How to Set Up a New WooCommerce Store: Step-by-step

Finding a convenient way to start ecommerce business?

Woocommerce platform is the ultimate solution to start you as a beginner. The latest trend shows, Woocommerce owns 39 percent market share in the ecommerce industry.

This WordPress-based ecommerce plugin is easy to manage for the newbies.

While you are out there to create your new WooCommerce store, we are here to help you with the step-by-step process with the most convenient and easy-to-use platform.

Let’s delve into the process right away!

What is Woocommerce?

If you want to reach more visitors and show your product with an authentic and powerful combination of buying and selling platforms, Woocommerce is your precise choice. This popular ecommerce platform has been used by millions of ecommerce enthusiasts.

Woocommerce is the plugin or extension of WordPress, and the reason for its development is to provide visitors with a seamless user experience for online shopping. It enables the shopping cart functionality for online shopping on your WordPress website.

With lots of Woocommerce features and functionality, this open-source ecommerce plugin is free to use, but the domain setup and web hosting are required to set you up.

What Makes Woocommerce Widely Popular?

While there are thousands of plugins to use for your online store, Woocommerce stands out as the best among all. But still you may ask why choose Woocommerce in the first place? Here’s why-

• WordPress Compatible. Woocommerce is compatible with the most popular website-building platform, WordPress. You can easily set up your online shop from the get-go.
• Easily Customizable. Woocommerce offers lots of paid and free extensions to customize your online store. As your site develops, you get more customizable options free of charge.
• Secure and Reasonable Pricing. With Free of charge installation, Woocommerce ensures a secure connection between transactions. So, you don’t need to worry about revealing your card information.
• Helpful Guide. Woocommerce includes practical guides and customization for your store. Also, if you need more help, you can contact the Woocommerce team for support.

How to Setup a New Woocommerce Store

Before you start with the Woocommerce installation, you need to set up a WordPress website, domain, and SSL for website security. All in all, you need a fully functioning website to install and run Woocommerce plugin.

Remember, domain and SSL require you to spend some bucks. So, if you have the website ready, let’s start with the Woocommerce Installation-

Step 1: Woocommerce Installation

This first step is no challenge at all. All you need to have is a fully-functioning website with domain, SSL, and definitely, a WordPress account to initiate the Woocommerce plugin installation. Here are the steps to install Woocommerce-

●       Login to your account in WordPress and go to WordPress ‘Dashboard’.

●       Click on the sidebar and select ‘Plugins’.

●       Click ‘Add new’, and in the search box, type ‘Woocommerce.’

●       Click ‘Install Now’ when Woocommerce appears.

●       Click ‘Activate’ when the installation finishes.

Pro-Tip: Some domain and hosting companies provide a one-click WordPress installation while you create a new website on WordPress, such as Namecheap, Hostinger, GoDaddy, and Bluehost.

Step 2: Adding Store Information

If your store information is ready to submit, adding is no challenge at all. When you finish activating the Woocommerce plugin, you need to add detailed information about your store. Here’s what you need to fill up-

• Adding Store information includes postcode, city, address, country, email address
• Select ‘Industry’ this time, in which category your Woocommerce store operates
• Opt to ‘Product types’ section and select which type of product you are selling
• Add ‘Business Details’, about number of products and if you have other business
• Select a Theme for the final step, you can change the theme anytime

Pro-Tip: Always add store information with a bit of keyword research according to your products or niche.

Step 3: Working on Woocommerce Dashboard

After you finish adding store information, the Woocommerce dashboard appears. Here you need to complete some of the checklists to successfully set up the Woocommerce website.

Add my Products

Adding products is really not a daunting task to do in Woocommerce. This plugin offers a range of product-adding options, such as-

• Adding with Template
• Adding products manually
• Importing via CSV
• Importing from another source

We are showing you here adding products with templates. Here’s how to do it-

• Select ‘Start with Template,’ and a box appears
• The box shows three categories to take you to the product editor
• Select one of your choices, and this brings you to the editor
• Pick the title of your choice for the product and add a description
• Select a category for the product, or you can add a new category
• Opt to ‘Product Data’ and add type, pricing, shipping costs, and all info
• Opt for the ‘Product Short Description’ box and add catchy product details
• Add product images to an image gallery that shows your product precisely
• Review all the information this time and edit the field for correction

If you find all the information correct and the product is ready to go live, click on the ‘Publish’ button to do so. You can add more products by following this procedure.

Pro-Tip: Alternatively, you can add new products from Products→ Add New page.

Setup Payments

This time the payment gateway needs to be added. This ensures your customer can buy your products with handy and secure payment options. Let’s set up the payment options-

• Go to Woocommerce → Homepage to view your checklist again
• Select ‘Setup Payments’, and this opens up a list of payment options
• Choose the payment processors as your preference and setup the gateway

Pro-Tip: Use a free Stripe add-on to set up the Stripe payment gateway instead of the default Woocommerce’s one.

Setup Tax

Setting up taxes is one of the checklist work here. Tax is a complicated part of a business if you don’t have adequate knowledge. But Woocommerce features make it easy for you to set up taxes. Let’s find out how to set it up-

• Setup Tax option brings you a couple of tax partners
• Setup taxes with Avalara or Woocommerce tax
• Opt to ‘I don’t charge sales tax’ if you don’t want to
• Opt to ‘Setup taxes manually’ if you want to do it manually
• Choosing the manual option takes you to the settings → tax tab
• Fill up the tax details like country, zip code, city, state and all
• Click Save Changes if you finish setting up taxes

Pro-Tip: Follow Woocommerce Tax setup for more complex and detailed instructions for setting up taxes.

Setup Shipping

Here you have to add shipping details. It lets you charge the shipping cost based on the different regions or areas. Here’s how to set it up-

• Setup Shipping brings you to set the shipping cost within your country
• Fill up the field with zero, if you want to set free shipping
• Enable the ‘Rest of the world’ option if you want to ship worldwide
• Enter the costs for different shipping zones in the ‘Rest of the world.’
• Click ‘proceed’ if everything is good.

Later, you get the option to ‘Shipping Label Printing.’You can enable this Woocommerce feature to print shipping labels at home.

Step 4: Customizing Your Store

We have completed all the steps to set up a Woocommerce store. But your store requires some customization in order to operate your store more conveniently. This also makes your store visually attractive.

In order to customize your store, you need appropriate themes and extensions that inform visitors about your brand identity. From numerous Woocommerce themes, we have picked some of the best themes and extensions below.

Installing Themes

• Astra. This popular theme is all ready for starting your Woocommerce store. Astra includes full support for Woocommerce, built-in pages, shops, and a one-click fully prepared website.
• Threadwears. This block-based Woocommerce store is highly customizable, and it offers over 17 templates and 16 block patterns.
• Ocean WP. This customizable theme is lightweight, extendable, and contains unique Woocommerce features to run your store with a great conversion rate.
• Make. Also called WordPress’s most flexible theme, this one includes drag and drop page builder. Also, hundreds of customizing options make it unique.

Pro-Tip: Pick a simple design and install themes from WordPress.org or reliable sources. Untrusted themes may completely hamper your store. Also, pick the one that provides better SEO and conversion rate. Check the theme reviews as well.

Installing Extension

• SeedProd. This drag-and-drop page builder enables you to easily create landing pages to promote your products, campaigns, and showing events.
• Husky. This extension allows you to filter your products based on size, price, and category.
• WPForms. This enables you to create Surveys, contact forms, customer login forms, and more features.
• YITH Woocommerce Wishlist. This wishlist plugin provides adding products to the wishlist and sharing options for ecommerce products on social media.
• FraudLabs Pro. This essential plugin protects and prevents fraud orders, and it verifies all the orders and transaction-related matters with authenticity.

These are the essential extensions you can use for your Woocommerce store. Also, consider installing YITH Infinite Scrolling, Woocommerce Menu Cart, Woocommerce Currency Switcher for a more convenient user experience.

Step 5: Enhance the Performance of Woocommerce Store

Your Woocommerce shop is ready to go live, but you still have to work on it to reach more visitors or increase conversion rates. Follow the recommendations below.

• Create Email List. Creating email listings will increase the chance of retaining visitors who have direct communication with you. Woocommerce lets you add major email marketing services to your store.
• Abandon Cart Sales. Visitors often add products to the cart, but later they don’t purchase the product. This happens in most of the online stores. You can set reminders or pop-ups before they leave the cart to elevate the chance to sell.
• Supervise the Customers. Your store requires the customers’ shopping data to analyze which products customers purchase the most, which pages they most visit, popular products, and more. Google Analytics can help you on this matter.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Woocommerce free?

Yes, Woocommerce is 100% free. You can use your purchased domain and SSL on Woocommerce. But Woocommerce still includes some paid plugins and per-transaction charges for Paypal and Stripes.

How to contact Woocommerce Support?

If you have any questions regarding their service, search their documentation to find your answer. If you have any further inquiries, login to your WordPress account→ Dashboard → Support → Contact us and place your name, email, and inquiry and send.

Conclusion

Woocommerce is, without a doubt, a popular tool to operate your online store. Although it offers many useful features for newbies, some of the features it covers require expert supervision. Still, you don’t need to be a Woocommerce expert to set up your online store.

I hope our tutorial will help you make new Woocommerce store with great potential. Good luck!