WooCommerce Guide for Beginners
Did you know that Over 39% of All Online Stores Run on WooCommerce?
That is because Woocommerce is one of the most powerful and customizable shopping cart software out there… and the best thing? It’s free!
In this guide, I am going to show you how to set up a WordPress website with Woocomerce so you can sell just about anything online.
What is Woocommerce?
WooCommerce is a free plugin for WordPress that allows you to turn a WordPress blog into a fully functioning E-commerce store.
It currently has over 77,528,124 downloads and runs almost half of all ecommerce stores.
But let’s look at all of the things that make WooCommerce great…and the things that could be better.
WooCommerce Pros
- Secure & Free
- Customizable
- Easy to use interface
- Add-on Plugins
WooCommerce Cons
- Can get slow with a lot of products/plugins
- Updates can mess up your store
- Small learning curve
Ok, now that you are familiar with the good, the bad and the ugly, its time to install WooCommerce on our WordPress website.
1. Installing WooCommerce
Once you have installed WordPress on your server, you are ready to install WooCommerce and get started setting it up.
To install WooCommerce, all you have to do is go to the plugins manager in WordPress and click Add New.
On the plugin search page search for ‘WooCommerce’, and click install on the correct plugin (It’s the one by Automattic).
After you install the WooCommerce plugin, click activate and it will take you directly to the Setup Wizard that will guide you through the setup.
2. Setting Up WooCommerce
If you will be shipping products, then enter your Address, Country, and Currency on the store set up page.
After you have added your correct address (where you will be shipping from), click the continue button.
Now, you will need to set up your payment processor. If you don’t have a payment processor yet, you can simply click continue and skip this step for now.
Next, you will choose your shipping zones if you will be shipping actual physical products. You can choose a flat rate or you can choose live rates from carriers like UPS or USPS.
After this step, you can exit out of the setup wizard as the rest of the steps are just trying to sell you more add-ons.
You have successfully installed and set up WooCommerce!
Setup WooCommerce Pages
Next, you will want to make sure that it has created a shop page, my account page, login page, etc. If not, there is a tool inside WooCommerce that creates them for you.
Just go to WooCommerce->Status->Tools and then scroll down till you see the ‘Create pages’ button.
Click the button and all of the needed WooCommerce pages will automatically be created for you.
Now, lets set up our products.
3. Creating Products
All of the products are in a different tab than WooCommerce called ‘Products”.
This is where you can create products, attributes, tags (though I don’t recommend) and product categories.
Simply go to Add New to create your first product.
On the Add New Product page, there are a number of different spots you will need to add information to about your product.
Product Description
The product description is the normal WYSIWIG editor that is the same for any post or page.
Your product descriptions should be long, explain the product in detail, its features and as much media as possible.
Adding images, videos and graphs to your product descriptions can increase the conversion rate and sales.
Product data
The product data is where you add the price, inventory, etc.
There is are tabs on the right you can navigate to enter in different information about the product. I am not going to go into real detail about all of these tabs but the most important ones are:
- General: The general tab is where you add the price and sale price of the product.
- Inventory: If you will be tracking inventory, add the SKU, stock status and choose the Manage Stock radio button.
- Shipping: If you are shipping these products, and are using the live rate, enter the product weight and dimensions.
- Linked Products: This is great for internal linking and upselling your customers on similar products.
- Extras: The Extras tab is where you can add a product video (from youtube), custom tabs and top/bottom content.
Once you have added all the necessary information, you will also need to add the product image and gallery.
Product Images
Adding good product images is a necessity for getting sales with your e-commerce store. Include multiple images of your product from different angles and even being used (when applicable).
The main product image will be added as the product image. The rest of the images you have of the product will be added to the product gallery box.
Click Set product image and choose or upload the main photo of your product.
Note: The larger the image the better, but you don’t want it to be too large as this will slow down your load times.
Next, click add product gallery images to add the other images you have of your product.
Congratulations! Your first product is now set up and ready to be sold. But first, you will need to set up a payment gateway so you can accept payments online.