Mystical Twilight

Ecommerce & WordPress

I know, I know WordPress is not what you would expect to use when you want an ecommerce site.  But most people are faced with a dilemma, do they shall out serious dollars for a site or do they go down the open source route, sometimes with much less supported formats.

I know some people I know have used open software to great affect like this mens dressing gowns site.  But that particular site got stuck after a while and had to spend a significant amount of money on software.

But is there another way?

I believe there is.  Our friend WordPress.

Now I’m not saying this is THE solution, its one solution and a good one if you’re just getting into your niche and funds are tight.  You want your site to look presentable, give an air of trust and you want to be able to take orders.  You can do this all with wordpress.  Save your cash in these early stages and spend it on marketing and getting people to the site.

All you have to do these days is to choose a theme with an inbuilt shopping cart.  That’s it, it really is that simple.  There are other solutions as well which I’ll discuss in a moment.

There are a stack of these themes to choose from such as Shopperpress, vanilla cart, crafty Cart (although this needs the ecommerce WP plug in to work properly) and my favourite storefront from the makers of the ecommerce plug in.  The storefront theme lets you use the ecommerce plug in to create much more valuable and attractive pages.

But you don’t have to have an ecommerce theme especially if you just have a simple offering.  You can use plug in to give you add to cart buttons almost anywhere on your site.  There are lots of these like yak, eshop or if you want something simpler still you can use simple paypal shopping cart.

So you see WordPress has got your back once again.  No need to spend thousand on an ecommerce solution.  Start small and grow big.  Once you are in profit I would look at other solutions as you may need support in the future and support is one of the negatives of these smaller solutions.  As is the constant updating of WordPress that can leave some plug in’s floundering.

Choose your solution carefully, go hang out in some forums and see what the actual users of the themes or plug in’s are saying before you use them.  This is usually the best bit of research you can do, it can save a lot of headaches down the line.

Free WordPress Themes

WordPress has so many options it’s easy to get lost when you are looking at themes.  But it’s also easy to forget that themes are a crucial element of your internet marketing strategies.  Depending on the objective of your blog you should choose your theme accordingly.

If you are  starting a free online business there is no need to splash out on expensive themes there are many excellent one’s to choose from. But I give you a word of caution don’t spend weeks deciding on a theme.  Have an idea of a look in your mind then find something that fits it and install it.  The great thing about WordPress themes is they are quick and easy to change.

Another tip I can give you is to try 2 or 3 different themes when you have got traffic and see if anyone gives better results in terms of conversions.  Almost nobody does this but it can make a huge difference.

The other consideration should be the reason for your theme.   This is really important as one theme does not fit all purposes.  I’m going to give some themes we like but they don’t catch all, it depends on your objective and your topic.

If you are just a blogger talking about your life it needs to be friendly, memorable and bright.  You need to stand out, to get noticed.  So you may want to try the brave zeenat theme or something similar.  Something with impact.

If you are doing a review site you probably want something simple like this trilastin sr reviews site.  You might even say the trilastin review site is ugly and uninspiring and it is.  But I bet this is exactly what the owner wanted, he wanted the reader to be drawn by the content and nothing more.  I think that’s a flexibility theme which comes as a free or paid theme.

So having said all that I’ll give you some of the themes I like.  Now I warn you on the whole I like clean unfussy themes and I know some of you love the more in your face themes so it’s everyone to their own.

I like the titan theme from the theme foundry, the modernist theme also gets the thumbs up,  check out wpesp if you are in any kind of design niche and finally kelentong for ecommerce seems to go down well.

But whatever you go for be quick and decisive, you can customize your site later with headers and footers to give it the design you really want.