5 Minute Ecommerce Website Builder with WordPress


Believe it or not, creating an ecommerce website to sell products online is such a simple process, you can complete it in less than 5 minutes.  Whatever you have to sell, from eBooks to music, clothes to garden sheds, adding products that your readers can buy is an excellent way to increase your income stream and make a healthy income from your website.

WordPress is the ideal ecommerce website builder.  It’s simple to install, easy to customize and perfect for selling your products.  We’ve put together a step by step guide on how to create an ecommerce website in less than 5 minutes, which means you could be making extra money by the end of the day!

1.  Download Your Ecommerce Website Builder

Once you’ve decided on a hosting company, you’ll need to download WordPress as your free website builder program.  Once you’ve done this you’ll have your blank website, which you can begin customizing to suit your ecommerce needs.

2.  Choose an Ecommerce theme

The really great thing about WordPress is that there are so many themes to choose from, which basically give you the look and design of your website, to which you can add images and content.  Here are three ecommerce themes, which are all available to download through our themes page:

  • Crafty Cart: designed to be used alongside the WP e-commerce plug in, which we will be discussing in just a moment.  This is a free theme with a fresh retro style, ideal for t-shirts, handmade items and vintage wear. 
  • Ecommerce Theme: this is a premium theme, costing $79.95 for multiple websites.  It’s really easy to customize, is search engine optimized and ideal for selling any kind of products online, from eBooks to photos, music to gadgets. 
  • The Shopping: this is another free ecommerce theme, ideal for combining product sales alongside a blog.  It’s bright, colorful and has an attractive header with a simple style, perfect for selling clothes, shoes, handbags and designer gear. 

Once you’ve chosen your theme, simply download it to your WordPress program.  For more information on how to do this, this article has everything you need to know about How to Install a WordPress Theme.

3.  Install the WP e-Commerce Plug in

The WP E-commerce plug in is the perfect tool for any website wanting to sell products.  It gives you everything you’ll need and is completely free to download from our resources page.  It provides a one page checkout, a shopping cart and easy to customize product pages.  You can also add premium widgets to suit various ecommerce styles and for extra control over customization.

To install the plug in, first log into the admin page of your WordPress website.  The address for this is  http://yourdomainname/wp-admin.  On the dashboard go to the plug in section, where you can install new plug ins.  Choose the ecommerce plug in and once installed you’ll see a new drop down menu on your side bar, saying e-commerce.

4.  Setting your WP e-commerce Plug In

This plug in gives you so many options for customizing your products pages and how your customers can pay.  Here are some of the most important setting you can adapt to suit your needs, which you can access by clicking on e-commerce in your dashboard:

  • In the settings page, ensure you choose your country, the currency you wish to trade in and whether you want to add tax to your products.
  • Payment Options: you can choose from PayPal, Google Checkout, PayPal-Express, Chronopay or Manual Payment.  The final choice gives your customers the option to make an order, then phone you to give their credit card details or send a cheque in the post.
  • Presentation Settings: choose which product group you’d like to display on your main product page by default, or you can show all products.  You can also decide on your Cart Location, which can be inserted anywhere on the page or as a widget on the sidebar.  By clicking Show Breadcrumbs, this allows readers to navigate through product subcategories, which can be very useful if you have a lot of products for sale.
  • Admin Settings: if you’re selling digital items, such as eBooks or music files, you can limit the number of times a customer can download the file once they’ve purchased it.  This could be just once, or any number of times.  It’s a good idea to lock the download to a particular IP address, to prevent customers from sharing the download with other people.

5.  Display Your Products

The final stage is to add your products, by entering the Products category on the dashboard.  You need to set the name, price, description, assign to a category and add an image.  Once completed your product is on your website and ready for your customers and readers to buy.

That’s it, your ecommerce website builder is now complete and it’s only taken you a matter of minutes!  Now all you need to do is drive some quality traffic to your site who’ll be interested in what you have to sell.  This article has 5 Secrets to Ecommerce Success using Social Media that any ecommerce website builder will find invaluable.


5 Ecommerce Website Builder Plugins Reviewed


WordPress is the perfect ecommerce website builder, making it possible for anyone with absolutely no experience of creating a website to get their products on sale online in just a matter of minutes.  Selling products through your blog or website is one of the best ways to boost your income stream, whether it’s eBooks or photographs, vintage clothes or expert advice. 

All you’ll need to make your site a commercial success is one of the ecommerce website builder plugins.  These handy pieces of software have been downloaded by thousands of people to make the job of selling online a breeze.  But which one should you choose?  To save you the hassle of searching through the hundreds of ecommerce plugins, here’s a review of five of the best.

1.  WP e-commerce:  The Complete Commercial Website Package In One

This plugin is designed with both functionality and aesthetics in mind, giving you an elegant ecommerce site with full shopping cart software.  It’s ideal for selling your products, services or subscription fees online.  Over half a million people have now downloaded this plugin and its success is probably due to the fact it’s a complete website builder package ideal for ecommerce.  It’s packed with features, including:

  • Easy to use design templates you can customize to suit your needs
  • Ability to run promotions, newsletters and add coupon codes
  • Automatic online marketing tools – such as built in search engine optimization, shopping search engines, Google Base and Facebook Marketplace submission

WP e-commerce works with all WordPress themes, or you have the option to choose one of the WP e-commerce themes.  There are also premium upgrades you can purchase from as little as $10, such as the MP3 Audio Player or the Next Gen Gallery Buy Now Buttons, which turn your gallery into a shopping cart.

2.  eShop:  Sell Your Expertise Online

Another free plugin which allows you to create products from your pages and posts, which is ideal if you’re an expert in your field with knowledge that people will pay for.  It gives you a wide variety of payment options, has various methods for listing products, a variety of shopping options and automatic email after a successful purchase.  This plugin is compatible with WordPress 2.9 and above.

3.  WP Live-Shopping:  Highlight Your Latest Promotions

Keep your readers up to date with all your current shopping offers and latest promotions with one simple widget that goes on your sidebar.  You can customize the appearance of the widget to suit your site’s style, allowing it to blend seamlessly with your ecommerce website. 

This is a really useful piece of software to promote your products.  All you’ll need to do before you use it is set up a Live account, which is free and easy to do.

4.  Quick Shop:  Make Shopping a Breeze For Your Website Customers

If you have sidebar widgets installed in your website builder for ecommerce, this plugin is the perfect addition to enhance your customers’ shopping experience.  It places a widget on the sidebar to show buyers what they have in their cart, which they can change at any time.

It also makes the job of building an ecommerce website much simpler by adding a TinyMCE button to use for quickly and easily adding products to any page or post on your site. You can also create various product options in a drop down menu and it comes with a checkout page to complement the shopping cart.

5.  WP Auctions:  Make Buying from Your Website an Interactive and Fun Experience

Bring the commercial side of your website to life with this auctions plugin for WordPress.  It costs just $35 and allows you to host auctions on your blog for anything you wish to sell.  There are no auction fees or commissions to pay, just a one off fee for the plugin.

The software presents your auctions in an elegant pop up or you can have them featured within a page or post.  Payment can be made through PayPal and you can also offer items for “Buy Now.”  If you want an innovative way to sell your goods, that makes your customers’ experience more fun and interactive, then this is the plugin for you.

Don’t forget that all these plugins are available to download from our resources and plugins page.  The sooner you get building your ecommerce site, the quicker you can start making money from your products and building a profitable website business.


WP Auctions


WP Auctions is a very easy to use plugin for WordPress which enables you to host auctions on your blog for ANYTHING you wish to sell, completely fee free!   The plugin costs a one time fee of $35

  • Show your auctions in an elegant jQuery powered popup, or
  • Place auctions in a post or page
  • Auctions for registered users only
  • Accept PayPal, wire transfers† or checks †
  • Add a Shipping Price, Shipping To and Shipping From location
  • Create, Manage and Edit as many auctions as you like
  • Upload multiple images for each auction
  • Sell items on “Buy It Now” basis
  • Show 3rd party ads when there are no auctions
  • RSS feed for your auctions
  • Set your own currency (?)
  • Get bid notifications via email
  • Bidders get email notifications when they get outbid
  • Winning bidders get email notification with payment instructions
  • Accept bidder URL or use custom contact information
  • Delete fraudulent bids
  • Compatible with Google Adsense and any other CPC program

Bloggers all over the world are already using the plugin and making money with it!


Quick Shop


Quick Shop supports any WordPress that has the Sidebar Widgets installed, really. It adds a SideBar widget that shows the user what they currently have in the cart and allows them to remove the items, not to mention a TinyMCE button to easily allow you to add products to your posts/pages.

Also, you will need to make your own CSS for this. I’ve included enough classes/ids for you.    Note: This plugin requires PHP 5


Wp Live Shopping


This widget enables you to display all relevant live shopping offers within your WordPress blog in one single widget. You can add the widget to your sidebar and customize its appearance as you like inside the boundaries of LiveShoppingWidgets presentation options.


Great Real Estate


Great Real Estate was developed to enable real estate agents, brokers, and REALTORS to display and manage information about their listings in WordPress pages.


WP-Reservation


This WordPress plugin allows for the creation of own sites with a booking system. It can apply to their sites hostels and hotels. Your users accessing the site, will fill a special order form and place your reservation. During the checkout process automatically register the user in WordPress. To order management created an administrative part. You can always see the true information about orders and customers, to confirm payment of your reservation, as well as a book by hand.


Checkfront Booking Plugin


Checkfront™ is an online Availability, Reservation and Booking Platform. This plugin connects your WordPress site to your Checkfront account, and provides a powerful real time booking interface within your site.


WebReserv Sidebar Booking Calendar


This is the WebReserv Sidebar plugin – if you are looking for the MAIN embedded plugin it’s called WebReserv Embedded Booking Calendar. The WebReserv Sidebar Booking Widget for WordPress lets you add online booking and reservation handling to your website via the Sidebar.


YAK for WordPress


YAK is an open source shopping cart plugin for WordPress. It associates products with weblog entries, so the post ID also becomes the product code. It supports both pages and posts as products, handles different types of product through categories, and provides customisable purchase options (cheque or deposit, basic credit card form, basic Google Checkout integration, standard PayPal integration, PayPal Payments Pro, and Authorize.net).