Technology brings ease AND complication to our lives. This question, “What do I need in my WordPress Ecommerce site?”, brings what seems to be a long, frustratingly unattainable list. How are you supposed to know the difference between a merchant account and a gateway? The sales tax codes are enough to make a person crazy. This is definitely a good time to hire a professional web developer to build and maintain your ecommerce site. Trying to set up all the needed banking, shipping and plugins for ecommerce on your own can create bigger problems and more money than if you gave the job to the guru.
Here are some things you will need to go over and decide with a web designer:
Option 1 is to go with a Shopify or PayPal type company. You can eliminate the headache of setting up a merchant account at the bank, and instead use one of these companies to take care of it all for you. This is a simple one stop option, as long as you don’t mind paying more for each transaction.
Option 2 is to go to the bank and set up a merchant account, and use the gateway company that your bank partners with. This is the a la cart way, and you or your web designer will purchase the shipping and sales tax plugins needed. WooCommerce in WordPress will be linked with the gateway.
WooCommerce for WordPress is what we usually to use for setting up your product pages. It has most of the bells and whistles, and many plugins work with WooCommerce. One of the plugins that we have found to be crucial for selling on the web is a Sales Tax code software. Sales Tax codes are different for each state. That would be a nuisance to set up without a special plugin, but to make it nearly impossible is the fact that tax codes vary from county to county within each state…and the codes change often. So we require our WooCommerce customers to retain a Sales Tax Code plugin like Tax Jar. There are many different apps that do this, with varying prices. What they do is take care of entering and updating the tax codes, as well as calculating the tax.
Setting up an account with the shipping companies and purchasing plugins will have to be done in order for you to calculate and print shipping labels when using WooCommerce. The main shipping companies are USPS, UPS, and FED EX. If you have decided to go with a PayPal or Shopify, these accounts are not on your list to purchase, as they have all of this built in to their software.
Just know that your web designer has your back, and will help you navigate these questions. Give us a call at 360 WEB DESIGNS to get started on your first big sale.
