But what if you’re running a WordPress website? Can you create an eCommerce store on WordPress? Is there an eCommerce solution that’s native to WordPress?

Yes! It’s called WooCommerce.

What Is WooCommerce?

WooCommerce has a funny name, but it’s one of the world’s most popular eCommerce platforms, powering about 40% of all online stores. It was originally developed by WooThemes and was acquired in 2015 by Automattic, the developer of WordPress itself.

WooCommerce is an open-source platform, like WordPress. It’s a free WordPress plugin that helps you create a fully-functional eCommerce store on your WordPress website.

It also has a massive marketplace of extensions, some free and some paid. You can find just about anything you need to set up your eCommerce store and start earning cash. There are also extensions for marketing, payments, shipping, customer service, and more.

Creating an eCommerce Store on WordPress with WooCommerce

To get started with WooCommerce, download and install the plugin like you would any other WordPress plugin.

When you activate the plugin, it will walk you through some initial steps for setting up your store. This will include basics like your location, the types of products you’ll be selling, and other simple configuration options.

Selling Physical Products

WooCommerce allows store owners to sell both physical and digital products. For physical products, you can manage important details like inventory and shipping.

The inventory settings let you set the product’s SKU, stock quantity, backorder options, and how many of each item can be purchased per order.

Out of the box, WooCommerce offers limited shipping options, which include weight, dimensions, and shipping classes for products.

Most eCommerce stores that ship physical products use extensions that let them extend these capabilities, such as bulk stock management and “back in stock” notifications. More importantly, you can get extensions that integrate with popular shipping solutions like Shippo, ShipStation, USPS, UPS, FedEx, and many more.

These shipping extensions provide options that are used by the shipping service. For example, the UPS Shipping Method extension can calculate domestic and international shipping costs for a variety of shipping methods, such as Next Day Air, Ground, or Worldwide Express. It also provides measurement and weight options that UPS uses to calculate shipping prices for packages.

Many store owners are interested in selling customizable products or collections of products in bundles. Check out extensions like Product Bundles and Product Add-Ons, and there are lots of other extensions available to suit your needs.

Selling Digital, Virtual, and Downloadable Products

It’s easy to sell digital, virtual, or downloadable products with WooCommerce. When setting up a product, all you have to do is check the boxes for “Virtual” and/or “Downloadable.”

The “Virtual” checkbox removes the shipping option, and the “Downloadable” checkbox adds a downloadable file setting so that you can select a file for your customer to download. You get the ability to limit the number of times a customer can download the file, and you can set the download ability to expire after a certain number of days.

Another use for virtual products is when you need to sell nontangible items, like access to events. It’s possible to combine WooCommerce and a plugin like The Events Calendar to sell tickets for events that are in-person or online, such as webinars.

If you need to sell access to something else, you can use WooCommerce with an extension like WooCommerce Memberships to sell association memberships, subscriptions to online magazines, or memberships to eLearning sites.

Taking Payments

In order to sell products, you’ll need a payment gateway. Payment gateways process credit card payments for you.

To set up a payment gateway, navigate to WooCommerce > Settings > Payments. When you installed WooCommerce, it came with a few starter payment gateways: WooCommerce Payments, direct bank transfer, check payments, and cash on delivery. These are less frequently used than payment gateways that process credit cards, but you can set them up if they work for your business needs.

Common payment gateways are PayPal, Stripe, Authorize.net, Affirm Payments, and Klarna Payments, and there are extensions available for all of these.

Before you take a customer’s credit card, you might want to offer a coupon or a discount. WooCommerce has a built-in coupon section where you can create coupon codes. For each coupon code, you have the ability to set the type of discount, the coupon amount, an expiration date, and other usage restrictions.

And, of course, WooCommerce makes it easy to offer even more coupon options with extensions. You can create coupons for groups of people, free gift coupons, store credits, and more.

Customizing Your eCommerce Store’s Design

What about your store’s design?

WooCommerce works with your current WordPress theme, so you can set up your store without changing your website’s design. There are also WooCommerce themes that work especially well if your entire site is dedicated to a store.

It’s also common for theme developers to override aspects of the design of WooCommerce by making copies of the plugin’s template files and changing them. This is developer-level work and involves changing HTML, CSS, and PHP.

This can be a good investment because it will allow you to change the design of WooCommerce elements like the shopping cart, the order confirmation page, or the automated order confirmation emails. Get started with this documentation.

Marketing Your eCommerce Store

Marketing is a big topic in the world of eCommerce. After all, what’s the use of having an eCommerce store if nobody shows up?

Installing WooCommerce will give you a “Marketing” tab on the sidebar in WordPress. Open that and you’ll find a list of recommended marketing extensions.

Email is a long-standing part of marketing, and WooCommerce recommends MailPoet as the official solution. MailPoet lets you create newsletters, promotional campaigns, automated follow-up emails, and cart abandonment recovery emails.

There are social media extensions for Facebook, Pinterest, and TikTok that will help you promote your store on those platforms. There are also extensions for services like MailChimp, Trustpilot, Zapier, Google Ads, and many more.

Conclusion

If you want to create an eCommerce store on WordPress, WooCommerce is the way to go. It provides a comprehensive solution for selling physical products and downloadable products. Plus, WooCommerce simplifies taking payments, creating a store design, and marketing your shop.

WebDevStudios is well-experienced with eCommerce projects. We would love to hear about your WooCommerce store. Reach out to us and tell us how we can help you.

The post Creating an eCommerce Store on WordPress appeared first on WebDevStudios.

If you’re a data nerd, you won’t be disappointed with today’s options for processing payments. Dashboards give online store owners insights into customer data in new and exciting ways. Do you have an idea for a product you’d like to sell or a side-hustle you know would take off? Then you should definitely keep reading for some eCommerce tips and information on processing payments.

Payment Gateway vs Payment Service Provider

When most people think of PayPal, they may not consider how many steps go into a successful online transaction. Many verifications need to take place before money changes hands, and that’s a good thing for everyone. Those who run an online store want to be certain all transactions are secure and encrypted, and that’s where payment gateways come in.

A payment gateway is a service that handles the authorization of payments for online merchants. This is typically done through a third-party company, who specializes in these types of transactions.

In this article, we’ll mostly discuss payment service providers (PSP). PSPs utilize payment gateways, but often add a layer of useful services for the merchant site owner. Services can include fraud protection, credit card processing, label printing, data analytics, invoicing and more.

Stripe, PayPal, and Authorize.net are but a few of the dozens of PSPs to chose from. You’ll really want to dig in and see what fits your company’s business model best. Forms of payment range from credit/debit cards to bank transfers and even Bitcoin.

It goes without saying that when it comes to your company’s reputation, it’s critical that you minimize your exposure to financial liability when processing payments. There’s probably nothing that will enrage a customer more quickly than the loss, or perceived loss, of money. If, for some reason, there are problems in a transaction (and lots of things can go wrong), you can turn to your trusty dashboard and root out the problem. Personally, I believe having that level of control and peace of mind is worth the service fee alone.

How are Payments Accepted Through a Payment Gateway?

This is a general overview, but when a customer is ready to place an order, their data is encrypted and sent. Data is usually sent directly to the PSP, altogether bypassing the merchant’s site. Once the customer’s order data is received, an authorization process is carried out with the relevant credit card company or bank. After the financial institution has authorized the purchase to the payment gateway provider, your online store portal will receive an update letting you know that the payment has been authorized.

The merchant (you in this case), will then complete any remaining requirements including preparation of goods for shipment or delivery of the product if it’s a digital item. After all of this has taken place, your PSP will confirm that the required steps have been verified. You can then mark the transaction for completion. Behind the scenes, final steps are taken to exchange funds, and the whole process is usually completed within three days. Rinse and repeat.

How Much Are Service Fees?

The rates are competitive, but service providers will often charge a percentage and a set transaction fee. At the time of publishing this, Stripe, for example, charges 2.9% plus $0.30 per successful transaction. PayPal’s fee is similar. International rates will vary and may increase considerably in cost.

Do You Have a WordPress site?

There’s a reason why WordPress sites account for 33% of the internet. WordPress has a loyal following, to say the least. It’s easy, powerful, and highly customizable. WordPress plugins are famous because they’re easy to install and they’re usually kept up-to-date by their developers. Updating your plugins is as easy as pressing a button, and can be scheduled for automatic updates. And, if you don’t want to handle updates yourself, you can always turn to our maintenance and support team at Maintainn. Want to get your online store off the ground fast with the payment service provider that’s perfect for you? We think WordPress is the way to go.

Is Your Product Digital or Physical?

Digital Products

Easy Digital Downloads (EDD) is a great way to manage your sales. Whether you’re a writer, musician or videographer, Easy Digital Downloads has you covered. Almost any digital file type or format can be sold through EDD, but generally speaking, if you can upload it to WordPress’ Media Library, you can sell it through this plugin. If WordPress restricts your file type, there are third-party hosting options available via Amazon S3 and Dropbox. Here’s a list of file types that WordPress supports. As you can see, the options are almost limitless.

Physical Products

If you’re offering physical products at your eCommerce, then you may want to consider WooCommerce. “Woo” is the go-to WordPress plugin for physical sales. It integrates with many major players in the payment service provider space and can be quickly configured to your needs. Highly customizable, it will be there for you as you scale up your company and rake in the big bucks.

Let’s Do This Together

Have big eCommerce plans but think you’re going to need some expert help? As you may know, at WebDevStudios, we’re huge fans of WordPress and eCommerce. Our clients love them, too. WebDevStudios provides end-to-end WordPress opportunities from strategy and planning to website design and development, as well as full data migration, extensive API integrations, scalability, performance, and long-term guidance and maintenance.  Contact us and let’s discuss your eCommerce project and which payment processing solution is best for your business.

The post Take My Money! eCommerce Tips for Processing Payments appeared first on WebDevStudios.