B2C comes with fluctuation of prices. With customer-specific prices and discounts that vary based on who is selling how much, B2C has much more of unpredictable price changes than its content counterpart. 

 

So how exactly has B2C influenced B2B ecommerce? Well, in many important areas:

• Customization
• Making catalogs more attractive
• Inventory availability in real time

With facilities like real-time inventory availability, B2B has made itself more attractive to the lay businessman because it does away with unnecessary third-party links in the supply chain. Add customer reviews to customization and personalization and you get an almost B2C-like environment!

A Peek into Magento for the Uninitiated

Magento has remained the No.1 ecommerce platform ever since its inception in March 2008. Robust, flexible and Open Source, it is built on the Zend framework and delivers just what the customer wanted. The leader though it is, it’s not difficult to learn for all you need is sound knowledge of HTML and CSS and you will learn the rest with the Magento environment itself. 

 

The Building Blocks of Magento 

 

Now, to build an ecommerce website with Magento, you need to be familiar with the MVC pattern. The MVC (Model-View-Controller) design pattern is used to separate an application’s concerns with the model representing an object, the view representing the visualisation of data and the controller acting as both, essentially controlling the data flow.

But there are many other components apart from the models and the views in Magento. When you look at the code of Magento, you will find many modules without views. On the other hand, you will find additional modules such as ‘sql’, ‘helper’ etc. What you need to understand here is that Magento has its own set of modules each having their own M’s and V’s and C’s. These modules create the separate portions inside a typical Magento page replete with the headers, links, footers, mini-carts, and so on. 

 

The Magento code structure is extremely well-designed in the sense that there exists a clear distinction between the ‘core’ code and community ‘third-party’ code. What does that mean for you? This means that you can install third party extension and modules without any fear of it impacting your site’s essential look and feel.

Now, with this Magento is able to achieve some great features such as product comparison, CMS system for static pages, layered navigation, multistore feature and much more. It is able to achieve all this with its superior API integration that other ecommerce platforms still have a lot to learn from. As to how Magento does this, wait till the next article!