When starting an online business, entrepreneurs must consider many things. Some of them, such as developing products or creating a marketing plan, can be tedious and difficult. WooCommerce assures that adding eCommerce functionality is easy.
We will help you get your WooCommerce store up and running.
Use the WooCommerce Wizard as your guide
The setup wizard guides you through how to create a WooCommerce online store. It will ask you questions about where you are located, your industry, and the products that you use to create recommendations. You can also install extensions to provide additional functionality, such as marketing and unique product types.
After that, you will be asked to install a template. This theme controls the layout and design aspects of your site. You don’t need to worry if your WordPress site is already set up and compatible with WooCommerce. However, if you are creating a new store or brand, it is important to choose the right theme. Storefront is a great theme option. It’s easy and intuitive to use, but it can also be customized. You can find more information in our guide to choosing WooCommerce themes. Don’t worry, you can always switch themes later.
After that, you can enable WooCommerce Shipping & WooCommerce tax. Although these extensions are optional, they offer a lot of great benefits for store owners. WooCommerce Shipping provides discounts on USPS and DHL shipping labels. It also allows you to print labels from your dashboard. WooCommerce tax calculates sales taxes based upon your location. This eliminates the need to set rates manually.
The store checklist serves as a template to help you set up your other stores. You can click on any item to be taken to the settings page. You can also skip them and return to them later. But let’s examine each one individually.
Add products
You can click on Add my product in the wizard and choose to import a sheet, add products manually or migrate from another platform such as Shopify or BigCommerce.
If you want to manually add a new product, you’ll be taken directly to the product page. Or you can use the WooCommerce dashboard to go to Product > Add Product. There you can enter a title, description and photo for your product, along with details about shipping and pricing.
WordPress is a familiar platform. However, WooCommerce product pages have a different layout than other pages and posts. A new WordPress page will have a main text box, but that is not where your product description will be placed. This important piece of writing should be in the “short Product Description” field at the bottom of the page.
Instead, the text block at the top of the page is an excellent place to provide details about the product such as its construction, components, and country of origin.
Also, you will need to choose a product type. There are many types of products, but the most commonly used are simple and variable. Simple products like books don’t offer many options. Variable products allow customers to choose from different sizes and colors.
Set up payments
If you wish to set up payment through the wizard you will be able to choose a gateway from the same screen. Go to WooCommerce – Settings – Payments. You can make cash payments, check payments or bank transfers. To charge customers online, you can set up a Payment Gateway.
A payment gateway secures the credit card information of your customers and validates it before transferring the funds to your bank account. There are many choices available. Common gateways include Stripe or PayPal.
The WooCommerce Payments extension is free and easy to install. It takes just a few clicks to get you started. You can keep your customers on your site while they shop, accept Apple Pay, manage refunds and payments directly in the WooCommerce dashboard. Additional benefits include instant deposits, payments in multiple currencies, and refunds directly from the WooCommerce dashboard.
Install tax
You can set up taxes in your WooCommerce store by clicking Set up tax in our wizard or going to WooCommerce Settings – Tax. You can enter prices for products with and without tax. You can also select the address to which you would like tax calculations to be made.
Researching tax rates will be necessary depending on where you are located and where your sales go. Also, you might want to consider consulting a professional. Install WooCommerce Tax and it will take care of all the details.
Personalize your store
By clicking Personalize my store you can quickly create a homepage, upload your logo and set up store notices that will appear on all pages. You can always modify these later.
Sending an order
The setup wizard allows you to confirm your store’s location and set shipping prices for your country and other countries. This will handle basic shipping settings. For more details, visit WooCommerce – Settings – Shipping. You will find options like free shipping and shipping zones.
WooCommerce Shipping offers a quick and easy setup, label printing, and discounted shipping rates. WooCommerce Table Price Shipping is available for more complicated orders, including pricing based upon weight or cart totals.
Beyond the wizard: Design and functionality
Your store is now ready to go after you’ve completed the steps in the setup wizard. However, depending on your products and business, you might need to consider a few more things.
Additional pages can be created
If you already have a WordPress website, most likely you have all the important pages (e.g. a homepage, about page, contact page, etc.). However, if you have a brand new site, you will need to have those pages set up.
The theme you choose took care of much of the design work. This theme can be customized to fit your brand or store. The drag-and-drop WordPress editor allows you to add visually appealing content on any page.
Add extensions
Extensions are similar in function to WordPress plugins but are designed for WooCommerce. Some extensions are not required by every store. WooCommerce is able to provide all the essential functionality. However, you might need some extra functionality.
We’ve already talked about extensions for different product types like subscriptions or memberships, shipping, payments and taxes. You also have great options for marketing and store management. All extensions are available in the WooCommerce Marketplace.
However, it is important not too much. Installing too many tools can slow down your site, and make your dashboard look cluttered. Instead, choose those that enhance the user experience.
Don’t know where to start? WooCommerce Essentials offers a selection of extensions specifically designed to help store owners start their stores. They are organized according to their purpose (growth or security, customization, etc.). The WooCommerce team has thoroughly reviewed and verified them.
Secure your store
It’s important to protect your store once you have it set up. All you need to ensure your store is secure are a few simple steps.
Jetpack Security offers a fast and simple setup. This includes everything you’ll need to protect your WooCommerce store, including backups and malware scanning, as well as spam prevention. Jetpack also offers security tools such as downtime monitoring, brute force attack detection, and downtime monitoring.
Join the WooCommerce Community
A strong community is vital. Although we are biased, the WooCommerce Community is our favorite. It is a great place to learn from others, share your own experiences, and make connections with other stores who are experiencing the same issues as you. You will also find many people who are passionate about helping you succeed.
Are you ready? Get started with WooCommerce today.
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