WordPress eCommerce website: Step by step to build it effectively
Published: 2020-11-25 04:16:50

WordPress is one of the most popular website builders in the world. The number of eCommerce sites on WordPress is increasing dramatically, especially in 2020. Then, if you want to set up your own WordPress eCommerce website, in this guideline, we will show you detailed steps to do that.

Set  up your business plans
Business plans are essential for every type of business, regardless of online or offline ones. Without business plans, you will easily be out of track. Then, building a valid business plan is the first step to do. 

Find your target customers
Let’s face facts: You can’t satisfy everyone. Therefore, to deliver the best service and products to your customers, you need to narrow down your audience. After that, you’ll have to learn about them: their behaviors, demography as well as geography. Thanks to that, you will be able to serve them well. Then, you can improve customer satisfaction along with your revenue.

Choosing products to sell
You need products to sell on your WordPress eCommerce site. Now, it’s time to select items to sell on your online store. Will you resell products from a supplier, or handcraft products yourself? Will you sell your items in bulk, or individually. Depending on your segmentation and target customers, you can find the right products and service to offer to them

Understand your competitor
This is such an important step for your business. Learning about your competitors can help you determine your advantages as well as disadvantages. From that, you’ll be able to set a suitable price. Also, it’s a great way to improve and upgrade your products/

Choosing your brand name
Brand name, tagline, and slogan can greatly reflect your business perspectives. Thus, you should think of the brand name as well as the slogan carefully.

Developing your unique value proposition ( UVP)
ECommerce is such a competitive market. Thus, to compete with thousands of WordPress eCommerce website out there in the market, you need to highlight your unique value proposition. Thanks to that, customers can instantly see the value of your products. Then, they will choose you over other website or brands

Set up your WordPress eCommerce website
Register your domain 
The domain name is simply your website's unique address. Without the domain, customers can’t go to your online store. 

However, don’t jump right in settling on a domain name. Instead, you should confirm if the domain is available first. There are many tools that help you with this. One of them is HostGator’s a free domain search tool.


Register your domain name
With a WordPress eCommerce website, you’ll need to buy your domain name. For example, sites like NameCheap sell domain names at an affordable cost. Particularly, you can get the domain name that you like with only $10 to $20 per year. This is such a bargain. 

Sign up for web hosting
After getting your dream domain name, now, it’s time for you to find hosting providers. Keep in mind that every website needs web hosting, therefore, you should choose to host providers carefully. Depending on the type of your WordPress eCommerce website, you will be able to find the right web hosting providers. Often, eCommerce web hosting will charge you from $5 to $20/ month

Also, we highly recommend not using shared – hosting. Why? If you share your web hosting, the cost will be much lower. However, once the other websites get hacked, your WordPress eCommerce website will become vulnerable as well. In case you want to offer credit card payment, this is highly risky.

Install WordPress
In this step, there are two options for you

One-click installs via your web hosting providers
Manually download WordPress and upload it to your hosting account
Let’s dive deeper into these two options

One-click install
Needless to say, this option is much easier, more simple, and faster than the other one. 

To use this option, make sure you choose the hosting providers that offer one-click installation. For example, HostGator allows you to easily install WordPress with one click

Manually install WordPress
With this option, you simply download WordPress into your computer and upload it to your hosting dashboard. It’s not that complicated. However, it surely takes you a lot more time than one – click installation

Build your WordPress eCommerce website
Design your WordPress eCommerce website
In this step, you can either ask a professional designer to help you, or do it yourself

Of course, hiring professional designers will grant you stunning, outstanding and modern websites. However, you’ll need to prepare a sufficient budget when choosing this option. On the other hand, “ do it yourself” option will be a lot cheaper. Nevertheless, keep in mind that WordPress is not for beginners or those who have no experience in coding. 

Install WordPress eCommerce plugin
WordPress doesn’t offer you everything you need to build an online store. Therefore, a high chance is that you’ll need to install some plugins to make your website functioning. And one of the most essential and popular WordPress plugins is Woocommerce. In this guideline, we will focus on this plugin. Woocommerce is totally FREE to download and use. With this WordPress plugin, you can easily turn your website into an online store without spending too much effort and budget. 

Install and active Woocommerce
Login to WordPress dashboard. Then, click in “ Plugin” on the left menu.


Type in “ Woocommerce” in the search bar to find Woocommerce. Then, choose “ Install Now” to download and install it.

Once the “ Install Now” button turns into green “ Activate” button, click this

Add in your business details
Now, it’s time for you to fill in your business information in Woocommerce


Make sure you choose the “ I plan to sell both physical and digital products” option

Choose payment option
In this step, you choose the payment option that you want to offer on your online store. Stripe and Paypal are two popular payment options. Therefore, you should include them in your WordPress eCommerce websites.

Shipping option
When it comes to eCommerce, shipping is one of the most important factors. Then, you’ll need to choose shipping rate. Woocommerce will automatically set your current area as your “ Shipping zone”


Select additional plugins/ theme
According to your requirements and needs, you can choose the suitable plugins/ themes for your eCommerce site. If you can’t decide now, you can choose the theme later on. No need to rush

Activate Jetpack
Finally, you need to activate Jetpack. This will enable your payment setup and automate taxes


Choose themes for your WordPress eCommerce website
Choosing themes is an exciting, yet difficult step when building your website. WordPress has thousands of themes for you to choose from. Despite the variety of options, you’ll need to spend a lot of time searching and finding the right themes for your online store. Make sure your dream WordPress themes fit your budget When it comes to choosing WordPress themes, it might be daunting and mot very easy. Then, in this case, we want to introduce you a stunning and powerful WordPress theme – Lusion

Lusion is a multi purpose WordPress theme. Lusion is evaluated as most unique multi-purpose eCommerce theme for shop online with clean and modern design. Lusion will be a subtle and smart choice for shop owner to sell their best products. There is no doubt that Lusion will make your work look more impressive and attractive to viewers. Lusion theme is Retina ready and fits within multiple devices, browsers, and platforms. Built-in Elementor allows you to customize any sections of the page instantly, right at front-end. Explore now! https://themeforest.net/item/lusion-multipurpose-ecommerce-wordpress-theme/27657550
Add products
You can upload your products right after activating Jetpack, or do it later. 
If you choose to do it later, when you return to dashboard, click on “ Product” on the left menu and click “ Add New”

After that, you can upload your products. Make sure that you include necessary information such as product names, prices, products images and product description

Install some additional WordPress eCommerce website plugins

Depending on your requirements, you will be able to choose suitable plugins for your online store. In this guideline, here are our recommendations

Yoast
SEO plays an important role in digital marketing. Therefore, to best optimize SEO, Yoast will come in handy. Moreover, it has both a Free and paid version for you to choose. 

This plugins will analyze your content, assess it and give some suggestions to make it more SEO – friendly

Securi
When it comes to online buying, security is a must, especially when you want to offer customers credit payment options. Then Securi will be such an ideal solution. It can greatly boost the security of your website. Thanks to that, you don’t need to worry about hackers or broken website

Site reviews
As you might know, customer reviews have a great effect on customers’ buying behaviour. By encouraging people to leave comments, reviews or feedback on your WordPress eCommerce website, you can gain more trust from customers. Moreover, most of customers’ feedback is related to the products and rich in keywords. Thus, it can improve your SEP as well