WordPress: Perfect For Ecommerce
WordPress: not just for blog posts anymore! Did you know you can use WordPress for your business' ecommerce site? Think about it: with your online storefront and blog in one spot, there's less for you to worry about, and an added value for customers providing a one-stop shop for information regarding your business. 
There's no question WordPress is an excellent CMS (Content Management System) solution. CMS allows even the most inexperienced of website developers create a website they can be proud of, utilizing their choice of template. Billing solutions provider Star2Billing declared WordPress the winner in the arenas of ease-of-use and customer support when compared to other CMS solutions.
Seamless Integration of Shopping Cart And CRM
Using WordPress for both ecommerce and marketing site means amazing things for your revenue. Let's think about the possibilities for a minute: you have developed a new product, and want to tell the world. While you're at it, why not a celebration sale on the product? Typically, you use your homepage to promote your sales and products, but this one is special. Just use a global WordPress widget to utilize the sale information throughout your entire site, rather than just restricting it to the homepage.
Another bonus: you don't need to keep track of multiple login information. Only your WordPress login is needed in order to manage your entire site and everything it contains. Don't forget you only need to keep track of analytics for one website! So much easier.
WordPress: Perfect For Ecommerce, Appreciative Customers
To know that your customers will be pleased with this integration, think of your own experiences on the Internet. How often have you visited a business' site, which is often well-designed and user-friendly, only to navigate to their storefront and find yourself at a completely different website? It looks nothing like the brand's informational site, and is difficult to navigate. Do you have a different opinion of this brand after an experience like that? Probably. Some customers will look elsewhere!
Don't be that type of business! Using WordPress for your entire operation means the design from one page to another is constant right up through the checkout page.
Developers like it, too. They don't need to spend countless hours working on two different systems in attempts to make them appear similar (when they never will), or remembering to update two separate sites every time it is needed. The time it saves on site maintenance is amazing!
5 Free Ecommerce Plugins For WordPress
If you're looking for a starting point, here's a list of 5 ecommerce plugins you can turn to in order to create the perfect one-stop-shop for your business.
1. Cart66 Lite
This is a light plugin, but still quite powerful. Easy to use, it allows you to sell both digital products thanks to Amazon S3 integration, or physical products or services internationally. Want to rely on affiliate marketing? Go ahead! You can also place ads on any page you'd like.
2. eShop
eShop is another easy plugin, providing multiple methods to list your products. It's simple to customize settings as well. The interface makes it easy to browse and purchase quickly, offering many payment gateways, multiple shipping options, statistics for purchases, and more.
3. Jigoshop
Within minutes, you can have your online shop up and running when you rely on different products and services offered by Jigoshop. Group your products any way you'd like, and offer users different attributes by which to filter their results (such as S, M, L or by color) to speed up their experience.
4. Woocommerce
This plugin is brought to you by the developers of the popular Woothemes. Woocommerce claims to bring you a powerful ecommerce experience with its many features like a dashboard widget through which you can check the progress of your shop. Extremely customizable, it offers many payment options.
5. Quick Shop
Quick Shop provides a sidebar for customers to view their shopping cart throughout the shopping experience. It supports a variety of functions, like email and built-in Paypal, along with the option to add products to your web pages with a TinyMCE button.
There are many, many options, so check them all out before you make a final decision. This way, you are providing what your customers want, and what you and your developers will be comfortable updating.
Do you already use WordPress for your e-commerce website? What plugin do you rely on?
