Easy Digital Downloads (EDD) plugin is the second most well-known WordPress eCommerce plugin, after WooCommerce. EDD plugin is used to create an eCommerce store for selling digital and downloadable products. This plugin is mainly installed by musicians, writers, or digital content creators to sell their digital work. By using the Easy Digital Downloads plugin, one can download the contents available on the website after successful payment.
Easy Digital Downloads offers specific and sophisticated designs for selling digital products. This plugin comes in two different versions, free and premium. The cost of the premium version of the EDD plugin can range from $99 to $499 per year. You can integrate both the versions of this plugin with other platforms to extend your eCommerce store’s functionality. The payment interface supported in the free version of the EDD plugin is PayPal Standard, Test Payment, and Amazon Payments. If you are using the EDD plugin, then it is easy for the developer to make any changes to the codebase.
Features of Easy Digital Downloads Plugin
Some of the essential features of Easy Digital Downloads are as follows:
- The setup process of the EDD plugin takes only a few minutes, and this feature makes it one of the excellent choices for eCommerce stores of all sizes. After installation, there are no transaction fees for using this plugin.
- The EDD plugin is easy to use.
- The hundreds of extensions available in the EDD plugin can add additional features to your eCommerce store. Some of the extensions that can add massive features for your store are ConvertKit, Software Licensing, EDD Message, and MailChimp.
- This plugin can help you convert leads into sales in a free-flowing and continuous way.
- The robust reporting system can help you track customer purchase history. This system can also help you to display earnings, sales, and analytics of your eCommerce store.
- Easy Digital Downloads is compatible with almost all WordPress themes. If you have not installed any themes yet, then you can use the themes built explicitly for the EDD plugin.
- The EDD plugin is always up-to-date to ensure that it is compatible with the latest versions of WordPress.
Steps to Install Easy Digital Downloads
- Log in to WordPress as the admin user. In the ‘Dashboard’, select the ‘Plugins’ tab.
- Click on ‘Add New’ and search for the plugin.
- Select the ‘Easy Digital Downloads’ plugin and click the ‘Install Now’ button.
- After installation is complete, click the ‘Activate’ button.
- You can check if the plugin is installed correctly under the ‘Downloads’ tab in your WordPress Dashboard.
- You can see the default pages created by EDD under the ‘All Pages’ tab. These pages are Checkout, Purchase Confirmation, Purchase History, and Transaction Failed.
Configure Easy Digital Downloads Plugin
To configure the settings of the Easy Digital Downloads plugin, follow the steps given below:
1) Go to your WordPress dashboard and select the ‘Downloads’ tab.
2) Select the plugin from the list and click the ‘Settings’ tab.
3) By default, you can see seven tabs for different settings. These tabs include settings such as General, Payment Gateways, Emails, Styles, Taxes, Privacy, and Misc.
4) Make the necessary changes and click the ‘Save Changes’ button on each page.
The seven different tabs under EDD Settings are:
1) GENERAL
This tab is used to set the general settings, and this has three different subsections. These subsections are General, Currency, and API.
The General Subsection is further categorized into three sections, and these sections are Pages, Store Location, and Tracking. You can set the Base Country and Base State/Province under the Store Location section. You can skip the Pages section, and then under the tracking section, you need to uncheck the ‘Allow Usage Tracking’ to make sure that EDD does not collect your data anonymously.
In the Currency section, you can see the Currency as ‘US dollars ($)’ and the Currency Position as ‘Before – $10’ by default. If you want to change these options, then you can choose the same from the drop-down.
In the API section, the ‘manage_shop_settings’ user can generate an API key by default. You can check the box next to ‘Allow User Keys’ to allow the users to generate an API key. This section includes RESTful API, and this API can retrieve data remotely in either XML or JSON format.
2) PAYMENT GATEWAYS
In the Payment Gateways tab, you can see both General and PayPal Standard, and you can see both General and PayPal Standard subsections.
In the General subsection, you can select the ‘Payment Gateways’ and ‘Payment Methods’. The settings made on this page can reflect in your eCommerce store. The free version of EDD supports PayPal Standard, Test Payment, and Amazon as the payment option. If you check the ‘Test Mode,’ then no live transactions are processed. This section can be used to test out the payment gateways using a sandbox (test) account.
By default, the PayPal Standard selected as the Default Gateway. Under the PayPal Standard subsection, you can add the required details to connect to your PayPal account to EDD.
3) EMAILS
By using this section, we can set the email settings. This section also includes three different subsections, and they are General, Purchase Receipts, and New Sale Notifications.
In the General subsection, you can select a reliable and affordable way to deliver essential mails to your customers. You can upload your log and enter the sender’s name and email address.
In the Purchase Receipts section, you can customize the purchaser’s receipt and email by entering the Purchase Email Subject, Purchase Email Heading, and Purchase Receipt. You can also use template tags in the text area. You can use HTML and CSS in the text area to customize the email templates.
One can also customize the email customers receive after the successful transaction under the New Sale Notification. Also, you can configure the sales receipts email sent out to customers.
4) STYLES
To set the appearance of your eCommerce store, you can use the Styles section. You can enable and disable different styles. You can check the ‘Disable Style’ option to disable all the styles, and then you can add your styles using CSS. Also, you can use this section to customize the Button Style and Color.
5) TAX
You can set the tax percentages depending on your base country using this section in the settings. Also, you can set the appearance of taxes in store, fallback tax rate, prices entered with the tax rate, and tax rates during checkout in this section.
6) PRIVACY
The two different subsections of the Privacy section is General and Export & Erase. In the General subsection, you can set the simple solution to let customers agree with the privacy policy before the transaction. Also, you can set a Label for your Privacy Policy.
The Export & Erase subsection is used to configure actions to be taken when a customer wants to purchase anonymously.
7) MISC
This setting has six different subsections, and they are Miscellaneous, Checkout, Button, Text, File Downloads, Accounting, and Terms of Agreement.
The Miscellaneous subsection allows you to enable the following settings:
- If a user adds products in the cart, then you can redirect them to the checkout page by checking the box near the ‘Redirect to Checkout’ option.
- You can enable the Cart Item Quantities.
- If you want to see the debug logs, then you can enable the ‘Debug Mode’. To view the debug logs, you can go to ‘Downloads’ and click the ‘Debug Log’ option under the ‘Tools’ tab.
- If you want EDD to remove all the data when the plugin is uninstalled, then you can check the ‘Remove Data on Uninstall?’ box.
In the Checkout section, you can configure your checkout page settings. It is recommended to add an SSL certificate to your WordPress site to use secure URLs (HTTPS) on the checkout page.
You can customize the checkout field text and buttons to match your eCommerce store by using the Button Text section.
In the File Downloads section, you can set the file download limit and link expiration time. If you don’t want users to re-download items from their purchase history, then you can check the ‘Disable Redownload?’ option.
The Accounting section is used to manage the Stock Keeping Unit assigned to individual products. In the ‘Terms of Agreement’ section, if you need, then you can configure an agreement. If you want to show an agreement to the terms on the checkout page, then you can check the ‘Agree to Terms’ box and add the agreement text under the text box. You can also set a label that should show next to the agreement in the ‘Agree to Terms Label’ box.
OTHER SETTINGS OF EDD PLUGIN
You can see some of the EDD settings under the ‘Downloads’ tab in the WordPress Dashboard. These settings include Payment History, Customers, Discount Codes, and Reports.
The Payment History setting displays the history of every purchase, including the details filled by the customer during the checkout. You can filter the data based on the date and payment methods.
All the customer’s details, such as names, primary emails, purchases, and time spent on your eCommerce store can store in the Customer setting option. You can also check specific customer details using this setting.
If you want to add new discount codes, then you can do the same under the ‘Discount Codes’ settings by clicking the ‘Add New’ button. This page can display all the existing discount codes sorted sequentially with their code, amount, uses, status, start date, and expiration date.
You can see your eCommerce website’s earning under the Reports tab. You can check the sales performance using this report.
Conclusion
Easy Digital Downloads is used to create a digital product store. The intuitive and exciting features of EDD makes it easy to use, even by beginners. This plugin can help customers to download any digital products after the successful payment easily. Some of the digital products that can be sold using the EDD eCommerce store are Software, Photography, Music, Video, eBooks, and more.