WordPress is one of the most popular website builders in the world. The number of eCommerce sites on WordPress is increasing dramatically, especially in 2020. Then, if you want to set up your own WordPress eCommerce website, in this guideline, we will show you detailed steps to do that.
Set up your business plans
Business plans are essential for every type of business, regardless of online or offline ones. Without business plans, you will easily be out of track. Then, building a valid business plan is the first step to do.
Find your target customers
Let’s face facts: You can’t satisfy everyone. Therefore, to deliver the best service and products to your customers, you need to narrow down your audience. After that, you’ll have to learn about them: their behaviours, demography as well as geography. Thanks to that, you will be able to serve them well. Then, you can improve the customer satisfaction along with your revenue.
Choosing products to sell
You need products to sell on your WordPress eCommerce site. Now, it’s time to select items to sell on your online store. Will you resell products from a supplier, or hand – craft products yourself? Will you sell your items in bulk, or individually. Depending on your segmentation and target customers, you can find the right products and service to offer to them
Understand your competitor
This is such an important step for your business. Learning about your competitors can help you determine your advantages as well as disadvantages. From that, you’ll be able to set the suitable price. Also, it’s a great way to improve and upgrade your products/
Choosing your brand name
Brand name, tagline and slogan can greatly reflect your business perspectives. Thus, you should think of the brand name as well as slogan carefully.
Developing your unique value proposition ( UVP)
ECommerce is such a competitive market. Thus, to compete with thousands of WordPress eCommerce website out there in the market, you need to highlight your unique value proposition. Thanks to that, customers can instantly see the value of your products. Then, they will choose you over other website or brands
Set up your WordPress eCommerce website
Register your domain
Domain name is simply your website’s unique address. Without the domain, customers can’t go to your online store.
However, don’t jump right in settling on a domain name. Instead, you should confirm if the domain is available first. There are many tools that help you with this. One of them is HostGator’s free domain search tool.
Register your domain name
With WordPress eCommerce website, you’ll need to buy your domain name. For example, sites like NameCheap sell domain names at an affordable cost. Particularly, you can get the domain name that you like with only $10 to $20 per year. This is such a bargain.
Sign up for web hosting
After getting your dream domain name, now, it’s time for you to find hosting providers. Keep in mind that every website needs web hosting, therefore, you should choose hosting providers carefully. Depending on the type of your WordPress eCommerce website, you will be able to find the right web hosting providers. Often, eCommerce web hosting will charge you from $5 to $20/ month
Also, we highly recommend not using shared – hosting. Why? If you share your web hosting, the cost will be much lower. However, once the other websites get hacked, your WordPress eCommerce website will become vulnerable as well. In case you want to offer credit card payment, this is highly risky.
Install WordPress
In this step, there are two options for you
- One – click installs via your web hosting providers
- Manually download WordPress and upload it to your hosting account
Let’s dive deeper into these two options
One – click install
Needless to say, this option is much easier, more simple and faster than the other one.
To use this option, make sure you choose the hosting providers that offer one – click installation. For example, HostGator allows you to easily install WordPress with one click
Manually install WordPress
With this option, you simply download WordPress into your computer and upload it to your hosting dashboard. It’s not that complicated. However, it surely take you a lot more time than one – click installation
Build your WordPress eCommerce website
Design your WordPress eCommerce website
In this step, you can either ask a professional designer to help you, or do it yourself
Of course, hiring professional designers will grant you stunning, outstanding and modern websites. However, you’ll need to prepare a sufficient budget when choosing this option. On the other hand, “ do it yourself” option will be a lot cheaper. Nevertheless, keep in mind that WordPress is not for beginners or those who have no experience in coding.
Install WordPress eCommerce plugin
WordPress doesn’t offer you everything you need to build an online store. Therefore, a high chance is that you’ll need to install some plugins to make your website functioning. And one of the most essential and popular WordPress plugins is Woocommerce. In this guideline, we will focus on this plugin. Woocommerce is totally FREE to download and use. With this WordPress plugin, you can easily turn your website into an online store without spending too much effort and budget.
Install and active Woocommerce
Login to WordPress dashboard. Then, click in “ Plugin” on the left menu.
Type in “ Woocommerce” in the search bar to find Woocommerce. Then, choose “ Install Now” to download and install it.
Once the “ Install Now” button turns into green “ Activate” button, click this
Add in your business details
Now, it’s time for you to fill in your business information in Woocommerce
Make sure you choose the “ I plan to sell both physical and digital products” option
Choose payment option
In this step, you choose the payment option that you want to offer on your online store. Stripe and Paypal are two popular payment options. Therefore, you should include them in your WordPress eCommerce websites.
Shipping option
When it comes to eCommerce, shipping is one of the most important factors. Then, you’ll need to choose shipping rate. Woocommerce will automatically set your current area as your “ Shipping zone”
Select additional plugins/ theme
According to your requirements and needs, you can choose the suitable plugins/ themes for your eCommerce site. If you can’t decide now, you can choose the theme later on. No need to rush
Activate Jetpack
Finally, you need to activate Jetpack. This will enable your payment setup and automate taxes
Choose themes for your WordPress eCommerce website
Choosing themes is an exciting, yet difficult step when building your website. WordPress has thousands of themes for you to choose. Despite the variety of options, you’ll need to spend a lot of time searching and finding the right themes for your online store. Make sure your dream WordPress themes fit your budget. Otherwise, you might go bankrupt for them
There are both free and premium WordPress themes for you to choose
To install free WordPress themes
- Log in your WordPress dashboard
- Go to “ Appearance” and click “ Theme”. Then, you’ll be moved to the Theme dashboard
- In the theme dashboard, choose “ Add new”. After that, choose the Free WordPress theme you like and click “ Install”. Make sure you look into them carefully, or go through their “ Live preview” first
- After a few minutes, an “ Active” button will appear under the theme. Click it and you’re ready to go
To install premium WordPress themes
- Download the .zip file of the new theme. Then, log in to WordPress Dashboard.
- Go to “Appearance”, then click “Themes” to go to the theme dashboard.
- Click “Add New” to go to the WordPress theme dashboard.
- Click the blue button at the top that says ‘Upload Theme’.
- You’ll then be prompted to choose a .zip file from your computer. Choose your new theme file. Then, you’re ready to go
When it comes to choosing WordPress themes, it might be daunting and mot very easy. Then, in this case, we want to introduce you a stunning and powerful WordPress theme – Lusion
Lusion
Lusion is a multi purpose WordPress theme. Therefore, it can fit in many types of online store, from Fashion, Clothes to even Food or Furniture. There are over 25+ homepage demos for you to choose. All of them are well – structured, clean and professional to display your products beautifully. Moreover, if you want to make some change with this theme, you can easily do that without a line of coding
Check out our best WordPress themes for your online store
Add products
You can upload your products right after activating Jetpack, or do it later.
If you choose to do it later, when you return to dashboard, click on “ Product” on the left menu and click “ Add New”
After that, you can upload your products. Make sure that you include necessary information such as product names, prices, products images and product description
Install some additional WordPress eCommerce website plugins
Depending on your requirements, you will be able to choose suitable plugins for your online store. In this guideline, here are our recommendations
Yoast
SEO plays an important role in digital marketing. Therefore, to best optimize SEO, Yoast will come in handy. Moreover, it has both a Free and paid version for you to choose.
This plugins will analyze your content, assess it and give some suggestions to make it more SEO – friendly
Securi
When it comes to online buying, security is a must, especially when you want to offer customers credit payment options. Then Securi will be such an ideal solution. It can greatly boost the security of your website. Thanks to that, you don’t need to worry about hackers or broken website
Site reviews
As you might know, customer reviews have a great effect on customers’ buying behaviour. By encouraging people to leave comments, reviews or feedback on your WordPress eCommerce website, you can gain more trust from customers. Moreover, most of customers’ feedback is related to the products and rich in keywords. Thus, it can improve your SEP as well
In conclusion
Above is our guideline for setting up WordPress eCommerce website. However, to ensure the success and quality of your website, we highly recommend hiring professional developers. In this case, it’s our Woocommerce development services.With more than 16 years in e-commerce, we can grant you an outstanding and professional-looking web store, not only on WordPress, but also on Magento or Shopify. Working with our decade-long experienced developers, you surely get your dream online shop.What are you waiting for? Contact us here
