Tips and Tricks WP eCommerce

eCommerce Solution for WordPress Blog

WordPress eStore Plugin Features

The main features of the WP eStore Plugin are listed below:

WP eStore will help you with the following:

  • Get rid of any ongoing subscriptions you may have with a 3rd party site for your eCommerce needs
  • We don’t charge you for future plugin updates. So you will be able to get newer versions of the plugin for free.
  • Get rid of any heavyweight, bloated and site performance impacting e-Commerce software from your site
  • Use a plugin that is always kept upto date to work with the current version of WordPress (this way you won’t get stuck with a plugin that stops working after a WordPress upgrade)
  • Get a response from professional developers if you face an issue with the plugin (we won’t sell you a product then disappear)

Digital Product Delivery

  • Automatic instant digital product delivery. Upon payment the buyer receives a product download link in the email and also on the post-payment return page (eg. a Thank You page)
  • Encrypted Product download link (The buyer always receives an encrypted product download link which means the actual link to the product always remains secret)
  • Automatic Link Expiration (The encrypted link the buyer receives also gets expired after a configurable amount of time (eg. 12 hours) so the link doesn’t get passed around)
  • Ability to limit the number of downloads per link. An encrypted download link will automatically expire after a specified number of downloads (eg. 3 times) if this option is used
  • Ability to offer multiple file downloads per product
  • Allow your customers to redownload the digital files that they purchased
  • Ability to dispatch a serial number or license key (from a pool of pre-configured keys/numbers) to your customer upon purchase of a product
  • Variation control for digital product (digital delivery of different files depending on the selection)
  • You can also host your digital files at a non-web-accessible URL of your server such as “/home/var/digital_products/myproduct.zip”. WP eStore will be able to feed this file to your customers via an encrypted download link
  • Ability to automatically shorten the encrypted download URL using Google’s free URL shortener (this makes a complex URL look nice and tidy)
  • You (the admin) can re-generate encrypted download links manually for a digital product and send it to the buyer (useful when a buyer misses a download link)
  • Product Specific Instructions for the buyer. This option is useful when you need to give your customer some specific instruction that applies only to that product
  • Ability to offer a “Squeeze Page” type form (This allows the site visitors to download a free digital product after they fill in their name and email address. This can be used for email list building). See example
  • Ability to create download now buttons to serve free downloads to your users using the encrypted download system
  • Option to create free encrypted download now buttons (for downloadable items) using a simple link
  • You can let your customers see their purchase history

Security

  • WP eStore is PCI compliant.
  • You don’t need to have a SSL certificate to use WP eStore plugin
  • WP eStore easily works with your secure SSL (https) pages if you want to use a SSL certificate on your website
  • Automatic Instant Payment Notification (IPN) validation (The IPN sent from PayPal is validated against your products database and with PayPal, before the product download link is sent to the buyer. This stops anyone trying to scam the system by sending a fake IPN)
  • Automatic post payment product details verification. This stops anyone from trying to scam you by changing the product price or currency on the webpage by injecting queries into the form (learn more)
  • Product downloads are always delivered via encrypted download links
  • Keeps the true location of your digital asset hidden. This ensures the security of your digital asset

Lots of Free Addons

Amazon S3 Integration

  • Can be integrated with Amazon S3 so that the downloadable files can be stored on your Amazon S3 account and served via secure encrypted download
  • This method can be used to protect the digital items that you are selling or to protect the downloadable files that you are offering to your members (if you have created a membership site)
  • This option can be really good if you have an overcrowded shared hosting and you have a limited memory allowance on your server

Pay Per View Content

  • Simple Pay Per View Content Protection. Instant delivery of pay per view content, the true URL of the page where the content is embedded (e.g. a steaming video) does not get revealed
  • The link can be configured so it redirects the buyer to a web page instead of giving them a download (useful when you want to redirect the buyer to a web page which contains streaming videos for example)

Support

  • Free lifetime plugin updates. Please see the following post on how updates are handled
  • Free technical support for our plugin. Please see our support site to find out the available support options
  • Use the plugin on all of your sites (the sites that you own and operate)

Payment Related

  • Ability to use “Add to Cart”, “Buy Now” or “Subscription” type buttons
  • Ability to setup PayPal Donate buttons to accept donation for a cause
  • Ability to setup Subscription/Recurring payment via PayPal. Configure a “Subscription” button for any type of subscription payment. (See demo)
  • Ability to setup “Buy Now” type buttons with different PayPal email addresses (per button basis). Useful on a multi-author blog where different authors can setup “Buy Now” buttons with their products and get the money directly into their PayPal account after a sale
  • Allow customers to specify a product price (learn more).
  • Option to specify a PayPal checkout page style
  • Multiple Payment Gateways. Customers can pay via PayPal, 2Checkout, Authorize.net or a manual/offline process (learn more)
  • Option to add more payment gateways if you need via a premium gateway bundle addon

Currency and Language

  • Accept money in your preferred currency (Can be configured to accept money in any currency that is supported by PayPal or the payment gateway in use)
  • Ability to configure a secondary currency that can be used to display the equivalent price of the products in that currency (this is for display purpose only, the transaction takes place in the primary currency of your store).
  • Any texts or messages that your visitors can see, can be customized through the language file
  • Some language files for the commonly used languages are already included but others can be added upon request
  • You can customize the price currency display format (useful for European users)

Shopping Cart Related

  • Ability to specify a minimum checkout amount (example: only allow customers to checkout if the cart sub total value is more than $50.00)
  • Ability to specify a maximum checkout amount limit (example: do not allow customers to checkout if the cart sub total value is more than $500.00)
  • Ability to specify a per customer item quantity limit (example: only allow a customer to purchase a maximum of one copy of an item)
  • Ability to allow your customers to save their shopping cart so that it can be retrieved at a later time
  • Set an automatic redirection to the checkout page once a customer adds an item to the shopping cart
  • Hide the quantity field in the shopping cart (can be useful when selling only digital items)
  • Optionally display a continue shopping link in the shopping cart
  • Ability to specify a custom image that is displayed when the shopping cart is empty
  • Ability to add a product to the shopping cart on your site via a simple text link (helpful when you want to place a buy link on facebook, twitter etc).

Setup and Design

  • Easy to use and the freedom of adding an “Add to Cart”, “Buy Now” or “Subscription” type button for a product or service anywhere on your blog (posts, pages, sidebars, header, footer)
  • Products can be configured with a thumbnail image and a description and can be displayed in a stylish way by using a shortcode. (See demo)
  • Shopping cart – session based (The shopping cart can be displayed anywhere on your blog posts, pages and sidebar)
  • All the buttons are customizable through the usage of button images and CSS
  • Easy Checkout. Simple one-click checkout through PayPal or 2Checkout or Manual Checkout
  • Sell both digital and non-digital products with this one WordPress plugin
  • WP eStore DOES NOT create any page or post automatically (I find it untidy when plugins automatically create pages). WP eStore gives you all the shortcodes that you can embed on posts or pages to get various functionality but you will have to create the pages yourself (in my opinion this gives the designer more design flexibility)
  • Products can be listed under product categories allowing for easy placement of multiple items (the items you specify for this category) on one product page. e.g. You can display all the eBooks you have for sale by placing a shortcode on the products page
  • Terms and Conditions – You have the ability to require your customers to agree to your “Terms and Conditions” before they can purchase any item
  • PayPal custom template checkout pages can be used with the eStore plugin to customize your checkout page on PayPal
  • Simple Up-selling feature (the admin can use this feature to put in some coupon codes which the customers only get after they have made a purchase)
  • Collect Customer Input. This will display a text box next to the Add to Cart button where the customer can enter special instruction for that product (eg. a Name if selling Engraving)
  • Capability to limit the quantity to be sold for a specific product (Useful when you only want to sell 50 copies of a product for example)
  • Coupon Code/Discounts Feature. Offer coupons and discounts to your customers
  • Ability to offer product specific affiliate commission when using with the WP Affiliate Program plugin
  • Can be used with PayPal’s profile based shipping for dynamic shipping calculation based on location or weight
  • Ability to use the simple shipping and tax calculation feature that comes with the plugin or use the shipping and tax settings specified in your PayPal profile
  • Option to add a shipping variation in the shopping cart
  • Ability to apply tax calculation on shipping amount
  • Option to allow customers to pickup the items from your store. The cart won’t charge shipping to customers who choose to pickup from your store

Integration Options

  • Can be integrated with the NextGen Gallery Plugin to create a Digital Photo Store from the NextGen Gallery (sell photos from your WordPress site):
  • Can be integrated with Google Analytics E-Commerce tracking (learn more)
  • Pre-integrated with the WP Affiliate Platform plugin (the affiliate plugin is not included with the eStore plugin). So, in the future if you want to use an affiliate program to boost your sales all you have to do is activate the other plugin
  • Pre-integrated with WP eMember Plugin (the eMember plugin is not included with the eStore plugin). WordPress eMember is a membership plugin that can turn your existing or new WordPress site into a membership site easily. You can also setup recurring payment via the eStore for membership payments
  • Pre-Integrated with the WP PDF Stamper: This plugin allows you to protect your eBook from being uploaded to file sharing sites. Automatically stamping the footer of your eBook with the customer’s personal details (e.g. name, email, address) upon purchase
  • Can be easily integrated with the WishList Members plugin (Create Membership a Site)
  • AWeber Integration option. customers are automatically signed up to your AWeber list for email marketing purpose
  • MailChimp Integration option. This allows your customers to be signed up automatically to MailChimp list for email marketing purpose
  • GetResponse Integration option. This allows your customers to be signed up automatically to GetResponse campaign for email marketing purpose
  • Can be integrated with iDev Affiliate software
  • Can be integrated with the Memberwing Membership plugin
  • Ability to use Google base feed for your eStore products

Miscellaneous

  • Earnings and sales charts for your products.
  • Export customers record to a CSV file.
  • Export serial keys issued to your customers to a CSV file.
  • MySQL Database driven.
  • Customer Database (When a Customer purchases an Item his/her details are stored in the database).
  • WP eStore works well with any properly coded (valid xHTML code) WordPress theme (example: Thesis Theme, Genesis Theme, Elegant Themes etc.)

Visit the WordPress eStore Plugin Page.

Note: We provide technical support for our premium plugins via our customer only support forum