How to Use WordPress for eCommerce

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Imagine starting an online business, only to struggle with setting up and managing your store. If you want to focus more on fulfilling orders and helping customers, you may want to use WordPress for eCommerce.

The platform can be hard to use at first, but it gets easier with practice. After a while, you may find running your store is a breeze.

Read on to learn how to start using WordPress for your eCommerce website.

Set Up the Technical Parts

If you’re just starting to use WordPress for eCommerce, you need to set up your new website. You’ll need to decide on a web domain and a hosting provider.

While you can host your site with WordPress.com, you’ll need to pay for WordPress Pro. However, you can find third-party hosts that offer a better deal, so you can save money.

Once you select a host, you should install WordPress, which you can usually do with one click. Then, you should set up an SSL certificate that makes your site more secure and can be more trustworthy to visitors.

Depending on the hosting provider you choose, they may help you set up the website so that you don’t have to do it alone.

Configure Your Store

After you set up WordPress, you can log into your dashboard and configure the new site. Select a WordPress theme that will be compatible with WooCommerce, the most popular eCommerce plugin.

When choosing a theme, you can go with a free one, or you can pay. Paid themes tend to have more customization options, but you don’t have to spend money right now if you don’t want to.

Of course, you should install WooCommerce on your site and set up payment methods you want to accept. Some payment gateways include PayPal, Stripe, and Square.

List Products

Next, it’s time to start adding products to your eCommerce business website. You can add products using your WooCommerce plugin, so be sure to add a title, description, and image.

WooCommerce lets you add physical products and digital products. When adding physical products, be sure to add the number that you have in stock so that you can track your inventory.

You don’t have to add all of your products now, so don’t worry if you want to add items later. But it’s a good idea to get some products on your site before you start getting customers.

Install More Plugins

The WooCommerce plugin can help you grow your eCommerce website. However, you can use so many other WordPress plugins to help make your website look and run how you want.

For example, you may want to install a table plugin so that you can add a table to a product page. Yoast SEO is a good plugin that can help you optimize your pages to rank in search results.

Google Site Kit lets you connect Google Analytics to your site to track where you get the most traffic. And to keep your site secure, look for a security plugin and a backup plugin.

You can find plenty of free plugins, so you can invest more in products and other things to grow your business.

Write Content

When using WordPress for eCommerce, you may want to write content for more than your product pages. Write a home page or about page that tells visitors about your store.

You can also write something on the main store page that describes the products you sell and what customers you serve. It’s also important to write a return policy and a privacy policy.

That way, you can protect your business in case a customer complains. You can refer them to your policies, and you can keep your store up and running.

Make sure you proofread the content, and consider having someone else edit it for you. Then, you can publish everything and avoid sharing content with spelling or grammatical errors.

Consider a Blog

You may want to add blog posts to your eCommerce website to help promote your products. Blog posts can also increase your traffic potential from search results.

Your blog posts don’t have to be super long, and you don’t have to publish something new every day. However, you should post consistently to increase the chances of getting results.

Be sure to link to relevant products in all of the blog posts you write. Then, you may be able to get more sales by educating people about what your products can do.

Implement Email Marketing

If you want your eCommerce business to thrive, you should consider using email marketing. This is where you collect email addresses and usually offer something for free to new subscribers.

You can then send email newsletters to announce a sale or the launch of a new product. WordPress has a few free email marketing plugins to help you get subscribers, but you’ll need a separate program to send the emails.

A good way to get subscribers is to offer a free coupon code for their first order. You can set up coupons in WooCommerce, and you can see how many people subscribe and use the coupon.

Add More Users

You may be able to use WordPress for eCommerce by yourself. However, it doesn’t hurt to hire people to help you with WordPress reporting, inventory tracking, or shipping orders.

If you want to hire help, you can add more users to your WordPress website. You can add people and give them certain permissions, so you don’t have to make others full administrators.

For example, you might give someone the role of Shop Manager. That way, they can help run your shop, but they won’t be able to adjust settings for the rest of your site.

Will You Use WordPress for eCommerce?

Using WordPress for eCommerce can be an excellent way to start or grow your online business. You can set up WooCommerce and add other plugins to customize the site to meet your needs.

Then, you’ll be able to start getting customers and sales, so you can turn your business into a success.

Are you ready to start a store using WooCommerce? View the pricing for our reporting tool to help manage everything.

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