We recently had a lot of fun putting together an e-commerce website for the Post-Landfill Action Network, or PLAN. PLAN is a not-for-profit focused on sustainable environmental practices on college campuses. We created a WordPress website for PLAN a while back. In addition to being responsive and attractive, it contains a forum for members to chat and interact.
The e-commerce site is aimed at providing PLAN members with a place where they can get great, environmentally friendly swag for the campus events they may organize. We deployed essentially a brand new website, using the same WordPress theme, Divi from ElegantThemes, that we had used for the main site. We needed a new site because we did not want the whole PLAN website to render as a storefront.
We changed the color scheme, however, so the visitor would understand they were at a related but distinct part of the PLAN website. PLAN opted to place the store in a folder rather than in a subdomain. What this means in practice is that the store is located online at http://postlandfill.org/store/ instead of http://store/.postlandfill.org. Either way would have worked.
We deployed WooCommerce for the shop, and connected it to PLAN’s PayPal account for payments. We also used a variety of WooCommerce extensions or add-ons for additional functionality and product variability. Among the issues that we needed to consider for the store are taxes, shipping costs, and item descriptions, pictures, weights, and dimensions. We also needed to provide for customer uploads of graphics to go on printed items. Like the main site, the store is mobile device friendly.
Creating an e-commerce store is a challenge different from creating a basic website. It is a welcome one, however, and can ultimately provide additional revenue to the site owner.
Check out PLAN’s store. It is open to the public!
