How to do about adding e-commerce functionality on wordpress site? [closed]

Question

My client is a photographer and he wants to offer prints for sale (not digital). How am I best going about this? I know paypal has a shopping cart facility for wordpress, but I've also noticed that there is a marketPress plugin that has some good feedback.

Answer 1

Best thing to do is search the existing plugins and test: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/search.php?q=e-commerce

And then search here for a specific plugin when you decide on one.

Answer 2

Here's an old post on SE this lists some of the more popular ones. Also not mentioned is Cart66 (I'm the designer for that company) which might offer more flexibility for what you're looking for.

One thing that you have to keep in mind when choosing a Wordpress E-Commerce solution is whether or not that plugin/solution will be PCI Compliant. PCI Compliance is not talked about much in the Wordpress E-Commerce world because it can be very difficult and VERY expensive to acquire/setup. After all, Wordpress touts a 5-minute free install (why mention something that costs $1,000's+ per month). Here is a good article on what you need to know to be PCI Compliant. Near the end it reports:

There are several attempts to work around these PCI and security requirements. One common attempt is to submit cardholder data directly to a payment gateway using javascript, and iFrame, or a transparent redirect. Admittedly, there is a great deal of confusion as to whether or not [these are] a PCI compliant solution. Our firm has interviewed multiple Qualified Security Assessor (QSA) firms and the vast majority of them suggest that this is not a PCI compliant solution because the merchant’s website is still responsible for generating the code that transmits the cardholder data. Whether it be javascript, HTML markup for an iFrame source, or HTML markup for a form action tag, if the merchant’s website is hacked the cardholder data can easily be stolen.

Using Paypal absolves one of having to be PCI compliant because they use what is commonly called a "self hosted checkout page". The big problem with this is the discontinuity of the checkout process for the buyer. Nothing's more jarring than picking your product, adding it to the cart, going to the checkout page only to be abruptly shot over to a hosted checkout page that doesn't even closely resemble your site. Many users abandon the purchase process because of this very last step. It introduces uncertainty in the buyer and therefore they don't make the purchase.

For this reason, I would consider using Woocommerce or Cart66 that have the mijireh service integrated into the core of the plugin. There's a video on how their home page that shows the page slurp technology that makes it dead simple to have a PCI Compliant checkout page with the same look/feel as your own website.

Answer 3

I ended up using WP Simple Paypal Shopping cart