Lessons Learned from a WordPress E-Commerce Project

Responsive WP e-commerce Project

WordPress Responsive E-Commerce Website
Responsive WordPress ecommerce website design for Valle Training Gloves

Launched a WordPress e-commerce website yesterday.  The project was a conversion of an existing DotNetNuke website.  Here are my takeaways from the development process:

The Good:
  1. Themes are inexpensive, plentiful, and super easy to install
  2. Plugins are copious, one-click activation makes life easy
  3. WooCommerce set-up is intuitive
  4. Dashboard navigation is straightforward
  5. Quality hosting providers are abundant

The Bad:
  1. Theme documentation is sparse
  2. WP forums can be slow or unresponsive, so you will be on your own when troubleshooting
  3. Small changes to CSS can cause issues in responsiveness "mobile" view
  4. Media (images) can be a pain to upload and replace
  5. Performance can be sluggish

In Summary:

The development process was fairly straight forward.  But like every other WP site I have developed, it seems like there are always issues with managing media files.  (Uploading, cropping, scaling, replacing, thumbnails).  Third party plugins can help alleviate some issues.

Theme customization is trial and error.  Deviating too far away from the original look and feel of the WP theme will almost always cause grief.  By comparison, customizing DotNetNuke skins is much easier.  I don't like the segregation of PHP code snippets, especially when and open and close tags span multiple files.

For a website where blogging is the "core" feature, WordPress is the way to go.  Coupled with WooCommerce, it's also a legitimate platform to quickly launch your next Online storefront.

Website URL:

 http://valletraininggloves.com
Patrick LaJuett
Patrick LaJuett manages a website design agency: + LaJuett.com, where he supports clients as a Web technology consultant and search marketing strategy advisor.

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