How to create an ecommerce site on WordPress with WooCommerce?

“WordPress only lets you create blogs”. This is one of the misconceptions—completely false—that has stuck to WordPress.

With this tool, you can build any type of site, including cutting-edge, professional online stores.

In fact, you can turn your WordPress installation into an ecommerce site thanks to the famous WooCommerce plugin. Wondering how to do it?

By the end of this article, you’ll know exactly how to proceed thanks to a detailed 8-step guide, sprinkled with plenty of practical tips. 

What is WooCommerce?

WooCommerce is a free plugin that turns your WordPress site into an online store. It lets you sell all kinds of products and/or services: physical products, digital products (ebooks, software), bookings, subscriptions, etc.

Launched in 2011 by WooThemes, WooCommerce was acquired in 2015 by Automattic, the company behind WordPress.

Automattic has continued to develop and improve WooCommerce over the years and has made it the most widely used ecommerce solution among the one million sites with the highest traffic in the world, ahead of Shopify.

Within the WordPress ecosystem, WooCommerce crushes the competition. With more than 5 million active installations, it ranks among the 10 most popular plugins in the official directory, which has more than 60,000.

This places it far ahead of some competing plugins such as Easy Digital Downloads (EDD), Ecwid, EasyCart Shopping Cart, BigCommerce, or Wpshop.

Several reasons may explain WooCommerce’s success among users: 

• The plugin is free and open source (its code can be modified). The only expenses you need to incur are related to web hosting and the domain name for your WordPress site (or even to certain WooCommerce plugins you might want to activate).
  For the rest, using Automattic’s ecommerce plugin does not involve any expense, if that is what you want.
• It is flexible and highly customizable. With it, you can sell anything you want.
• It is suitable for beginners. You can configure your online store’s settings in a couple of hours.
• It allows you to design any type of online store, whether it is a shop with a few products or a large ecommerce site listing thousands of items (with or without a blog). 
• It allows you to keep control over all your data and your content. This is not the case with SaaS solutions (Software as a Service) such as Shopify, Wix, WordPress.com or Squarespace.
  The latter remain “owners” of your e-commerce website and their code cannot be modified (or only with great difficulty, when possible). In addition, the proprietary solutions mentioned above are paid for monthly. 

Good to know: We have just mentioned the WordPress.com platform. You should know that there are “two” very different WordPresses. On the one hand, there is WordPress.org. This is the free software that you download and install on a hosting server. This is the WordPress we will refer to throughout this article.
On the other hand, there is WordPress.com, the hosting platform of the company Automattic. It also allows you to create a WordPress website, but without having to install it on a hosting server.
However, it is much more limited than WordPress.org in terms of customization, and you will have to pay if you want to take advantage of its most advanced features.

If you are migrating from another e-commerce platform to WooCommerce, a preliminary WordPress audit will help you assess your current infrastructure and plan a successful migration.

8 steps to create an e-commerce site on WordPress with WooCommerce

Find a domain name and a web host

How to choose a domain name for your WordPress e-commerce site?

Before thinking about installing WooCommerce, you need to have two key elements: 

• a domain name;
• a web host.

The domain name is the address of your future WooCommerce website. It consists of a name and an extension.

For example, Maintenance WP’s domain name is maintenance-wp.fr: 

• maintenance-wp corresponds to the name;
• .fr represents the extension.

Here are a few tips for choosing your domain name: 

• Choose a short name that is easy to remember and represents your brand and/or business. Your domain name should be easy to pronounce and remember. 
• Opt for a “classic” extension. .fr will be very suitable if you are targeting a French audience. .com can also do the job, especially if you want to sell in France and abroad.
• Avoid numbers and accents. 
• Watch out for double meanings and words in another foreign language, which may have a meaning very different from what you think.
  If you plan to use a word from a foreign language in your domain name, check its meaning on Google Translate.
• To get ideas, rely on a domain name generator such as Nameboy or Bust a name.

Check whether the domain name you have chosen is not already in use using AFNIC’s availability search tool. Also carry out this check on social media using Namech_k.

Once you have made your choice, buy your domain name from a registrar, that is, an accredited registration office.

Most web hosts (OVH, Ionos, o2switch, Kinsta, etc.) are registrars and will offer to provide you with your domain name bundled with hosting space.

However, there are also services dedicated solely to purchasing domain names, such as Gandi, for example.

Which web host should you choose?

A web host, actually, what is it? It is a company that rents you storage space so that your website can be viewed and accessed online. 

There are different types of WordPress hosting (shared, VPS, dedicated, specialized, etc.) suited to different needs and with more or less expensive pricing.

For example, shared hosting (where you share server resources with other sites) will be cheaper than specialized hosting, but also less powerful if you have a store with a very large number of products. 

In practice, we recommend that you follow these tips to find a good web host: 

• Its servers must be high-performing and secure; 
• Its customer service must be responsive and available 24/7.
• It must be well established in the industry and have excellent user feedback. To do this, check customer reviews on Google. 
• It must not charge prohibitive prices. On average, expect to pay between €50 and €100 per year to benefit from quality shared hosting, for example.
• The presence of an easy-to-use custom interface is a real plus for carrying out basic actions on your hosting space (creating email addresses, redirects, database creation, changing the PHP version, etc.).

Based on experience, we recommend Kinsta as a hosting provider. Their managed service is cutting-edge and the level of support is high.

Once this first step has been completed (choosing the domain name + hosting), move on to step no. 2 to create an ecommerce site with WordPress. 

Install WordPress and WooCommerce

How to install WordPress?

Remember: WooCommerce is an ecommerce plugin for WordPress. Therefore, WordPress must first be installed on your hosting space in order to activate WooCommerce.

But before that, be sure to read the box below.

Good to know: Before installing WordPress, activate an SSL certificate on your online hosting space. SSL helps secure the connection to your website and will allow it to switch to HTTPS. This is essential to protect your site and reassure your future customers.
When HTTPS is enabled on your site, a small padlock will appear in your web browser, next to your domain name. Most hosting providers allow you to activate an SSL certificate free of charge.

Let’s get back to installing WordPress. In broad terms, you have two methods to choose from for installing the most popular CMS (Content Management System) on the market:

• Automatic installation, known as one-click installation. A great many hosting providers offer this option. To use it at Kinsta, click “Add a site” on your hosting dashboard.

• Manual installation. In this case, the procedure is a little longer. In short, you need to download WordPress, add its files to your hosting space, and create a database on your server.
  To finish, start the installation script by going, via your web browser, to the URL where you have just installed the copy of WordPress. Follow the on-screen instructions and you’re done. If you want to tackle it, check out the guide provided by WordPress.org. 

How do you install WooCommerce?

Now it’s time to install WooCommerce on your WordPress administration interface (back office). 

In Plugins > Add New, type “WooCommerce” in the search bar. Click the “Install Now” button, then remember to activate the plugin right away:

A setup wizard will then appear in full screen:

You will be asked to enter several types of information: 

• Details about your store: country, address, postal code, city, email.
• The business sector associated with your store: fashion, health and beauty, electronics and IT, food and drink, home, furniture and garden, education and learning, other.
• The type(s) of product(s) to sell: physical products, digital products such as downloads, subscriptions, memberships, bookings, etc.
• Details about your business, such as the number of products you want to sell.
• The WordPress ecommerce theme for your online store. For now, choose to continue with your active theme. In the next section, we’ll explain how to choose a WooCommerce theme, with our recommendations.

Try to fill in the requested information as best you can, but don’t panic if you don’t have all the answers yet! You’ll be able to edit or add all of this later in the settings provided by WooCommerce. 

Choose a WordPress ecommerce theme

Now it’s time for the 3rd step in creating your WordPress ecommerce site: choosing a theme for your online store on the web.

A WordPress ecommerce theme consists of a set of files that define the design of your WordPress site. It controls the appearance of your content.

When you install WordPress, the CMS activates one of its native themes by default. In our case, it’s Twenty Twenty Three.

You can find out which theme is installed on your site by going to Appearance > Themes.

The problem with Twenty Twenty Three is that it isn’t suitable for ecommerce, but rather for creating a blog (among other things). You therefore absolutely need to find a WordPress theme suited to ecommerce (and compatible with WooCommerce).

Here are several tips and tricks for choosing a good ecommerce theme:

• Choose a high-performance, fast theme. Its code should be as lightweight as possible so as not to affect loading time. On average, a study has shown that website conversion rates decrease by 4.42% with each additional second of loading time (between 0 and 5 seconds).
• Check that the theme is compatible with WooCommerce. If it is, the developers will be sure to mention it in their theme description.
• The design should be attractive and navigation clear, even if you can improve this by customizing it.
• Choose a theme with good user reviews and frequent updates.
• Check the theme’s responsive design: it must be readable on any type of device: computer, smartphone, and tablet. To do this, use Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test (free).

You can find a WooCommerce-compatible theme in several places:

• On a premium theme sales platform such as ThemeForest; 
• On stores specializing in the sale of ecommerce WordPress themes; 
• On the official WordPress directory, of course.

You should know that WooCommerce offers a free in-house ecommerce theme called Storefront.

It can do the job, but its design remains very classic. If you want to move a little off the beaten track, you will probably need to purchase one of its paid child themes.

Rather than Storefront, we recommend using one of the following freemium themes: 

• Astra.
• Kadence.
• Neve.
• Blocksy.
• GeneratePress.

Each of these tools notably offers e-commerce site templates for WordPress, with ready-to-use pages.

This is very practical for starting from a clean, well-designed layout that you’ll only need to adapt to your visual identity. It also guarantees a significant time saving.

To install one, go to Appearance > Themes > Add New. Then enter its name in the search bar, exactly as you did earlier with the WooCommerce plugin.

Without further ado, let’s now move on to the settings for your brand-new e-shop.

Configure the WooCommerce store

Overview of the WooCommerce settings menus

As soon as WooCommerce is running on your WordPress installation, it adds 4 new custom post types (custom content types) to the sidebar of your admin interface: 

1. WooCommerce. Here you will find information about your orders, customers, and promo codes in particular. This is also the menu where you can access settings for products, shipping, payments, or the emails WooCommerce sends after an order, for example.
2. Products, to add and customize your products.
3. Analytics provides analytical data in the form of charts and tables. You can get a clear overview of your sales, their amounts, or the orders placed by sorting everything by date, if needed.
4. Marketing mainly offers tips to improve your sales and grow your customer base, as well as direct access to manage your promo codes.

To help you get started and start selling quickly, we will focus first on 4 major actions to put in place.

How do you add products to your online store?

To add a new product, go to Products > Add. Start by giving your product a name and description:

On the right, you can:

• Assign it a category.
• Set a product image, meaning the one that will appear on your Shop page.
• Add images in the form of a gallery, to offer other photos of your product.

Next, focus on the section called “Product data”. In particular, you need to: 

• Choose a product type. It can be simple (while being virtual or downloadable), grouped (some of its features can be purchased separately), external (if you do affiliate marketing), or variable (with several characteristics). For example, a corkscrew is a simple product. A T-shirt offered in several colors (red, green, yellow) is a variable product.
• Enter the SKU, meaning your product’s identifier.
• Define the stock status.
• Set a price for your product.
• Specify the weight and dimensions.

When you have finished, click the “Publish” button. Your products are then listed under Products > All products.

How do you configure payments?

Next, choose which payment options you want to offer your customers. To do this, go to the WooCommerce > Settings > Payments menu.

By default, WooCommerce offers 4 payment methods: 

1. WooCommerce Payments, the payment gateway offered by Automattic. Very comprehensive, it accepts payments by credit card, Google Pay, Apple Pay, etc. All in more than 100 different currencies. However, it requires a WordPress.com account, an SSL certificate, and the Jetpack plugin to be active on your online store.
2. Bank transfer.
3. Check payments.
4. Cash on delivery payments.

You can configure the payment method of your choice either by installing it or by activating it by clicking the associated button.

In addition, WooCommerce integrates with many payment gateways such as Stripe, PayPal, Square, Mollie, Klarna, etc.

How do you enable VAT?

If you charge VAT, you need to configure this on your online store. WooCommerce can first handle it automatically for you via the WooCommerce > Home > Add tax rates menu.

You can choose between two solutions, which will calculate your taxes in real time in particular: 

• WooCommerce Tax (100% free).
• Avalara (free for 30 days).

But you can also configure taxes manually by clicking on the associated link:

In this case, you will be redirected to the WooCommerce > Settings > VAT menu. You will be able to configure your VAT options, as well as their rates (standard, reduced, zero).

How do you configure shipping on your WordPress e-commerce site?

Once the first orders have been placed, you will need to handle their delivery. To do this, a few basic settings need to be configured in WooCommerce > Settings > Shipping.

In particular, you need to add a shipping zone (e.g., France) and can choose from 3 features, known as shipping methods:

1. Flat rate: you set a price for shipping.
2. Free shipping.
3. Local pickup: for in-store pickup.

The main configuration elements of your WordPress e-commerce store are now set up. Let’s now look at the content of your shop, especially its pages.

Add key pages to your shop

By default, as soon as it is activated, WooCommerce adds 4 pages to your online store:

• “Shop” showcases all your products or services.
• “My Account” lists your customers’ information: orders placed, shipping and billing address, etc.
• “Cart” (“Cart”) contains all the products added by your customers before they proceed to payment.
• “Checkout”: the Payment page. 

The mandatory pages for e-commerce

This is the necessary minimum, but you will certainly need to add extra pages to offer a more professional and attractive website.

To begin with, certain rules must be followed when doing business online. As the official administrative information website for businesses points out, general terms and conditions of sale (T&Cs) must appear on your website if you are targeting individuals. 

You can include them on a dedicated page, displayed in the footer of your WooCommerce site. You will find a list of the key information to add there on this resource. 

However, the wisest approach is to call on a legal expert or a lawyer to help you draft your T&Cs. Your T&Cs page can also include your legal notices, some of which are mandatory.

In addition, you are required to protect your users’ personal data in order to comply with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). 

It is necessary to add a Privacy Policy page that informs website visitors about the collection of their data.

By default, WordPress creates it upon installation, accessible via Settings > Privacy. But you must complete it and adapt it to your own situation (do not add this to a blog post).

Here again, we recommend relying on a legal specialist. And still regarding the GDPR, you will need to obtain consent from your website visitors, particularly regarding cookies and subscription to any newsletter (more information on the CNIL website).

The more “classic” pages

For the rest, you are free to add additional pages. Here are a few tips on this subject. We recommend that you include at least the following pages: 

• Contact, to allow people to contact you by phone or email. You can also provide practical information such as your address, especially if you have a physical store.
• About, to present the origins of your brand, your expertise, and the members of your team. It is a good way to inspire trust and make yourself more human. To buy, a website visitor also needs to be reassured.

In addition, the pages below can bring you real added value: 

• A Blog page can help you create posts with instructional and educational content (tips, advice, guides) around keywords related to your business. A blog is an excellent way to generate additional traffic in an effort to improve your conversions. In addition, with a blog, you can take the opportunity to optimize your organic SEO and strengthen your expertise.
• An FAQ can be very useful for answering the most frequently asked questions from your prospects and customers. This is a good way to ease the workload of your customer service team and to clarify certain features of your product or service, for example.
• You can also create a custom homepage that is not necessarily your Shop page. 

Adapt the design to your brand identity

While it is important to offer excellent content on the pages of your WordPress ecommerce store, you will need to align it with a design that matches your brand identity. This is the next step in your plan.

To customize your different pages, it all depends on how the theme you have chosen works. 

For example, if you use Storefront, you will be able to modify certain aspects of your pages through the WordPress Customizer (Customizer), under Appearance > Customize. 

For example, you will have control over features such as: 

• The choice of colors for the typography, background, buttons, header, and footer.
• The display on your Shop.
• The number of products displayed per row.
• Adding options to your checkout page (displaying optional or required fields, for example).

If you don’t know how to code, you’ll quickly be quite limited in terms of customization with Storefront.

With a multipurpose theme like Astra, for example, you’ll be able to activate a ready-made ecommerce site template (with all its pages) and will have additional options in the Customizer.

In addition, many of its templates can be modified with a page builder such as Elementor. 

Thanks to the pro version of this builder, you’ll be able, for example, to customize certain key WooCommerce pages in every detail (Basket or “Cart”, Shop, My Account, Checkout) without touching a single line of code. It will also, of course, be possible to run a blog.

However, note that Elementor requires a learning curve before all its features can be properly mastered.

Install essential plugins on your WordPress ecommerce store

Among WooCommerce’s many advantages is its flexibility. Since it is built on the WordPress ecosystem, it is very easy to scale it according to your needs using dedicated plugins. 

You may be wondering where to find these famous plugins. To start with, WooCommerce offers its own plugin directory (nearly 800 plugins at the time of writing this article).

Filters allow you to filter extensions by price or category (payment, shipping, customization, marketing, etc.):

Another option for finding WooCommerce plugins? The official WordPress plugin directory. Of course, you’ll find extensions developed by Automattic there, but above all some very useful third-party plugins.

Which WordPress ecommerce plugins should you activate?

On that note, here are a few recommendations for ecommerce plugins for WordPress that could be useful to you: 

• WooCommerce Stripe Payment Gateway, to accept payments directly on your WooCommerce store via Stripe’s API.
• PDF Invoices & Packing Slips for WooCommerce, to add a PDF invoice to each customer order.
• Variation Swatches for WooCommerce, to add color, image, and button variations for your product attributes.
• WooCommerce Subscriptions, to offer subscriptions to your customers.
• WooCommerce Memberships, to offer exclusive products and discounts only to your members.
• WooCommerce Bookings, to enable online bookings.
• Kadence WooCommerce Email Designer, to customize WooCommerce’s default emails.

Which general-purpose plugins should you choose?

Beyond these ecommerce-specific plugins, we recommend enabling certain plugins to optimize how your online store works: 

• SEOPress, Rank Math or Yoast SEO for optimizing your pages and posts. Essential for improving your organic SEO.
• WordFence Security or SecuPress offer tools to protect your site against bot attacks and malware.
• WP Rocket to enable a caching system and improve the loading speed of your pages.
• Imagify to reduce the size of your product images.
• Akismet to fight spam. 
• UpdraftPlus to back up your site (files + database).
• Polylang, to make your WordPress ecommerce site multilingual.
• GA Google Analytics, to link Google Analytics to WordPress.
• WPForms, to easily create contact forms.

Optimize the WooCommerce online store

Finally, on to the last step of this guide to creating an e-commerce site with WordPress: optimizing your online store with one last round of tips and tools. 

Over time—or right from the start, who knows—you may want to step up a gear to attract as many people as possible to your pages and increase your revenue. 

To do this, you can rely on at least two strategies. First, an SEO (search engine optimization) strategy to increase traffic to your site.

To do this, you can create specific pages optimized for keywords related to your business, optimize your product pages and/or create a blog.

Also consider developing a broader marketing strategy (SEO is part of marketing too, after all). Here, for example, you might consider setting up a newsletter to stay in touch with your prospects and customers and share the launch of new products or promotions with them.

A plugin like MailPoet allows you to design forms to capture your visitors’ email addresses via a marketing subscription form, then send your newsletters directly from the WordPress interface. 

Also consider combating cart abandonment with an extension like YITH WooCommerce Recover Abandoned Cart.

At the same time, don’t neglect customer relationship management. A CRM (Customer Relationship Management) can be useful for tracking your sales statistics and optimizing your online sales process. Several plugins allow you to do this, such as the HubSpot plugin, which integrates directly into your WordPress dashboard. 

Finally, don’t forget the importance of maintenance for your WooCommerce store. To be effective and functional, it must be constantly updated, high-performing, and secure. 

In this regard, the team of experts at Maintenance WP can offer you a customized solution to create your WooCommerce store and/or manage it. 

Available 7 days a week, our WooCommerce agency can meet your needs quickly, professionally, and efficiently. Contact us to learn more.