Are you planning to have an e-commerce website for your brand using WordPress? Great thought to start with but are you aware of the WordPress development services? WordPress is a flexible and user-friendly site builder that can help you make a professional site easily. In today’s guide, we will learn how to build an E-commerce site with WordPress.
Domain Name and Hosting Provider are Relevant
For any website, especially when it is for e-commerce, it’s important to keep an interesting yet easily memorable domain name. It will help your customers grab the name in their minds quickly. On the other hand, if you keep a complicated domain name, it might be a game-losing factor for you in the long run. Hence, choose a domain that’s easy to spell and relevant to your e-commerce business. After that, select a hosting provider that supports WordPress installations and offers good customer support.
Install WordPress
After securing a domain name and hosting for web development, you need to install WordPress. You can check if your selected hosting provider offers one-click WordPress installation. If yes, your work has already become easier. Let’s see how to install WordPress below:
- Log in to your hosting account.
- Find the one-click installation option for WordPress (usually under the “Website” or “Software” section).
- Follow the prompts to install WordPress on your domain.
Now, just log in to your WordPress dashboard directly by visiting your domain name.com/ wp-admin.
Select An E-commerce Theme
Now to start with WordPress web design, choose a theme that fits well to the needs and preferences of your brand. For an e-commerce site, we suggest choosing a theme that is compatible with WooCommerce. Now, you might ask what WooCommerce is. Simply understand for now that it is the most popular e-commerce plugin for WordPress. Here’s a brief list of some e-commerce WordPress themes:
Astra, Botiga, Neve, Storefront, OceanWP, Divi, Hestia, Metro, Ultra, and many more.
To install a theme on WordPress, follow these steps:
- Go to Appearance > Themes in your WordPress dashboard.
- Click on Add New.
- Search for your chosen theme and click Install, then Activate.
Install Woocommerce
Let us now understand the purpose of WooCommerce. Remember that we have chosen a theme that is compatible with WooCommerce above? It’s a plugin, as discussed above also, that helps make your WordPress website a fully functional online store. So, now, you need to install it by following the below-given steps:
- Navigate to Plugins > Add New in your WordPress dashboard.
- Search for “WooCommerce”.
- Click Install Now and then Activate.
Configure WooCommerce
After you install and activate WooCommerce for your WordPress website design, it will guide you through a setup wizard. Follow the steps:
- Store Setup: Enter your store details such as location, currency, and type of products you’ll sell.
- Payment Setup: Choose and configure payment methods (PayPal, Stripe, etc.).
- Shipping: Set up shipping options based on your delivery methods and locations.
- Additional Options: Configure tax settings and other preferences.
Add Products to Your Store
Now, you have finally made an e-commerce WordPress website for your brand and it’s time to add your products there. But first of all, you need to create product categories. For what purpose? Organize your products into those categories so that the users can navigate and find the desired items easily. You can follow these steps to create product categories on your WordPress website:
- Go to Products > Categories.
- Add New categories with names and descriptions.
After you do this, simply add your products into those categories individually. Puzzled how to do it? Don’t worry, just follow what’s being mentioned ahead:
- Navigate to Products > Add New.
- Enter the product name, description, and other details.
- Set the product price and upload images.
- Configure product data (simple, variable, downloadable, etc.).
- Publish the product.
This is how you work with WordPress development services for adding products to your e-commerce website.
Manage Orders and Customer Information
As you bring your products live, it’s very important to manage orders and customer information. But how to do this? As you have installed WooCommerce for your WordPress e-commerce website, it will help you do the same. Just follow the below-given steps to access and manage your orders:
- Navigate to WooCommerce > Orders in your WordPress dashboard.
- Here, you can view a list of all orders, including details like customer information, order status, and payment methods.
Here, you also get an option to update the status of your orders, such as marking them as delivered or processed. Not only this, but you can also track the progress of your orders this way and make sure that the fulfillment goes on timely. In addition to all these, you can also view customer information using WooCommerce. It includes their purchase history. Very often, it is valuable to provide personalized customer service and understand their buying patterns.
Customize Your Store
WordPress offers customization options as well. You can add pages to your e-commerce store using these customization options available. The pages can include Home, Shop, About Us, and Contact. Follow the below-provided steps to add pages to your e-commerce WordPress web design:
- Go to Pages > Add New.
- Add your page title and content.
- Publish the page.
Now, you can customize your chosen e-commerce theme as well. You might ask what customization of the theme includes. Using this option, you can adjust site identity, colors, typography, and a lot more. To customize your WordPress theme, follow these steps:
- Appearance > Customize.
Install Plugins to Increase Functionality
Yes, you can enhance the functionality of your e-commerce WordPress site with the help of so many plugins available. Here’s a list of some of the most popular WordPress plugins for an e-commerce site:
Download, Yoast SEO, MemberPress, Shopify, WPForms, BigCommerce, Elementor, and many more.
Each plugin comes with its own purpose, making your e-commerce WordPress site more functional and ready to use.
Do you now want to know how to install these plugins? Simply follow the steps provided:
- Go to Plugins > Add New.
- Search for the desired plugin.
- Click Install Now and then Activate.
Enhance User Experience with Analytics
To make sure that your e-commerce WordPress site runs smoothly you need to understand user behavior and sales performance as well. But how to do the same? Using analytics. Have you heard of ‘Google Analytics?’ It is a very powerful tool that you can integrate with your WordPress site and track various metrics. Follow these steps to set it up:
- Install a Google Analytics Plugin: Go to Plugins > Add New, search for “Google Analytics,” and install a plugin such as MonsterInsights or GA Google Analytics.
- Connect to Google Analytics: Follow the plugin’s instructions to connect your site to your Google Analytics account. This usually involves authenticating your Google account and configuring basic settings.
Once you set it up, you can easily track a lot of data like page views, user demographics, and conversion rates. With the help of all this information, you can make informed and wise decisions about marketing strategies, website design improvements, and product offerings to the customers.
Optimize Your E-commerce Site For SEO
Using the correct SEO techniques, you can boost your ecommerce scale to a greater extent. And, the process starts from choosing the right keywords that go well with your niche and industry. Then, you can opt for on-page SEO with the help of SEO-friendly titles and descriptions, Alt text for images, and internal linking to your e-commerce products or content. To understand the overall prices of SEO, you need to first understand how much does it cost to build a website.
Test and Launch
As you feel satisfied with your web design, test it first! There might be some mistakes or technical issues that you need to fix before launching it. While testing, check all your e-commerce product pages and checkout processes. Do not skip to verify whether payment gateways are working properly or not. Also, the shipping options are very essential to be cross-checked once more. And, you can try and test whether your WordPress e-commerce website is responding properly on various devices. Once you feel that everything is fine, just go and launch your e-commerce site. After launching it, promote it on your social media handles.
Other than WordPress, you can use a lot of other best site builders for small businesses to make your e-commerce website like Shopify.
Conclusion
Overall, anyone can create an e-commerce site with the help of WordPress if one has the correct knowledge and understanding of the core concepts. Do not worry about technical expertise at all. Using the customization options WordPress web design services offer, you can build a professional and personalized e-commerce website for your brand very easily.
Are you looking for a professional and expert web design company to help you build an e-commerce website using WordPress? Don’t look further as the Digital Care Agency is here to help you. Our WordPress developers in Bakersfield, Los Angeles, Edmonton, Miami, San Diego, and Orange County can help create your desired e-commerce WordPress sites.
