E-commerce with WordPress: Create Your Own Online Shop Easily
More and more people all over the world use WordPress to run their online shops. You can choose from various sophisticated plugins and themes. Some of them are even suitable for the legally difficult German market. Running an online shop in Germany can be still quite complicated. No one want's to get a cease and desist letter just for overlooking an important detail. Therefore, we'll also show you some solutions that help you gain a foothold in the German market. Then you'll be on the safe side and can concentrate on your actual business. Let's have a look at some “e-commerce with WordPress” solutions...
wpShopGermany – German Wordpress Shop Plugin
wpShopGermany is a German online shop plugin that is constantly updated and knows the rules of the German market by genetics. It helps you sell physical products as well as digital ones, such as download software, e-books, videos, etc. All relevant payment methods for the German market are available, and you can simply add mandatory pages and information like legal notices, shipping costs and terms and conditions with only one click. The plugin also features multiple languages and coupons for your customers, and it has a separately available module that generates PDF invoices automatically or with one click.
WpShopGermany is a commercial plugin, however, you can try it for 14 days before you will have to enter a license key. A suitable theme is not readily provided, but it usually works with any theme from the repository. We took a closer look at wpShopGermany. The full review will be published soon. Stay tuned for that.
Here's a screenshot of the developer's test server:
- Developer: Roger Rehnelts Männchen1
- Regular updates: Yes
- Latest version: 12.06.2014
- Price: 25 – 149 EUR
- License: Special license
- Interactions with other plugins: Not known
- Developer's website: wpShopGermany
WooCommerce – excelling eCommerce
WooCommerce is the global leader in the market of online shop plugins. There's, practically speaking, nothing you can't sell with it.
WooThemes offers, in addition to the plugin, lots of suitable commercial themes. That makes it really easy for you as a future shop operator, as you don't have to create an extra theme for your shop. If you can't find a feature you need in WooCommerce, check out the extensions list. There you'll find hundreds of extensions that add special features to the plugin.
- Developer: WooThemes.com
- Regular updates: Yes
- Latest version: 18.09.2014
- Price: Free on WordPress.org
- License: GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
- Interactions with other plugins: Not known
- Developer's website: WooCommerce-Homepage
If you want to use WooCommerce for the German market, you'll need some extensions.
WooCommerce – Important Extensions for the German Market
WooCommerce German Market
The WooCommerce German Market plugin helps you to set up your online store legally compliant to German law. You can add mandatory pages and information like legal notices, terms and conditions, shipping costs, cancellation policy, etc.:
- Templates for legally required pages and information: Shipping costs, cancellation policy, legal notice, terms and conditions and other information are required by German law.
- Correct product pricing: Prices must be displayed correctly with information about shipping costs and delivery time.
- “Price per unit” editor: Products charged by weight or length must be labeled with a price per unit, for example: “€4/kg” or “4€/m”.
- Small businesses: If you don't charge value added tax according to the German small business law (§ 19 UstG), you can activate this option in the back-end. This makes the information visible for your customers.
- Delivery time editor: WooCommerce offers only a few settings for the delivery time. With this editor you can define delivery times to your needs. This comes in handy when your products are produced as orders come in.
- Free shipping: This is a pretty good marketing tool. You can offer free shipping based on your customer's cart value. Decide if you want to activate this option and choose a minimum cart value. In the best case, your customers will add more products to their shopping cart.
- Information about shipping costs to countries outside the EU: If you ship to non-EU countries, shipping costs may vary. With this setting you can inform your customers about additional costs.
- Short product descriptions in the checkout area: In order to comply with legal regulations, the order summary must include a short description of every product. This saves your customers from clicking the back button to return to the product page and minimizes the risk of an abandoned shopping cart.
- 100% support from WooCommerce: Future updates will be applied automatically.
WooCommerce German Market is a commercial plugin. The following licenses are available:
- Developer: MarketPress, Inspyde GmbH
- Regular updates: Yes
- Latest version: Summer 2014
- Price: 99 - 239 EUR
- License: Special license
- Interactions with other plugins: Not known
- Developer's website: WooCommerce German-Market
Themes for WooCommerce from MarketPress
In addition, MarketPress also offers three shop themes for WooCommerce, including the Hamburg and Dusseldorf theme.
The mid-priced themes (55 Euro) are lovely designed to perfectly suit the WooCommerce shop. As they are all responsive they work well on any device, no matter if it's a desktop computer or a smartphone.
The WooCommerce German (de_DE) Extension
This is a complete German translation of the WooCommerce plugin. Language files are available in formal “Sie” as well as informal “Du” addressing. Although WooCommerce can be set to German language, this language pack eliminates quite a few translation errors.
- Developer: David Decker – Deckerweb
- Regular updates: Yes
- Latest version: 12.09.2014
- Price: Free on WordPress.org
- License: GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
- Interactions with other plugins: Not known
- Developer's website: Not available
WP-shopified – WordPress E-Commerce Template
The WP-Shopified system takes a completely different approach. So far, we have only talked about plugins, but WP-Shopified is a WordPress theme that offers full, comprehensive and absolutely professional shop support.
WP-Shopified was developed in Germany, so you don't have to worry about legal compliance to the rules of that "special" country. Besides an incredible functionality, this theme offers a beautiful design, and you can start right away. However, if you're not happy with the design and want to modify it, use a child theme to ensure your modifications are preserved after an update. You can customize the color of the buttons to your own needs within the theme.
Some excellent functions are certainly the automatically generated PDF invoices and the payment options. You can choose between direct debit, bank transfer, credit card and Paypal.
It supports full integration of new legal requirements. The German customer support makes every effort to help you. You can get it at a reasonable price of 29,95 Euro. Here's a screenshot of the WP-Shopified demo shop:
- Developer: WP-Shopified / IWEBIX
- Regular updates: Yes
- Latest version: Not obvious
- Compatible to WordPress 4.0: Yes
- Price: 29,95 EUR
- License: Special license
- Developer's website: WP-shopified Homepage
Conclusion
It has never been so easy to create a full online shop with a WordPress installation. It's up to you if you want to rely on a plugin or rather install a shop with a one-click theme.
Personally, I prefer wpShopGermany, but the theme solution is also worth a try. Not only that WP-Shopified complies with German law, it also looks good. And equally important in times when loading performance is relevant to the Google rating: The WP-Shopified demo shop indicates a really good performance out of the box.
If you are into selling to English speaking targets only, WooCommerce is the biggest stag in the forest.
Ultimately, you should give preference to the solution you trust most and which suits your personal workflow. Which one do you prefer?
Related links
wpShopGermany
WooCommerce
- WooCommerce by WordPress.org
- WooCommerce Homepage on WooThemes.com
- WooCommerce Extensions on WooThemes.com
- WooCommerce Premium Themes by WooThemes.com
- WooCommerce German (de_DE) expansion for a complete translation
- WooCommerce German(de_DE) video
WooCommerce German Market
- WooCommerce German Market Homepage and expansion
- WooCommerce Premium Themes by Marketpress
WP-Shopified
- WP-Shopified Homepage
- Demo-Shop Wp-Shopified – that's how their shop looks like
- Overview of WP-Shopified functions
For anyone looking to sell images specifically, there is a premium add-on to the popular NextGEN Gallery plugin, called NextGEN Pro. It can efficiently sell images using pricelists – both sales of prints and automated digital downloads.
Scott works for NextGen. Keep that in mind ;-) (NextGen is not bad, however)
Hi,
WooCommerce is my all time favorite but since the SAS based eCommerce platform comes into existence, these platforms are fading away mostly among the new entrants. Although big eCommerce websites are still using them but for newbies , it is hard to manage them without some technical expertise.
There are many good open source solutions for Ecommerce but WordPress has really an immense community and is more affordable. But applying WordPress plugins for web shops may require special hosting. Don’t you think so?
We have been using WordPress for our clients who want an E-commerce website. We can set them up for them in no time. Those themes with E-commerce features are really helpful.
Do you think that WordPress with ecommerce plugins can equally compete with Magento for example?
I think that normal e-commerce systems are way better than WP – it is to easy. But your propositions looks interesting :)
Building e-commerce websites using wordpress is very easy and performance wise has improved over the years. You can find elegant themes, seo plugins and other e-commerce plugins readily available with a user-friendly CMS facility.
I have built a couple of sites using WooCommerce and it is really a powerful e-commerce plugin. My only *complaint* about it is that it it does not work seamlessly with most WP themes so if you have an existing site, there is no guarantee that the WooCommerce-generated pages will blend with your site aesthetics.
Great
I think WordPress for an e-commerce website would be a great option as WordPress is an easy and efficient platform to work with.