This guide covers exactly how to set up a WordPress ecommerce website with the WooCommerce plugin.

The WordPress platform originally began as a way to blog online. Over the years, it has evolved into a full blown “content management system” – in other words, a backend software that can “power” any type of website – including an ecommerce website.

That said, WordPress as an ecommerce platform isn’t a good fit for everyone. Here’s a brief run down of reasons it would be a good fit:
You want full control over your website
You want to easily build out other portions of your site that aren’t ecommerce (blog, pages, etc)
You don’t want the monthly & transaction fees of an integrated ecommerce platform like Shopify or BigCommerce
You want to start small and build out your site as you grow (ie, and avoid the fees while doing so)
You aren’t daunted by some technical work – ie, hearing the acronym “FTP” makes you more curious than scared (note – WordPress is built to be easy for first timers, but it’s not a click, click, done software either)

You don’t plan on having a complicated payment processing system at first (ie, you’ll be using PayPal, Amazon or Google Wallet, not processing payments on your own server). WooCommerce works perfectly fine on SSL, but again, you’ll need that expertise to implement it properly

You want a common platform where you can easily pull developers in on a project basis as you grow
WordPress will not be a good fit for you if:
You want all the hosting and technical details simply taken care of (especially speed, etc)

You are plan on having a full (ie, non-PayPal) integrated payments/inventory system right from the start without developer help (ie, you’ll be selling across platforms like eBay/Etsy and need inventory numbers to be automatically updated – WooCommerce can do this, but it can be complicated)

You want dedicated customer support that’s already paid for

You want a single bundled predictable cost of software every month

If WordPress doesn’t look like a good fit, you should check out either Shopify (see their plans here) or BigCommerce (see their plans here) for an all inclusive ecommerce platform. Note – I wrote more about choosing an ecommerce platform here and reviewed Shopify here.

Otherwise let’s dive into the guide. Or skip to:
Getting Started
WordPress Ecommerce Options
Installing Your Plugin
Setting Store Structure
Getting a Compatible Theme
General Store Settings
Setting up Product Pages
Next Steps

GETTING STARTED – INSTALLING WORDPRESS
Your absolute first step for using WordPress for an ecommerce website is to actually install WordPress on a hosting account with your domain name. Here’s my guide to setting up WordPress step by step on a hosting account if you don’t have it already.

Ecommerce sites need even more memory for PHP than a standard WordPress install since they are larger and more complex than a simple blog. Having thousands of products + thousands of visitors can add even more resource requirements to your hosting account.

If you’re starting out small (hundreds of products, low thousands of visitors), a shared linux hosting account (like the one I mentioned in the setup guide) is good, but it needs to have more than 64M of memory…preferably 256M. I recommend HostGator (see their plans here), with InMotion Hosting (see their plans here) and BlueHost (see their plans here) also being good options (I’ve reviewed each here, here, and here).

If you’re starting out big (thousands of products, many thousands of visitors), you’re going to need either a managed hosting account from a company like WP Engine (see their plans here) or a VPS hosting account from HostGator.

INTRO TO WORDPRESS ECOMMERCE OPTIONS
There are really 3 components that make a “regular” website an “ecommerce” website – product pages, shopping cart, and a checkout process.

You can add the ecommerce functionality to WordPress with a plugin. Plugins are separate pieces of software that you install and activate into WordPress that basically adds to what it can do.
In this case, we need a plugin that will create custom product pages, that will have a shopping cart functionality allowing individual visitors to add products to a cart throughout the time they are on the site, and that will sync up with a payments system to accept payments, and match those payments up with the visitors’ products purchased. Wow.

There are a lot of plugin options to turn your WordPress site into an ecommerce site, but by far and away the leader is WooCommerce by WooThemes.

It has the functionality, the ease of use, the reputation, community, and versatility to be a solid long term choice for an ecommerce plugin.

It’s the most search engine optimization-friendly ecommerce platform I’ve seen. I’m an SEO Specialist who’s worked on major brands’ platforms, and from an SEO perspective, I would love to be able to work with WooCommerce. It gets rid of most all duplicate content (a SEO plague for online stores) and has Schema markup built-in.

Plus, the company that creates it, WooThemes, has been a core part of the WordPress community for years. Since they’ve open-sourced the software…it’s not going away anytime soon.
It has support, and plenty of versatility for what you’ll need.

Quick aside – Anytime something is free, you should look for the catch. In this case, WooThemes makes money providing extensions to WooCommerce for things like advanced inventory management, direct credit card processing (ie, the free version syncs with PayPal, but not directly with your credit card processor). WooThemes also sells custom themes, which are encouraged but not required.

While there are solid alternatives like JigoShop out there, if you’re going to go WordPress for your online store – I recommend using WooCommerce for its strong developer base, app store and compatibility with a range of plugins & themes. It’s what this tutorial will focus on.

WooCommerce has a ton of options and tons of documentation. Here’s how I generally install it for clients with a focus on things that often trip up first timers. It may look daunting, but it’s really straightforward once you get a handle on the general structure.

INSTALL YOUR ECOMMERCE PLUGIN
To get started with WooCommerce, navigate to your WordPress Dashboard and Add New Plugin. Search for WooCommerce, and simply install and activate WooCommerce by WooThemes.

Read More: http://www.standontech.com/2016/02/the-easiest-way-to-create-wordpress.html?m=1