Starting an e-commerce website can be a real daunting affair as it involves a lot of basic yet very important steps, which when not done efficiently, can have a huge negative impact on the website. However, recent surveys have stated that WooCommerce plugin has been considered as one of the easiest yet beneficial plugins for individuals or companies looking for commercial opportunities on WordPress.

Currently being used by over 42 percent of e-commerce stores, the plugin offers many customization options including great flexibility. But, before jumping down to the steps, let’s have a quick look at the server requirements to start a WooCommerce store on WordPress.

Server Requirements for WooCommerce Site

PHP Version 7 or higher

MySQL Version 5.6 or higher / MariaDB Version 10.0 or higher

WordPress Memory Limit of 128MB or higher

HTTPS Support

Steps for Starting WooCommerce on WordPress

a) Installation and Activation

While this step may seem to be simple, most of the WooCommerce errors occur due to inappropriate installation or activation. Hence, proper care and attention is required for starting the first step towards the completion of your dream. When activated a setup wizard appears including two new user roles, customer and shop manager, along with various widgets, custom post types, taxonomies, and menu items, and lastly various shortcodes which help in inserting the content into posts and pages.

b) Adding Store Information

After installation, the next step is to add the store info into the setup wizard. Although all the details can be changed later as desired, filling up the store info during the setup is very much essential to provide your store with an overall form. One has to fill up store details like store location, currency to be accepted by the shop, and type of the products to be sold at the store. In the case of online stores, the user will still be needed to fill up the prevailing country, to proceed with the setup. Moreover, one can also skip or check on the last option which basically asks if the products will be delivered in-person.

c) Setting Payment Options

In the third page of the setup wizard, the user is required to fill up their preferred payment options, which will be displayed to customers during checkout. Users can then choose any one from the options and go ahead with their purchase from your WooCommerce store. While the payment gateway options change from country to country, PayPal and Stripe are the two most common payment options which can be found in any WooCommerce store. When the payment options are chosen, specific extensions are automatically downloaded and installed on the WordPress site. Moreover, one can also choose from the various options which allow a user to accept offline payments.

d) Configuring Shipping Settings

The fourth step consists of choosing the shipping settings for your WooCommerce store. Depending on the location of the store, one can choose from various shipping providers available at that location as per one’s budget and shipping charges. This may require the e-commerce owner to specify the average weight and dimensions of a delivery package to be used in the store, for referral purposes.

e) Completing Installation

The final page asks users to install Storefront which is a default WooCommerce theme designed specifically to add a flair to the display of the store. Furthermore, users can also allow the WooCommerce sites to calculate taxes automatically by clicking on the second option. Lastly, after pressing on continue one can also choose to avail ‘Jetpack’, an additional plugin which offers additional services like counting live rates and automatic taxes.