How to Create an Online Store in WordPress
The best way to create an online store in WordPress is to use WooCommerce. This is an e-commerce solution offered by the same company that is behind WordPress, which means they work great together.
If you have always wanted to create an online store of your own, you have come to the right place. In today’s post, I am going to show you how to build an online store in WordPress.
Getting Started with WooCommerce
First of all, install and activate the plugin on your WordPress site. This will create two new menu items in the dashboard menu –
- WooCommerce
- Products
It will also display a quick setup section with a button titled “Run the Setup Wizard.” Click the button to get started with the process.
The five-step process will help you to create the necessary pages, define the store location, default currency, shipping methods, payment methods, and the theme. Once you have completed all the steps, you can get back to the website dashboard to add products and configure the rest of the settings.
Remember the two new menu items? Among these, “WooCommerce” includes all the settings and store management options, while “Products” allows you to add and manage the products.
Let’s get started with the products first.
Adding a Product
Go to Products > Add New to add a new product to your online store. The page looks like the following –
First of all, there are the usual options to provide the product name and the description. Below, you will find lots of additional fields to provide more information about the product.
WooCommerce allows you to create different types of products including simple, grouped, affiliate, variable products along with the option to sell virtual and downloadable products as well. The available options will change depending on your chosen product type.
The product options are grouped into several sections. Let’s take a quick look at the sections.
General
This section allows you to set the regular and promotional prices for your product.
Inventory
Here, you will find separate options to define the product SKU, stock status, and choose to sell the item only once to a customer.
Shipping
As you can guess, this section enables you to provide the product weight and dimensions.
Linked Products
This section allows you to choose products to promote for upsell or downsell for the product you are adding right now.
Attribute
In case your product has special attributes, you can add and manage these attributes from this section.
Variations
If you are selling a variable product, this section allows you to provide separate SKU’s, enable stock management, and allow the customer to purchase each variation only once.
Advanced
This section allows you to provide a special purchase note, enable reviews, and define the menu order for the product.
You will also find some more product options in the right metaboxes. These will allow you to set the product category, tag, featured image, gallery, etc.
Once you have made all the changes, click “Publish” to make the product available on your online store.
Handling the Products
You can check out the products in the Products > All Products page. For each product, you can view the name, SKU, price, stock status, category, tag, and so on. It is also possible to edit, delete, view, or make duplicate copies of any product.
Managing the Settings
Go to WooCommerce > Settings to find all the settings options for your online shop. The options are divided into various sections. Continue reading to know more about these sections.
General
This section allows you to set up the basic store options including the base location, selling location, currency, currency position, separators, enable taxes, and display a site-wide notice.
Products
Here, you can define the measurement units for the product weight, dimension, enable product ratings, reviews, etc.
Shipping
As you can guess, this section allows you to manage the shipping options for the products. You will find separate areas to add shipping zones and classes as well.
Checkout
In the checkout section, you can enable coupons, guest checkout, force secure checkout, set the relevant pages, and choose the display order of the payment gateways. You will also find separate tabs to manage each of the available payment gateways.
Accounts
This section will let you choose the “My Account” page along with some options to enable customer registration, display login reminder on the checkout page, auto-generate the username, and so on.
Emails
Finally, this is the section where you can manage the email notifications sent to your customers on various events like order placed, canceled, failed, put on hold, processing, completed, refunded, password reset, new account created, etc. It is also possible to customize the sender name, email address, and use a template for the emails.
Dealing with the Other Options
WooCommerce also comes with several other configuration options. Let’s take a look at those options.
Orders
Go to WooCommerce > Orders to find a list of the orders placed by your customers. For each order, you can check out the status, customer name, email address, shipping address, order notes, date, total amount, etc.
Coupons
You can add coupons to your online store by going to the WooCommerce > Coupons page. It is possible to create different types of coupons with a percentage discount or a fixed amount of discount. You can set a date of expiry, minimum and maximum amount of spending to get the coupon, attach the coupon to specific products, categories, and set usage limits.
Reports
You will find detailed reports about your online store in the WooCommerce > Reports page. There are different options to check out the orders and customer reports for the last seven days, this month, last month, this year, or for a custom range.
Extending WooCommerce
There are lots of extensions available to add more features to your WooCommerce store. You can check out these extensions by going to WooCommerce > Extensions page.
Final Words
Creating an online store becomes a lot easier when you are using a ready-made solution like WooCommerce. Now that you have read this in-depth tutorial, you have a clear idea about how to do that. Leave a comment below if you still have any confusion, and I’ll try to help you out.
