You need an effective way to showcase your products, provide key information, and make the products seem like a good deal. It’s not just about displaying your wares – you need to have a professional-looking shop if you want the products you sell to seem like high-quality items. You want to build up your credibility, so that your shop has a serious, even dignified, feel about it. As WordPress is a very popular CMS that is widely used for e-commerce websites, let’s look into some useful WordPress plugins that can help you customize your website and make it a bit more attractive and user-friendly. Some of these are designed specifically for either WooCommerce or JigoShop, and will require having one of these installed, some will work with both, and some will work with any WP theme and will not require either WooCommerce or JigoShop to be previously installed. This way you have a somewhat diverse list of plugins to choose from, depending on how you have envisioned your online shop – in the end, only you can decide on what feels right for you. So, if you are getting started with WordPress, remember: good research and a rich plugin database are your most valuable assets.
uSquare
With uSquare you get a fully responsive, universal grid that is ideal for displaying products and services. First of all, this plugin is the work of a longstanding CodeCanyon member and elite author Br0, who ranks amongst the top 40 by overall number of sales, and the plugin itself has an average rating of 4.54. The huge popularity of the plugin, amongst the 20 top selling WP plugins on CodeCanyon, can be explained by its simple, elegant and highly intuitive design that offers the user many avenues of customization. It is highly adaptable and can be used for a variety of tasks, but since we are interested in enhancing our e-commerce website, its primary function will be to display pictures and information about any number of products. uSquare allows your visitors to quickly scan through a number of products, the pictures and basic description fitting neatly into squares that form a checkered pattern. Visitors can then pause on something they like and quickly expand the selected square to gain more information, and then simply close it back up when they are done, so they can continue their shopping spree. You can fit as much information as is needed as it can be scrolled through within the compact space, and you can also include social media icons that allow quick sharing of the content. It is a very stylish and efficient way of presenting your products to the potential customer and it works as well on mobile devices as it does on big screens.
Zoom In/Out Effect Slider
There are three predefined skins, but there are a great deal of customization options available as well. The zoom in/zoom out effect is particularly well executed – you can adjust the final zoom size of each image as well as the duration of the zoom effect. You can also disable this effect if you wish. The plugin allows you to play around and utilize it in many possible scenarios, going from basic to very flashy. It is a great way to showcase the best deals and top sellers for example, or to provide key information and video material on various product lines. The plugin is very adaptable and highly functional, a great asset to any serious online shop.
Fancy Product Preview
A cool feature is the ability to select a number of additional images that can be viewed in the Fancy Preview, thus allowing easy access to a mini gallery for each product. If you don’t really want to go far beyond the basic web store look, but you still want some additional functionality without too much hassle, then this is the perfect little plugin for you.
WooZoom
These four plugins offer you good options in two distinct schools of thought in e-commerce: uSquare and the Zoom In/Out Effect Slider give you something a bit different, they help you stand out from the competition and are great for more serious and dignified websites; while Fancy Product Preview and WooZoom let you add a bit of functionality to your basic online shop layout, and are good for simple online retailers that deal with the more banal side of online shopping. In any case, it is up to you to use all available resources and improve your website.
