Far from being just another Internet soapbox, WordPress has exceeded the expected lifetime of a Web 2.0 generation pioneer. While other sites have faded into irrelevance or morphed into what is essentially ad space with user-generated content, WordPress continues to evolve and diversify in unexpected ways. What started out as a place for people to blog about their daily lives has turned into one of the most popular platforms for businesses to promote and sell their services and products online. The active and highly inventive user base took the ball and ran, developing widgets and plugins by the thousands to extend the capabilities of the open sourced site. The newest morph from the original blogging platform has powered WordPress into an eCommerce player to be reckoned with, hosting small and large stores offering an array of tangible and digital goods and services to a world gearing itself toward online shopping.
The Evolution of Retail
Retail used to be a physical place you went to buy something that you wanted or needed. With the opening of the broadband market and the heady flush of the startups in the Web 2.0 age, the Internet began evolving into a worldwide marketing conversation, with thousands of businesses pedalling their goods to billions of consumers around the world. It’s not too early to start gearing up for the holiday season, and getting your store shipshape will position you to pull in some of the 2014 holiday business projected by Internet Retailer, with 87 percent of online shoppers looking to meet or exceed last years 4th quarter spree. WordPress’ user base has helped to take small business online retailing in an entirely new direction, with useful or downright essential plugins and extensions like these:
Akismet
We’ve all seen it. The reply to a review or post that starts with, “That’s really great, Ted, but I just had to tell you that my aunt makes $3,456 a week by-” Everyone hates spammers, and they can clog up the comments and reviews on your store site faster than mainlining Spam and eggs will clog your arteries. Akismet checks comment against the Akismet database to see if they are spam or not, and offers useful features like comment status history and highlighting links in the comment body that can lead to unsafe sites. It’s a paid service for commercial blogs, but well worth the price you can call that spam.
Mailpoet
Free (for less than 2,000 subscribers) or Premium (2,000 or more), Mailpoet for WordPress is an intuitive email and newsletter management tool that won’t cause your head to leave unsightly dents on your keyboard. Both versions boast attractive templates, drag and drop editing, queuing, auto responder mailings, and the ability to see your opens, clicks, bounces, and unsubscribes. The premium version adds more data on your mailings and most engaged subscribers, spam scoring for your posts, automatic bounce handling, and improving your delivery stats with a DKIM (Domain Keys Identified Mail) signature. Priority support is available for Premium users.
WooCommerce
Depending on whom you ask, it’s one of the best WordPress eCommerce plugin or a robust eCommerce platform in its own right. With over 3.3 million downloads and a four-star rating, WooCommerce busts out of the gate with features to get your store up and moving. Scalable, brandable, and versatile, your customers will be deeply satisfied with their experience on your site, which will bring them back for more. According to UPS, the number one contributor to customer satisfaction is the ease of moving from shopping to checkout, with 81 percent making that factor their top priority. WooCommerce is great for the storeowner, but the experience will convert a customer into a client.
Online Retail is Becoming the Driving Force
US retailers are looking to capitalize on the explosive growth of online shopping, according to Business Insider. Growth is expected to clock in at 33 percent per year until 2017, driven by economic recovery, Millennials who use the Internet for almost everything in the first place, and use of mobile devices to carry the shopping experience in a purse or backpack. With 1.2 billion consumers accessing the web from their mobile devices everyday, according to Mobify, online eCommerce stores have the chance to capitalize on the ever-increasing mobile shopping market to make their online storefront a success. Also noted is the significant trouble Target and other mass merchandisers have experienced with breaches in customer data security, leading some shoppers to decide that smaller is better – and possibly much safer. Riding the crest of the wave, small business eCommerce is in position to expect significant growth from this year forward. Starting your business or repositioning your current store to take advantage of WordPress eCommerce plugins could pay off significantly.
