Looking for an online store solution? A responsible task! New services for online trading regularly appear on the web development market. But in this article we will talk about the eternal – WordPress online store in conjunction with WooCommerce.
I started working with WordPress in 2011, and at that time this engine was viewed solely as a blogging tool. Since then, old man WordPress has become a versatile development platform. With the team, we have made more than a thousand sites on it, about a third are online stores on WooCommerce. Let’s talk about them.
WordPress for an online store
A trading site is different from a regular web page. It should contain a catalog with product cards, order and payment forms, client and administrator account. It takes a long time to develop such a project from scratch.
The WooCommerce plugin is a WordPress add-on that helps you quickly create an online store. Contains all the elements necessary for the store: product cards, order forms, cabinet and others. The plugin appeared in 2014, and by 2019 it had been downloaded more than 5 million times from the WordPress directory. What are the reasons for such popularity, besides the fact that it is free?
WooCommerce Plugin Benefits:
- Flexible and powerful – after installation, it turns the site into an online store.
- Compatible with a variety of design themes – you can choose a design to your taste.
- Compatible with many other plugins – you don’t have to pay extra for development to upgrade your site. There are paid and free add-ons for security, SEO, backups, and more.
And don’t forget about the pluses of all WordPress sites – easy management and good SEO. After launching the project, you can easily create new categories, add products, photos and descriptions, and also optimize the text for search engines.
Online with stores WooCommerce
How big can a website run on WooCommerce
I have come across the opinion that a WooCommerce site will not “pull” a lot of products – it will work slowly and slow down. But the “load capacity” of an online store depends not only on the engine, but also on hosting, functionality and traffic.
Hosting . Weak hosting will eat up the speed of the lightest and most optimized site. Basic hosting requirements:
PHP version 7.3 and higher,
MySQL version 5.6 and higher or MariaDB version 10.1 and higher,
HTTPS protocol.
Functionality . The site loading speed is influenced by the number of categories, products and filters. The more there are, the slower the store is. So if you are planning to build a new Yandex. Market or Amazon, give up WordPress. If there are no such plans, then the capabilities of the engine will be enough.
“If you are planning a new Yandex. Market, give up WordPress”
WordPress exports from 10,000 products and successfully pulls out the integration with 1C. But don’t forget that a lot depends on the hosting.
Traffic. Track website traffic. If you run ads for a website, do SEO and traffic is growing, choose a more powerful hosting. If the performance is not enough, the site will start to work slowly, or even crash altogether.
How to create an online store with WordPress and WooCommerce
Have you decided that WordPress with WooCommerce Development in Lahore is right for you? I support! Below I will describe the process of creating an online store with their help. This is not a complete guide, but it will help you figure out what to expect.
To create an online store using the WooCommerce plugin, you will need:
- Prepare a topic.
- Install a theme for hosting.
- Set up a product card.
- Upload products to the online store.
- Set up shipping and payment sections.
Order a design, buy a theme or get a free one
First you need to decide whether you will use a ready-made theme or want to make an individual design for the site. If you do not have the skills of a designer, layout specialist and you do not know how WordPress themes are created, then you can:
- Learn to.
- Hire a specialist or a team, they will do everything for you.
- Buy a ready-made theme that best suits your store.
A quality design and custom theme will fully suit your needs, but if your budget is tight, it’s better to buy a good theme than hire a bad specialist . Some ready-made e-commerce themes for WordPress are just as good as the work of good designers.
Look for ready-made themes in Templatemonster and ThemeForest stores . Pay attention to the constructor YOOtheme .
If you decide to download a free or broken theme, check the reliability of the source. Attackers often add “left” links to them and leave security holes. Then viruses hack sites on such topics, search engines lower their rating, and block hosting. It’s better not to risk it and download free themes and plugins from the official WordPress directory .
Broken themes are one of the reasons for sites to be infected with malicious code
Not all themes are created equal and may require specialized skills to install, customize, and fix. So do not rush to kill developers if the paid theme is not installed. To configure it, you have to delve a little into the jungle of WordPress or contact the experts. Freelancers’ help costs from 500 to 3 thousand rubles.
How to choose a good topic
Design is important . It is not necessary for a site to be worthy of a place in the Hermitage, but it must be no worse than its competitors. Go through modern online stores, look at competitors’ sites and paid themes, the links to which I gave above – this will help you navigate. Make sure that the site is pleasant to look at and does not want to close after one second.
The best is the enemy of the good . You shouldn’t overdo it with “ruffles” either. Nothing should distract the customer from the goods. Moderation applies to colors and fonts. Choose one or two accent colors, but white, gray and black will serve as auxiliary colors.
Convenience is the key to sales . Surely you have been to online stores where it is not clear which button to press, whether it was pressed, how much the product costs and weighs, whether the action took place and what. These are sites with poor usability that you want to close as soon as possible. So the convenience of the site is the key to successful sales.
Step 1. Preparation
After choosing a theme, install it on your hosting. The article Virtual, Dedicated or Cloudy: Choosing a Hosting will help you to find a place for your site . Installing a purchased WordPress theme for hosting is easy with Vepp .
– Business owners and marketers use Vepp to support WordPress sites
When the online store theme is installed, you need to customize it and fill it with products. Before that, it would be nice to provide all the functionality of the online store, but it takes a long time. Therefore, to begin with, I recommend answering three questions.
- What will be on the product card? Name, description, cost, color, material, size, etc. Create a list, it will come in handy later.
- Do you need to filter on any of these attributes?
- How will the products get to the site: will you add them manually, load them from the price list, or do you want to link the site with 1C and another system?
Step 2. Setting up a product card and filtering
The product card is the most important thing in an online store. It must be configured before loading the product. Otherwise, the goods will not stand up as needed, you will have to demolish everything, reconfigure the card and load the goods again.
If the card contains only the name, article, short and full description, cost and photo – congratulations, you will not need to perform additional actions, all this is already in the plugin.
Product card in a store built with WooCommerce. There is a name, photo, cost and a field for choosing the quantity
Create product attributes. To do this, go to the Products section – the Attributes item . On the start page, create an attribute, for example, color, and then set its parameters.
Product cards are good. But if it is impossible to find the right one among hundreds of products, this is bad. Filters help you navigate large catalogs.
Usually there are filters in the topic. If not, add them with plugins. Take a look at WOOF , Premmerce WooCommerce , Product Filter, and YITH WooCommerce Ajax Product Filter .
Step 3. Adding products
You can add products manually or automatically. If the online store is new, then it is easier manually. If the price list is large, then it is easier automatically.
Manual
To load items manually, please prepare. Add categories and a list of tags. Prepare photos so that they fit the photo size of your theme. If necessary, change them in the “Settings” – “Media” section, and feel free to start filling.
If you are using product attributes , do not forget to add them in the appropriate section of the card. As you can see, you can also create an individual attribute for each product.
The cost of the product may vary depending on the attribute, for example, a blue scarf costs 100 rubles, and a green one costs 200 rubles. To customize this, you need to make the product variable and use the “For Variations” attributes. After adding attributes in the “Variations” section, you need to add all the variations and adjust the individual cost.
Via Excel
Plugins will help you add products to the site through the price list in Excel. The real import monster is the WP All Import plugin , but it starts at $ 99. Look for free alternatives in the WordPress directory. Before importing, study the plugin documentation: you may need to bring the xml / csv file to a suitable form.
WordPress and WooCommerce can also be integrated with 1C or “My Warehouse”, the cost of plugins for integration costs from $ 35 to $ 100.
Step 4. Setting up delivery and payment
If you are going to accept payment on the site, do not forget to set up the “Delivery” and “Payment” sections: add delivery zones, types of delivery, types of payment.
You can work with received orders in the WooCommerce – “Orders” section.
The user’s personal account will be available at the link / my-account. It can be published in the header of the site, next to or instead of the basket.
Top Useful WooCommerce Plugins
For taking orders and paying,
Saphali Woocommerce Russian is a useful addition to Woocommerce, especially indispensable if you need to quickly set up an order form.
Bootstrap one page woocommerce checkout allows one page checkout .
Yandex.Kassa 2.0 for Woocommerce
Robobox for WooCommerce
For beauty and convenience,
WC Variations Radio Buttons turns drop-down lists of attributes into radiobuttons (circles), which is often more convenient and pleasant to use.
WPB WooCommerce Product slider is a good product slider that can be displayed, for example, on the home page.
WooCommerce Cart Count Shortcode is an alternative to the standard cart. Shows the basket icon, the number of products in it and the window with the contents.
Premmerce WooCommerce Product Search is an interactive product search.
For SEO and acceleration,
Yoast SEO allows you to add metadata necessary for search engines to your site pages. Generates a sitemap, suggests SEO errors.
PageSpeed Ninja helps you optimize and speed up your website.
Clearfy Pro is another fighter for site speed. Does not conflict with PageSpeed Ninja.
