If you are thinking about selling digital products, you will need to choose an eCommerce solution for setting up your webstore. In our days, selling digital products & services is one of the best way to make money online. Unlike selling physical products, selling digital products requires no inventory nor dealing with shipping.
Easy Digital Downloads – Selling Digital Products
In principle, there are many eCommerce solutions that you can choose from. The graph below shows the number of active installations for each eCommerce solution.
Number of Active eCommerce Stores by Platform
Shopify, Squarespace, BigCommerce and Volusion are proprietary hosted solutions. Propriety hosted solutions are platforms where you pay a monthly or annual fee and get a fully operational store where you do not have to worry about the technical operations. On the other hand, WooCommerce, Magento and Easy Digital Downloads are open source eCommerce platforms. This type of platform allows easier customization to fit the needs of your chosen business. Both WooCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads is integrated into the content management system WordPress.
WordPress is a free open-source content management system and about 30% of the world’s websites are run by WordPress as its one of the most popular blogging tools available. Furthermore, WordPress offers a rich eco-system with plugins for all kind of additional features to add to your websites and many talented developers are ready to provide their assistance.
Easy Digital Downloads is a WordPress Plugin by itself which transforms WordPress into an eCommerce store optimized in selling digital products. As there are no shipping options the process is more streamlined and optimized for selling digital products than alternative such as WooCommerce which still carry the legacy to ship products in their processes.
Easy Digital Downloads – Selling Digital Products
In this article, we reviewed 10 Best Easy Digital Downloads eCommerce Stores where the Easy Digital Downloads platform is a key component to monetize the traffic of their website. Our selection of these EDD eCommerce stores are mainly based on the Alexa Ranking – which can be used as an indicator of how popular such store is – and also checked how well implemented typical elements of high-converting eCommerce stores were. We based our analysis on public accessible data sources of course, with the caveat that our analysis might be limited or we might have missed some things.
Here are the 10 Best Easy Digital Downloads (EDD) websites we could find starting at number 10.
#10: PROMOTELABS
The Art & Science of Better Marketing
Source: https://promotelabs.com/
Promotelabs offers the best marketing tool & services as evident by countless outstanding reviews from new and experienced online digital entrepreneurs. According to its users not only are their tools streamlined and easy to incorporate in their online stores but their customer support is highly professional and readily available to assist 24/7. Their online tools give users access to Exclusive Licensing, Software, Membership, Courses/Trainings & Consulting.
With 4 bestselling products to offer, any EDD eCommerce store can surely find something they can use to boost traffic, generate potential customers and exponentially increase online presence. ProductDyno, one of PromoteLabs product is a flexible digital product delivery platform that helps online stores with user management and product delivery. It effectively manages and delivers premium digital content, software, licensed products and digital services. PostGopher, a WordPress plugin that completely works on autopilot, converts blog posts and pages into downloadable PDF books that is then sent as a link to the site readers.
PromoteLabs offers deals that can help entrepreneurs, online businesses, bloggers, marketers and lets owners streamline their lead generation, funnels, customer retention, upselling, customer lifecycle strategies while also helping businesses on how to get automated so they can profit and repeat while also staying at the top of their game. They offer free digital publications about viral strategies, product launching, writing killer headlines and how you could potentially double your profits overnight.
Although PromoteLabs social media presence is not evident that they generate huge traffic, its presence is highly debatable with its Alexa Global Ranking of 143,442. Its website fall a bit short with 7.8 sec loading speed however its webpage design is easy to navigate and their products speak for itself. Backed by countless of good reviews, and products that cater to every online entrepreneurs PromoteLabs is one website that can be sure to generate regular internet traffic. They also provide Blogs, Discounts and an Affiliate program where members are sent automatic updates on current promotions and deals. Hence we deem this EDD eCommerce store as one of the best.
Website Metrics:
- 143,442 Alexa Global Ranking
- >600 Followers on Facebook
- >1500 Followers on Twitter
- GT Metrix Page Speed: 7.8sec 1.39MB
#9: Radiustheme
WordPress Themes Plugins
Source: https://www.radiustheme.com/
RadiusTheme offers WordPress themes & WordPress Plugins that are fully responsive, clean, and mobile & SEO friendly. Once purchased, their products can be used for a lifetime where updates are free and customer support is extensive. They also have Themes and Extensions for Joomla. Joomla, like WordPress, is an open-source content management system for publishing web content developed by Open Matters, Inc.
Their products range from themes for SEO Master to Fitness or Gym enthusiasts. RadiusTheme site has blogs available where one can learn the Best WordPress themes for certain business types of services and articles about the best plugins that might be suitable, together with updates on the latest themes and information on how to customize or use certain Theme Customizer.
RadiusTheme has 3 types of subscriptions which are WordPress Personal for $69/year, WordPress Business for $99/year, and WordPress Developer for $149/year. Each subscription comes with their own set of inclusions like plugins, support & updates, license, domain tech support, and Lifetime Usage license.
Membership is not automatically recurring and users have to manually renew after their membership expires. The site offers support to its users through chat/email and even skype 15 hours a day. Payments are via Secure Payment using most credit and debit cards together with Paypal and 2CO.
RaduisTheme site has an Alexa Global Ranking of 79,620 and an impressive page load of 2.0s. The site’s design is simple, easily navigated and user friendly. With the use of proper tagging, they regularly post updates on their twitter site where they have 2,215 followers. One traffic generating factor for RadiusTheme could also be their 100% Money Back Guarantee on the products that they offer where users and potential users are assured of quality and outstanding after-sales support.
Website Metrics
- 79,620 Alexa Global Ranking
- >800 Followers on Facebook
- >2,300 Followers on Twitter
- GT Metrix Page Speed: 2.0s, 2.67 MB
#8: PIXINVENT
Premium & FREE Bootstrap Templates
Source: https://pixinvent.com/
PIXINVENT provides Premium & Free Bootstrap Admin Template, HTML & WordPress Template, Plugins and graphics that are high quality and easy to use. Among their selling points are responsive design that supports all screen devices, easy to use products that can be customized and integrated per customer requirements together with free updates and quality support.
Most templates are priced at $24 with the option of paying additional $7.50 for 12 month support extension. Demo of each template is available so you can check the overall look of your website before finalizing purchase. Templates have awesome elements that make your website fun, interactive and easy to use such as animated statistics, advance search, social cards and animated weather or whatever element suitable for your type or business or niche. Before being able to finalize the purchase you must first create an account with Envato Market. A link will then be sent to your nominated email address so you can access your purchase once payment has been accepted.
Pixinvent
Alexa Global Ranking is 68,231 which is so much higher than the first 2 stores
we reviewed. Their social media accounts may not have a lot of followers
however they make sure that it is regularly updated and uses proper tagging.
Their website is simple and has a streamlined one page design that you can
scroll through all the information you need. They have also incorporated a chat
service if you need help pre purchase to make sure that they can provide you
with the best solution that your specific store or site might need.
Website Metrics:
- 68,231 Alexa Global Ranking
- >150 Followers on Facebook
- >10 Followers on Instagram
- >80 Followers on Twitter
- GT Metrix Page Speed: 22s, 5.04 MB
#7: Problogger
Make Money Blogging
Source: https://problogger.com/
ProBlogger, founded by Darren Rowse, an Australian speaker, author and blogger, is a website for all aspiring bloggers around the world. They aim to inspire, teach and support bloggers to create blogs that not only serve their readers and make the world a better place – but which build income streams for the bloggers behind them.
The site offers helpful blogs on how to better your content. They have eBooks and Courses that you can purchase in order for you to hone your craft as a blogger and increase your potential into creating a revenue generating skill through your passion which is writing. They also help those who are ready to use their skills in finding their dream jobs through their Job postings. Among the list this is one who has taken advantage of the potential that social media can provide with its thousands of followers.
By making use of all possible avenue to generate traffic like Facebook community, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter it is no wonder that among millions of website ProBlogger is ranked 48, 048 in the Alexa Global Ranking. We believe that proper tagging, newsletters, podcasts, and a very active media presence have garnered Problogger a great deal of good conversion rates coupled with good SEO skills. With a lot of people today that wants to be an influencer through social media channels, this site is sure to generate a lot of traffic as it promotes and encourages one to follow their passion in blogging and influencing people online.
Website Metrics:
- 48,048 Alexa Global Ranking
- 98,000+ Followers on Facebook
- 19,100 Followers on Instagram (Darren Rowse founder of ProBlogger)
- 236,300 Followers on Twitter
- GT Metrix Page Speed: 2.4s, 1.4 MB
#6: MONSTERINSIGHTS
Grow Your Business with Confidence
Source: https://www.monsterinsights.com/
MonsterInsights is the best Google Analytics Plugin for WordPress. It provides small business owners with information and statistics about how their websites are found and how it is being used. It is trusted by over 2 Million businesses worldwide with big names such a PlayStation, Microsoft, SUBWAY, FedEx and many more.
Connecting your WordPress site with Google Analytics is made effortless so you can start making data-driven decisions to grow your business as soon as possible. Data generated through MonsterInsights shows you which country your visitors are from, what are they most interested in, which device are they using, their age, gender, and a whole lot more. It shows you exactly which content gets the most visit, so you can analyse and optimize it for higher conversions. MonsterInsights shows you important eCommerce metrics like total revenue, conversion rate, average order value, top products, top referral sources, and more.
Being a data analytics site has its perks for MonsterInsights where they are aware of their user behaviour thus they are able to respond and create marketing campaigns or promotions that would target their customer. With big names using them they can be considered as a leader in the market especially with an Alexa Global Ranking of 45,600. Their website might be simple but it makes use of SEO optimisation where H1 H2 & H3 are properly used to increase their probability of making it to the top of the search result.
Website Metrics:
- 45,600 Alexa Global Ranking
- >200 Followers on Facebook
- >900 Followers on Twitter
- GT Metrix Page Speed: 3.8s, 1. 36
#5: WRAPPIXEL
One Stop Solution for all your Backend and Frontend Design
Source: https://www.wrappixel.com/
Wrappixel, an Indian company which began in 2016, offers website developers, website designers and agencies FREE & affordable Premium Bootstrap Admin Dashboard Templates & UI Kits. For great quality their products come at $29 for single use and $399 for extended use.
The business has not been in the industry that long having been established only in November 2016 however in the last 3 years, they have now a total download of 168,541. Their goal is to help reduce the difficulty that web developers and agencies by creating stunning backend interfaces that can help save time and money.
Wrappixel has 40+ Free & Premium Bootstrap @ Angular Templates and UI kits, 40+ Free & Premium Bootstrap Templates and 20+ Free and Premium Angular Templates. At WrapPixel, you will get the free admin template with bootstrap 4, material and angular framework. They have a wide range of free bootstrap admin template, free angular admin templates, free material angular admin templates. You are free to use it for your client project.
With an Alexa Global Ranking of 45,243, we can say that their website design, their proper use of SEO optimisation and good reviews about their product has helped them with their online traffic. They offer good support to both users and those that are still looking into acquiring their products and have Blogs that are also well written.
Website Metrics:
- 45,243 Alexa Global Ranking
- >700 Followers on Facebook
- >20 Followers on Instagram
- >2300 Followers on Twitter
- GT Metrix Page Speed: 5.1s, 1.6MB
#4: UICookies
Free Responsive Bootstrap Themes and HTML Templates
Source: https://uicookies.com/
Every website needs a good template that is customized to suit the needs of the target market and the products and services offered. Uicookies offers a great variety of templates for every type of website be it business, commercial or for personal use. UICookies have templates from Photography sites to Transportation and logistics where each template is designed with forms buttons and navigational tools to suit the specific need of the user. Some have elements that offer reach improvement, awesome services, are interactive, technologically sophisticated or just simple and clean. They even offer free HTML5 website templates using Bootstrap framework. Some templates come in minimal designs so creative people can customize the design to suit their style.
The All Template License, which is their popular and in-demand product costs $59.00 each while the Single Template License costs $15.00. Clients should create their own accounts in order to purchase the products and download them. Clients may also opt to subscribe in their daily newsletter.
Uicookies website has a Global Ranking of 35,120 and this website is very popular in the Country of India wherein there is a good traffic rank. The website has an IPv6 record and Website is a direct publisher for Google ad content. It also built with Google Sitelinks Search Box so people can reach the content more quickly from search results and WordPress Plugins. This is also a good sample of EDD E-commerce because its easy to use and has templates for all types of business and niche. The site also offers FREE Templates that makes it a viable source for people who are looking into affordable or templates at no cost. Although they do not have a lot of followers on their social media pages they are still able to generate traffic through blogs and reviews from their users.
Website Metrics:
- 35,120 Alexa Global Ranking
- >500 Followers on Facebook
- GT Metrix Page Speed: 5.1s, 1.6MB
#3: WPForms
Drag & Drop WordPress Form Builder
Source: wpforms.com
WPForms is perfect for business owners, bloggers, designers, developers, photographers, and basically everyone else. If you want to create a custom WordPress form, then you need to use WPForms.
This site offers the best WordPress contact form plugin. It can create and build online forms for your websites quickly. The WPForms has the most powerful and user-friendly WordPress forms builder in the market. They offer products features like Drag & Drop Form Builder, Form Templates, Responsive Mobile-Friendly, Smart conditional Logic & Easy Payment process.
WPForms offer their products starting at the Basic Deal good for 1 year with a cost of $39.50 including essential tools to build your online form. The highest deal they offer is Elite with a cost of $299.50 good for 1 year, this is a Premier solution for developers & agencies. Clients have an option can pay either via Paypal or Credit Card is known as (Stripe Payment). The site also offers special deals that you can save up to 50% off for a limited time only. The countdown for this deal shows in the above part of the website for marketing purposes and to get the chance of increasing the traffic number of the website to invite more visitors.
The WPForms website has a Global Alexa Ranking of 25,757 which means they also received considerable organic traffic from search engine. The USA is the highest Country Traffic Rank for WPForms. We also found out that this website built with Google Analytics, Facebook Conversion Tracking by allowing a user to track advertisement clicks and other Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Plugins. This site also uses Sitelinks Search Box to reach the content more quickly from search results. Moreover, this site is consisting of much good Software and Plugin to run the website smoothly. Overall, WPForm is a good example of Easy Digital Downloads (EDD) E-commerce.
Website Metrics:
- 25,757 Alexa Global Ranking
- >1,000 Followers on Facebook
- >1,200 Followers on Twitter
- GT Metrix Page Speed: 4.0s, 748KB
#2: Greyscalegorilla
4D Made Easy
Source: greyscalegorilla.com
The Greyscalegorilla website offers motion designers and cinema 4D artists tools and training so they can get better at their chosen craft. The site offers a variety of products related to Cinema 4D creation and Motion Design such as pieces of training and tools in any level by creating easy-to-follow tutorials and training that show people way more than just what buttons to push. Greyscalegorilla also works to develop tools to streamline your creative workflow and to help remove tedious and repetitive tasks so you can spend more time creating great work. The website is created for clients who love animation, persons with interest in all aspects of Cinema 4D, Movie Creator, Animators and the like.
The website has a creative design template consisting of the most important part of the website itself. Greyscalegorilla highlights their Product Features and customer that you’ll find at the homepage of the website. Some of their Customers are from big companies like Disney, Sony Pictures, Fox, Microsoft and many more. You may contact the Support Team quickly. They also require you to create an account in Greyscalegorilla for Customer Area so you are able to see your purchase easily for your record.
Product features and details can be found in each product images when you point your mouse. It also includes the number of licenses you purchased and can easily proceed to checkout. The site is accessible to use and user-friendly website.
In addition, The website has a Global Alexa Ranking of 23,518 which means that they receive considerable organic traffic from search engine. Another source that invites large traffic for Greyscalegorilla are their job vacancy posts, social media links and subscription to daily news letter. Overall, the website is put together professionally which is visible by its fast page load speed of less than 4s.
Website Metrics:
- 23,518 Alexa Global Ranking
- >68,000 Followers on Facebook
- >100,000 Followers on Instagram
- >19,000 Followers on Twitter
- GT Metrix Page Speed: 3.7s, 9.7 MB
#1: Digital Photography School
Digital Photography for Everyone
Source: digital-photography-school.com
This Digital Photography Website (DPS) website offers a variety of resources related to digital photography such as tutorials, ideas & advice for every photographer whether you are a beginner or a pro.
They will also teach you different tips and techniques that will help you get the most out of your camera by creating professional and stunning photos. You may notice that the DPS website is very informative and therefore offers great value to visitors. The main advantage of this EDD eCommerce store is the images that are both attractive and engaging that one can just browse through them for hours on end.
Digital Photography School offers 24 Photography e-Books for different topics that most people love and several Courses with tutorials. Easy Digital Downloads is used to process the purchase of their e-Books (costing around $19) and the purchase of the higher priced courses ($99 each course). Visitors can pay either via PayPal or Credit Card (via Stripe) which are probably the most common payment methods used by many eCommerce stores.
The website has a global a Global Alexa Ranking of 16’927 which means they receive considerable organic traffic from search engines. Also, when looking at their webpages, nearly all of them are Search Engine Optimized (SEO) optimized with descriptive URLs, meta descriptions properly filled out, H1, H2 include keywords and long, content rich articles pepped up with many images. The site offers informative content eager to attract many visitors. Another source of traffic are the social media channels with a combined follower of more than 1 million. Without offering great content it would not be possible to attract the attention of such large audiences
In addition, the website also offers free tips via its weekly newsletter. It is very likely that they receive many sign-up since it’s a nearly nothing-to-loose proposition especially if you are truly interested in photography. Overall the website is put together very professionally which is also visible by its quite fast page load speed of less than 3s. Especially for image rich websites, this is only possible when carefully optimizing caching, images sizes, script load times to make the website faster. This is only on top of a very professional website which has all the elements in place to make this a well converting eCommerce store. Overall a great example of a well-functioning Easy Digital Downloads store.
Website Metrics
- 16’927 Alexa Global Ranking
- >830’000 Followers on Facebook
- >385’000 Followers on Twitter
- >105’000 Followers on Pinterest
- GT Metrix Page Speed: 2.3s, 1.38 MB
Conclusion – Learnings from our Review of the some of the 10 Best Easy Digital Downloads eCommerce Stores
There are so many things that affect an EDD eCommerce store to succeed or fail in terms of traffic, conversion and even life span. One must be ready to test what works for you. We cannot discount the fact that page loading time, website design and ease of navigation plus the value that users or potentials customers can get from visiting your site plays a vital role in your business.
Although the EDD eCommerce stores that we have reviewed are not all social media superstars we must not forget the power that it has in terms of customer awareness and the impact that it can provide any website when it is properly utilised. SEO optimization, good products reviews and regular updates on designs, discounts, promotions and product information peak people’s interest and help in making sure that we are constantly visible in the world wide web. There are so many EDD stores out there that we might have missed some good ones so please do let us know your take on this topic and if there are more that you might share by leaving a comment below.
