Best WordPress Plugins for eCommerce Businesses

WordPress may have started as a blogging platform, but now you can leverage the powerful content management system to establish a thriving eCommerce business. There are dozens of WordPress plugins that can help you boost your sales.

If you’re not sold on wordpress, then take a look at this explanation from TechLogitic “WordPress – Is It Worth Investing For Your eCommerce Business?” which shows the benefits of WordPress over other platforms when it comes to eCommerce.

In this post, we will take a closer look at the best WordPress plugins for eCommerce businesses that you can use to create a profitable online shop.

Best WordPress Plugins for eCommerce Businesses

Tip: If you’re still starting out and wondering how to host your WooCommerce website, check out this guide from TechLogitic about the “6 Most Popular Hosting Companies for WordPress” 

#1 WooCommerce

WooCommerce is a popular open-source eCommerce plugin that can help you sell physical as well as digital products. It is driven by a passionate developer community that gave rise to the hundreds of themes and extensions available that you can put to good use. It has built-in support for major payment gateways, and you can add several other payment options using extensions.

Even big brands like the non profit organization, World Vision use WooCommerce to collect payments on their website. For example you can buy 2 chickens and a goat for someone in need, thanks to WooCommerce.

If you view the page source of their website you can see how it mentions “Yoast”.

#3 Easy Digital Downloads

Easy Digital Downloads is a powerful eCommerce plugin that focuses purely on digital products. Since it is explicitly developed to sell digital downloads, it enables you to create an engaging and functional digital goods store with ease. You would instantly figure out how to add products and display them on your site right from the get-go. There are also tons of extensions available for this plugin, such as additional payment gateways, marketing platforms, and services.

#4 Shortcodes Ultimate

Shortcodes Ultimate is a plugin that enables dozens of new shortcodes for your WordPress website. These range from things like attractive call to action buttons to Pros and Cons lists, tabbed layouts, accordions, and other little UI elements. This plugin is mainly useful in situations where you want to include more advanced UI elements without needing to use a full on-page builder. Since they’re shortcodes they work out of the box on any post type.

Here is an example of the “Button” shortcode in action:

#5 Jigoshop eCommerce

Jigoshop is another open-source eCommerce plugin that can help you set up an online shop for both physical or virtual products within minutes. Although it is not as popular as WooCommerce, it offers some upside that makes it worthy of your consideration. It features a built-in layout manager that gives you full control of your store’s appearance. You can also choose from a variety of extensions that lets you add payment gateways, shipping methods, and more.

#6 BigCommerce

BigCommerce is a feature-packed eCommerce solution that offers seamless integration with WordPress. What it does is enable you to employ a scalable eCommerce platform while using WordPress to manage your content and run your website. It also has a powerful plugin that makes embedding products to WordPress very simple.

#7 WP eCommerce

WP eCommerce is one of the first plugins dedicated to online business, but it struggles to compete with WooCommerce. It comes with plenty of useful features that help you create a cost-effective store from the ground up. Like some of the more popular eCommerce plugins, it offers integration with various payment gateways. However, many users note that the plugin is buggy and that it lacks the vast support for extensions that the other eCommerce solutions have.

#8 Cart66 Cloud

Cart66 Cloud is the newest iteration of the Cart66 eCommerce plugin. It handles the payment security aspect of your store so you can focus your attention on making your business more profitable. This plugin offers an integrated billing system that works well with any payment gateway and an email center to help you manage newsletters and online subscriptions. It also has support for Amazon S3 that makes selling digital products more convenient.

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#9 Ecwid eCommerce Shopping Cart

The Ecwid eCommerce Shopping Cart is a powerful plugin that allows you to add a store to your WordPress website. It coordinates with major carriers such as USPS, UPS, FedEx, Canada Post, and Australia Post to automatically calculate shipping rates. It also has a feature that automatically synchronizes your products and inventory between your WordPress website and your Facebook or Instagram storefronts.

#10 WP EasyCart

WP EasyCart is a shopping cart plugin that can be integrated into new or existing WordPress blogs and websites. It comes with a convenient plugin that you can download across different devices to manage your cart wherever you are. It also has support for numerous payment gateways, multiple languages, various currencies, and an integrated coupons and promotion system.

#11 Yoast SEO

Yoast SEO is a search-optimization plugin that helps you ensure that your online store content is search engine-friendly. Making your website SEO-driven increases traffic and ultimately boosts your sales. You may think that optimizing websites takes a lot of work, but this plugin makes it very straightforward. It has a snippet preview feature that shows you how your pages will appear in the search results and insight tools that give you an idea of what keywords or keyphrases you should focus on to rank higher in search engines.

If you want to promote your website beyond Google and other search engines, then your next best bet is Social Media. TechLogitic has a guide to the best social sharing plugins for WordPress to make it super easy for your customers to promote your products on social media.

#12 MemberPress

MemberPress is a membership site plugin that makes it easy for you to charge users for access to exclusive content and digital products such as software and e-books. It enables you to define the user access levels and content restrictions in a way that only members who have your permission will have access to such content. This plugin is beginner-friendly and has support for hundreds of extensions to help you take your online store in the direction you want. There’s also the option to use a different WordPress membership plugin if this one isn’t for you.

#13 Product Countdown for WooCommerce

Creating scarcity is one of the most effective methods in business. The Product Countdown WordPress plugin for WooCommerce is a scarcity plugin that helps you generate scarcity-based countdown timers to let your visitors know that your product is selling like hotcakes. It gives them a feeling of desperation and a need to grab the item before the time runs out.

#14 iThemes Exchange

iThemes Exchange is an eCommerce plugin designed for selling digital goods via your WordPress website. It focuses on eliminating the complicated aspects of establishing an online store and centers on simplicity. Some of the most impressive features include the user-friendly interface that allows you to embed products quickly and the integration of major payment gateways.

#15 WPForms

WPForms is a beginner-friendly contact form plugin that allows you to create forms using its simple drag and drop builder. You can generate contact forms, email subscription forms, payment forms, and any other type of online form with just a few clicks.  It gives you an idea of what the users expect from your site and improve on their feedback.

#16 OptinMonster

OptinMonster is an online lead generation software that encourages visitors to complete a purchase from your online store instead of abandoning their cart. It provides innovative features such as referrer detection, onsite retargeting, geolocation targeting, and cookie retargeting to help you increase sales, earn subscribers, and convert your traffic into customers. They also offer seamless integration with your email marketing software so you can run targeted campaigns for more repeat visitors.

Here’s an example used by an eCommerce website called SnackNation.com to incentivize visitors to convert as they were moving their mouse to  leave their website:

#17 Envira Gallery

An attractive and updated gallery of products is necessary for a profitable online store. Envira is a great gallery plugin that offers quick and seamless drag and drop functionality to help you personalize your store. The plugin is optimized for web and server performance to help you achieve fast load times. It is even mobile-ready to ensure that your store looks great on any device.

#18 MonsterInsights

MonsterInsights is an intuitive Google Analytics plugin that is designed to give you an understanding of how visitors are interacting with your online store. You can monitor views, submissions, and conversion rates of your site with just a few clicks. It also offers enhanced eCommerce tracking features that are available for users who are using WooCommerce or the Easy Digital Downloads platform.

Final Thoughts

WooCommerce remains on top of the list for the best WordPress plugins for eCommerce businesses. The control, flexibility, and features it offers remains unmatched. However, these other platforms have stepped up to the challenge and offer considerable advantages.

All you have to do is find the right plugins that work for you and start growing your store!