WooCommerce 2024: The complete guide to starting your store

WooCommerce 2022: The complete guide to starting your store

Introduction

You are planning to start your online store with WooCommerce but don’t know how?  Need a complete WooCommerce guide that is easy to follow for non-technical users? If so, you found the right place.

WordPress WooCommerce is one of the leading eCommerce platforms with 23.43% of the market share worldwide. It is understandable that WooCommerce is the market leader as it is super versatile, cost-effective, and easy to manage even for beginners. 

However, setting up Woocommerce may require some research and study to thoroughly understand how to get started. Don’t worry, the setting up process is designed for everyone.

Or Arestós provides one-stop WooCommerce online store development to save you from the complex technical terms and let you totally focus on the core business matters.

Here’s a rundown of everything we’ll cover in this complete WooCommerce guide:

• What is WooCommerce?
• Why should you choose WooCommerce to start selling online?
• What do you need to prepare to build a WooCommerce store
• How to set up a WooCommerce shop

1. Choose a hosting provider.
2. Setup WordPress
3. Install WooCommerce
4. Select a website theme.
5. Add or import products to your WooCommerce online store.
6. Build a solid sales funnel.
7. Make use of extensions to enhance your website.

• Frequently asked questions about WooCommerce

Let’s start building your WooCommerce store!

What is WooCommerce?

WooCommerce is a free eCommerce platform that makes it simple to sell goods and services online. It has grown to be the most popular eCommerce platform in the world, with millions of small and major enterprises using it (online stores).

WooCommerce was developed as a plugin for WordPress, the most popular website builder on the market. Users may use this to create an eCommerce website from the ground up or to add shopping cart features to an existing WordPress website.

WooCommerce is free to download and use since it is open-source software. While the WooCommerce software is free, you will still need a domain name and web hosting provider to set up a website, both of which are paid services.

Why should you choose WooCommerce to start selling online?

WooCommerce has been the most popular eCommerce platform in the world because it is simple to use and offers a wealth of amazing features.

Because WooCommerce is open source, it is not only totally free, but you also have full independence and control over your eCommerce website.

WooCommerce cost does not include license fees, unlike other proprietary eCommerce platforms. This means you may use it to establish an unlimited number of online businesses and eCommerce websites.

WooCommerce is an eCommerce plugin built on top of WordPress, so you get all of the amazing features of a WordPress site as well. 

To launch your online store, you may select from thousands of stunning WooCommerce themes and templates. Each of them comes with simple customization choices, and many of them are free.

The versatility of WooCommerce is one of the key reasons why company owners appreciate it. Various WooCommerce plugins may be used to extend the functionality of WooCommerce (also known as add-ons). There are literally dozens of WooCommerce-specific plugins available to add services such as booking, subscriptions, shipping platform connections, sales tax collection, and so on.

Aside from WooCommerce extensions, you can also utilize thousands of WordPress plugins on your website to add features like as contact forms, call now buttons, galleries, data backup, security firewall, and so on.

Another benefit of utilizing WooCommerce is that it does not enforce any limitations on how you manage your business.

You can add an unlimited number of products, make an unlimited number of sales, import and export product data, and add an unlimited number of product photos, videos, categories, and other features.

Accepting payments online is a significant barrier for many online sellers. The most crucial advantage of implementing WooCommerce for those users is that it connects smoothly with hundreds of payment systems and gateways.

It includes support for PayPal and Stripe by default. Using add-ons, you may utilize hundreds of alternative payment gateways. Integrations are also available for certain lesser-known and regional payment gateways.

Learn more: 5 Reasons why you should use WooCommerce for your eCommerce web

What do you need to prepare to build a WooCommerce store

To create a WooCommerce website from scratch, you will need the three elements listed below.

• A WordPress hosting account is required. This is where you will save all of your website’s files.
• A web address. This is the internet address for your website, such as wpbeginner.com.
• A SSL Certificate is required to accept online payments securely.

The above are paid items to build a WordPress website..

How to set up a WooCommerce shop

After having all the fundamental elements, you can start installing the FreeWooCommerce plugin to turn your website into an online store. 

Below is the step-by-step guide of configuring your WooCommerce store:

1. Choose a hosting provider.

When someone enters your website address, known as a URL, they are entering a web host that stores your website files and makes your site available online (e.g. arestos.com is our URL). Consider a host to be similar to a physical place where you would rent a space to open a store. Choosing a bad web host is like leasing a space in a bad neighborhood. A solid host paves the way for a quick, safe, and stable online business.

Some factors to consider when choosing a web hosting provider are:

• • Focus: the chosen host should be dedicated to WordPress and WooCommerce

• Support and maintenance: Check to see if your host welcomes direct contact by phone, email, or online chat, and search for 24-hour support. Choose a service that includes free automatic backups and restores without additional fees; 

• Value: The chosen hosting plan should satisfy a list of things including anticipated volume of traffic; The expected amount of storage space required; A content delivery network; An in-house caching system.

• Scalability: A good host will help you easily upgrade your package when your online store gets more traffic.

• Uptime and security: You will want to keep the time your host is available to serve your site be as close to 100% as possible (at least 99%). Besides, your host also plays a vital role in your website security. You host should offer software security, malware scanning and firewall.

• Support for the Open Web: As WordPress and WooCommerce are open-source with large community of open-source supporters and developers, choose a hosting company that values and invests in the Open Web.

You can check the trusted WooCommerce host recommended by WooCommerce here

1. Setup WordPress

After having a good hosting plan and domain name, it just takes a few minutes to setup and configure your WordPress website. All the best WordPress web hosting providers will make it easy for you to install WordPress. You can find the instruction on the hosting dashboard.

From the hosting dashboard, you can complete initial setup, select a domain. Then, you can access the WordPress admin dashboard to complete the website information such as site title, tag line.

1. Install WooCommerce

WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin. Thus, simply visit Plugins -> Add New page in your WordPress admin and type WooCommerce on the search bar.

Then, you need to click the button “Install Now” next to WooCommerce. When it’s finished, click Activate.

After you’ve installed and activated WooCommerce, you’ll have access to all of the plugin’s functions. To start setup your store.  You can now: 

• Build website pages: homepage, product pages, landing pages, etc 
• List products 
• Set up payment methods

1. Select a website theme.

Choosing a theme or template is a first place to start when creating an online shop. Customize the color palette and page layout to give visitors a sense of what your brand stands for.

With WooCommerce, selecting and modifying a theme that matches your brand is easy. Storefront is the default WooCommerce theme. It is available for free download from the WordPress Theme Directory.

You may also buy premium WooCommerce themes if you want a different appearance. Premium themes enable you to further personalize your store’s appearance and feel, making it stand out even more. You may also engage an outside web design partner like Arestós to help you build a stunning and professional look for your store.

1. Add or import products to your WooCommerce online store.

After you finish choosing and setup product page template, the next step is adding all of your products to the Products dashboard. You can use this dashboard to:

• Filter by product category and add your own tags.
• Enter inventory and shipment details.
• Group related items together

This dashboard makes it simple to manage your products. When you have a new product, you can easily add it to your list, and it will display on your website right away. If you want to alter the settings for a single product, you won’t have to make difficult modifications to a webpage – simply change the settings in your dashboard.

1. Build a solid sales funnel.

Now, you are ready to sell online. The next step is driving traffic to your online store and make visitors convert. Some tactics you can consider are:

• Building an Email list: 90% of your WooCommerce online store visitors will leave without buying anything. But you still have a chance to get their email address to keep them stay in touch and convince them to make a purchase later. WooCommerce allows integration with many powerful email marketing services such as Mailchimp, Hunspot to help you build engaging email marketing campaigns to grow your email list.
• Follow your visitor behaviour: There are many tools to help you track what people do on your WooCommerce online store to find out what product they like, what stop them from finishing the order. These data will be the solid ground for you to enhance your user experience, and build convincing content to communicate with customers to make them purchase.
• Automatic follow-up emails: After having a solid email list and understand how visitor browse your WooCommerce online store, you can implement automated email marketing campaigns to reach your leads at key points in the shopping journey such as birthday, promotion reminders, special offers for the products in their cart, recover abandoned cart, etc
• Utilize SEO: Search Engine Optimization is the key to drive traffic in the long term. WooCommerce itself is SEO friendly as it is built on WordPress. You can find many tools to help you track and optimize your SEO for your WooCommerce online store such as Yoast SEO.
• Consider online advertising (Social media and SEM): As you are new with the market, this tactic is helpful to get your products reach more people quickly. In return, when you online store drives more traffic, search engines will recommend your store as organic search more.

1. Make use of WooCommerce plugins to enhance your website.

WooCommerce default functions are enough to help you start selling online. However, you also can find a wide range of WooCommerce plugins to customize your online store. Below are some examples of WooCommerce extensions you can use to enhance your user experience:

• YITH WooCommerce Ajax Search: a simple plugin that adds a search box to your shop and returns quick and accurate results Naturally, the plugin makes use of your website’s database, so if the product is accessible, the plugin will match the customer’s term with your product list and allow them to shop without difficulty..

• WooCommerce LiveChat: Allow you to have live chats with your customers and assist them if they are unsure about anything. If you can answer all of your consumers’ questions, they will feel more safe during the purchasing process.

• Checkout Manager for WooCommerce: Customize the whole checkout process so that only fields that are needed are included. You may also add a note before the checkout to personalize the procedure. Overall, it may be an excellent method of engaging your customers.

Frequently asked questions about WooCommerce

WooCommerce is a really strong platform, and many business owners have several WooCommerce questions before they begin.

Here are some of our users’ most frequently asked WoooCommerce questions.

• What types of products can I sell using WooCommerce?

WooCommerce allows you to sell a wide range of products. Physical products (things that must be shipped), downloaded products (ebooks, software, digital art), and even subscriptions and memberships.

WooCommerce may be used as a booking platform, auction site, multi-vendor marketplace, dropshipping platform, and much more.

• Is it possible to use WooCommerce for dropshipping?

You certainly can. In fact, WooCommerce is the most popular platform for creating a dropshipping website. There are numerous fantastic WooCommerce dropshipping plugins available that make it simple to manage orders, manage providers, and automate the entire process.

• How can I obtain WooCommerce help?

Because WooCommerce is free software, there is only a limited amount of WooCommerce support accessible through the WordPress community forums and the official WooCommerce website.

Your WooCommerce hosting provider or individual WooCommerce theme and extension developers supply the majority of WooCommerce support.

You may hire a WordPress developer from a trusted partner such as Arestós for bespoke WooCommerce development, customization and maintenance services.

Conclusion

We hope you found our guide on starting a WooCommerce online store useful. Setting up a new WooCommerce store might be challenging – that’s why we come in to help.

Arestós provides one-stop WooCommerce solutions from install, set up, design, and customize online store for businesses across different industries.

Contact us for free consultancy and to find out about how we can together build a custom WooCommerce online store that drives sales.