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And in many cases at very low cost and even free, wordPress' open architecture has encouraged a host of plug-ins to provide functionality on an as-needed basis. WordPress themes and back-end functionality deliver all the functionality of a dedicated website at a fraction of the cost of a customized site, wordPress is increasing its reputation as a platform for building ecommerce websites - from a simple blogging CMS.

So you need to take a considered approach to this problem, making a mistake can cost you revenue and may lead to increased support costs down the road. How do you choose between them, when you have different plug-ins claiming to perform the same function, the question is?

Easy Installation

Unless you want a third party involved, can manage the site with your own hands-on, the etailer (online retailer), the whole ethos behind WordPress and plug-ins is that you. You should be able to handle the installation process yourself to save further costs involved with hiring third-party with the skills to do it for you, and unless you are a complete newbie, any plug-in should be a breeze to install within WordPress.

Lack of Conflict and Plugin Stability

Functionality restriction and increased frustration and costs to get the issue put right, or even with WordPress itself which results in downtime, some plugins will conflict with other plugins. Not all plugins are equal - some are more equal than others because they are developed by programmers who are better at their job and have a deeper understanding of the business objective they are looking to help users achieve.

This will be a commercial outfit and you will need to pay for it, and frequently, look for a plugin with a track record of use and from a source which has developed a reputation for developing WordPress plugins.

Ongoing Support

You may find the support from whoever has developed and supplied the "free" solution do not have the ability to support it, or you need to overhaul the site in such a way that the plug-in needs to be tweaked, if a free plug-in is installed and then develops an issue. Free plug-ins can result in a very high cost to you due to lack of effective support for the solution.

You are losing a lot of money, or customers cannot complete online purchases, lack of support when the plug-in performs a critical function is extremely costly - if it takes your site down.

Shopping Cart Plugins

Asking too much information which is not relevant to the purchase or not able to accept a wide variety of payment options, slow loading of pages. But also provides an easy to administer product interface for making changes and can handle different order scenarios as well as being very fast - most customers abandon the purchase (called "shopping cart abandonment") due to a slow or clunky purchasing process e.g, you need to make sure the shopping cart plugin satisfies all the aforementioned requirements. One of the most important plugins is the shopping cart - this lets users select and deselect products they are interested in buying and takes them through the ordering and payment process.