How to create an Online Store?
E-Commerce is the reckless growing retail industry globally, and it is expected to get double by the end of 2025. People now prefer online shopping over traditional shopping. No matter what you’re selling: services, digital downloads, or physical goods, there has never been a perfect time to start a store online. In this article, you will get to know the super easy steps and all you need to know to create a stunning online store with WordPress and blue host and jump into the world of e-Commerce.
WordPress is one of the top tools through which many have built their stores and increased sales by more than 10 times when talking about an online business. WordPress is an incredible tool that makes it easy to create a successful online store. It offers various facilities and themes to aid the owners in setting up a comprehensive e-commerce store for selling nearly anything they want to sell. Whether you’re a tech-savvy person or a complete newbie to the world of E-Commerce, you can design and turn your website into a functional online store with just a few simple steps.
Essentials for a successful online store setup:
The configuration of the WordPress online store relies on the nature of your trade, your aims, and the niche of services and products that you are planning to offer online. Commonly, though, an all-in-all e-commerce store requires a set of core functionalities that enable the store owners to administer the store and buyers to see and buy what they actually need. To meet this, your WordPress business platform should provide:
- Convenient management of product pages, with choices for promoting contained products and other special prospects.
- Display download links for digital products at the checkout page.
- Highly secure payment methods that should protect the confidential information of the customers.
- A fast hosting partner like Bluehost to deliver fast page load speed
- Edge-cutting customization that shows off the business brand.
- Include product categories, SEO-friendly product descriptions, and images.
- Shopping carts, easy to find, and understandable checkout pages that display essentials such as currency conversion and shipping calculators.
- Contact options, like live chat, contact forms, or a support dial number to manage issues and answer questions from the customers.
- Mobile device friendliness to reach the increasing number of people who prefer shopping from their smartphones and other gadgets like tablets.
- Social media integration and links to share posts and enable your customers to engage with your business
- Confirm that your store is secure with an SSL certificate
Precisely, the best eCommerce setup for your WordPress online store depends on your budget, and the scope of your eCommerce business, and technical skills. But the great news here is that whether you’re an absolute newbie with no tech background and skills, you are enabled to creating a storefront for an established retailer through WordPress. This platform can bring your dreams into reality.
Why Use WordPress?
WordPress facilitates nearly a third of all websites worldwide, from personal blogs, portfolio websites, and small businesses to many of the leading 100 corporates in the world. WordPress is a free and open-source site-building platform and is getting more popular day by day. It offers a super easy interface with features of a drag and drops system to design and develop websites that are pleasant to the eyes, user friendly, and functional in working. WordPress provides thousands of free themes, plugins, and other extensions to customize yours according to your choices.
Being a versatile platform, WordPress makes it possible for people of all skill levels to create a fully functioning online store on an existing WordPress website. You can convert a regular W.P. site into a perfect store in almost no time and start selling your goods and services. The world’s most popular website builder and content management offer an excellent customization level through free and paid themes and plugins. You can customize your store beautifully with the free ones and add your own code or buy the premium plugins and themes for a greater customization level.
Steps to How to create an Online Store with WordPress and Bluehost
Step 1: Choose Your Web Hosting Service
If you do not have an unswerving web hosting server already, this is the perfect point to start. With an edge-cutting service host like Bluehost, you are free to get your own desired domain name and choose the hosting package that best fits your business goals. As compared to the other hosting partners, Bluehost offers exciting, more facilities, and highly efficient solutions. Bluehost also provides a reasonable rate for its domain and hosting plans.
Pros of Bluehost:
- Offers High-Performance servers.
- Fastest around the globe.
- Unmatched security
- Freebies that matter.
- Bluehost is amazingly easy to use.
- A buffet of benefits.
- Excellent support response
Note: While choosing your web service, you have to decide which extension would be better for your business— like .biz, .com, .tech, or .net — or a new Top Level Domain (T.D.L.), such as. N.Y.C., or .coffee. You need to know that your domain name is not just your online name- it is far more critical. The domain name for your business can impact your credibility, brand, and growth status.
Step-2: Install and Configure WordPress Plugin
E-Commerce plugins for WordPress cover all of the cores that make up an online store. There are hundreds of plugins to perform some special functions of any type on a regular WordPress website. The WordPress e-Commerce range from comprehensive storefronts to out-and-out plugins that enable you to set up special features like payment portals, shopping carts, and others on your online store.
Woocommerce is the plugin of WordPress for e-commerce that requires no need of any coding skills or a lot of time to create an online store. WooCommerce is recommended by the top developers, designers, and online businesses for small to mid-level businesses.
Follow these basic steps to install the plugin:
- Log in to your WordPress site, navigate to the Administration panel and click on that.
- Choose the option “Plugins” and then click “Add New.”
- Now, search for “WooCommerce” by typing the plugin’s full name: WooCommerce and then press enter button. You are free to check out the specs, such as the ratings and features of the plugin, if you want more information before getting started with the plugin.
- After reviewing the details, when you are sure that this is the right software solution for your business, press the “Install Now” button.
- Check the pop-up as “Yes.”
- Now sit back and wait. WordPress setup will complete the installation after a while, and you will receive a message on the screen when the installation is done.
- It is just that easy. The built-in wizard helps and guides you through the whole process and in each step. It helps you miss any core pages like product and checkout or shipping pages and info about taxes.
When you are done installing the plugin, you will see an option to set up and develop the core pages for your online store.
Step-3 Create the store pages
You can create your pages just by clicking the right options with the help of the guided wizard. You will get to know more about this in the next steps.
But before jumping into the pages and customization, here is what you need to know about:
WordPress eCommerce Themes
Themes in the website builder are a vital component of the eCommerce system. There are thousands of themes available in both basic and premium plans on the WordPress theme collection and external third parties.
The e-Commerce compatible free themes, such as The Store and mobile responsive Shop Isle, provide the users a variety of ways to present their products, add featured product images in galleries and landing pages, create other pages, and even establish a blog section. The premium plans of these and other themes offer an upgraded version and more features. A WordPress theme like the Storefront eCommerce theme is openly well-matched with WooCommerce.
eCommerce Plugins
WordPress themes and the code, WordPress e-Commerce plugins, are vital to developing a functional online store. Like the themes, hundreds of free and premium plugins are set to accomplish specific functions on a regular WordPress website. E-commerce plugins for WordPress enable you to set up exceptional features such as payment portals, shopping carts, and more.
As you have previously learned that the most famous e-commerce plugin for WordPress is WooCommerce. It can be installed on any compatible WordPress site, which offers all needed features and extended support to create a perfect online store.
WooCommerce may be the most prominent and popular WordPress e-commerce plugin, but several other plugins are available for WordPress e-Commerce.
Step-4 Configure Shop Area
When you have finished creating the pages, it is time to outline your area so the system can be allowed to show info properly. This step will make you answer some basic queries related to currencies and about the measurement language (i.e., pounds or kilos, euros or dollars, and package guiding principle for national and worldwide purchasers).
Step-5 Set Up Shipping and Taxes
The delivery and tax displays allow you to specify shipping and handling policies, including any regional or international limitations, and tax rates about the products. Don’t get stressed if you are not able to figure out what percentage of tax to charge. WooCommerce offers an automatic feature that provides suggestions based on your region, and you are allowed to go back and later set up the details.
Step-6 Configure Payment Gateways
In this step, you’ll create your desired payment gateways for your clients. There are standard options available such as A.C.H. (bank transfer), C.O.D., Paypal, and other payment options incorporated by installing third-party extensions.
At this phase, you can either add individual products manually or command WooCommerce to fix product data and establish your first product pages. That’s it!
Step-7 Customize Your E-Commerce Store
Installing and configuring the necessary software means you have finally “established” a new eCommerce store. Now, it’s time to customize your online store to deliver premium content and a value providing user experience. In this way, you can drive more sales.
Take a look at the following for tips to help you build to add more value to your store and attract your customers.
- Think about using promoting products like the C. Showcase to help you stand out in the crowd of competitors.
- Test all links to ensure better navigation and a user-pleasant user experience.
- Integrate your online store with the social media platforms and add S.M. buttons.
- Customer reviews are the core thing that can drive more customers to your eCommerce store. Make it easy for customers to share your content and leave reviews on your store.
- Integrate Google Analytics to analyze user behavior and retention.
- Create a blog section for your WordPress Online Store to aid with SEO and more organic traffic.
