It is a great idea to start an online store in 2022. Being your own boss is both challenging and rewarding at the same time. To assist you in reaching your goal of being a successful online business owner, we have created an online store-building guide that outlines several essential steps.
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Find The Right Hosting For Your eCommerce Store
Setting up your online store begins with registering a domain name and finding hosting. Both of these things are essential. Services such as Bluehost, Hostinger, NameCheap offer affordable shared hosting plans that are ideal for new online store websites.
Secure Your Online Store With An SSL Certificate
As part of this process, you must purchase an SSL certificate. A SSL certificate, also known as a Secure Socket Layer, allows you to establish a secure connection between your website and your customer’s browser. This will be reflected in your website’s URL.
Online Store Creation Made Easy
In order to launch your online store and add products, you will need a website. We recommend self-hosted WordPress. WordPress is an affordable and flexible option that can be tailored to fit the needs of all small businesses.
Choosing Your Online Store Design
After you have chosen your domain and installed WordPress, you can customize the aesthetics of your website with one of the many themes available within WordPress.
With most themes, you can customize the way your eCommerce site looks as well as the aesthetics by using drag-and-drop page builders, template builders, and premium sliders.
What You Need To Know About Building An Online Store
After you have your website up and running, it is highly recommended that you use the free, popular and extremely powerful WooCommerce e-Commerce plugin to set up your online store.
As a premium add-on, WooCommerce offers a wide variety of options that can be added to your online store to increase functionality.
How To Install And Set Up WooCommerce
Installing WooCommerce is easy since it can be accessed directly from your WordPress dashboard.
To install the WooCommerce plugin, log into your WordPress dashboard and click the Plugins option. The Add New option should appear as soon as you type in “WooCommerce.”
When you activate WooCommerce for the first time, you’ll see the WooCommerce Setup Wizard screen, which guides you through setting up and configuring your site with WooCommerce.
You can create your WooCommerce online store immediately by filling out the first form, clicking on Let’s go, and completing the other parts of the form. If you choose Not right now, you can setup your store later.
After you have completed the five-step wizard, you can add products! However, first you need to create categories for your products. Input the URL name and slug (or you can leave the slug empty. WooCommerce will use the category name), and click Add Categories. Next fill in your parent category and description as display in the image above.
Adding Product Tags
Tags are another method of forming groups of like items that aren’t in the same category. This is not necessary, but can be extremely useful for customers. Tags make it easier for customers to group like items that shouldn’t belong in the same category.
How To Add New Products To Your Online Store
WooCommerce allows you to easily add products with plenty of information and images to attract customers (and search engines). To add new products, click Product from the menu, and then click Add New.
An example of a product page is shown below. For clarity, the image is numbered so you can see how to fill it out.
Adding Product To Your eCommerce Store
- Product Title: The product title usually appears above or below the product image in most themes
2. The main content and a brief description of the product has two parts of content: the main product description and the product short description (marked ‘3’).
4. Adding Product Data: On the main image above, you can find a section ‘4’ called ‘Product Data’ where you can add all the important information about your product, including price, stock, SKUs, etc.
With the Simple Product setting, you’ll see an option to add a SKU (normally for your own records) and a price for the actual product data.
5. Product Categories: When you run a clothing store, you might have categories like ‘Shirts’, ‘Trousers’, ‘Coats’, etc. You might also group your products into categories such as ‘Jerseys’.
7. Product Image: You can either upload an image or choose one from the library when you click on the ‘Set product image’ link. This will lead you to the media manager on WordPress.
Most themes usually display product images above or next to the product title, price, and short description.
8. Product Gallery: You can upload multiple images to a single product using the WooCommerce product gallery. The gallery can be used to display your product from different perspectives or settings.
You can upload multiple pictures at one time by clicking the ‘Add product gallery images’ link. You can also select multiple images at the same time.
9. Publish a new WooCommerce product: Once you’ve entered all your product data, it’s time to publish
Getting started with WooCommerce is relatively simple. Once you’ve added your products, use your WordPress theme options to design a stylish shop page.For further information the new WooCommerce Store Owner Guide can assist you in setting up and configuring WooCommerce.
SUMMARY
Your online store should not just draw attention. It should be designed to attract and engage your customers. A first impression won’t be repeated. Your online store’s purpose is to make your customers feel good. Furthermore, an online store can enable your business to engage in omnichannel marketing by offering shoppers more ways to find you and buy from you through multiple channels.
Are you ready to take your eCommerce business to the next level? See how enDesign Digital Marketing can enable your business to launch quickly and begin selling right now.
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