What is WooCommerce?
WooCommerce is a free eCommerce WordPress plugin that allows you to sell both goods and services. It now powers 30% of all online stores – more than any other platform. Although the plugin itself is free, to get the best use out of the platform you will have to add various add-ons and extensions to your site which range from free to hundreds of pounds, this helps enhance the user’s experience and add extra features to your store, such as offering bookings, memberships and monthly subscriptions.
Getting started
Before you get started using WooCommerce you need to make sure you have the following things:
- A WordPress site
- The WooCommerce plugin installed
Setting up WordPress
Setting up WordPress is extremely easy and does not take long – we have actually already created a tutorial on how to do so here. Once you have this setup and are logged into the admin side of your site you are ready to install the plugin.
Installing WooCommerce
Installing plugins on WordPress is very easy – from the main menu, all you have to do is click “plugins” on the sidebar to the left of the screen and then underneath that press “add new”. From there search “WooCommerce” and install it. Wait for this to install and then click “activate”. You will now be redirected to the WooCommerce Wizard.
Click “Let’s go!” and follow the steps on each page, filling out the relevant information for your website and choosing things such as payment methods you will accept.
Now that this is all setup you are ready to begin adding products and selling things!
Using WooCommerce
One of the first things you are going to want to do is add a product, so you actually have something to sell. To do this go to Products and click Add New and you will be taken to the product page, this is very similar to adding a post or a page.
You will want to add some information about the product, such as a name, description, a price and some accompanying pictures. Once you have filled all this out you will want to click publish and from there you will have your first product available on your site.
Add-ons
There is so much you can do with WooCommerce straight out of the box but sometimes your website will have special requirements that the plugin cant handle. This is when you need to look at the premium add-ons and choose one that will help you. There are hundreds to choose from that can do a huge range of different things such as marketing, accounting and dealing with complex shipping arrangements.
They are a great way to scale your website and add more functionality to it. For a full list of Add-ons look here.