What Is WooCommerce: A Complete Guide For Beginners

What Is WooCommerce: A Complete Guide For Beginners

You may have heard of WooCommerce if you are interested in starting an online business. With over 4 million active users, it is the most widely used e-commerce platform for WordPress and powers 30% of all online stores. However, it can be daunting to know how to approach it if you’re a beginner.

Fortunately, WooCommerce is simple to use. Even if you don’t consider yourself technically savvy, it’s adaptable, user-friendly, and makes integrating your online business with your WordPress site effortless.

In this post, we’ll explain what WooCommerce is, what WooCommerce is used for, and, more importantly, how you can use it to start your online business today!

What Is WooCommerce?

A third-party WordPress plugin, WooCommerce, was created to help create small- to large-scale eCommerce websites. It can be used on WordPress websites to manage an online store, accept payments, and sell physical and digital goods.

The plugin’s popularity is a result of its user-friendly interface, which can be customized to suit the requirements of almost any type of business, and its extensive marketplace, which enables users to create an eCommerce website from scratch or add shopping cart functionality to an already-existing WordPress website.

Even though WooCommerce Development is a free program, you still need a domain name, web hosting, and an SSL certificate to host and encrypt your website. An additional expense is the time, money, and effort required to run a business.

What Is WooCommerce Used For?

WooCommerce is used to create an online store. It’s a free plugin compatible with the WordPress content management system. Once you’ve installed the plugin, you can customize your online store by adding products, payment options, and shipping methods to your site.

If you already have a website but don’t have an eCommerce solution in place, You can use WooCommerce to:

• Sell goods and services, such as affiliate products and digital downloads.
• Add shopping cart features and functionality.
• Make membership websites.
• Control orders and shipping processes.
• Automate calculations for sales taxes.
• Accept payments from various gateways in a secure online environment.
• Select from a variety of add-ons to personalize your online store.
• Discover products that integrate with other eCommerce plugins.
• Manage your customers and orders through an intuitive dashboard.
• Utilize the advanced features of WordPress to create the perfect eCommerce website.

Why Is WooCommerce The Best?

We have already discussed that WooCommerce is free and open source, but what makes it better than its competitors? Here’s a breakdown of why you should go with WooCommerce out of all eCommerce solutions.

 

• Ease Of Use: Most eCommerce solutions require technical literacy, but not WooCommerce. WooCommerce is user-friendly. It’s easy to use, and you do not need to be a programmer or website developer to build your eCommerce website.

 

• Management Tools: This plugin gives you an intuitive dashboard to track your orders, customers, and payments. You can use this dashboard to create a shopping cart and manually process your orders without relying on a third party.

 

• Compatible Payment Gateways: The plugin allows you to accept payments from different gateways, such as PayPal, Stripe, and Authorize.net. This makes it easy for customers to pay online and ensures that the money goes through to your bank account.

 

• Flexible & Scalable: The plugin is flexible and scalable, which makes it easy to customize the appearance of your online store. This feature allows you to create a unique look without writing any code.

 

• Support: The plugin’s support is excellent. They provide user guides and documentation to help you create a website that works for your business. Additionally, the WooCommerce community offers 24/7 support through forums and chat if you have any questions or concerns.

Why Should You Use WooCommerce?

Now that you understand what WooCommerce is and why it is the best, you may wonder if you need it.

The answer depends on the website type you’re creating and the CMS (content management system) you’re using. WooCommerce, as the name implies, is designed to develop e-Commerce websites. It’s WordPress-based, so you’ll need to use the CMS.

This plugin is a must-have if you intend to set up an online store on WordPress. It’s completely free and has numerous advantages. In addition, WooCommerce allows users to sell almost anything. They are starting with physical goods, moving on to digital products, reservations, and other services.

The Benefits Of Using WooCommerce To Create Your Online Store

Aside from helping you set up an online store, using this plugin will help you enhance your online business. Here are a few of the benefits that come with using WooCommerce:

 

• Designed For WordPress: WooCommerce is a plugin that only works with WordPress, meaning you enjoy seamless integration between your eCommerce website and your CMS.

 

• Complete E-commerce Features: The plugin comes with full e-commerce features, including payments, offers, and shipping. These features help you create an ideal online store that helps sell your products or services to your customers.

 

• Sell Any Product: Use WooCommerce to sell almost anything with the plugin. You can sell digital products like eBooks, digital downloads, and software. Sell physical effects such as books and CDs. Sell other services like rentals or subscriptions. It’s up to you!

 

• Integration Capabilities: WooCommerce is flexible when integrating any third-party software system with your webshop. You can easily incorporate a CRM system, order management tools, third-party shipping services, and other tools to make your web shop operations extra flexible.

 

• It’s SEO Friendly: You can use many SEO factors to make your website more visible in search engines. SEO services will help you optimize your site content and structure for search engines.

 

• Security Matters: Security is an essential issue behind which every online business must be. Keeping your website secure is vital. With WooCommerce’s security features, you can rest assured that all your customer data, payment information, and order details will be safely stored and transmitted.

 

• Mobile-Friendly: You must have heard about the importance of mobile-friendly websites. This is one of the significant factors that determine your website’s success. WooCommerce is fully responsive and mobile and tablet friendly, which means you can sell to your customers, even if you use a commerce website design.

What Do You Need To Get Started With WooCommerce?

You can easily set up a fully-functioning eCommerce website without any technical knowledge or coding experience. However, you will need to know a few things to get started.

 

To do that, we’ll first talk about the essentials of your online business and then get into the details of configuring your site. Here’s what you need:

 

• A domain name for your eCommerce business. It’s the address people will use to access your online store. The name should be short and accessible but should also reflect the identity of your company or brand. 

 

• A WordPress hosting account will help you run a website. It’s where your site will live. Hosting is essential because it provides the platform on which your eCommerce website runs. It also provides the web server, dedicated IP, and bandwidth to support your site. 

 

• An SSL Certificate for your website. SSL certificates encrypt the information between your web server and end users, ensuring your site’s security. Furthermore, an SSL certificate will help you build trust with your customers. 

How To Get Started With WooCommerce

Let’s look at how to get started now that we’ve covered the fundamental requirements for WooCommerce.

Step 1: Installing And Activating WooCommerce:

Before installing the plugin, you must first go to the official WordPress website and download the most recent version of the application.

The first step after downloading is to log into the WordPress administration area.

To Install The Plugin, Proceed As Follows:

 

• From the left-side menu of your WordPress dashboard, choose Plugins.

 

• Click Add New, and in the search box, enter WooCommerce.

 

• Click on Install Now after locating WooCommerce in the search results.

 

• Click the Activate button after the installation is finished.

Step 2: Access The Setup Wizard

After installing WooCommerce, a setup wizard will be presented to you. Although it is optional, we advise going through it to configure some basic settings.

WooCommerce asks you to fill out some basic information about your store here. Included are its address, preferred currency, and whether you intend to sell physical or digital goods (or both).

Once it’s done, you should be all set.

Step 3: Choose Your Payment Processors

Next, you need to configure the payment process of your eCommerce website.

WooCommerce is powered by Stripe and PayPal payment gateways. You can choose either or both depending on your business’s needs.

At this point, the vital setting must be configured in the “Payment Method” option. Please select the options you’d like to use, and WooCommerce will set them up. You can also use extensions to add more payment processors (if you’d like).

Once you click Save Changes, you can visit the main WooCommerce page to see its features. 

Step 4: Configure Your Shipping Options

Next, you’ll find the Shipping screen. It’ll ask you to choose the shipping options you want to use.

WooCommerce allows you to use any shipping platform – either a third party or your own. You can even choose to use more than one service!

You can decide to use a free or paid shipping option, depending on the features that are offered by each. You can also determine if you’ll provide free shipping for your customers.

WooCommerce allows you to charge different amounts depending on location and other factors. This will help you sell globally while giving prices according to your area and currency.

Depending on what features are being used, ensure that the payment processor is configured correctly (which we covered earlier).

Step 5: Review Optional Add-Ons

Next, you’ll find the options to purchase WooCommerce Add-ons. These add-ons can help you customize and improve your webshop appearance.

Most of these will be optional to get started, but you should be aware of them if you want to expand the functionalities of your eCommerce website. 

Step 6: Install The Jetpack Plugin

Finally, you’ll be presented with an option to install the Jetpack plugin. It’s a free plugin with extra features and performance improvements for WordPress.

We recommend installing it, as some features will make managing your WooCommerce website easier.

Step 7: Setup Reports:

WooCommerce comes with a set of valuable reporting options. You can use the pre-defined reports for various tasks – for example, to view the number of orders and items sold.

Options like these are excellent tools for understanding your company’s state and potential areas for improvement.

Conclusion

WooCommerce is a powerful plugin for WordPress, which is why it’s one of the most popular eCommerce plugins in the world. As such, it offers many incredible features that will help you run your online business. From payment gateways to shipping options, WooCommerce Development has many features to help you run your business. And as we’ve seen from the above points, setting up WooCommerce is easy – even if you don’t have any technical knowledge or coding experience.