WooCommerce 3.0 Plugin Tutorial: How To Setup an Amazing WordPress eCommerce Website in 12 Minutes

Here you find a short 12 minute WooCommerce (3.0) tutorial based on a video from Robert (ThemeIsle). WooCommerce is a popular eCommerce plugin for WordPress. You will learn how to setup this plugin from scratch and start selling your products.

You can use these step-by-step instructions for any WooCommerce compatible theme, no matter what you plan to sell online.

Recommendation: If your website has no SSL certificate (https://), contact your hosting provider to install it. This is an important safety feature to secure data and transactions on your website. It will help your Rankings as well.

Below you find My FindingYourNiche Video Notes (plus timing in video).


Now, let’s move to the first step of this setup guide and learn how to install the WooCommerce plugin in WordPress.

 

1. Install & Activate the WooCommerce plugin

0:57 You can find the WooCommerce Plugin in your WordPress dashboard by accessing the Plugins section then click ‘Add New’ and type in the keyword ‘WooCommerce’.

After the installation is complete, activate the plugin, and Run the Setup Wizard.

 

2. Quick Initial WooCommerce Set-up

1:14 ‘Welcome to the world of WooCommerce’ is the first message for this quick setup. Click the ‘Let’s go!’ button.

The first setup screen is for Pages (Shop, shopping Cart, Checkout, My Account). Your webshop needs a few essential pages that will be created automatically. You are free to skip this step and create the custom pages later.

The next screen ‘Store Locale Setup‘ is where you set your store location, which currency your online store will use, and the units which should be used for product weight, as well as for product dimensions.

Remember you can find all these settings anytime later, in your WordPress dashboard by accessing the Setting options in the WooCommerce menu.

The Shipping & Tax setup: now you can select the option for sending physical goods to your customers, as well as the option for charging taxes.

With sales tax charging on, choose if prices will be entered inclusive or exclusive tax. The tax rates will be imported automatically according to the location setup.

Continue to setup your Payment methods. The first two options are PayPal and Stripe. The main difference between them is that transactions with PayPal will be processed outside you website using the PayPal servers and the Stripe option will process payments directly on your website.

For PayPal, you need to enter your PayPal email address. You can also enable ‘Check Payments’, ‘Bank Transfer’, and / or ‘Cash on Delivery’.

Choose the options here according to the type of products you sell. For example, if you sell virtual and downloadable products, the ‘Cash on Delivery’ option is useless. If you sell affiliate products, all options here are useless because every transaction will be done outside of your website.

The last screen shows ‘Your Store is Ready’, so Click the button ‘Create your first product!’.

Create Your First Product in WooCommerce

3:21 How to add a product? It is as easy as creating a blog post. First, set a name for your product then enter a (short and main) description.

– General

Now choose the product type. You can select one of the four different types of products like:

  • Simple product,
  • Grouped product (= a product type that lets you add similar simple products (like materials, design etc) to a single parent product),
  • External / Affiliate product and
  • Variable product (= a product type that lets you offer a set of variations on a product, like multiple colors and sizes).

After that, check if the product will be virtual or downloadable.

Next is to set the sale price. You can set two prices here; a regular price and a sale price (= the price after discount).

The last two general options are tax status and tax class.

– Inventory

If you have a limited inventory, then you can manage it using the Inventory tab.

– Shipping

The shipping tab is where you can set the shipping taxes based on the customer location (address) and product weight.

– Linked products

Create Up-sells and Cross-sells using published products in the Linked Products tab to gain more sales through the same order.

– Advanced

In the last tab, you can set a custom message that will be sent to your customer after the checkout, and here, you can enable (default) / disable reviews for this product.

Next, is to add the Product category and Tags. Also upload at least one Product Image. You can add a product gallery as well to show more pictures of the product.

Now, hit ‘Publish’. Yes, your first product is live and can be ordered right after you’ve added shipping methods and zones.

Add Shipping Methods & Zones

5:52 You can learn more about your preferred shipping zones by clicking the button ‘learn more about shipping zones’.

A shipping zone is a geographic region where a certain set of shipping methods and rates apply. You can add as many zones as you need, but your customers will only see the methods available for their address.

Click ‘Add shipping zone’. Set a zone name, the zone regions then click to add at least one shipping method for that particular one. For example, if a customer address is near your store location, you can set ‘Free Shipping’ or ‘Local Pickup’ for that zone.

You can set a flat rate as well. After adding a shipping method, you can enable or disable that option.

How to use WooCommerce plugin in WordPress for Your Online Store

 

3. More WooCommerce Settings: Set-up Details

6:54 For more options, head to the Settings item in the WooCommerce menu (see your WordPress admin interface).

General Tab

The first tab with General Options is what we previously have filled in during the quick set up, but here you find more options to activate.

You can use the ‘Store notice text’ to announce coupon codes and special discounts. Scrolling down to the Currency Options you have to set the position, separators, and the number of decimals.

Products Tab

7:28 Next, move to the Products tab, then click on ‘Display’ settings.

– Display

Now, you can set the online shop page, what the shop page will display, the default category and the default product sorting.

Add to shopping cart behavior: If you sell a single product, redirect to the cart page after successful addition. Or leave this option empty to let your customer browse for more products.

Product images: Here you can set the dimensions for the catalog images, the single product image, and the product thumbnails.

– Inventory

Set your email address where you wish to receive inventory notifications. Change any option here according to your situation.

– Downloadable products

Only if you plan to sell this type of products.

Tax Tab

8:24 Set the Tax Options carefully, according to your business standards, store location, and shipping destinations.

Shipping Tab

This tab has options we previously walked through to set the Shipping zones,

– Shipping options

Here you have two more options to set: the Calculations and the Shipping Destination.

– Shipping classes

The last option here is to Add Shipping Classes that can help you group products of similar type.

Checkout Tab

9:02 The Checkout Process tab is where you can enable the use of Coupons and choose to calculate coupon discounts sequentially.

Enabling the guest checkout allows customers to checkout without creating an account.

Leave Checkout Pages and Endpoints as they are, then click to enter custom details for every Payment Gateway.

Accounts Tab

Move to the Accounts tab and set the pages so that WooCommerce knows where to send users to access account-related functionality.

Email Setting Tab

9:37 Here, you can set different emails for notification options. Type a custom ‘From Name’ and Email Address. You can also set the email template according to your website colors.

The email header image can be set by uploading an image in your media library. Just copy and paste the custom link.

You can also set the Footer Text.

10:14 Now, the Online Store is Ready!

You are able to manage every single order using the Orders menu-item in your WordPress dashboard.

You can create, edit or delete Coupons (menu-item) for your marketing strategies and check out the Reports (menu-item) anytime you wish to see the Sales Reports (by date, product or category).

Use the tabs to see yearly, monthly or even a daily Reports. For more reports about Customers, Stocks and Taxes, you can use the main tabs.

For more features: check out the WooCommerce Extensions (menu-item). Some of them are free to use.

To your online success!

Back to the niche monetization page.

As found on Youtube

Do you want to sell affiliate products in your new WooCommerce Store? Learn how to sell affiliate products with Sarah Staar:

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