How to make an online shopping website with WordPress?
How to Start an Online Store With WordPress in 6 Easy Steps
More than a quarter of the web runs on WordPress. There’s good reason for this – WordPress is easy to use and free. Plus, there’s a ton of free information for novice users to get up and running online business in a matter of minutes.
If you’re wondering how to start an online store / online shopping website, you need to read this guide. It will walk you through how to create a powerful e-commerce website with the world’s most popular web platform.
I promise, it’s a lot easier than you might think! And there’s never been a better time to take the plunge into an e-commerce industry that is projected to keep growing for years to come. If you want to start an online store, then we’ll get into the details below:
Let’s get started!
#1: Use Personal Passion To Fuel Niche Selection
Almost every successful entrepreneur I’ve crossed paths with attests to the fact that passion is the secret ingredient to the high-roller lifestyle they enjoy. And building an online store with WordPress takes a lot of passion – with years of effort required (in many cases) before you’ll make enough to pay yourself a meaningful salary.
To find a product that overlaps with your personal passion:
- Analyze your past shopping habits. Why do you purchase the items that you do, and which ones excited you the most?
- Sample a few different product categories. Is there something in your local department store that lights you up?
- How do you want to impact people’s lives? Which products can you sell to help impact others in this way?
- What do you find yourself doing in your free time? How can you monetize these hobbies with your online store?
The more specific your niche, the more you’ll be able to let your passion shine through online and offline.
#2: Book a Catchy Domain Name
Your domain name is how your customers find your website. If they hear about you somewhere, will it be easy for them to remember your name? Will it be easy for Google to use your domain to identify what your site sell?
Here’s how I recommend picking a domain name:
- Do keyword research. Domains that include these will be helpful for ranking on Google.
- Keep your domain short to minimize mistypes by customers.
- Secure all domain extensions (
.com
,.net
, etc.) to keep copycats at bay. - Avoid words with multiple spellings. For example, “site” and “sight” sound the same over the phone.
- Avoid hyphenated domain names. Your customers will forget the hyphen.
- Consider alternate meanings or interpretations. Think about goofy, or immature interpretations of your domain name. You don’t want to be the butt of a joke.
- Make it easy to say. If a toddler can’t say it, it’s no good.
To help you with generating an original – and even more important – an available domain name, try using a domain generator tool like DomainWheel. The combinatory algorithms will present interesting new options to choose from, while the domain availability checkup will suggest available extensions. We will help our students to choose and book domain names in our WordPress training classes.
#3: Nail Down Your Business Plan
When learning how to start an online store with WordPress, you need to create a comprehensive business plan for your company that lays out exactly how you envision:
- selecting products to sell,
- acquiring inventory,
- creating your website,
- marketing your website,
- growing your market share,
- remaining compliant with legal requirements,
- handling taxes and other operating costs.
#4: Set up WooCommerce
WordPress creates a powerful foundation for your site. WooCommerce transforms your WordPress site into an e-commerce powerhouse – and the base package is free. Even without paid plugins, you can implement the best elements of e-commerce design on all of your most important pages.
Setting up WooCommerce and listing your first product for sale isn’t complicated:
- Select a host for your site that offers a package designed for WordPress (the foundation of WooCommerce). Pay attention to their security and performance metrics – if you can’t find them, it’s time to look at a different host. And don’t forget about customer service – if something goes wrong, you need fast, competent help.
- Download and install the WooCommerce plugin for WordPress. Answer the questions in the setup wizard to get your site up and running in less than 5 minutes.
- Select, install and customize a WordPress theme that’s fully compatible with WooCommerce.
- Use the Product Tab in your WordPress Admin center to add your first product. It will guide you through the process, step-by-step.
We will give provide you with full training on choosing WordPress themes and Woocommerce plugin installation in our WordPress classes in Dubai and Abu Dhabi.
#5: Attract With Content and SEO
“If you build it, they will come.” Field of Dreams was an excellent movie, but if they were talking about e-commerce, they would have changed the catch-phrase to: “If you write a lot, in an SEO-friendly way, they will come.”
You need search engines to send motivated customers, ready to make a buying decision to your online store. The way that you do this is with content – lots of content.
#6: Grow Traffic with Facebook Ads
When you are shopping for a product or service, who do you trust? Chances are, you’ll ask a few of your friends what they own, and whether or not they love their products. Social selling is a way to cash-in on a shopper’s instinct to trust their friends and family.
Advertising your brand’s Facebook Page, or promoting a Facebook ad for a particular page of your website is an excellent way to inject your brand into your customer’s newsfeed.
For example, this Facebook event listing has been promoted by a website attempting to sell tickets to a show. The ad, which appeared at the top of my newsfeed, tells me that one of my friends is already interested in the show, and is probably going to go.
Instantly, this brand and entertainment product has more relevance, and I can trust that it’s probably a cool way to spend an evening.
Create targeted Facebook ads to engage the ideal customers for your products. And, as you post on your blog, you can share links with catchy Facebook posts to help drive traffic. Just make sure your list is targeted.
We have years of experience in the online shopping website industry and we would like to provide you with this trade secrets in our Advanced WordPress training classes in Dubai and Abu Dhabi. More over, We also conduct Facebook Ads training programs in Dubai and Abu Dhabi.
You can start your own online store using WordPress and WooCommerce, it’s easy! Just attend our WordPress E-commerce classes.
Final Thoughts
If you have any questions about how to start an online store with WordPress, I’d love to get your enquiry through our contact us page..
Are you looking for guidance and help on building your e-commerce website or starting your own website business, here we go:
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Date |
Location |
Course Name |
Status |
---|---|---|---|
21st Feb 2020 |
Dubai |
Basic WordPress – 1 day |
|
22nd Feb 2020 |
Abu Dhabi |
Basic WordPress – 1 day |
|
28th & 29th Feb 2020 |
Dubai |
Advanced WordPress – Theme Customization and CMS – 2 days |
|
6 & 7th Mar 2020 |
Abu Dhabi |
Advanced WordPress – Theme Customization and CMS – 2 days |
|
13 & 14th Mar 2019 |
Dubai |
WordPress E-commerce – Online Shopping site – 2 days |
|
20 & 21st Mar 2019 |
Abu Dhabi |
WordPress E-commerce – Online Shopping site – 2 days |
|
27th Mar 2019 | Sharjah | Basic WordPress – 1 day | Book |
28th Mar 2019 | Ras Al Khaimah | Basic WordPress – 1 day | Book |
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