WooCommerce
Want to grow your business by selling products online? Adding WooCommerce to WordPress will be your best option. It’s a free WordPress plugin with additional features available as extensions. WooCommerce is made by Automattic, the corporate arm of WordPress, so when you use it, you’re in good hands. WooCommerce has been around since 2011 and has a strong development team behind it.
Just like WordPress, WooCommerce is a free and open source. So despite its premium feel, it’s completely free for anyone to download, use and modify.
Powerful and an amazing set of features of WooCommerce:
- Sell any kind of product you like: physical, digital or even affiliate
- Add unlimited products and images
- Add categories, tags, and attributes– including size or color – to any product to make it easier to find and search
- Geo-location auto-detects customers’ addresses to simplify shipping and tax calculations
- Choose how you’d like to process payments: use popular providers such as Stripe and PayPal, credit cards, Direct Bank Transfer, checks or Cash on Delivery
- Choose shipping options and restrict options based on customer location
- Manage orders and customers with one-click refunds, customer accounts, and guest checkout
Install the WooCommerce WordPress plugin
You can install WooCommerce straight from your WordPress installation, the same as any other WordPress plugin.
To add WooCommerce to your website, head to Plugins → Add New and search “WooCommerce” to locate the WooCommerce plugin
Once you’ve found it, click Install Now then Activate. You’ll then be taken immediately to the WooCommerce Setup wizard
You should go through this setup straightaway and fill in all the details relevant to your store. If you’re unsure about which payment gateway you want to use, you can decide this later.
There are readily available themes in WooCommerce. When you’re considering a theme, be sure to check all WooCommerce pages – not just the shop page. This includes the ‘My Account’ section, the cart, and the checkout page.
The first thing to do is to add some products! These are the things you’ll be selling. Go to Products → Add New and you’ll be taken to the product page. It’s similar to adding posts or pages, but specifically for WooCommerce products.
Payment Gateway
Unless you’re giving your products away for free, you’ll need to take payments! To do this you’ll need something called a payment gateway.
WooCommerce comes with a couple of payment gateways built in, including PayPal. Most of the other options, such as check and payment on delivery, aren’t especially useful for an online store.
