Are you a new business just starting out in the world of e-commerce? Has your business been around for a while, and now’s the time for you make it digital? Maybe you already have an e-commerce website that just needs some improving?
Whatever your situation, building a WooCommerce website could be key to your company’s future.
Learn how to start a WooCommerce store with our short, snappy, straightforward guide, developed in the beefound ‘hive’ by our expert digital marketing team of ‘busy bees’. Let’s dive in!
What is WooCommerce?
Most businesses need a website to boost their profile and find new customers, but when it comes time to sell, you’ll need a personalised e-commerce store. As the online platform where both new and existing customers come to buy what you sell, the quality of your e-commerce store has a direct impact on your bottom line.
WooCommerce is an open source, free-to-use e-commerce plugin developed by and for WordPress, one of the internet’s most popular website hosts, used by almost half of all the websites in the world! It’s just as popular for website hosting, in fact, as it is for search engine optimisation (SEO).
To put it simply, WooCommerce is the only free e-commerce platform built specifically for use with the world’s favourite website platform, WordPress.
What are the benefits of starting a WooCommerce store?
Why choose WooCommerce over other available e-commerce software? Why sell online in the first place? Let’s take a look at 7 key pros to using WooCommerce to get your online business off the ground.
- WooCommerce is free to setup and use, with paid plans and added extras for businesses to use when they’re ready to grow even further—meaning the overall cost of your e-commerce website is up to you!
- There are thousands of handy plugins to choose from to customise, grow, and secure your e-commerce store.
- E-commerce development makes your website more secure from cyberattacks and data leaks.
- WooCommerce is the only e-commerce software built specifically by and for WordPress.
- Behind the software there’s a 5,000+ strong community of developers, designers and e-commerce experts to offer you help and advice.
- WooCommerce offers exceptional flexibility, customisation and precise control over the look, feel, and performance of your e-commerce website.
- We voted WooCommerce as one of the five best platforms for selling online!
How to get started with WooCommerce: 6 steps to set up your online store
Step 1) Choose a website host
A website host is a company which “hosts” your site, like Bluehost or SiteGround, on top of which you’ll need a web design “platform” like WordPress. WooCommerce—the e-commerce plugin—is built for WordPress and so works best with it, though that doesn’t mean you need to use WordPress as your website platform.
Ultimately, choosing the right website host and platform for you and your business depends on your budget, the degree of control you want over your website’s design, and whether or not you already have a website hosted elsewhere.
If you build a website with WordPress, then adding an online store with WooCommerce is as easy as 1, 2, 3—just head to your WP dashboard and look for “plugins”. From there, search for WooCommerce and hit the ‘install’ button, and you’re done!
If you choose to host your website elsewhere, you’ll simply have to install the WordPress software through your third-party host before launching the WooCommerce setup wizard.
And if all this sounds a bit too jargon heavy for you, we get it! Thankfully, you can always turn to the expertise of a website hosting provider like beefound.agency to host and support your website in its entirety.
Step 2) Add products to your new online store
The next step in how to get started with WooCommerce is to upload your inventory of products. You can organise your store’s inventory into different categories, give products different attributes (like colour, size, material), and tag products so that your customers can easily find related items with a custom search. Later, if you want to sell specialist products like subscriptions or memberships, you can do so by purchasing additional WooCommerce extensions.
Step 3) Set up payments, postage, and tax
Next step is to work out how you want your customers to pay for your products, as well as how shipping will be added. WooCommerce has its own payment and shipping portals you can use, which make it super easy to process payments, and even set up different shipping rates per country and product!
WooCommerce even makes it simple to calculate and add the tax you need to charge per product and destination.
Of course, if you don’t want to use the “out-of-the-box” WooCommerce payment gateway, tax or shipping tools, you can connect to other platforms like PayPal or Stripe, and set up everything manually instead!
Step 4) Make your website secure
When selling stuff online and collecting customer data, it is absolutely crucial that you spend time routinely making your website secure. Securing an SSL certificate for your site is an important first step. Other key ways to keep your business and customers safe include using two-step authentication, regularly updating your login details with strong passwords you don’t use anywhere else, and using a spam filter. You can also ask your hosting provider about setting up firewalls and other additional security measures.
Step 5) Personalise your new e-commerce website
In order to make your e-commerce store stand out from the competition, you’ll need to create a well branded, easily navigable, accessible, and engaging website which encourages visitors to buy, sign-up, and subscribe. Design your WooCommerce website with eye-catching copy, a branded colour palette and widget features like strong Call-to-Action buttons and links to your socials.
Step 6) Marketing, publishing, action!
It’s almost time to launch your brand new WooCommerce store. First, though, we recommend establishing a clear marketing plan for your digital shop in advance of the launch. Think about how you can use SEO, PPC advertising, email marketing, and digital content like a blog to ‘bee’ found online by your target customers. Once you’ve got a solid marketing plan in place, you can go ahead and hit Publish!
Recap: How to start a WooCommerce store
Knowing how to get started with WooCommerce sets you apart from the competition. With our trusty guide and a little perseverance, you can take your online business to the next level with a unique WooCommerce digital store.
Just remember, though, you don’t have to go it alone.
If coding isn’t your thing or you simply don’t have the time to maximise the potential of your e-commerce store, outsourcing web design and marketing to beefound.agency could be your ticket to success.
