The WooCommerce plugin is one of the leading names in the e-commerce field, offering you a wide range of options to create your online store, as well as manage and organize all its operations in a smooth and efficient manner.
In this article, you'll learn all the information you need to start using this plugin effectively and build your online store, even if you have no background in e-commerce.
What is the WooCommerce plugin?
The WooCommerce plugin is simply a free plugin for the popular WordPress content management system that enables you to create a fully functional online store with ease.
This includes designing the store's structure and interface, and integrating all other features, whether adding products, linking to payment gateways, linking to shipping companies, or other e-commerce features.
The WooCommerce plugin was released in 2011 by Automattic and gained significant attention at the time due to its free and easy-to-use nature. It now dominates approximately 37% of online stores worldwide.
Here's a link to download the WooCommerce plugin.
Why Use WooCommerce?
After you've gained a general understanding of the WooCommerce plugin, there are also many other features that will encourage you to use it.
The most important of these are:
1. Free: One of the most prominent features of both WordPress and the WooCommerce plugin is that they are both free, and you don't need to pay anything to use them. However, you can pay for premium WordPress themes and related paid tools if you wish.
2. Easy to Use: The WooCommerce plugin interface is very easy for beginners, and you rarely encounter any difficulty using or understanding it. Unlike traditional methods, you don't need any programming background to start using it.
3. Open Source: This means it's not exclusively owned by any particular entity, and anyone can freely use it and modify its code.
4. Fully Integrated: The WooCommerce plugin not only allows you to transform your website into a store, but it also offers many other tools and functions that allow you to manage the sales process from start to finish with ease. We'll detail the uses of the WooCommerce plugin in a separate section.
5. It has many tools and templates: Themes are designs for your store's appearance. If you use the WooCommerce plugin or WordPress in general, you have thousands of free and paid templates and tools to enhance the look and feel of your store.
6. Customizable: With the WooCommerce plugin, you have complete freedom to customize your site however you like. Things like site design, inventory management, content display, and other processes can all be customized to your needs.
7. Search Engine Friendly: We mentioned earlier that WooCommerce accounts for over 37% of online stores, giving it an advantage in terms of SEO and search engine rankings in general. This will help increase your customer base compared to most other methods.
8. Widely Used: The frequent use of a tool leads to the availability of numerous explanations and tools for it, which can help you solve problems related to it or even develop it without the effort of searching.
Uses of the WooCommerce plugin
We mentioned in the previous point that the WooCommerce plugin is highly integrated and can perform a large number of commands and operations related to online stores.
The most important of these are:
1. Order and Inventory Management: To manage your store effectively, you need to know your inventory and the extent of demand to avoid running out of stock at critical times. The WooCommerce plugin enables you to track both of these through its analytics.
2. Product Organization: The WooCommerce plugin supports many types of products, such as physical goods, e-services, and others. It also supports many related procedures, such as adding, removing, categorizing, and all other product customization procedures.
3. Easy Payment: The entire payment process is extremely easy with the WooCommerce plugin, as it enables you to set up many payment methods, most notably bank transfers, PayPal, and cash on delivery. It also enables customers to purchase with a very simple process, as simple as one click.
4. Product Shipping: The WooCommerce plugin has many custom commands to organize the shipping process, including options such as order tracking, email notifications, and many other customizable shipping options.
5. Marketing and SEO: In addition to being search engine friendly, the WooCommerce plugin also has many other tools and add-ons that enable you to do things like email marketing, integrate with social media platforms, and other various marketing operations.
6. Reports Viewing: The plugin provides you with periodic reports on your store's sales, which include all the data, ratios, and statistics you need to understand your store's activity. You can also download them in multiple formats.
How to Build an Online Store with WooCommerce
Creating an online store with the WooCommerce plugin is very simple, but it requires some systematic steps.
Here are these steps in an organized manner:
1. Own a Domain and Hosting
Before you start anything, you'll need to obtain web hosting and a domain name. Hosting is simply a service provided by some companies to place your website on a server so it's accessible to visitors at all times.
A domain is the address of your online store, which is typed into the browser so the store is visible to users.
Don't worry, most hosting companies provide you with a free domain with most hosting plans, so you won't have to search for it yourself.
As for hosting, in this case, it's best to choose one of the popular WordPress hosting providers.
2. Install WordPress and Install the WooCommerce Plugin
After purchasing hosting and activating the domain, installing WordPress on your website won't take more than a few minutes. This will be done through your hosting control panel, which varies from company to company, but is extremely easy.
After installing WordPress, you'll go to the plugins page from your WordPress control panel, search for the WooCommerce plugin, download it, and then activate it. You'll be ready to use it.
3. Store Setup
The WooCommerce plugin will definitely not work on its own, and you'll need to take a few steps to make it suitable for the type of products you'll be selling on your store.
After activating the plugin, you'll be taken to a questionnaire where you'll be asked to enter some information, such as your country, address, and zip code, as well as some additional information related to your business details and the products you'll be selling.
There are a large number of selling options on WooCommerce, the most prominent of which are:
Subscriptions.
Memberships.
Reservations.
Packages.
Customizable Products.
Based on the information you enter, the plugin will provide you with recommendations, including the free and paid templates that best suit your store's type. Even if you make the wrong choice, you'll be able to modify it later.
The final step is for WooCommerce to offer you some helpful tools. You can easily accept or decline them and finally start using the plugin.
4. Add and Manage Products
It's time to start working with products and adding items to your store so they'll be visible to users. You can add a new product by selecting "Products" from the menu and then "Add New Product."
Follow the steps below:
a) Adding a Title and Description: Here, you'll need to write the product name and specifications, including the keyword, along with any other necessary features or information.
b) Adding Categories and Tags: As an online store owner, you need to list your products within categories and tags, especially if you have a large number of products, to make them easier for users to browse and discover.
c) Adding Images: This is a very intuitive element, as any product requires multiple images for a buyer to determine whether it's what they're looking for.
d) Determining the Product Type: There are several types of products you can add and enter the rest of the data based on them. These are:
Simple Product: This is the simplest type of product that doesn't have any categories or subtypes, such as books.
Combination Product: This is a product consisting of multiple items, each of which can be sold separately, such as a set of cups.
External Product: These are products you sell as an intermediary and don't own, such as in dropshipping.
Virtual Product: These are intangible services that don't require shipping.
Downloadable Product: These are intangible items that users can download, such as software, images, and music.
Multi-variety product: These are products that come in more than one variety, such as shoes of different sizes.
Depending on the variety you choose, the WooCommerce plugin will ask you to enter additional information related to that variety to facilitate the sales process between you and the user. Most of these are very intuitive and easy to do.
You can also upload and export product files via CSV files, which will make the process easier if you're listing products for the first time or have a large number of products that you can't list traditionally.
5. Setting Shipping Details
Shipping is probably the most complex detail of all the items we've mentioned so far. You can set up its details through the "Settings" menu of the "WooCommerce" tab, which you'll find among the items at the top of the screen.
The items you need to set are:
a) Shipping Zones: This tab allows you to specify shipping methods and costs for each region you enter independently.
You have three main options:
Fixed Price: The price remains the same regardless of the proximity or the amount paid.
Free Shipping: This is a feature you can activate for certain areas or by customers spending a certain amount to encourage them to purchase.
Local Pickup from Store: The customer can visit one of your branches to pick up the product without the need for shipping.
b) Shipping Options: These are additional options for the shipping process, such as displaying the price, shipping address, and checking for address errors. Leaving them at the default setting is fine.
c) Shipping Classes: This is the process of grouping products similar in size and shape into specific classes so that you can generalize the shipping price across them. Shipping costs for each product vary depending on its weight and the space it occupies.
d) Shipping Companies: This isn't a tab like the previous points, but it's very worth mentioning. You'll essentially need to use a shipping company, and you can do this using the add-ons provided by major shipping companies to integrate with WooCommerce. The most prominent of these are:
Aramex
Fedex
DHL
6. Tax Calculation
Tax calculation is a feature that shows the buyer the price of the product before and after tax based on their country. This process has many details and procedures that you should be aware of, including:
Adding Taxes: To find this feature, you'll need to go to the "General" tab in the "Settings" menu of the "WooCommerce" box and enable the "Enable Tax Rates and Calculations" option at the bottom of the screen.
Tax Options: This is the page where most of the operations you'll perform will be located. This page will include your preferences regarding the price displayed, whether before or after taxes, during the purchase process, along with some other display options.
Adding Tax Value: After saving your settings from the previous tab, in this tab you'll enter the tax value for each country. You can also import it as a CSV file, especially if you operate in multiple markets.
7. Setting Up Payments
Payment is one of the most prominent features of the WooCommerce plugin, as it offers a variety of payment methods and options.
You can access it through the "Settings" menu and click on the "Payments" box at the top of the page. You'll find several methods you can use, most notably:
Bank Transfers.
Cash on Delivery.
PayPal.
Checks.
There are also some plugins for popular payment tools like Stripe, but they aren't widely used in the Arab world, and the ones mentioned above will suffice.
Conclusion
Creating an online store is now easier than ever, as there are now many tools that can help you create your store in record time and without any experience in this field.
One of the most important, widely used, and effective of these tools is the WooCommerce plugin.
In this article, we've explained all its features and uses, and how to easily create an online store using it.