September 30, 2020
12min Read
Tomas A.
Do you have products or services to sell? Want to earn money from your WordPress website, but not sure where to start? Worry no more. In this WooCommerce tutorial, you will learn how to turn a regular WordPress website into an eCommerce store.
WooCommerce is an open-source eCommerce plugin designed for WordPress. It is a platform for both small and large online businesses. WooCommerce has a variety of tools, such as different shipping and payment methods, variable products, and much more.
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Check out how to create an online store with WooCommerce in under an hour.
With that being said, continue reading our WooCommerce tutorial to know how to start an eCommerce store using WooCommerce for WordPress.
Since WooCommerce is a free WordPress plugin, it can be installed from the official WordPress plugins directory. The first step is to log into your WordPress admin area.
Next, follow these steps to install WooCommerce:
If you need more detailed instructions on how to install WooCommerce with WordPress plugins, see this article.
You will then see a WooCommerce welcome message asking to run the Setup Wizard. Press the purple Yes please button to begin.
Alternatively, you can also run the wizard from WooCommerce -> Help -> Setup Wizard section.
Follow the WooCommerce tutorial below to set it up:
The process of adding new products is similar to uploading a new post to your WordPress blog. Follow the steps below to add a WooCommerce product to your eCommerce store.
It is essential to learn the basics of WooCommerce and understand what product categories, attributes, and types are:
Let’s continue with this WooCommerce tutorial by checking the Products page. You can see and manage all of your products as well as edit, preview, feature an item, and apply bulk actions by selecting multiple products.
Here’s what else you can do with your products:
Now that you understand how to manage products on WooCommerce, in this part of the tutorial, you will learn how to handle everything else – orders, coupons, reports, and other online store settings.
A new order is created every time your customer completes the checkout process. View them by clicking on WooCommerce -> Orders on the left-hand menu.
Each order has its unique Order ID, date of purchase, order status, and total price.
To edit or view a single order, click on the Order name. You can easily update the order status, modify the ordered items, issue refunds, as well as view and change pricing, taxes, shipping, billing, email address, and more.
Coupons are a great way to market and sell your products. With WooCommerce, you can add, edit, and view coupons in the Coupons section.
Creating a new coupon is similar to creating a new post or product. First, choose a name or generate a coupon code. Then decide on the discount type which can be fixed or a percentage. You can choose free shipping as well. Then select the expiry date and click Publish.
If you need to edit a coupon, simply click on its name, and make the necessary changes.
In the Customers section, view all your previous customer’s information. This includes:
You can also download this information into a PDF file.
In the Reports section, you can see your store’s performance from the number of items purchased, gross sales, average daily sales, and product data, to other relevant stats.
You can get started generating statistics for separate products, categories, or coupons in this section. Do this by selecting the period for which you would like to create the report – the previous month, the current month, the previous seven days, or any custom duration, and click Go to generate the report.
On the Settings page, you can change your online store’s core options, such as location, currency, or API settings. But be sure to hover on the question mark beside each of the settings for a short description before making any significant changes. Now let’s go through the available tabs and briefly overview what can be changed there.
In this part of the tutorial, we’ll discuss the System Status page and why it is useful for checking the overall health of your WooCommerce store. From the WooCommerce version, web server type to PHP limits – you can see almost everything here.
Get started by pressing the Get System Report button to generate a detailed report for your hosting or WooCommerce WordPress support team.
You can also move to the following tabs to set other options:
Extensions are what make WooCoommerce so flexible and easily adaptable. Similar to WordPress plugins, you can install them from the WooCommerce Extension store.
Although there are mostly premium extensions, they are worth every penny. You can enhance your online store, add more payment gateways, shipping methods, integrate tracking solutions, and synchronize WooCommerce with third-party services.
Keep on reading to find our list of recommended extensions and plugins at the end of this WooCommerce tutorial.
In most cases, it isn’t the best idea to display your WordPress WooCommerce store in the default look. Take advantage of the vast array of customization options available and tailor your website to your needs. Therefore, to attain the maximum interest of customers, we recommend going for a custom theme.
You can improve the user experience even further by changing your website settings and adding various WooCommerce extensions. Fortunately, a lot of themes and extensions are free. Let’s look at some of them more closely:
Just like any other WordPress website, you can elevate your WooCommerce store by installing a new theme. There are plenty of options – whether you want a classy and minimalist look, or want to be loud and abstract.
Installing themes on WordPress is fairly straightforward – simply go to your admin area and navigate to Appearance -> Themes. Then, click the Add New button to install a new theme. If you are still having trouble, check our step-by-step guide on installing WordPress themes.
In this WooCommerce tutorial, we have compiled a list of the most popular free themes for your WooCommerce store:
An excellent place to start is with, Illdy, a sleek, modern, and minimalistic WordPress theme. Although geared primarily towards portfolio sites, due to its single page design, it can also work well for a business website. It is also compatible with other popular plugins.
Developed by WooCommerce, Storefront is a collection of WordPress themes. It comes with child theme variations, each of which is designed for specific eCommerce websites.
For instance, the Galleria child theme is perfect for a clothing and fashion store, while the Bookshop theme is intended for an online book store. With more than ten child themes to choose from, each with its own unique flavor and features, you can hardly go wrong with Storefront.
Market is another multi-purpose WordPress theme that works exceptionally well with WooCommerce. It makes it very easy to display products for sale, and is pleasing to the eye due to its minimalist design. Market also comes jam-packed with features, such as stellar animations that are uncommon on other eCommerce themes.
Last, but certainly not the least, is Make. Giving developers plenty of customization options, Make is easily one of the most flexible WooCommerce themes available free of cost.
The best part, you don’t need to know anything about programming to take advantage of its features, as it has drag-and-drop functionality and tons of customizable options.
As stated before in this WooCommerce tutorial, extensions and plugins are what make WooCommerce such a powerful eCommerce tool. You can pile a ton of useful features on top of the WooCommerce core. It ranges from user experience enhancements, additional languages, currency options, dedicated analytics, and more.
To install plugins on WordPress, navigate to the admin panel to Plugins -> Add New. The following is a brief list of some of the most popular extensions and plugins for WooCommerce:
A must-have for eCommerce websites that operate on a global scale, the Currency Switcher for WooCommerce is perfect for converting currencies on-the-fly.
Any eCommerce website is incomplete without an online payment solution. With PayPal, you get the world’s most widely used payment system on your WooCommerce website.
An alternative to PayPal is the Stripe Payment Gateway for WooCommerce. This can be a better option for some, as it does not take the customer to an external page for payment. Instead, it integrates fully with your website. It also supports Visa, MasterCard, Apple Pay, Goole Pay, American Express, and more.
A self-described glue for the WooCommerce and WPML (WordPress Multilingual) plugins, WooCommerce Multilingual allows you to translate every facet of your website to other languages. This includes product information, checkout, and contact.
As the name suggests, the plugin filters out products based on various criteria like price, size, category, etc. Product filtering is a staple of any eCommerce website, so you should definitely have this on your website.
Another neat plugin for enhancing user experience, the WooCommerce Menu Cart displays the visitors’ shopping cart on every page in a tiny window. Customers don’t have to periodically check the cart manually as they can see which items are in the cart at all times.
Combining social media with eCommerce is often a good idea, and YITH seems to understand this very well. Its WooCommerce Wishlist plugin can be used by visitors to create an item wish list on your eCommerce website, which can then be shared on various social media platforms for all their friends to see. A win-win for both sides.
Keeping in touch with mobile design principles, Pushover for WooCommerce is a tiny yet highly useful plugin for enabling push notifications for your eCommerce business. Whether you want real-time notifications on inventory, sales, or anything else, Pushover will come in handy.
FraudLabs Pro is a fraud prevention plugin that allows you to screen all order transactions and protect your WooCommerce store from fraud orders. It validates all order elements such as geolocation, proxy, email, blacklist, credit card, transaction velocity, etc.
The plugin works behind the scene during the checkout process. It also generates comprehensive reports in the merchant area. This tool is a must to protect against fraud and chargebacks. It’s a freemium plugin, meaning you can get a Micro Plan (less than 500 transactions) free of charge.
Another gem of an extension by YITH, Infinite Scrolling, eliminates the wait users have to endure for a new page to load. Instead, they can scroll indefinitely for new items. This is useful for quick comparisons of multiple items, as you don’t have to switch between pages.
To separate yourself from other eCommerce stores, you can also change your settings and add the option for customers to gift wrap the items they have just bought. This makes sending gifts convenient and can be beneficial for your business come holiday season. The plugin can also be configured to choose between multiple gift wraps.
Among the many eCommerce plugins you can use for free, WooCommerce in WordPress is considered to be at the top of the list. Here’s why:
WooCommerce is undoubtedly a great tool to turn WordPress into a fully-featured eCommerce online store. The best part of it is that you don’t need in-depth knowledge of programming to sell your products online. We hope that this WooCommerce tutorial helps you set up and manage your online store.
If you have any queries related to the above WooCommerce tutorial, do let us know in the comments.
August 19 2020
thanks much, extremely awesome
Tomislav T.
Replied on August 25 2020
Very happy to see that helped you, Najeeb! :)