WooCommerce is the most popular WordPress e-commerce plugin worldwide. It provides a platform to create a powerful online store. You can use one of its numerous intuitive themes to make your e-commerce site user-friendly, professional, and elegant.
With WooCommerce, you can carry out stock management and get notifications when it’s time to restock your products. WooCommerce also allows you to provide a platform for your customers to leave reviews.
But to achieve these benefits and many more, you need to set up WooCommerce properly, an issue that most beginners face. In this tutorial, we will guide you through the process of setting up this e-commerce plugin.
We will show you how to add the specific countries where you would want to deliver your goods and services. You will learn how to add both physical, digital, and affiliated products. We will guide you through setting your payment getaways and setting a currency, among others.
Begin by installing the plugin first.
How to Set Up WooCommerce Properly (Step by Step)
To start the configuration process, first, you need to log in to your WordPress dashboard. After logging into your WordPress dashboard, go to WooCommerce > Settings.
Here you will find tabs for several areas to set up: General, Products, Shipping, Payment, Accounts & Privacy, Emails, Integration, and Advanced. There are a total of eight options available. We will describe these eight options in detail, one by one.
1. General
Here you have to provide a store address, set some general options, and select currency options.
- Store Address: Give your store location or office address her; type your city name, select your country, and add the postal code. Scroll down below. You will now see ‘General Options’.
- General Options: Select the countries where you are offering your service. If you offer your service worldwide, then use the default settings (Sell to all countries). However, if you sell your products to a specific country, like the U.S.A. or Australia, then you should choose ‘sell to specific countries’ from ‘selling location’. After choosing this, you will find the option to add those specific countries’ names. According to the selling location, change the shipping location also.
Selecting specific shopping countries means service deliveries are only operational to those specific countries. When any user comes to your website from outside of your specific location, WooCommerces will show him or her a message that this service is not available in his/her location.
Next, you must enable the coupon code option, because you might want to offer a discount to your customers at some point.
- Currency Options: Scroll down more and work with the currency options. The following options will allow you to select the currency that you want to display in your store. Currency position selects where you want to show your currency icon. Will it be shown on the left of your price or on the right?
You can also choose a thousand separator, decimal separator, and a number of decimals, but it is not mandatory.
After completing this process, click on the ‘Save changes’ button and go to the ‘Product’ tab.
2. Products
You will find here three more options (General, Inventory, Downloadable products) under the products tab. These options allow you to set the information and settings that are related to specific product types.
A. General
Let’s check the general tab first.
- Shop pages: There is no need to change anything from the ‘Shop page’. It is recommended to use the default settings.
- Measurements: Under measurements, there are two more options available: ‘Weight unit’ and ‘Dimensions unit’. Weight unit selects whether you want to show your products’ weight in kg, g, or others. Dimensions unit refers to how you want to display your products’ dimensions.
- Reviews: If you enable the product reviews option, customers can give reviews about your products, whether they are good or bad. A good number of reviews can increase more sales of your products, so it is best to run this option in your store. It’s the same situation for the ‘Product ratings’ option.
B. Inventory
As you need to do stock management of your product, you should check the ‘Enable stock management’ box.
WooCommerce sends you notifications when your product will be released, as well as for when your product will be out of stock. These notifications will be sent to the email that you select from the ‘Notification Recipient’ box.
Select the number of products for both the low stock and out of stock message thresholds.
Moreover, you can also choose to hide products from the catalog which are out of stock, and you can also display the number of available products.
C. Downloadable Products
Downloadable products mean digital products like graphics, photoshop presets, software, music, and more. Use the default settings. You don’t need to change anything from downloadable product settings.
3. Shipping
There are also three more options available under shipping. They are shipping zones, shipping options, and shipping classes.
- Shipping zones: Select your zone name and zone regions first. Next, you have to select the shipping method. When you click on the ‘Add shipping method’ button, you will find options to choose different types of shipping like Free Shipping, Flat Rate, Local Pickup, etc.
After adding the ‘Free shipping’ option, you can edit it further. When you move your mouse cursor below the ‘Free Shipping’ text, you’ll find the editing and deleting options here.
We have set this option so that if someone wants to get free shipping, then he or she should order a minimum of $200 of products.
You can add more than one option, such as flat rate and local pick up as well. Setting procedures is almost the same as the ‘free shipping’ setting process.
After finishing that, you can look at the shipping options and shipping classes, but there is no need to change anything from these two items.
4. Payments
This is the most important and sensitive part of the WooCommerce settings. In any event, it is not hard to set up.
This option allows you to set up how you want to receive payments from your customers.
By default, you’ll find here four payment gateways: Direct bank transfer, Check payments, Cash on delivery, and PayPal. If you want, you can integrate more payment gateways as you need.
Enable a payment gateway by clicking the ‘Enable’ button. Click on the ‘Set up’ button to add additional information and credentials to your payment gateway. After setting these you can easily manage them from here.
Last, click on the ‘Save changes’ button.
5. Accounts and Privacy
From accounts and privacy, you have to just check some boxes.
For example, if you want to allow your customers to place an order without logging into your website, then you can select this from here.
Next, you’ll come to ‘Account Creation’. This allows you to define which procedures your customers can use to create accounts for your WooCommerce store.
There is no need to change anything from the ‘Privacy Policy’ and ‘Personal Data Retention’ tabs.
6. Emails
From the Emails tab, you have to complete a few simple steps.
When a customer places a new order, cancels an order, or if an order fails, you’ll get emails for these events. This means you’ll get a total of three types of emails from your customers’ actions.
The rest of the emails will be types received by your customer. Customers will get emails after processing an order, completing an order, etc., and they’ll be sent an invoice also via email when they place orders.
Customers also get notifications via email when they generate or reset passwords.
Scroll down and enter your site’s name and email address that will be used to receive and send notification emails.
You are done with the email options. Other options don’t need to be changed.
7. Integration
If you want to use Maxmind geolocation services, then you need to integrate it by adding the license key here.
The database file path shows the location where the Maxmind database will be stored.
8. Advanced options
The Advanced Options tab is mainly used by developers. Here is a very simple step for you to do.
Head over to the ‘Terms and conditions’ settings and select your terms & conditions page from here.
If you add this to your store, your visitors will be asked to agree to your terms and conditions before placing an order. If they don’t agree, they won’t be able to place orders.
Congratulations! You have successfully set up the WooCommerce plugin.
Related reading: Best WordPress WooCommerce Plugins
Conclusion: How to Set Up WooCommerce Properly
Setting up WooCommerce is not a hard task, and you do not need to be a technical expert to carry it out. Follow our step by step guide to ensure that the settings on the following details are correct:
- Store address and location settings
- Currency and payment options
- Products and product shipping
- Email address
- Account creation
Getting these settings right is essential for the smooth running of your website. And it will also give your visitors an easy time setting up their account and making a purchase. It increases the chances of having them return or referring your store to other customers.
In case you need help, feel free to contact us.
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