Create an online shop with WooCommerce

With over five million active installations, WooCommerce is one of the most popular shop systems for e-commerce. With the shop plugin (and some basic technical knowledge), it’s almost easy to turn a WordPress website into an online shop. In this article, we’ll show you step by step how you can easily create your own online shop with WooCommerce, even if you’re a WordPress beginner.

Let’s also take a brief look at who WooCommerce is suitable for and what technical requirements should be met.

Who is WooCommerce suitable for?

The WooCommerce e-commerce plugin is interesting for anyone who wants to present and sell products easily and conveniently via an online shop. This could be small and medium-sized companies, for example, but also solo freelancers, freelancers and agencies. A certain level of technical understanding or at least interest is required.

The plugin allows you to create an online shop with WordPress that doesn’t necessarily require you to dig deep into your pockets.

What technical requirements must be met for a WooCommerce shop?

Before you can set up your WooCommerce shop, you should make sure that the technical requirements are right.

WooCommerce currently requires:

• PHP version 7.2 or higher
• MySQL version 5.6 or higher (or MariaDB 10.0 or higher)
• a WordPress memory limit of at least 128 MB
• HTTPs support (one SSL certificate)

You can find all server requirements in detail in the Automattic documentation.

Overall, WooCommerce websites generate a lot of data and requests that can only be handled with high-performance WooCommerce hosting. You can find out exactly what is important when choosing a hosting provider here: You should consider these 4 factors for your WooCommerce hosting.

WooCommerce guide: Create a shop in 5 steps

So much for the theory, now it’s time for the practice. In the following, we will guide you through the installation of WooCommerce on your WordPress website and show you how to set up your online shop with WooCommerce step by step.

Step 1: Install WooCommerce plugin

The first step is to download WooCommerce as a plugin for your WordPress website. To do this, log into WordPress and select Plugins → Install in the left-hand navigation bar. To find the shop system among the numerous WordPress plugins, you can simply enter the keyword “WooCommerce” in the search bar.

Once you have found it, click on Install now. Automattic should be listed as the author of the plugin. Once the installation is complete, all you have to do is activate WooCommerce and the plugin is ready to use.

Step 2: Make general settings

Once you have successfully installed and activated WooCommerce, you can start setting up your shop. You should first take care of the general settings. The best way to do this is to use the setup wizard of the shop plugin.

The setup wizard guides you through the most important basic settings. It will ask you for some basic information about your shop on the first page(Store Setup). You should have this ready:

• the address of your shop,
• the currency you accept for payments and
• which products you sell.

On the next page, you can select how your customers can pay in your shop. By default, you can add Stripe or PayPal to your online shop as payment methods. Offline payments (e.g. cheques or cash) are also possible.

You can then configure your shipping options and select how much your customers in which “shipping zone” will be charged for shipping. WooCommerce distinguishes between two zones by default: United States (US) and the rest of the world.

Step 3: Create navigation and design

After you have gone through the setup wizard, you will find a few additional tabs in your navigation bar on the left with options for customising and designing your shop. For example, you can add individual pages or customise the design of your online shop. After the automatic setup, your online shop initially only consists of four pages:

• Shop (product overview)
• Shopping basket (for customer orders)
• Checkout (payment page for the checkout)
• My account (customer account with order overview and contact details)

You should take a lot of time for the design . After all, it can ultimately decide how long your visitors browse through your shop – and whether they actually buy something. You can expand, customise and manage your shop’s navigation menu under the Design menu item. There are also countless plugins and themes that you can use to further customise the design of your online shop and, for example, design the colour scheme and layout. You have to decide for yourself which type of design is best for your shop. You can take inspiration from other shops in your industry, for example. Depending on the products you sell, a different shop layout may be suitable.

You can find out what you should look out for when choosing your WooCommerce theme and what the most important themes are in our article The best WooCommerce themes: 7 tips for more sales & usability.

Step 4: Add products, texts and images

The framework for your shop is in place and you’ve found a design that you like? Then you probably can’t wait to add your products. This also works with relatively few clicks.

In addition to the general settings, you will also find the “Products” tab in your WooCommerce menu, which you can use to enter what you are selling into the content management system. Click on Add product to create the first product. Among other things, you can choose whether it is a simple product or a variable product (with several versions, e.g. a T-shirt in different colours).

The input screen for products in WooCommerce is quite intuitive. Firstly, you should upload a product image and enter a title and a short product description.

You then add further product data , for example:

• Product type (analogue vs. digital)
• Selling price
• Shipping information (weight, dimensions, etc.)
• Stock (e.g. quantity, status)
• Linked products (upsells and cross-sells)
• Attributes (e.g. product properties, variable products)
• Advanced settings (e.g. position of the product in the menu, activate/deactivate ratings)
• Keywords (tags)

Organise products into categories

To sort your finished products into category pages, navigate to the Categories sub-item in the Products menu and enter the name and URL variant of the category (e.g. jumpers and “pullover”). Then give the category a description and a preview image and click on Add product category.

Once you have created the category, you can go back to the individual product menu and tick the appropriate box under “Product categories”. Click on Publish (or Update) to add the product to the created category.

Further functions for your WooCommerce shop

If you have followed the steps described above, you now have an initial working version of your online shop. However, WooCommerce offers many more functions in the menu that you can use to further customise your shop.

Here is an excerpt of the most exciting functions for WooCommerce beginners:

• Create vouchers: WooCommerce offers several options for granting your visitors a discount. Under the Coupon menu item, you can create voucher codes including a description. You can choose between percentage discounts and fixed discounts on individual products or the entire shopping basket. You can also add usage restrictions to the voucher (e.g. minimum order value, expiry date, individual use, single/multiple use).
• Manage orders: In the Orders menu item, you will find a list of the most recent purchases made in your shop. If you sell physical goods, you can see here which products you still have to dispatch or the status of your orders.
• Create reports: WooCommerce comes with an integrated tracking feature that allows you to display a wide variety of charts and graphs. For example, you can quickly get an overview of how often you have sold a certain product over a certain period of time or what your current stock levels are.

Step 5: Customise the shop for the German market

WooCommerce is primarily geared towards the US market. If you want to use your WooCommerce online shop in Germany in a legally compliant manner, you need to go through an additional step. You cannot use the standard version of WooCommerce in the German-speaking market, but will definitely need an additional plugin, such as German Market. This allows you to expand your shop system to include information on delivery times, information on shipping costs and taxes, terms and conditions, privacy policy, etc. required in this country.

You can find information on what you should pay attention to when it comes to legal compliance with WooCommerce and which other plugins can support you in our article Making WooCommerce legally compliant: Requirements for Germany and Europe.

Frequently asked questions

Can you create an online shop with WordPress?

The answer to this question is quite clear: Yes! Thanks to plugins like WooCommerce, you can turn your WordPress website into a professional online shop relatively easily or integrate the shop into your website.

How much does a WooCommerce shop cost?

You don’t necessarily have to spend a lot of money on an online shop with WooCommerce. However, the actual costs can vary greatly depending on which and how many products you have on offer, how often they need to be updated, whether you have the technical infrastructure and whether you can manage your shop on your own.

What do you need for a WooCommerce shop?

For a WooCommerce online shop, you first need an active WordPress installation, at least 128 MB WordPress memory limit and high-performance hosting. You also need the free WooCommerce plugin and a theme that is compatible with WooCommerce.

Which is better, Shopify or WooCommerce?

The question of whether Shopify or WooCommerce is better cannot be answered in general terms. Both tools have different strengths and weaknesses. Which one is better for you depends on many different factors, including the type of your shop, your budget, your technical understanding or how much value you place on customisability and flexibility.