Book Image

WordPress 2.9 E-Commerce

Book Image

WordPress 2.9 E-Commerce

Overview of this book

WordPress is easily one of the hottest platforms for building blogs and general web sites. With the addition of the WP e-Commerce plug-in, it's also a competent platform for easily creating and running an online store, capable of selling physical items as well as services and digital downloads. WordPress with e-Commerce offers every feature that a seller and a customer may need. You can build an online store that makes it easier for the customers to find and buy products.WordPress 2.9 e-Commerce focuses on the integration of WordPress with the WordPress e-Commerce plug-in, covering all aspects of building and developing an online store from scratch.This book provides a simple, step-by-step approach to developing an effective online store. It guides you through your initial planning and first steps, plug-in installation and configuration, building your catalog of products to sell, accepting payments for your orders, and dealing with taxes and shipping. You will also learn how to promote and market your new store, handle customer accounts and staff roles, and deal with essential store security.As you work through each chapter, your online store will grow in scope and functionality. By the time you finish this book, you will have a complete and working store, ready to release your products to the world.
Table of Contents (19 chapters)
WordPress 2.9 -Commerce
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
Preface
Free Chapter
1
Getting Started with WordPress and e-Commerce
2
Getting Ready to Sell
3
Configure Your e-Commerce Settings
4
Managing Your Product Catalog
5
User Accounts: Customers and Staff
6
Checkout and Payment Setup
7
Shipping, Taxes, and Processing Orders
Setting Up a WAMP Testing Platform
Index

Chapter 11. Marketing Your Shop

As satisfying as it is to get your online store running, the work is not yet complete. Up to this point, you've labored and toiled in building your shop, wrestling with configuration settings, plus deploying and securing your shop. You should definitely congratulate yourself on all of the time and effort you have invested thus far. However, as anyone who has built a successful online store already knows, the initial effort invested up to the store deployment date is only the beginning of a journey that will hopefully pay rich dividends for the rest of your entrepreneurial life.

With apologies to the popular movie from 1989 Field of Dreams, the mantra "if you build it, [they] will come" does not automatically hold true for new store owners. We would all be gleefully happy if it were. Let's face it, most new stores receive little to no traffic at first. It's a rare store indeed that already has a solidly established customer base upon first launch. What steps...