WordPress’ popularity is driven by how simple, easy and intuitive it is to use, especially for someone with minimal technical know-how and no background with any form of coding. As an example, say you’re a small enterprise selling funky socks or facemasks, you may not have the capital to set up an online store, so as a workaround, you ask customers to phone or email you for their orders. As your business begins to grow and you begin getting a more steady cash flow, you can set up a website upgrade fund.

With the newest upgrades implemented to your website, you can now add more, and potentially, varying products to your online marketplace, ultimately setting up a full blown online store, otherwise known as an e-commerce website. E-commerce is the formal term for an online store; choosing the best e-commerce plugin is not a science and is, in our opinion, a matter of both budget and available support from the plugin’s developers and people with the technical aptitude. Tech Warrior’s suggestion would be WooCommerce, the defacto WordPress add-on for an online shop. WooCommerce offers a large amount of personalisation; you can up and downscale the size of your online store; if your business plans on selling in various regions there are built in features to make your life easier like currency exchanges and VAT rates for different countries.

Whichever route you choose, you’ll now be able to add something called a payment gateway, which allows your customers to pay for their chosen products online and not through an invoice you, or an employee, has to write up; reducing the amount of admin you potentially need to do - saving you and your customers hassle and headaches.