WP eStore Plugin Review

Apart from the usual selling of physical products, WordPress eStore also offers a secure way to sell down-loadable products by encrypting each file before automatically delivering the order by email. Another option you may consider is selling pay per view content, such as pre-recorded webinars. You may also want to sell subscriptions to a service such as coaching or “product of the month” service you provide, and this is also catered for, as well as offering an introductory trial period to entice people to sign up.

As customers buy something the plugin integrates with Aweber, GetResponse, MailChimp and InfusionSoft so they are automatically added to your mailing list. There are 2 settings that you can use for mailing list integration, the global settings which is to your main mailing list and there is also the option if someone buys a product, they will then also be signed up to the product mailing list too.

When setting up your WordPress eStore, if you have many products to sell, it is a good idea to sort them into categories before you start. This is because when it becomes time to build your estore, the layout works using short codes. This means that if you create a new page, called “training products” all you would need to do is add this short code to the page and as if by magic, when the page is published, all the products that you have available under the category training products will appear. You don’t need to enter each product one at a time, making it quicker to create your online store.

There is well documented installation and usage instructions that come with the download. In addition, there is also a support forum to get any questions or technical issues you may have regarding the plugin, answered. Questions are usually answered within 24 hours, if not sooner. As the plugin has been around for a few years, the support forums are a wealth of knowledge that you can explore, as someone else may have had similar problems as yourself, which is usually easily solved.

If you are building an estore where there is more than one seller, then WordPress eStore allows you to set it up so that each product sale can be paid to a different PayPal address. Perhaps you charge for the listing or for renting space in your eStore and then any sales go directly to your seller. This is much more preferable for your seller, getting instant payments.

Other sales strategies that you can implement by using WordPress eStore is the use of coupons and discount codes. Also just like the infamous saying “would you like fries with that?” you can add some code to your thank you page and offer an upsell, adding extra profits to your business.

There are sales statistics built into the plugin, which will tell you how many units of each product has been sold, number of refunds and total sales made in any time period. However if you want to take it a step further, you can easily integrate the results with Google Analytics eCommerce settings, giving you a much more in-depth analysis of your customers and sales.

The WordPress eStore is one of the best shopping cart solutions for WordPress and as it integrates with an affiliate plugin and a membership plugin, you have the tools to build a really profitable business.