We’re thrilled to announce that, starting today, WordPress.com Business users can connect their sites to their online stores. With three leading ecommerce partners to choose from — Ecwid, Shopify, and ShopLocket — you can showcase, promote, and sell products to your customers directly from your site.
If you’re already a WordPress.com Business user, or are thinking of becoming one, here’s how the ecommerce feature will power your WordPress.com site.
A simple, hassle-free connection
Users with the WordPress.com Business upgrade already enjoy great features like live-chat support, unlimited storage, and free access to all our premium themes. Now, you can turn your site into a sleek online storefront, and let visitors shop from any post or page. The partners we’ve teamed up with — Ecwid, Shopify, and ShopLocket — all provide a smooth and secure ecommerce experience for you and your customers.
Connecting to your store is quick and easy — you initiate the process on your Dashboard, by going to eCommerce Plugins, where you can select the desired service:
After activating the service you’d like to use, you can go to the service’s Settings page to complete any necessary account details — from your Dashboard, go to Settings ? Service Name (i.e. Ecwid Store, Shopify, or ShopLocket). In case you don’t already have an online store, you’ll be able to create one from the Settings page. (If you’ve ever used Publicize to connect your site to any social media platform like Facebook or Twitter, this process, which is very similar, will be a breeze).
Turn your site into a tailor-made storefront
Once your WordPress.com Business site is connected to your online store, the possibilities are endless. Each service is slightly different, but you can feature your products by simply embedding a link to your product into the editor, pasting in a shortcode from the services’ dashboard/admin, or, in some cases, just copying over the embed code into the editor. Regardless of the method you choose, we’ll automatically convert each link into a sleek, professional product image.
If you’d like more control over your site’s visuals, you can tweak your products’ appearance even further. You can modify the look and feel of the products on your page by customizing the shortcode, from image size and background color to “Buy” button text. Depending on the ecommerce service you’re using, you can add products to your sidebar with a designated widget, or even have a shopping cart on your page.
All three ecommerce options are now available to all WordPress.com Business users — we hope you give them a try!
Filed under: New Features, Upgrade, WordPress.com
