The e-commerce industry is growing rapidly. Global e-commerce sales are expected to grow to $6.54 trillion in 2023.
There are numerous WordPress e-commerce plugins you can use to launch your online shop, such as BigCommerce, Shopify, MemberPress, Easy Digital Downloads, and Cart66 Cloud, among others.
Each e-commerce plugin has its strengths and weaknesses, but WooCommerce is the most popular among WordPress users.
WooCommerce comes with a wide variety of themes that you can use to create an attractive design and layout for your website. It has built-in integration with popular payment gateways. You can use it to sell both physical and digital goods, and you get the option to add affiliate products.
In this article, we will guide you through the process of installing a WooCommerce plugin to your site and using the automatic setup process. We will guide you through what is expected from each section of the process, including adding a theme.
Here is our easy guide on installing and setting up the WooCommerce plugin.
How to Install the WooCommerce Plugin
WooCommerce is a completely free plugin. You can easily install it from the WordPress dashboard. To install the plugin, first, log in to your WordPress dashboard. After that, go to Plugins > Add New.
After clicking the ‘Add New’ button, you will see the WordPress plugin archive. All the WordPress plugins are stored here. Search for ‘WooCommerce’ from the search box in the top-right corner.
Now the WooCommerce plugin will appear in front of you. Click on the ‘Install Now’ button to install it on your WordPress website. Next, you have to activate the plugin on your WordPress website.
You will see that the ‘Install Now’ button will be transformed into the ‘Activate’ button. Simply click on the ‘Activate’ button to activate it on your website. If you are new to WordPress, you can read our definitive guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
After activating the plugin, WooCommerce will automatically create a setup wizard to quickly set up and run your WooCommerce store in real-time. However, you can also skip the automatic setup wizard and do it manually if you want. Cancel the automatic setup by simply clicking the ‘Not right now’ button.
We will go through the automatic setup as it is the best practice and it will also save a lot of time, as well as making our work easier.
To continue, click on the ‘Yes please’ button.
How to Set Up the WooCommerce Plugin (Complete Guide for Beginners)
To complete the setup process with WooCommerce, you have to complete a total of five simple steps. Let me walk you through each of these steps with real-life examples.
1. Provide Your Store Details (Location)
In the first step, you need to provide some basic information about your store location.
Type your store address here, select your country or region, provide your city name, and add the postal code.
Adding real information here will increase your trustworthiness to your new customers. It will also create real visualization of your WooCommerce store to your customers.
If you’re building a WooCommerce store for your client, you can check the box at the end.
After completing the first step, click on the ‘Continue’ button to go to the second step.
2. Choose Your Industry
In this step, you will be asked to select the specific industry in which you will operate your WooCommerce store.
Here you will find various types of categories to choose from, such as Fashion, Apparel, Health, Beauty, Art, Music, Photography, Electronics, Computers, Food, Drink, Home, Furniture, Garden, and more.
Select your industry from the box. You can also choose more than one category from the box. If these are not the industry that you will operate in on your WooCommerce store, then you can select “others.”
After finishing the configuration of this step, simply click on the ‘Continue’ button.
Let’s dive into the next step now.
3. Select Your Product Types
In the third step, you have to choose your product types, such as physical, downloads, subscriptions, memberships, composite, and bookings.
- Physical (Free): Physical products are what you can deliver physically to your customers, like clothes, machinery, tools, furniture, and more. The best part of WooCommerce is that the majority of people build e-commerce stores with physical products and WooCommerce provides its service for free to physical products sellers.
- Downloads (Free): Besides physical product sellers, WooCommerce also provides its services free of cost to downloadable product sellers.
- Subscription ($199/Year): Subscription products are the products or services that users pay periodically to get access to. Newspapers, magazines, and cable TV are traditional subscription products. If you want to sell these types of products on your WooCommerce store, you have to pay $199 per year.
- Memberships, Composite Products, and Bookings: To sell composite products in your store you have to pay $79/year. It will cost $199/year if you want to run membership access to your store. Adding a booking system will cost $249/year.
4. Provide Business Details.
This time you have to provide your business details. You will be asked to select how many products you want to display in your store. You can choose 10-100, 100-1000, or 1000+ based on your business size.
Next, you have to select if you are currently selling your products on other platforms, such as a physical store, an existing online store, or if you don’t sell anywhere else.
After choosing these, you will get more options to grow your business by marketing via Facebook, MailChimp, and more.
You will also be asked to share your annual revenue and the platform’s name that you’re using for your business if you have an existing store.
5. Choose Your WooCommerce Theme
In the last step of the Wizard setup, you will be asked to choose your WooCommerce theme.
You can also search by category with paid or free themes. You can see a demo by previewing these themes. If you don’t know which theme you should choose, you can read our best WooCommerce theme review.
Choose a theme and continue the setup process.
After choosing a theme, you will be asked to choose options, such as whether you want to enhance your store with ‘Jetpack’ and ‘WooCommerce services’ plugins or not. These plugins will add store management, automated sale taxes, and improve speed as well as security.
If you want, you can skip this process.
To follow our tutorial, click the ‘Yes please!’ button to install the ‘Jetpack’ and ‘WooCommerce Services’ plugins.
Woo hoo, you are almost there! Your basic wizard setup is finished.
Now you will be automatically sent to the WooCommerce dashboard.
On the left side, you will notice that there have been some new options added, like WooCommerce (Dashboard, Orders, Coupons, Customers, Reports, Settings, Status, Extensions), Products, Analytics, and Marketing.
On the right side, you will find a list of the most important steps to get your store up and running.
From the WordPress dashboard, you can see an overall report summary of your stores such as net sales of the current month, active orders, and more.
Conclusion: How to Install and Set Up a WooCommerce Plugin
WooCommerce is an excellent plugin for building a powerful e-commerce website, and its popularity is a testimony to its effectiveness.
Although installing WooCommerce is automatic, it can get tricky. Follow our step by step guide, and you are sure to have your e-commerce up and running in no time and without having to incur the cost of hiring an expert.
Use this guide to design your website in a way that makes your store stand out from the crowd. You can create an attractive and professional website while keeping it user friendly. A beautiful website will keep your visitors on the website and encourage them to make more purchases.
In case you have any questions, feel free to reach out to us.
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