How To Set Up An Ecommerce Store With Wordpress

This guide covers exactly how to set up a WordPress ecommerce website with the WooCommerce plugin.

The WordPress platform originally began as a fashion to blog online. Over the years, it has evolved into a total blown "content direction organization" – in other words, a backend software that can "power" any type of website – including an eCommerce website.

That said, WordPress equally an eCommerce platform isn't a expert fit for anybody. Here'south a brief rundown of reasons it would be a good fit:

You want full control over your website
You want to easily build out other portions of your site that aren't ecommerce (blog, pages, etc)
Yous don't want the monthly & transaction fees of an integrated ecommerce platform similar Shopify or BigCommerce
You want to start small and build out your site as you lot grow (ie, and avoid the fees while doing so)
You aren't daunted by some technical work – ie, hearing the acronym "FTP" makes you more curious than scared (note – WordPress is built to be easy for first timers, but information technology'due south non a click, click, done software either)
You lot don't plan on having a complicated payment processing system at first (ie, you'll be using PayPal, Amazon or Google Wallet, not processing payments on your ain server). WooCommerce works perfectly fine on SSL, but once more, y'all'll need that expertise to implement it properly
Yous want a common platform where y'all can easily pull developers in on a project basis every bit you grow

WordPress will not exist a expert fit for yous if:

Yous want all the hosting and technical details simply taken care of (especially speed, etc)
Yous are plan on having a full (ie, non-PayPal) integrated payments/inventory system correct from the kickoff without programmer help (ie, you'll be selling across platforms like eBay/Etsy and need inventory numbers to be automatically updated – WooCommerce tin do this, but it can exist complicated)
Y'all want dedicated customer support that's already paid for
You want a single arranged predictable cost of software every month – rather than a potential developer bill

If WordPressdoesn't look like a skillful fit, you lot should check out either Shopify (see their plans) or BigCommerce (run into their plans) for an all inclusive eCommerce platform.

Note – I wrote a quiz to assist choose the best eCommerce platform for your needs and wrote a WooCommerce Review.

Otherwise let's dive into the guide.

Getting Started – Installing WordPress

Your absolute first step for using WordPress for an eCommerce website is to actually install WordPress on a hosting account with your domain proper noun. Here'south my guide to setting up WordPress step by step on a hosting account if you don't have information technology already.

Ecommerce sites need fifty-fifty more than retentiveness for PHP than a standard WordPress install since they are larger and more than complex than a simple blog. Having thousands of products + thousands of visitors tin can add together even more resource requirements to your hosting account.

If y'all're starting out small (hundreds of products, low thousands of visitors), a shared linux hosting account (like the i I mentioned in the setup guide) is expert, but it needs to have more than than 64M of retentiveness…preferably 256M.

I recommend InMotion Hosting (meet their plans) with HostGator (meet their plans), and SiteGround (see their plans) as well beingness good options.

If yous're starting out large (thousands of products, many thousands of visitors), you're going to need either a managed WordPress hosting business relationship from a company like WP Engine (encounter their plans) or Liquid Web (come across their plans) or a VPS hosting business relationship from InMotion.

Intro to WordPress eCommerce Options

At that place are really 3 components that make a "regular" website an "eCommerce" website – product pages, shopping cart, and a checkout process.

Yous can add together the eCommerce functionality to WordPress with a plugin. Plugins are separate pieces of software that yous install and activate into WordPress that basically adds to what information technology can practise.

In this case, nosotros need a plugin that will create custom product pages, that will take a shopping cart functionality allowing individual visitors to add products to a cart throughout the time they are on the site, and that will sync up with a payments arrangement to accept payments and match those payments up with the visitors' products purchased. Wow.

There area lot of plugin options to plough your WordPress site into an ecommerce site, only by far and away the leader is WooCommerce past Automattic (the people behind WordPress.com and JetPack).

It has the functionality, the ease of utilise, the reputation, community, and versatility to be a solid long term choice for an ecommerce plugin.

It'south the well-nigh search engine optimization-friendly ecommerce platform I've seen. I'm an SEO Specialist who'due south worked on major brands' platforms, and from an SEO perspective, I would honey to be able to piece of work with WooCommerce. It gets rid of virtually all duplicate content (a SEO plague for online stores) and has Schema markup built-in.

Plus, the company that creates information technology, WooThemes, has been a core office of the WordPress community for years. In fact, Woocommerce has been acquired by the same company that owns WordPress.com and supports the WordPress.org foundation. Since they've open-sourced the software…information technology's not going abroad anytime before long.

It has support and plenty of versatility for what you'll need.

Oh – and it's complimentary.

Here's WooTheme'south sales pitch & overview.

Quick aside – Anytime something is free, you should wait for the catch. In this case, WooThemes makes coin providing extensions to WooCommerce for things like advanced inventory direction, directly credit carte processing (ie, the costless version syncs with PayPal, but non directly with your credit card processor). WooThemes also sells custom themes, which are encouraged but not required.

While there are solid alternatives similar MarketPress out in that location, if you're going to get WordPress for your online store – I recommend using WooCommerce for its strong programmer base, app store and compatibility with a range of plugins & themes. It'due south what this tutorial will focus on.

WooCommerce has a ton of options and tons of documentation. Here's how I generally install it for clients with a focus on things that often trip up first-timers. It may look daunting, but information technology's really straightforward once you lot become a handle on the full general structure.

Install Your Ecommerce Plugin

To get started with WooCommerce, navigate to your WordPress Dashboard and Add New Plugin. Search for WooCommerce, and simply install and activate WooCommerce by WooThemes.

Afterwards activating your plugin, you'll be prompted to Install WooCommerce with a sorcerer to take intendance of the initial settings. It'southward worth information technology.

WooCommerce needs several pages to function – including a Cart folio, etc. At that place is i page, the Shop page, that you may want to customize. Simply for at present, you tin allow the wizard install these pages.

You'll then need to set your location, units and currency. Be certain to annotation your tax rates. You can edit and alter them later.

And at present for Shipping & Tax. You can (and will) need to alter/customize this later in the Settings. But for at present, you tin enter in full general settings to get the store started.

Then you'll need to enter Payments. Payments are the trickiest part of running your own shop. I recommend entering PayPal so that you take something to start. You can explore other options in the settings as needed.

Next you'll need to set your theme (ie, your pattern / layout). WooCommerce has a lot of unique design classes that have to be covered. I recommend using the default Storefront theme as your placeholder while you set up your products and store for new theme. I'll embrace it in coming sections.

At present that WooCommerce is installed – you lot tin go learn more than near the production, head to a New Product page or return to WordPress Dashboard. I recommend heading to the Create Your First Product page so that y'all can go through the walkthrough and cheque out the information you'll demand to enter.

If yous click on "create your first product" – you'll be sent to a new production folio. I recommend explore the Product page to encounter what you lot need – but don't actually add whatsoever new products (except for a test product to encounter how your design / theme looks). Your next footstep will exist to brand sure your shop URL construction is correct and your WordPress Theme integrates with your new ecommerce functionality. Otherwise, you'll create a mess for yourself later.

Aside – in addition to theme compatibility, continue in mind that there are many 3rd political party plugins that will sync upwards with WooCommerce. Brand a note to prepare up those options. For example – consider Analytics.

To call the ecommerce analytics available in Google Analytics powerfully useful would be quite an understatement. But yous can't take reward of it unless your site's analytics tracking is setup correctly.

Yous should be using the Google Analytics by MonsterInsights (formerly by Yoast) for your Google Analytics integration, simply nosotros desire to go a step further and markup your online store with lots of specialized ecommerce tracking (similar passing SKUs, and item attributes seamlessly into Analytics).

To do that, caput back over to Add New plugins and search for WooCommerce Google Analytics Integration. It too is produced by WooThemes, and is free. Install and activate. Boom – y'all've just added tracking that agencies normally sell for $$$$. You can do this same procedure for Yoast SEO and many other plugins.

Now that you have WooCommerce installed, permit's motility to the site structure before moving to General Settings.

Setup Your Online Store Construction

Ane huge benefit of WordPress + WooCommerce is efficient setup ofpermalinks ie, "permanent links." Online stores oftentimes have a thousand ways plus 1 to display products. It tin can generate really inefficient, ugly, and search engine unfriendly URLs for your products and product categories.

Once you prepare up a permalink construction, it's difficult to alter. Even though the defaults are mostly all-time, I like to confirm them before moving to General settings or annihilation pattern related. To kickoff, get to the new WooCommerce link on your Dashboard –> WooCommerce –> Settings –> Products.

WooCommerce needs a product archive folio that'due south going to display all your products and/or categories. Recollect of it like your Blog page that displays all your recent posts…but with your products.

WooCommerce uses a standard WordPress page for this annal. By default, it'south the Shop folio. You lot can edit that name in Pages –> All Pages. Y'all can create a new folio. Y'all can telephone call it whatsoever (ie, 'Store'). You can exit it default.

Your visitors don't have to see it, or you can go to the main Settings –> Reading and go far your Homepage. But it has to be, and this is where y'all go to customize it.

After confirming that page, click the link to look at your Production Permalinks.

This page allows you lot to set your WordPress permalinks and your production permalinks. When initially setting up WordPress, yous should have enabled Pretty Permalinks (see how hither).

These permalinks are structured and then they never conflict with blog post categories you may write. Just they are customizable if you want to customize them. For example, if you have a Gloves production category…but a Gloves weblog category, then past default they will be displayed equally

youronlinestore.com/category/gloves
youronlinestore.com/product-category/gloves

Make sense? Awesome. Usually the defaults are absurd, only if you want to customize it, and so this is where you lot practice it. I also generally cull the Product option under the Production permalink base of operations, only for aesthetics.

Now your online store setup is finalized. Feel gratuitous to navigate to the new Products link in the main WordPress Dashboard to create a sample product or category to come across how the URLs expect to yous before going further.

Get a Compatible WordPress Theme

Earlier nosotros go to Full general settings, you lot'll want to brand certain that your WordPress Theme is uniform and setup with WooCommerce.

As a WordPress refresher, Plugins control the functionality of your website. Themes command the design and "output" of your functionality – ie, what your visitor is going to see.

A plugin like WooCommerce adds a lot of functionality that some themes aren't built to handle or output correctly (especially themes with a lot of built-in choices). Information technology'south important to find a theme that doesn't produce product pages that a garbled and ugly.

That said, yous'll also want a versatile theme that can exist designed, updated, and in full general simply give yous the website yous want.

At that place's a few options that I recommend.

First, you can become a WooThemes theme. They are premium (ie, not gratis), well-fabricated, and (of course) sync perfectly with WooCommerce. This is the easiest (especially with the integrated support) merely the priciest solution. Check out their selection here.

2d, you tin use a WordPress default theme like Twenty-Twelve. These are complimentary, well-made, and can be extended by installing a Child theme. Your installation probably already has one, but yous can grab one via Themes -> Add New. This will be the cheapest pick, but besides one that requires some technical work to go the site you want.

Third, you tin can head over to a market place with high-quality standards like ThemeForest, and get a WooCommerce compatible premium theme. These are well-made, and a very like shooting fish in a barrel solution, but be sure to define exactly what you're looking for in a theme. Many oversell their features. But definitely become browse ThemeForest's selection here. I as well highlighted 25 of my favorites here.

Fourth, you tin get a Theme Framework such as Genesis by StudioPress. Information technology'due south my preferred way of building sites. Genesis adds some critical theme functionality (similar adding content to category pages), syncs beyond all sorts of plugins, and allows you to easily make design changes without impacting your whole site (peculiarly with born Child Themes).

Y'all can go read Genesis' sales pitch here, but it'sthe way to build a WordPress website in my experience. All the other options are awesome though – and WooThemes especially is a good fit if you want something that'south plug and play. Feel complimentary to skip down.

If you go with Genesis, information technology takes a small addition to make information technology sync upwardly with WooCommerce. Here'southward how to sync it up.

First, go get Genesis and install your kickoff Kid Theme (similar Genesis Sample). At present, check out the screenshot below.

Genesis Theme by StudioPress and WooCommerce

You're going to practise you're first scrap of PHP programming 🙂 Go to Appearance –> Editor –> In your Child Theme, Select Theme Functions –> Copy and paste the code beneath exactly (ie, no spaces or additions) into the functions.php file. Save.

[php]add_theme_support( 'genesis-connect-woocommerce' );[/php]

Now , caput over to Add New Plugins. Search for Genesis Connect. Install and activate the one by StudioPress.

Y'all're done. Stone out with Genesis.

Whether you go with Genesis, WooThemes, a ThemeForest theme, default theme, or a unlike theme solution, just make sure to install and activate information technology to ensure that WooCommerce plays well with it, and it makes sense for your shop and customers.

Now let'southward dive into…General Settings.

General Store Settings

Under the WooCommerce link in the Dashboard menu, navigate to Settings and await at the General tab.

The first matter to note is all the default settings. You'll have set most in the sorcerer, only most are set by WooCommerce. They may or may not be right for your store. But either way, you'll demand to click through each section and subsection to check on them.

WooCommerce also has built-in styling for buttons, borders, and the similar. If you want to get real control, you can customize these in your style.css theme file…or y'all can only match these to your website color scheme and everything will look great.

Too, WooCommerce allows yous to enable Lightbox. It's a piece of code that allows visitors to click on your production images and run into them in a bigger, zoomable window without leaving the product page. Super-awesome.

Y'all'll also demand to double-check the Production Paradigm settings. Expect to run into what size your production images are. Are they square? What do they scale down to? In this case, WooCommerce allows you to gear up Itemize Images (which appear in category pages), Single Product image (the featured paradigm on the Product page), and Product Thumbnails (which announced beneath the featured image on Product pages).

The image setup tin can get a scrap complicated, but WooCommerce has excellent documentation here which I'd read earlier uploading thousands of photos. Merely if the dimensions aren't quite right, don't fret since you can come to this same screen and regenerate your image dimensions.

Most of the residue of the Settings are fairly self-explanatory, or have excellent documentation. The main thing is to pay attention to detail, and take advantage of all the options that WooCommerce gives yous. If you go with a platform solution, you often won't accept this many options available. And other self-hosted ecommerce solutions (like Magento) are nowhere about as user-friendly.

Walk through the settings and customize every aspect of the experience for your customer even what email they receive when they reset their countersign.

Outside of the General Settings, WooCommerce has a couple other tabs you should understand when initially setting up your online store.

Offset is the System Status department. This is where you can go your technical information from memory allocated to version number.

Also, if y'all ever want to reset your entire shop, you tin can head to the Tools tab. Hopefully you'll never need it, but it's adept to know where information technology's at either way.

The second is WooCommerce Extensions. This department is where the magic can happen.

Equally I said in the Into to Options, one huge reward of WooCommerce is the deep community of developers and apps they have that seamlessly work with the software.

Unremarkably, when building an eCommerce shop with specialized functionality (like syncing with QuickBooks or setting up a new payment gateway), you'd need to rent a programmer to program a custom solution for a problem that honestly doesn't demand to be that custom. Information technology'd cost hours and $$$ to develop.

With WooCommerce, you get access to a huge range of extensions that y'all just "plugin to the plugin" and make WooCommerce become further. Most all the extensions are paid, but they toll manner less and showtime working much faster than a custom solution.

You should check out the WooCommerce Extensions marketplace hither. They are like shooting fish in a barrel to add on and this tab is where you lot head to manage them.

So at present your WordPress ecommerce shop is functional and prepare. Next is exploring what you lot need an online shop for in the first place – your products.

Setup Product Pages

Your theme volition provide the design, look, and feel of you product pages, just here's how to sympathize all that goes into your production pages. Hither's an case production page with the default setup and a default 20 Twelve theme.

It has all the nuts needed, but is also highly customizable. And all the attributes are marked up with Schema, which helps with search engine optimization.

If you have whatsoever reviews, they volition also appear below the production description

Below is a full capture of the backend in WordPress that generates that page. Note especially where the content gets pulled from (ie, Chief Content vs. Short Description).

A few features to phone call out:

Product Categories – self explanatory, but y'all can add together them directly from the product page
Product Tags – add additional categorization that doesn't need to be a product (like colors, etc)
Product Gallery – pictures that announced as thumbnails on the product page. As the customer clicks on them, they cycle to go the "large" featured image
Product Epitome – set up the main feature image

But the powerhouse of the production page is the Production Data widget. This is where you set your product blazon, price, shipping and more. But I'm serious when I call it a powerhouse. Once you lot effigy it out, you can do all sorts of fun stuff here and sell nearly any type of product you can imagine.

WooThemes has a ton of documentation on products here. But I desire to highlight the near confusing aspect. A simple product is a production with no options, no changes, and isn't a part of a collection. It's only a unmarried, simple product. Like a book or something.

Grouped products allow you lot to put a product as function of a drove. For example, you could post a dining set that would include the chairs, tables, etc in one grouped product…even though they would also exist individual simple products as well.

Variable products allow you to add attributes to a product (ie, small, medium, large or blue, green, red) and then that you can sell i product, but allow customers to choose the exact variation they want.

And External Products permit you to list and sell products off your site with your retail partners.

The Inventory and Aircraft options are highly customizable besides.

As I mentioned, you tin organize your products direct from the product folio, just you tin can besides organize them as a whole from the Products menu.

The category level pages also allow the cosmos of subcategory pages. Shipping classes, which I haven't actually touched on, are fairly self-explanatory but let you to customize your shipping policies and rates based on distance, weight, bulk, etc.

Quick aside: If you are running a theme like Genesis that allows you to put content on your category pages, these can exist a huge opportunity for your search engine optimization strategies.

Next Steps

If this guide seems daunting, and you lot think a hosted eCommerce platform would be a ameliorate fit, I'd recommend checking out Shopify (see my review here) or BigCommerce (come across my review here). They are both excellent options for a hosted platform.

If you love the look of the control that WooCommerce gives you, and you think it'd exist a good fit for your online shop, then go follow this guide on setting upwardly WordPress and so get started installing WooCommerce! And check out my complementary posts such as SEO for WordPress and how to bulk upload anything to WordPress (great for those thousands of products), and my list of WooCommerce themes.

If y'all desire further video documentation – check out WooCommerce 101 here. Peace!