WooCommerce the term defines itself, what actually wooCommerce is. WooCommerce is an open source platform that helps in creating ecommerce websites no matter whether it’s for small or large scale. The best part about WooCommerce? It integrates seamlessly with your WordPress dashboard, making it easier to manage your store or products.
Are you also thinking of crafting a shopping website, Woocommerce offers an easy and cost effective way to get started. From selling digital products to physical items, it provides all the powerful features you need to run a professional ecommerce site.
So, let’s dive into depth and know what basically WooCommerce is and how it helps in crafting an innovative online shopping store with robust measures and cost effectiveness.
What is Woocommerce in WordPress?
Woocommerce in WordPress works as a plugging extension which offers numerous features, it basically reshapes your WordPress website into a fully functional online store. You can use its built in features to add products, manage payment options, setting up shipping/delivery methods and the best part is you can use third party plugins to do much more.
Overall, Woocommerce offers you a free open source web to design a beautiful branded store, with endless customization built into our composable UI.
How to Set Up a WooCommerce Website?
WooCommerce is nothing but online store setup, which includes exclusive features like payments options, shipping, add to cart and more. It works as a store development, where you can hire ecommerce developers who help to build online stores, aligning with your ideas and parallely working with modern tools and technologies. Let’s understand the setup stage!
Stage 1:
Select a hosting provider and domain name
Before installing Woocommerce you first need to create a wordpress website. Select a name for your hosting business that aligns with your goals and objectives. After deciding on a hosting package that fits your needs and price range, register a unique domain name that goes well with your brands.
Stage 2:
Install WordPress
Okay, so you’ve got your hosting and domain sorted. Next up: WordPress! Usually, hosting companies let you install WordPress with just one click super easy. Once it’s installed, you can get into the WordPress admin panel and start making your site look awesome.
Stage 3:
Set up and activate WooCommerce
You must install the WooCommerce plugin in order to convert your WordPress website into an online store. You can accomplish this straight from the WordPress plugin directory:
1. Move to your own WordPress dashboard and navigate to plugins>Add plugins.
2. Search for WooCommerce and click install now
3. After installation, click Activate
Once you are done with the activation part, WooCommerce will automatically launch a setup wizard to guide you towards the initial configuration store. This setup wizard will prompt you to add key details like store location, delivery, currency, payment methods, add to cart and more.
Stage 4:
Select a WooCommerce-Friendly Theme
Selecting the ideal theme is crucial since it affects the appearance, feel, and usability of your WooCommerce website. Fortunately, WooCommerce comes with a ton of themes that are designed to work flawlessly with the plugin, both free and premium.
Stage 5:
Select payment gateways
It is an important and crucial aspect to select secure and widely accepted payment gateways to ensure a smooth checkout experience for your customers.
Stage 6:
Set up Shipping Options
The next step will define your shipping zones and methods.Woocommerce provides a number of integrated shipping choices, including local pickup, flat rate, and free shipping. You can configure shipping charges in Woocommerce based on the location of the customer, their weight, or the total order value.
Stage 7:
Add Your Products
As soon as the technical setup completes, the next step is to add your products to the Woocommerce store. This includes:
- Organise your products into relevant categories to make navigation easier for customers.
- You can also add on details for each product, so that users can easily search specific items and products more easily like description, images, stock keeping units, and stock levels. You can simply set up variations and offer related to products through upsells and cross sells.
- Woocommerce provides built-in inventory management tools that allow you to track stock levels, set low stock notifications and enable backorders if needed.
Stage 8:
Install essential plugins and extensions
You might want to install extra plugins for things like analytics, email marketing, security, and SEO optimization to improve the functionality of your Woocommerce store.
Stage 9:
Test your website
It’s crucial to conduct extensive testing to make sure everything functions properly before launching your Woocommerce website.
Testing the payment options, confirming that your taxes and shipping costs are applied accurately, and examining how responsive the application is on different screens, including tablets, smartphones, and desktop computers.
Stage 10:
Launch and market your store
You can formally launch your Woocommerce store after finishing the stage setup and application testing. Start promoting your website as soon as it launches to draw visitors and make sales.
Woocommerce also integrates with various digital marketing tools, including social media platforms, Google analytics and email marketing services which helps you to target traffic to your site.
Why You Should Use Woocommerce?
There are several compelling reasons which supports using of Woocommerce for your online store setup:
1. Fully Customizable and Flexible
Woocommerce provides extensive customization options for almost every stage of the purchase process, including product pages, checkouts, etc. Besides, you can create a store that aligns perfectly with your brand and business goals by selecting from thousands of themes, plugins, and integrations that have been provided.
2. Cost Effective
Woocommerce is a free open web source platform, where you only need to pay for premium themes and hosting, which are also lesser than SaaS platforms.
3. Huge ecosystems of plugins and extensions
Do you know one of the best parts about Woocommerce?There are 800+ official extensions and thousands of third party ones for:
- Payment Gateways
- Shipping solutions
- Subscription and membership
- Marketing and Automation
- Inventory management
4. Scalable and Suitable for any size
Whether you’re selling 5 products or 5000, Woocommerce can handle it. It scales easily with your business, especially when paired with good hosting and catching.
5. SEO friendly
As it runs on WordPress, Woocommerce benefits from powerful SEO tools and plugins like rank math. You can optimize product pages, URLS, meta tags, and blog content to improve visibility in search engines.
Conclusion
Woocommerce is not one more eCommerce platform, but rather the perfect mix of flexibility, control and scalability that lets the companies create their internet presence exactly as they see it. Whether you are a small retailer jumping into online sales for the first time or a startup wanting a personalized solution, Woocommerce has the tools, thousands of plugins and extensions, and freedom to make it all happen.
That is why if you are prepared to turn your WordPress site into a prosperous online store, then Woocommerce is the one and only best option to do so.
