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Want to create an e-commerce website with WordPress?
With over 40% of the top 10 million websites built on WordPress, it is one of the world’s most popular CMS, and for good reasons:
- It has a bit of a learning curve but is very user-friendly
- WordPress websites are highly customizable thanks to thousands of themes and plugins
- WordPress is a free CMS and there are many free or affordable themes and plugins to choose from
- With regular updates, WordPress has a strong security foundation
- Content published on WordPress websites can be search engine optimized to draw organic traffic
- WordPress has a large and active community, with many resources for help and support
Building an e-commerce site with WordPress is a great way to launch an online business.
In this article, we are going to show you how to create a WordPress e-commerce store using a free and powerful plugin called WooCommerce which is used by over 7 million websites.
Let’s get started.
How to Create an e-Commerce Website With WordPress
You need to first create a WordPress website and then install WooCommerce to convert the site into an e-commerce store. We are going to show you how:
Step 1: Buy a Domain & Hosting Plan
A domain name is a unique web address that helps identify a specific website on the internet such as theblogmetrics.com.
The domain name is essentially the online identity of your e-commerce business.
Web hosting refers to the service that stores your website’s files that stores your website’s files and makes them available to the public through the Internet.
So the domain name allows people to access your website and the hosting service stores your website files and displays them on the browser.
In simpler terms, the domain name is like your home address, it tells people where to find you and web hosting is like the physical house where your content actually resides.
Choosing Domain & Hosting
The domain has to be chosen carefully because it is permanent.
You can change your domain name later but it negatively impacts your website’s search engine rankings, backlinks, and overall online credibility.
Change of domain names may be inconvenient to existing customers and even affect your brand’s online presence.
On top of all these, there are additional costs and technical complexities involved in making the change.
Things to avoid while choosing a domain name:
- Do not choose long or complicated domain names
- Avoid using domain names that might be similar to existing websites or trademark
- Do not use numbers hyphens or special symbols
- Do not use spammy TLDs like .xyz, .abc, etc
- And of course do not use rude, offensive, or explicit language
As for hosting, it’s best to start with an affordable and scalable WordPress hosting provider. Start with a small affordable hosting plan from hosting providers like SiteGroud, HostGator, BlueHost, etc, and move to higher plans when your e-commerce store begins to draw large traffic.
Pick a Hosting from the best WordPress hosting providers.
Buying Domain & Hosting
Once you have settled on a domain name and hosting provider, buying a domain and hosting is a fairly easy and straightforward process.
Let’s say, you are going with Namecheap Hosting. Open their website and add your domain name.
Next, on the cart page, enable the hosting plan (shared hosting), proceed to create an account, and make the payment.
Alternatively, you can choose the managed WordPress hosting which as the name suggests was designed for WordPress websites. With this hosting, you get a ready-made WordPress site but you still need to install and configure WooCommerce. WordPress hosting is slightly more expensive.
That’s it. You now have a domain name and a hosting account.
Step 2: Add Domain in cPanel + Install an SSL Certificate
You have bought the domain name but it needs to be added to your hosting server.
So open your hosting account, go to cPanel or a custom equivalent of cPanel (like Hostinger’s hPanel), and go to Domains → Domains, and hit the Create a New Domain button.
Next, add your domain and hit the Submit button. The domain will be immediately added to your hosting server.
Most hosting providers offer a free SSL certificate for the first year. Install the SSL certificate into your new domain.
This is mandatory because websites without an SSL certificate are marked as “Not Secure” on the Google Chrome browser.
An SSL certificate is a digital document that ensures that the data transmitted between a website and a visitor remains private and secure. It helps visitors trust your e-commerce store.
On your hosting account cPanel, look for Namecheap SSL and proceed with the installation of the certificate. Alternatively, you can ask your hosting support to install it to your domain from their end.
Step 3: Install WordPress
Note: This step is for folks who didn’t purchase the managed hosting account and got the normal shared hosting plan. Those of you who purchased the managed WordPress hosting probably have WordPress installed on your website by the hosting provider.
On the cPanel, go to WordPress Manager by Softaculous, and hit the Install button on the next page.
Then select the https:// protocol, add your domain name from the dropdown menu, add an admin name, password, and email address, and then hit the Install button.
It will take a few seconds for the installation to complete. As soon as it’s over, you will receive your WordPress website login URL.
The default login URL of a WordPress website looks like this: https://example.com/wp-login.php.
Open the login URL on a different tab and use the admin name/email and password to log into your new WordPress website.
After logging in, you will see the WordPress dashboard displayed on the screen.
Step 4: WordPress General Configuration
On your WordPress dashboard, go to Settings and you will see 6 pages: General, Writing, Reading, Discussion, Media, and Permalinks.
You need to open each page and modify the options populating those pages according to your needs.
Let’s take a quick look at how to optimize the setting pages:
- General: Set your website’s title, tagline, timezone, and date and time format, among other general settings
- Writing: Configure settings related to writing and publishing posts, such as default post category, format, and editor options
- Reading: Set your website’s front page, blog page, and other reading settings, such as the number of posts to display on the front page, etc
- Discussion: Configure settings related to comments and discussion on your website, such as comment moderation, notification, and avatar display
- Media: Set settings related to image sizes, upload limits, and other media-related options
- Permalinks: Configure the structure of your website’s URLs, including the format of post and page URLs, and custom URL structures
When you are done, proceed with the next step.
Step 5: Add a Light-Weight Theme + Install WooCommerce
A WordPress theme is a pre-designed template that determines the layout, visual style, content organization, and user experience of a WordPress website.
While there are numerous themes available on the WordPress repository free of cost, you should be careful when choosing a theme for your WooCommerce store.
The theme should be lightweight because it will help improve page loading speed, reduce bounce rates, and provide a better user experience for your customers, ultimately leading to higher conversion rates and increased sales.
Instead of using a free theme, we recommend going for a paid theme because they offer ready-made site templates that save you time and effort in setting up your online store, and often come with premium features, regular updates, and dedicated customer support, making it easier to create a professional-looking and functional WooCommerce store.
There are a handful of lightweight paid themes loaded with read-made site templates, we recommend GeneratePress because we tested it and it scored pretty high in terms of features, loading speed, user-friendliness, etc.
At the time of writing this article, GeneratePress has 15 different e-commerce website templates from which to choose.
We will show you how to get an e-commerce website up and running in no time.
i. Installing GeneratePress
GeneratePress has a free version of the theme but you need the paid version because it offers access to ready-made website templates.
Purchase the premium GeneratePress and then download it on your local computer.
Open your WordPress dashboard and go to Appearance → Themes → Add New Theme and write GeneratePress in the search box. When the theme appears, hit the Install and then the Activate button.
Next, you will be installing the premium GeneratePress from your local computer.
Before doing that, you should know that the premium GeneratePress is a plugin and not a theme. It is built to enhance the GeneratePress theme’s (the one you just installed) existing features. So you will be installing it as a plugin.
On your WordPress dashboard, go to Plugins → Add New Plugin → Upload Plugin and use the Choose File button to upload the plugin from your local computer. Then hit the Install button followed by the Activate button.
Next, activate your license for the premium GeneratePress plugin by going to Appearance → GeneratePress.
Need assistance with the installation, follow these help docs.
ii. Importing Starter Site & Installing WooCommerce
By now you have a WordPress website with a theme installed on it. What you’ll do next is convert the site into an e-commerce store.
To do that, you need to do two things! One, install the WooCommerce plugin and re-design the website into a store. Redesigning a website takes time, effort, and designing capabilities.
That’s where starter sites come in.
As we’ve mentioned before, GeneratePress offers ready-made website templates that you can simply import and get a professional-looking website up and running within minutes.
GeneratePress has e-commerce starter sites with WooCommerce installed. Let’s import one of those websites.
Go to Appearance → GeneratePress, activate the Site Library, and select Open Site Library.
In the Site Library, go to e-Commerce, select any site for a quick preview, and import a site that you look at.
That’s it. Now you have a WooCommerce store on your WordPress website.
iii. Customize Store Design & Structure
You may want to modify some of the design aspects like typography and color, add a logo, favicon, and header menu, and change the website structure like site container size, product image size, and others.
All such changes can be made from the customizer. Open your WordPress dashboard and to Appearance → Customizer.
We recommend spending some time tinkering with the customizer and making modifications to build the e-commerce store exactly as you envisioned it.
Step 7: Configuring WooCommerce Settings
On your WordPress dashboard, go to WooCommerce → Home and a setup wizard will open.
It will ask you to enter some details like business address, type of shop, and number of products you are going to sell, etc.
Fill in these details properly as it will help WooCommerce configure your store’s currency, shipping, and taxes.
At the end of the setup, you will be asked to install add-on plugins.
You can skip them for now or install them only after learning what the plugins do.
Cluttering your website with too many plugins is a bad idea because they tend to overwhelm the dashboard and slow your website down.
Once this initial setup is complete, go back to your WordPress dashboard, and navigate to WooCommerce → Settings.
You will see a couple of setup pages like General, Products, Shipping, Payments, etc.
You need to configure all of these as per your requirements. Here’s a comprehensive guide on how to configure WooCommerce settings.
This will take a while but it’s an important part of your store and therefore has to be completed from the get-go.
Step 8: Add Products
To start adding products to your e-commerce site, go to Products → Add New, and the product editor will appear where you need to fill in the following details:
- Title
- Product Description
- Product data
- Short description
- Product mage
- Product Gallery
- Category
- Tags
Once the page is ready, you can hit the Publish button or the Draft button if you don’t want to publish it immediately.
You can add more products to your store by following the same methods, i.e. go to Products → Add New and add details about another product.
Step 9: Add Necessary Plugins
There are some must-have plugins for every WooCommerce start. We recommend adding and configuring the following plugins:
- UpdraftPlus Backup: Automatically backs up your WordPress site and WooCommerce store to prevent data loss and ensure business continuity
- Wordfence Security: Provides comprehensive security protection for your WooCommerce site, including firewall, malware scanning, and login security features
- RankMath SEO: Helps optimize your WooCommerce store for search engines with features like keyword research, on-page optimization, and technical SEO audits
- Contact Form 7: Allows you to create and manage multiple contact forms for your WooCommerce site, making it easy for customers to get in touch with you
- LiteSpeed Cache: Accelerates your WooCommerce site’s performance by caching frequently-used resources, reducing page load times, and improving user experience. (Note: this plugin requires a LiteSpeed Web Server.)
Step 10: Add Pages & Posts
In WordPress, posts are articles or entries that you publish on your blog, such as news, updates, or stories. They are often listed in order from newest to oldest, so the latest posts appear first. Posts are categorized and tagged, making it easy for readers to find related content and for search engines to index them.
Pages, on the other hand, are static content that is not necessarily time-sensitive, such as About Us, Contact, or Privacy Policy pages. They are usually not categorized or tagged but can be organized hierarchically.
You may not need to publish any posts immediately, but you need to publish three important pages, namely, About Us, Contact, and Privacy Policy, as soon as possible.
You can add new pages to your WooCommerce store by going to Pages → Add New Page.
That it, folks! With that, we have come to the end of this tutorial.
Conclusion
Congratulations! You’ve taken the first step towards building a successful e-commerce website with WordPress.
With its user-friendly interface, customization options, and strong security foundation, WordPress is the perfect platform for launching an online business.
By using WooCommerce, you’ll have access to a powerful, free plugin trusted by over 7 million websites.
With the steps outlined in this article, you’ll be well on your way to building a thriving e-commerce store. Don’t hesitate to reach out to the WordPress community for support.
And if you have any questions about how to create an e-commerce website with WordPress, let us know.
