Right ok, so you have your new fancy WordPress website. You have themed your site and it looks just how you like it. Now you want to start your online store and sell your products and are wondering what is the best way to get started.
So today we will take a look at the WooCommerce Plugin for WordPress, it supports multiple payment gateways such as PayPal and Stripe, it supports product variables so that you can sell products of different sizes and colours and even has an option to offer digital-only downloads. Add to the fact that there are many additional plugin options available to download which allow you to have many other features such as offering custom printed T-Shirts for example.
So How Do I Get WooCommerce?
The first thing you will need to do is to log in to the administrator section of your website. From here in hover your mouse over plugins from the menu options, an additional menu will appear and then select add new.
You will then be greeted with the Install Plugins screen.
Step 1: Search for WooCommerce in the search box
Step 2: Select install to install the WooCommerce Plugin
Now that you have installed the plugin you will need to press activate to enable the plugin.
Step 3: Activate the plugin to enable it
You will now be greeted with a number of options to enter your business details and to install additional plugins. We would recommend you enter your business details but the additional plugins are options and you may wish to skip this section as you can install them later as and when required.
Well done that’s the first part done you now have the WooCommerce plugin install on your website. In the menu options you will now see 2 new sections, 1 called WooCommerce and 1 called Products.
Setup How You Will Accept Payments ( for this example we will use PayPal )
From the menu options hover your mouse over WooCommerce and a new menu will appear, now select settings.
You will be present with a new screen, from this screen select the Payments tab
You will now be greeted by another new screen from here you will
Step 1: Enable the PayPal payment gateway
Step 2: Click Manage to set up the PayPal payment gateway
You will now be greeted with a new screen to enter your PayPal email address. Enter it then scroll to the bottom of the screen and press save.
The WooCommerce Plugin is now set up ready to take payment via PayPal for you.
We will now continue to use the plugin to start selling a simple product such as a game controller.
Setting Up A Simple Product
Things you will need:
1) and image for the product
2) some information about the product
3) the price of the product
From the main menu, hover your mouse over Products and new menu options will appear. Select Add New to start adding a product.
You will now be present with a new screen to enter your product details.
Step 1: Give the product a name for example Game Controller
Step 2: Give the products detailed description
Step 3: Scroll down to Product Data and be sure that Simple Product is selected
Step 4: Enter a price for the product
Step 5: Enter a short description of the product
Step 6: Add a product image from the options in the right-hand panels
Step 7: Publish the product from the options in the right-hand panels
Ok so now we have a new product available to be sold on WooCommerce.
How To Add The Shop To The Menu Of Your Website
Hover your mouse over Appearance in the main menu. A new menu will appear and select Menus
A new screen will appear for menu options. Under pages select View All and then look for Shop.
Step 1: Tick Shop
Step 2: Select Add To Menu
You will now see the shop menu item on your menu window. You may drag it up and down the menu to the location you prefer.
Now select Save Menu and the menu will be saved and you now will have a Shop button on the menu of you website and when selected the product that you added will be in there for you to purchase via PayPal.
Repeat the process to add other products to your online store.
This concluded our little lesson on how to start your own online store using the WooCommerce Plugin for WordPress.
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