17. How to setup an online store in 10 minutes — 30 Days Of Medium
Welcome back to 30 Days Of Medium.
Thanks to everyone who has been reading, clapping and commenting so far! Today’s topic is - How to setup an online store in 10 minutes.
You can catch up on the first 16 days of my 30 Days Of Medium challenge below if you missed them:
0. 30 Days Of Medium
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2. How to find a business you love — 30 Days Of Medium
3. How to build your own website — 30 Days Of Medium
4. How to measure your website’s performance — 30 Days Of Medium
5. How to get more customers by answering their questions -30 Days Of Medium
6. The successful business website cheat sheet — 30 Days Of Medium
7. How to measure success — 30 Days Of Medium
8. Understanding the Online Sales Funnel — 30 Days Of Medium
9. What is traffic and why is it important? — 30 Days Of Medium
10. What is Google URL Builder and why should you use it? — 30 Days Of Medium
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15. How to SELL services to small businesses — 30 Days Of Medium
16. How to win more deals with effective proposals — 30 Days Of Medium
17. How to setup an online store in 10 minutes — 30 Days Of Medium
18. How to work from anywhere — 30 Days Of Medium
19. Why your website is sabotaging your sales — 30 Days Of Medium
20. Where does your traffic come from? — 30 Days Of Medium
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Just do it
Starting an online store has never been easier.
With tools like Shopify, it’s super easy to get online and start selling.
I’m a big believer in just do it (thanks Nike).
Starting is half the battle.
If you have the get up and go to just start, you are halfway there.
Which is why I think if you’ve slept on an online store idea for a couple of days and still want to pursue it, just do it!
You’re never going to get it perfect the first time. The goal is to start and then work hard every day to improve.
Woocommerce > Shopify
I’ve wrote previously about how Woocommerce is a better than option than Shopify for selling online. For those of you who don’t know, Woocommere is an ecommerce platform that plugs into WordPress through a plugin.
You can read my detailed analysis of why this is the case in my article Why WordPress Is The BEST Platform To Build Your Business Or Startup Website On
But, the jist of it is:
- WordPress is more scalable
- WordPress is more flexible and offers better functionality
- WordPress has a simple, customizable 1 page checkout, Shopify has a 5 page nightmare.
Pre-requisites
Getting started with WordPress + Woocommerce is easy.
To begin with, you’ll need the following:
- A domain
- Hosting
- WordPress installed — How To Use WordPress
- Woocommerce installed — How To Install Woocommerce
For a domain and hosting, go to Siteground.
Install Storefront
Storefront is Woocommerce’s own free ecommerce theme.
Storefront is a free Woocommerce compatible WordPress theme that you can use to start selling online.
To install Storefront follow these steps:
- Download Storefront from the Woocommerce website
- Click Appearance > Themes
- Upload Storefront
- Install Storefront
- Optionally import the demo data.
Set up your Shop, Cart & Checkout pages
Once you’ve installed Storefront, you’ll need to setup the essential pages for selling online.
Woocommerce needs a Shop, Cart & Checkout page for users to browse and purchase products on your store.
You can setup these pages using shortcodes which are handy little short blocks of code (duh), that allow you to turn a normal WordPress page into a core Woocommerce page.
Here are the shortcodes to setup these pages:
[woocommerce_shop] — designate your shop page
[woocommerce_cart] — designate your cart page
[woocommerce_checkout] — designate your checkout page
[woocommerce_my_account] — designate the ‘my account’ page for users
You can add these using a simple text block on each page, using the WordPress page builder.
You’ll also need to set these pages using the Woocommerce admin section.
To do this follow these steps:
- Click on Woocommerce > Settings
- Click Products
- Click the Shop page drop down and select your page
Accept credit and debit cards
Woocommerce comes with some built in payment methods like PayPal but you don’t want any friction on your online store, so let’s setup Stripe so we can process credit and debit card payments.
To setup Stripe:
- Navigate to the Plugins marketplace
- Install Stripe
- Create a Stripe account on — https://stripe.com/at
- Enable test mode
- Input your Test API keys from your Stripe account
- Process a test payment to check it works
Setup a shipping zone
A shipping zone in Woocommerce is ‘a geographic region where a certain set of shipping methods and rates apply’.
You need a shipping zone to sell products.
To setup a shipping zone:
- Click ‘Add Shipping Zone’
- Name your zone
- Select a region
- Add a shipping method (flat rate, free shipping, or local pickup)
Once you have a shipping method set up, you are good to go.
Add your products and start selling
Once you have your payment method, shipping zone and products setup, you are ready to start selling!
I also recorded a more detailed step by step video of this process which you are welcome to follow along to.
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