We all know how awesome WordPress is, you might already have a website and now looking to sell items directly through your website or subscriptions. Alternatively, you are looking to open your own Ecommerce website and researching the options available to you to start selling online. We specifically specialise in WordPress and will be talking about the best option available to you if you are looking to accept payments via your website online in some sort of capacity, whether that is for physical or virtual products, subscriptions or membership websites.
What is WooCommerce?
WooCommerce is the go to plugin to transform your WordPress website into a fully-fledged Ecommerce platform. Easily downloadable via the WordPress repository, in a few simple steps, all the necessary pages will be added to your website to help you start selling online. Within the WordPress Dashboard you will see a new menu item on the left-hand side for WooCommerce as well as a Product section.
Within 10 minutes you can have a simple Ecommerce website up and running by installing WooCommerce onto your WordPress website.
Basic WooCommerce and Purchasing 'Add-Ons'
‘Out of box’, WooCommerce comes with the basic functions to allow you to start selling items online and accepting payments. To create a more advanced website, WooCommerce offers a range of premium plugins to make your Ecommerce website more advanced. Other time, it is more than likely you will want to purchase a few of these add-ons for you to truly optimise your WooCommerce website. These could include the following:
- Cross Selling or Up Selling
- Offer Discounts
- Memberships or Subscriptions
- Advanced Product Filters
- Etc
There are 100’s of different extensions you can add to your WooCommerce website to enhance the features.
How Do I Accept Payments?
Within the basic WooCommerce functions you can start accepting payments for your products immediately. WooCommerce offers several options, PayPal, Bank Transfer (not via the website, the customer must do this manually and you must check), Cheque or payment on delivery.
To fully make the most of accepting payments online you must purchase an additional plugin which means you can accept payment directly through the website without being redirected, to PayPal for example. Two of the best payments gateways are the PayPal Pro plugin or Stripe. Both plugins allow the customer to securely make a payment directly through the website.
Your website never stores your customers payment details, all of this is done via a secure connection with your chosen payment gateway provider. To use one of these premium plugins to accept payments, you must have an SSL certificate installed. To do this, simply contact your hosting company and they should be able to help you in this aspect.
Search Engine Optimisation & WooCommerce Websites
If you already have a WordPress website, then optimising your shop is no different from when you optimise your current website. Our personal favourite plugin to optimise both your WordPress and WooCommerce website is Yoast SEO. Yoast SEO is a powerful SEO plugin which will allow you to optimise each page via the Meta Title & Descriptions, not only of your standard pages but your product, product category and product archive pages.
MonsterInsights.com have an excellent article on how to optimise your WordPress/WooCommerce website.
