Due to the popularity of eCommerce, more and more people turn to run online businesses in recent years. Do you want to open online store and sell digital downloads, photos or many other merchandise over the Internet? If so, you won’t be let down by using this one-click shopping cart solution – WordPress Simple PayPal Shopping Cart.
WordPress Simple PayPal Shopping Cart, as a freemium and light-weight shopping cart plugin, allows users to sell services or products directly from a WordPress website. That is to say, this simple plugin helps to convert your WP blog site into an online store by adding “Add to Cart” button and displaying the shopping cart on any page/post. Note that the payment method is PayPal.
More importantly, this WordPress Simple PayPal Shopping Cart plugin is easy to start and use, and there is no need for any complicated settings. In the following, we would like to introduce the must-have steps to get this plugin started and some practical suggestions as well. Details are presented in below.
How to Set Up this WordPress Shopping Cart Plugin?
At the very beginning, you will need to login to the backend of your WordPress site to set up this WordPress Simple PayPal Shopping Cart plugin. In details, you should go to “Plugins > Add New”” and search this WP plugin. Next, click “Install” and “Activate” button to get it run. If done, enter the “Installed Plugins” section and you will see three setting options – “Settings”, “Deactivate”, “Edit” – as is showed in the following image.
Frankly speaking, to install and activate this WP Simple PayPal Shopping Cart plugin is not time-intensive at all, and instead it only requires a few clicks. By the way, if you want to know more details, there is a detailed plugin installation tutorial for your reference.
How to Configure this Shopping Cart Plugin?
Here, we will continue to explain how to make settings on this WP Simple PayPal Shopping Cart plugin. First of all, you shall click on “Settings” to go into the editing page of this plugin.
Set General Settings
Once done, you will be prompted to make “General Settings” as follows. In the “Quick Usage Guide” section, you can be aware of the easiest way to apply an “Add to Cart” button and the shopping cart to your WordPress site by pasting those traditional product codes.
Note that, there is another version of product code to create a display box, which will be discussed later. Now, let’s start with the traditional product codes.
Use Traditional Product Codes
For better understanding of the provided codes, we would like to take “Delicious Ice Cream” for example. To add a product page, you need to open a new page or post and enter this item’s name (we use “Delicious Ice Cream” here) in the post title area. In the meantime, you shall write the product description in the post body section. If done, you will have to place the following codes next to the product.
Beware that you can replace the product name and price to suit your preference. At length, remember to add your product’s picture by clicking the “Set Featured Image” link. If nothing goes wrong, you will see a button of “Add to Cart” and shopping cart like the following screenshot.
Create Product Display Box
If you have no ideas about how to design and lay out the entire product page, then you will need to set up display box for your product. Besides, this solution is good for your site to sell more merchandise than only a few goods hands down. To display a product in a display box, you can refer to the following codes.
At this place, we take the mentioned “Delicious Ice Cream” as example. It is obvious that we only add the absent information to the mentioned code, including product name, price, description and URL.
If completed, you will see the product is presented in a display box as follows. In addition, it needs to point out that both of the two basic product codes can be applied to all products on your page, post or a shop page.
Add Variant Attributes
In some cases you are going to sell some complex products like T-shirt and shoes, you will have to add variant attributes to the mentioned two versions of product codes. To do this, you shall add a line of attributes like:
Of course, you are empowered to add many other variant attributes in the format of “var2=”, “var3=” ore more. Here, we would like to show a T-shirt sample based on the variant attributes above.
Pay attention that we add variant attributes to a product display box, and it looks like the following image.
Make Settings on PayPal on Shopping Cart
As for the remaining parts in the “General Settings” page, you should drop down and make necessary settings for PayPal and shopping cart. For example, you can specify your PayPal email address, shopping cart title, currency, currency symbol, base shipping cost, free shipping orders, return URL and “Add to Cart” image, etc.
Pay attention that the base shipping cost refers to the shipping fee for individual product, and it only works when some products are put into the shopping cart. If you don’t want to charge any shipping cost or base shipping cost, you can set it at 0 (zero).
In the following image, you are allowed to set up those options:
Enable automatic redirection to the Checkout page when the product is put into the cart.
Add special instructions to the note field on PayPal checkout page.
Reset Shopping Cart when users go into the return URL page.
Open a new tab when anyone clicks on the Checkout button.
Hide the Shopping Cart button.
Configure Email Settings & Enable Product Discount
For more advanced settings, you should go to “Email Settings” and “Coupon Discount” sections on the top of the editing page. For email settings, you are empowered to enter your email address, send email to purchasers or yourself and fill in the title and content of an email.
As for discount/coupon settings, if you plan to offer a special discount for buyers, you will need to check the box next to the “Enable Discount Coupon Feature” option. In the meantime, you shall create a valid coupon code, discount rate and expiry date in the “Add Coupon/Discount” area.
In the end, don’t forget to “Update” all changes to take effect. Till this step, you have completed all essential steps to set up the WordPress Simple PayPal Shopping Cart plugin. If you are about to sell a wider range of products online, you may consider using those best shopping cart plugins.
Best eCommerce Hosting Solutions
From what we have discussed above, it is not hard to set up an online store with all kinds of shopping cart plugins on the market. However, to run online business is time-consuming and painful especially for new starters.
Hence, it is advisable to go with a helpful and powerful hosting solution. In the following chart, there are best eCommerce hosting solutions based on our long-term investigations.
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