I am using WordPress for some time as a blogging platform and sometimes to build small sites with few pages. From my point of view WordPress is a great platform ( the best out there) with a lot of great features and nothing comes even close. Once with the opening of my company from Romania I head the chance to use WordPress not only as a blogging platform but also as a ecommerce platform.
Before using WordPress as a ecommerce platform I head to do some investigations with what are the best WordPress eCommerce themes and features they are offering, to see if they can satisfy the needs of my clients and have what it takes to be a eCommerce platform. When I first started my researches the WordPress eCommerce community wasn’t that developed and many wasn’t recommending WordPress as a eCommerce platform. With time the community started to grow and there were more and more themes developed to be used to create a online store on WordPress. First I would like to start with some of the reasons to use WordPress as a eCommerce platform and then to present you the best free and premium eCommerce themes that I am aware of.
Reasons to Use WordPress as a eCommerce Platform to Build a Online Store
Developing eCommerce platforms it is very profitable and a lot of options are available on the internet. The concurrence is quite big and on the market a lot of big players like Magento, ZenCart, PrestaShop, osCommerce…. exists. Everyone of them has great features a lot of theme developed and are made especially for eCommerce. Wordpress is just now starting to gain some popularity as a eCommerce platform and below are some of the reasons to use it:
- WordPress is Fast – WordPress is a fast CMS and it is well optimized for performance. If you will use WordPress you won’t need a VPS or dedicated hasting for your store.
- SEO Ready – most of the theme are very good optimized for SEO ( permalinks, title, descriptions,H1,internal links) and if the the is not optimized you can easily install free plugins for this.
- Sell Diferent Products – if you want to sell simple products, digital products or having just a catalog site with WordPress all this is possible.
- WordPress is Cheap – not only WordPress is more cheaper for creating a online store but also is cheaper to maintain. Even if cheaper the quality and the features are the best.
- Easy to Develop On – developing new features for a WordPress eCommerce plugin it is more easy then on other platform. WordPress community it is very big and a lot of people can develop new things for you.
- Free Plugins – you can easily integrate new stuffs like sliders, menus and other great thinks that you can think on in WordPress. The new features and plugins that exists on the WordPress community are endless and for sure can satisfy every need.
- Very Customizable - with the help of sidebar zones and custom menus functions from WordPress you can make changes fast. You can add or delete pages and categories from the menu and you can easily add new stuffs like pictures. image sliders, text or everything you desire.
Best Free WordPress eCommerce Themes
Even if the themes are free they are great and can easily can be customized to every need and functionality that someone would like.
Below is the list with WordPress eCommerce free thmes:
Wootique from WooCommerce
Woothemes has recently launched a WordPress eCommerce plugin and started creating some great themes. The plugin and some of the themes are free. The features offered by WooCommerce are great and it can be enhanced with the extras.
DEMO / DOWNLOAD
Balita Theme from Tokokoo
The theme produces by Tokokoo looks great and have nice features, I haven’t had the chance to test it but it is free and you can test it by yourself.
Crafty Cart 2.0
An interesting theme , feel free to download it.
ShopMe
AppCloud
Best Premium WordPress eCommerce Themes
The number of premium WordPress eCommerce Themes is growing every day and new beautiful themes are lunched every day. Premium themes have more features then the free ones and also with a premium one you can have support from the developer. The internet is full of WordPress eCommerce themes and for sure you would not have any difficulties in choosing one. Below I will put a list with the eCommerce themes that I like most:
WooCommerce Premium Themes
Woothemes has the most looking themes for WordPress from the internet and the eCommerce themes are also very beautiful and with a lot of great features. For someone who would like to have a nice store that has also a lot of features they would be my first choice. I have used the free one to build a store and it is pretty awesome.
Templatic eCommerce Themes
The framework of Templatic is really great, a few months ago I have bought one of their themes and I can say that works really great and can be customized very well, the features are also a lot.
Tokokoo WordPress eCommerce Themes
Tokokoo is another developer of WordPress eCommerce themes that has some interesting features, visit the below link and see for yourself:
Sommerce Shop
E-Store
A very nice looking theme from Elegant themes.
Mazine
THE CLOTHES SHOP
WP FLEXISTORE
CHILD CARE
WP FLEXISHOP
FURNITURE STORE
KIDZ TOYS
SOFA SHOPPR
SOFA SUPPASTORE
Great post, I’ve been looking at making an ecommerce website using WordPress. I’ve tried Magento and Zen Cart but they just seem a bit too complicated.
Carport last post ..Double Carport
Personally, I find that Magento is a far more powerful solution to running an e-commerce site.
Ultimately, security is of more importance when you are running any e-commerce site and (as far as I am aware) none of the WordPress options have particularly large teams behind them to keep the code up to date.
They are probably perfectly fine for very simple shops, though.
Richard, Leeds last post ..Web design company in Leeds
Thanks for sharing this great article with all great themes. I really like WordPress because you can do so many things with it and because there are so many great themes for it. Keep on the good work!
Peter last post ..conference call
I started with a standard Twenty Ten theme. If I had to do it all over again. think I might start with a premium theme that fit my goals. Live and learn . . .
Astro Gremlin last post ..Comment Treasure
I use CTR Theme for WordPress.. In fact it is my 1st experience!
Joh Nebr Surgery last post ..Haglund’s Deformity Symptoms and Treatment