I recently had the privilege to work on an AMBER POS integration with Woocommerce for a very upscale and high performing retail business in the greater Vancouver area. It was quite the experience, as integrating WordPress with Woocommerce often is, but in the end we worked through a complex development project with a simple solution. Integrating WordPress with Amber POS actually had to bypass woocommerce entirely, but there is a relatively simple solution!
AMBER POS is currently set up to integrate with BigCommerce. BigCommerce is a pretty well known e-commerce platform that uses a similar codebase to Shopify. BigCommerce recently has seen quite a bit of success and I’d say that I personally started hearing about it more and more in 2019-2020 and now going into 2021. It’s a robust e-commerce platform that definitely gives Shopify a run for it’s money.
While this may seem a bit convoluted in nature and workflow, this solution allows you to benefit from integrating with AMBER to bring a retailers products online and not miss out on the benefits of WordPress like SEO (Search engine Optimization), Blogging, Custom Content and overall customization. Most of us know that it’s far easier to customize WordPress than it is BigCommerce or Shopify, and while I feel Woocommerce gives BigCommerce a run for its money, Woo has not garnered enough usage in this use case to be utilized.
Here’s what you need to do!
1. Sign up for a professional BigCommerce account.
2. Work with AMBER POS to integrate BigCommerce & AMBER POS (they are great here).
3. Utilize the “BigCommerce for WordPress” plugin to bring your BigCommerce store into your wordpress environment.
4. Develop your custom, beautiful, high-performing wordpress website as you normally would.
5. Style (With CSS) your BigCommerce product integration.
6. Configure your product-level data and store settings in BigCommerce
You’ve got a solution that’s robust and works!
Why would you want to use this “three platform” solution to bring products stored in AMBER POS online for e-commerce?
WordPress is so much easier to use and rank for SEO purposes. It’s also more user friendly when it comes to content creation. I’ve always found a WordPress site easier to rank than a Shopify or BigCommerce so you benefit from the perks of WordPress, the ecomm of BigCommerce and the automation and inventory control of AMBER POS.
This allows you to work with PHP and WordPress developers who are far more affordable and flexible, and provide a total custom storefront for your client or business.
