Honey Bee Buzz Marketing Blog

eShop for WordPress

Create an ecommerce site quickly and relatively easily on WordPress with the eShop plugin by Rich Pedley at Quirm.net.  This is a viable competitor to Instinct’s WP eCommerce, but it does not have a donation setting/capability.  This is too bad, because it’s an otherwise great plugin, and a great way to get one’s online store up and running.  The benefit to having a donation setting is that people can pay for your services online, as you can with this blog.  Anybody who’s already doing business online or likes eBay probably already has a PayPal account, and making it super easy for them to pay you in a secure, reliable, and familiar environment.  For instance, one of our HoneyBeeBuzz Marketing clients is using our online shop to buy a banner ad we are designing for them.

Rich at eShop provides excellent support, which you can find in his WordPress plugins support forum.  This is in great contrast to the WPeC support forum which is full of frustrated people whose questions can languish unanswered for months.  Also in contrast, Rich seems to have a very positive, mature and constructive attitude.  WPeC is steadily getting better and better, however, both in terms of response time and style and the features are hard to beat.

eShop has the support of a number of key and highly respected WordPress players, including Mike Cherim.

Here are some sample eShops:

http://greenmethods.com/site/shop/

http://thecabinetofcuriosities.co.uk/shop/

Here are some sample WPeC shops:

HoneyBeeBuzz Marketing Services and Products

GreenBuyDesign Store

Do you have an online store already?  What shopping cart system are you using?  What types of products or services do you  sell?

Shopping Cart Checklist

Having an online store is great, but in order for it to bring you money, you must make sure it’s working!

You don’t want to have done a great job starting your company and making your products only to have a messy bottleneck when the orders come rolling in. Or worse, to not have them roll in at all because the shopping cart or online store isn’t working correctly.

Before you set-it-and-forget-it, run through this checklist:

• Buy an item for yourself. Does the process go smoothly?
• Is it easy to find where to add info and where to click to progress?
• Can people find the starting point for shopping easily? Or is it buried on your page?
• Is the discounting system working correctly?
• Are the prices right?
• Are the shipping costs correctly calculated?
• Is the order slated to be shipped to the right place?
• If you’re using an automated delivery system where UPS or FedEx, etc. picks up from you directly through the ordering, is that working correctly?
• Is your contact info easy to find, preferably on every page, in case someone has a question while they’re ordering? Having your phone number, a chat function, or at least your email readily available is important.

How’s your online store? Let us know here at the Honey Bee Buzz Marketing Blog.