Get started with WordPress WooCommerce: a basic setup walkthrough

WordPress is a great publishing tool for almost anything. From blogs to corporate websites and from the bakery around the corner to the fishing store near the lake. WordPress can be simple and incredible complex at the same time.

In this article I will help you to get started with WordPress E-commerce by extending WordPress with the WooCommerce plugin. WooCommerce is the best you can get in sense of e-commerce for the WordPress platform.

Let’s get started: setup a test environment

At this time, I assume you have a WordPress website setup you can play with. Just make sure it isn’t a site that is important to you. Although the process is quite simple, errors are made easy. You never want that on a production and important site.

Go ahead to the ‘plugin’ section of your website and press the button ‘New plugin’. Search for ‘WooCommerce’ and select the WooCommerce plugin to install it on your website. After installation, activate the plugin.

Walk trough the WooCommerce setup

After activation WooCommerce will start a small setup wizard. Walk trough the steps and adjust any settings if necessary. For example make sure you configure the right settings for taxes that may apply in the region you are planning to set up shop.

The wizard lets you configure some basic payment gateways for your shop. You can start right away with a Paypal gateway as well as a Stripe gateway. Check the gateways you wish to use and continue, the configuration of the gateways happens later.

Finish up the wizard and create your first product!

Product types and which you need

WooCommerce default ships with a couple of product types you can choose. Simple, grouped, external and variable.

Simple

A simple product is… a simple product. It consist of some default product data and contains only one price. It has no variations or options the influence the price of the product. It’s simple.

Grouped

Grouped products are for grouping several simple products into one. This can make it easier for customers to buy a bundle of products. Important to know is that, as of WooCommerce default, you can’t set a bundle price.

External

External products are for linking off-site. You can use an external product to combine another site’s product in your own store. Users will be linked to the other site to order that product.

Variable

Next to a ‘simple’ product this will probably be the most used product type in your shop. It offers extensive support for products with multiple choices and different prices depending on those choices. We will dive into this product type in another article.

Create a product

To get started, enter a ‘simple’ product. Think of a name, price, description and a category it belongs to. Add a nice image to it and save it. View your product; you just created your first product people can buy online!

How does it look?

If your theme supports WooCommerce it should like alright out of the box. If not, well then maybe your theme isn’t that WooCommerce compatible at all. Try to find a theme that supports WooCommerce and fits your shop.

Set up your payment gateways

You remember checking some payment gateways at the setup wizard? That’s great… but they still need some setup. Go to “WooCommerce”, “Settings” and choose the tab “Checkout”. Click on the gateways you enabled to show their settings. Supply those settings and save the gateway to enable users to pay using that gateway. I recommend Stripe for creditcard payments. It’s easy to setup and works just great.

And… ship it all out. WooCommerce ‘Shipping Zones’

You got WordPress, WooCommerce, your first product and options to pay… but what about shipping? If you ship physical products like toys, electronics, etcetera you need to setup some shipping if you want to charge people for shipping.

Go to “WooCommerce”, “Settings”, “Shipping”. You enter a editor for shipping zones. Zones can be variable. A zone can be a country, a city or a zipcode. That way you can charge different costs for shipping outside your country and you can enable local delivery for orders nearby. Play with the options and try them out to see how they work out for you.

Thats it! You got a small shop setup in which you can sell products, let users pay for them and use shipping zones to charge the right shipping costs. There is a lot more in WooCommerce to explore. We will dive into more WooCommerce treasures in our next articles. Stay tuned!