Woocommerce Tutorial: What The Plugin Is And How It Works For You To Create Your Virtual Store
WooCommerce is a complete eCommerce platform for WordPress. The most interesting thing is that, although it is very complete and satisfactory, it is only a complement to the traditional CMS platform. Discover, in this article, how to obtain excellent results with this tool!
To take advantage of your business objectives, it is essential to be present in all commercial channels, which includes having a virtual store.
And if you have a website created in WordPress , the most suitable platform for this is WooCommerce .
However, when we talk about eCommerce , it is common that entrepreneurs, at first, do not know exactly where to start or how to manage a virtual store.
For this reason, we have developed this complete guide on WooCommerce to answer your main questions.
Read on and learn everything about it!
What is the WooCommerce plugin?
WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin that allows the creation of open-source virtual stores .
Therefore, it is very common for companies that already have WordPress sites to choose WooCommerce to manage their eCommerce.
The idea was originally developed by programmers Mike Jolley and James Koster in 2011. Four years later, it was acquired by WordPress and currently owns 26% of all virtual stores in the world.
After all, WooCommerce allows you to sell any type of product or service, from durable items to info products and content woocommerce subscriptions.
It also has integrations with the most varied forms of payment, such as:
credit card;
Debit;
electronic transfer;
Secure payment;
Payment Market;
PayPal;
among others.
Therefore, once the customer wants to buy your offer, choosing their preferred payment method will not be a problem.
What are the features of WooCommerce?
With WooCommerce you have the necessary functions to manage your online store. Next, we show you the main ones. Continue reading!
Product registration
Within WooCommerce, you can place and edit all the products of your business. Also, if there are similar products, you can duplicate them and highlight the differences between them.
And if one of them is your main product, you can also highlight it on the website to receive more access and purchase possibilities.
Payment Methods
As we said before, WooCommerce offers many payment options, there are more than 140 ways that you can make available to your customers.
This is very important, for example, to ensure that a customer does not leave a cart abandoned just because there is not a payment method that suits them.
Abandoned cart reactivation
There is a module specially prepared to reactivate those customers who were very close to buying, but did not go ahead.
This module sends emails based on the products placed in the cart, encouraging them to finish the purchase process .
Monitoring of each order
Monitoring works not only for abandoning carts but for general sales as well.
Through WooCommerce, you can stay in contact with the customer by email from the closing of the purchase to the delivery.
By the way, in the case of physical products, you can also offer free shipping, one-time value, or shipping value calculation.
Open Source
This feature is one of the biggest differences from WooCommerce, as it allows your online store to maintain the identity of your company.
After all, through it, you can make connections with other software and applications that are part of managing your business .
Recurring payments
For the offer of services carried out monthly or by subscription, WooCommerce also offers this option.
Facebook Store
Of course, the largest social network in the world could not be left out. WooCommerce can connect your online store to Facebook to increase the reach of your offers, both organically and through paid ads on Facebook Ads .
Preparation of reports
Finally, so that you have information on sales, which products were bought the most and statistics, among others, you can access in a very simple way the reports issued by WooCommerce that will facilitate your work when managing and making cash closings.
Promotions
WooCommerce also has tools to activate promotions and attract your audience even more.
If you launch, for example, you can activate a countdown on the page. In case of limited-time offers, discount coupons are available.
What are the advantages and disadvantages of WooCommerce?
If you choose WooCommerce, you will have benefits and improvement points that deserve your attention.
WooCommerce Advantages
Let's start with the benefits that the platform offers.
Easy to use
WooCommerce is an easy platform to operate, especially for those who are used to using WordPress.
Even if you are not a WordPress developer , you will not have a hard time getting the most out of the tool.
Online visibility
As WooCommerce was developed within WordPress, the platform prioritizes content so that the pages of each product are optimized for SEO and stand out in Google search results, providing more visibility to the company on the Internet .
Free system
Although to have a website in woocommerce is necessary to buy a domain and a server, in addition to investing in plugins and premium templates that provide some specific functions, the WooCommerce system is free so that programmers can assign new functions to the platform at no additional cost .
Market recognition
WooCommerce is one of the solutions most used by developers due to its flexibility in the development of virtual stores that can be operated even by their owners. This led to his brand gaining more recognition in the market .
Disadvantages of WooCommerce
Now, let's see which are the points that require more attention.
In some moments, you will need a developer
As simple as WooCommerce is to install (as we will see later in this article) and to operate, some actions will likely require the action of a programmer.
For example: let's say you have a cash flow management program and you want to integrate it.
As we said, WooCommerce has an open API, which provides this possibility. However, integration may not be that easy to perform and it is up to a specialized professional to develop it.
You will have to take care of the security of the website yourself
Every time we enter a website to make a purchase, a padlock appears next to the URL indicating that the connection is secure. All people pay attention to that, don't they? Well, not all ...
Therefore, it is essential that the site has a security certificate to allow safe browsing.
This certificate can be requested from the hosting server and applied in WordPress through the Really Simple SSL plugin .
On the other hand, the internal security of the website should also be done by you.
Therefore, avoid installing pirated plugins (as they may be infected) and check for updates. These good practices make your site less prone to cyber-attacks.
Make a backup of your files periodically
While navigators have a holistic experience when browsing and choosing a product to buy when they become website visitors , this experience is actually the result of a number of features within WordPress:
the presentation of the website is in charge of the theme;
the organization of the menu is done through a widget;
the various functions through plugins;
online shopping through WooCommerce.
So it's essential that all of these features work well, because if one of them is a problem, the entire visitor experience will suffer.
Some examples:
If the theme is not updated, the error screens can make navigability difficult;
If a payment plugin is disabled, your customers will not be able to buy.
Sometimes even simply updating one of these components can cause a break in the structure.
Therefore, you back up your site on a recurring basis, when recommended is once a week.
How to install WooCommerce on WordPress?
As it is a plugin, you can find WooCommerce in the WordPress plugin directory. Follow here the step by step of how to install and activate it.
How to download WooCommerce
In the menu on the left of the WordPress panel, go to "Plugins".
Then click "add new".
Search for "WooCommerce" in the search bar.
When you find the plugin, click "Install Now".
Once the installation is complete, click the "activate" button and WooCommerce will appear in the menu on the left.
How to set up WooCommerce
Once WooCommerce activation is complete, the next step is to configure it according to the needs of your business.
A welcome message is displayed so you can begin this process. But, if you have skipped it, just go to WooCommerce> Help> Setup Wizard and click "let's go."
Then, in Page Setup, WooCommerce will inform you what data will be necessary to create your online store:
Shop: the page where your products will be displayed;
Cart: the cart that customers can use before completing their purchase;
Checkout: the page where customers enter data to buy;
My Account: customers who have already purchased can see details of the product or service purchased on this page.
To progress click on "continue".
On the Store Locale screen, you must inform in which country your company is located, what currency will be used, as well as the units of weight and size (in the event that the store sells physical products).
Click "continue".
In Shopping & Tax, you will have to inform if it is you who will send the products or if you will only pay the fees.
If your offer is a service or an info product , simply do not check these fields and click "Continue".
The Payments section is dedicated to defining the woocommerce payment methods available to your customers.
If you need to add other shapes later, don't worry, we'll explain later here in this article. For now, click "Continue" when you complete this step.
Ready! WooCommerce setup will finish after this last step. Read on to learn how to add products and start selling!
How to add and manage products in WooCommerce?
Products are the main elements of a virtual store. Therefore, after installation and configuration, the next action to take is to add them to your eCommerce.
The first step for this is to go to WooCommerce in the left menu of WordPress and click on "Products". On the screen that appears, click on “Create your first product”.
Then enter the product title, as well as the description. Try to describe it in a very complete way, taking into account your personality and good SEO practices for eCommerce .
In "Product Data" you can customize the product. We suggest that you start with a simple product that includes the following elements:
General: here you must define the price of the product;
Inventory: this section is intended for inventory, the SKU (Stock Keep Unit) must be provided to determine stock availability and in the “sold individually” field it must be verified if the product is sold one at a time;
Shipping: refers to the shipping, dimensions, weight and class of products;
Linked Products: here, you can add linked products to your offer;
Attributes: in this part, you can add attributes to the product, such as different titles and modalities;
Advanced: in this last element, you can create purchase notes for customers, as well as allow them to send product comments.
In addition, it is possible to add other types of products, these are:
grouped products: it is within the "Product Type" option;
external products: allows you to add a third-party product, it is found in “External / Affiliate” in “Product Type”;
variable product: the addition is similar to the simple product, it is also available in “Product Type”;
virtual product: to insert this type of product, you simply have to mark the option "Virtual" in "Product Type";
product for download: in "Transferable" you can make available products that can be downloaded.
Finally, in "Catalog Visibility", you can allow whether the product will be available everywhere in the store or only on some pages.
After setting everything up, just like a blog post , just click publish.
How to manage WooCommerce
WooCommerce brings a part of the configuration that allows you to change the location of your store, the currency used, among other options. Now let's look at each of the available guides.
general
In this part, you can inform or change your store location, currency, and rates so that visitors can see everything.
Products
Here you can place the characteristics of the product, such as dimensions, weight and the activation of the reviews.
Shipping
If you sell your products nationally or globally, you can enter this shipping information here.
Checkout
In this tab it is possible to modify the configuration of the payment methods. By default, you can choose up to 5 shapes and add others through extensions.
Since the SSL certificate is essential in online stores, you can offer a secure checkout.
Accounts
In this part, you can change the location of the account page, enable or disable customer registration, among other login and account creation settings.
Emails
Here you can configure the emails so that your customers receive ecommerce notifications every time they place a new order, cancellation, account creation, in short, all the actions that visitors can perform in your store.
API
In this last tab, you can enable the use of API in WooCommerce, that is, enable the integration between it and third-party software and / or applications. If you need to do this through Webhook, the tab has a specific field for that.
How to customize WooCommerce buttons and templates?
And to start making the online store maintain the visual identity of your company, let's see how you can customize the themes and buttons within WooCommerce.
How to customize WooCommerce templates?
The installation of a theme in WooCommerce follows the same procedure necessary to install a template in WordPress as we teach in this tutorial . However, if you buy the theme directly from WooCommerce, you have to take into account some aspects.
After installing the theme, a warning will appear asking you to activate the key through WooCommerce Helper, a plugin that must be downloaded separately and that allows simple updates and contact with the support team.
When you download, install and activate WooCommerce Helper, it will appear in your left menu. To activate the key, click on the blue button that says "Connect your WooCommerce Account".
From there you can connect to your account automatically (if you are logged into WooCommerce) or manually by clicking on "Connect Subscriptions".
If plugins or extensions are missing from the subscription list, it means that your version is older and WooCommerce Helper does not detect it.
Therefore, you will need to download the latest version from the WooCommerce download section .
How to customize WooCommerce buttons?
There are three ways to customize WooCommerce buttons: theme, plugin, and CSS . Let's now look at each one of them.
Customize thematic buttons
As the common themes do not have this function, it is necessary that they have a theme directed to virtual stores made in WooCommerce.
Storefront is a free theme that serves this purpose, so it offers all the functions to customize your ecommerce buttons.
To customize the cart button, for example, simply go to "Appearance" and then "Personalize."
The theme will display options to change the background and the color of the buttons. After making the modification, simply click "Save."
Customize buttons through plugins
If you prefer to do this customization with a plugin, the ideal option is WooCommerce Colors . In addition to being free, it allows you to add additional functions to your theme, including buttons.
It may not work with all templates, but on standard WordPress themes the possibilities are greater.
Customize buttons through CSS
Finally, the third and last means is CSS, it is necessary to have programming knowledge to write the code in style.css as we will teach it now.
To apply styke.css to the shopping cart button, for example, you would enter single_add_to_cart_buttonclasse. And for the button to add a product to the cart, use add_to_cart_buttonclasse.
conclusion
As you could see in this article, WooCommerce is the ideal way to start an online store if you have a website created in WordPress.
After all, it has a wide variety of features that range from registering products in your e-commerce to promoting them.
In addition, since it is a solution made for WordPress, you can also customize the theme of the store to adapt it to the visual identity of your company.
