If you are using your WordPress site for e-commerce, having a reliable shopping cart plugin is a must. Tips and Tricks HQ has designed the WordPress Simple PayPal Shopping Cart for this purpose. With a rating of 4.3 stars, close to 400,000 downloads, regular updates and great support, the plugin is definitely worth giving a try.
WP Simple PayPal Shopping Cart allows you to include an Add to Cart button on your posts or pages, as well as display the actual shopping cart in your posts, pages or sidebars. Visitors can see what they currently have in their carts, and remove products or change their quantity with a simple click of a button. Payments are processed via PayPal.
Features
The free plugin is lightweight, meaning that it won’t slow your site down and only includes the minimum options. With that in mind, it still provides all the features you will need to easily add a shopping cart to your online store. You can display the cart with a help of a simple shortcode or make the dynamic Add to Cart button part of your theme.
WP Simple PayPal Shopping Cart lets you sell tangible items, as well as media files like e-books, photos, videos and music. You can integrate the plugin with NextGen Photo Gallery to be able to sell images from your gallery. When customers buy a media item, they will automatically receive an email with the file as soon as the payment is completed.
You can customize the product display box with the help of a shortcode, and choose one of the available Add to Cart buttons or add your own image for this purpose. You can set up discount coupons and track them to see who used which discount code. The convenient orders menu will display all orders you’ve received on your e-commerce site so far.
You can configure an email that your customers will receive after buying a product. WP Simple PayPal Shopping Cart is compatible with multi-site installation and can be translated into all languages. All in all, the plugin is very user-friendly, providing simple configuration features and allowing you to quickly start selling products through your WordPress site.
Installation
To add WP Simple PayPal Shopping Cart to your site, go to WordPress plugin repository and download the file. In your WordPress dashboard, go to Plugins and click Add New. Select the Upload tab, click Choose File and find the plugin file you have previously downloaded. Click Install Now and then click Activate Plugin.
Settings
You can find the plugin’s configuration options under the WP Shopping Cart item of your dashboard’s Settings menu. Here you will find a Quick Usage Guide, which explains how the plugin works and provides two shortcodes, one for the Add to Cart button and another for the shopping cart. In this menu you can also enter your PayPal email address, assign a name to your cart, customize the message to be displayed when the cart is empty, change the currency, enter shipping costs and more.
Brief Usage Guide
To create the Add to Cart button anywhere on your site, copy and paste the first shortcode provided one the plugin’s Settings page:
[wp_cart_button name="PRODUCT-NAME" price="PRODUCT-PRICE"]
Simply replace the PRODUCT-NAME with the name of the item you are selling and the PRODUCT-PRICE with the price of the item. You can use the shortcode under the name, description and picture of each product you are selling, allowing the buyer to easily add items to the shopping cart as they are browsing your site.
To create an actual shopping cart, use the second shortcode on the plugin’s Settings page:
[show_wp_shopping_cart]
You can add this in the sidebar, create a dedicated page for it or add it under every product’s description. This will display the cart’s contents and allow users to quickly remove items or change the quantity as they are shopping.
You can also add the compact version of the cart by using the following shortcode:
[wp_compact_cart]
To create a nicely formatted product display box, use this shortcode:
[wp_cart_display_product name="Product Name" price="10.00" thumbnail="http://www.example.com/images/product-image.jpg" description="Description of the product"]
Simply enter values such as name, price, image URL and product description to customize the code for each specific product you are selling.
Use the following shortcode to include the Add to Cart button to your media files:
[wp_cart_button name="My Download" price="10.00" file_url="http://example.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/ebook1.pdf"]
Replace the name and price values, and include the link to the uploaded media file you are selling. If you want your media files to show up in a product display box (rather than create something attractive with the WYSIWYG editor), use this shortcode instead:
[wp_cart_display_product name="My Download" price="10.00" file_url="http://example.com/uploads/ebook1.pdf" thumbnail="http://www.example.com/product-image.jpg" description="Description of the product"]
This option will allow you to once again enter the name of the product, its price and download link. In addition, you can now also include its image and add a description, all of which will be formatted in a single box. Once the purchase is completed, the buyer will receive an email with the link to the page where the media filed can be downloaded.