What is WooCommerce?
WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin that turns a WordPress website into an online store. It is open source and free, and extensions add features as your business needs them.
With WordPress and WooCommerce, you can open an online store without writing code.
What you need first
- Products to sell. What you sell shapes the store, from design to features. WooCommerce can sell physical goods, digital products and services.
- Hosting and a domain. WooCommerce only runs on self-hosted WordPress, meaning WordPress installed on your own hosting.
- A store theme. Choose a clean theme that supports WooCommerce. Storefront, the free official theme from the WooCommerce team, is a good place to start.
WooCommerce features
- Products: physical or virtual, with attributes such as size and colour, sale prices for promotions, and stock management.
- Payments: bank transfer, check and cash on delivery (COD) are built in. Other payment gateways, including local ones, are added with extensions.
- Orders: track incoming orders and create manual orders for offline sales.
- Shopping flow: cart, then checkout, the flow shoppers already know from marketplaces. Customers can create an account to track their orders.
- Reports: built-in sales summaries, which extensions can extend with Excel or CSV exports.
- Shipping: flat rate, free shipping and local pickup are built in. Indonesian courier rates are calculated with an add-on plugin.
- Discount coupons, which discount-rule plugins can extend.
- Automatic emails to customers and admins for every order.
- Marketplace: with a multi-vendor plugin, your store can host many sellers.
Installing WooCommerce
Set up hosting and WordPress
Choose fast, stable hosting: a store that is slow or keeps going down loses sales. The Cloud Hosting Pro series is tuned for WordPress and WooCommerce. Install WordPress first, then continue below.
How to install WordPress →Install and activate the plugin
- Log in at yourdomain.com/wp-admin and go to Plugins → Add New Plugin.
- Type WooCommerce in the search box and click Install Now.
- Click Activate.
- Follow the setup guide that appears: enter the store address, country, currency and the kind of products you will sell.
After the initial setup, WooCommerce shows a task list under WooCommerce → Home: add products, set up payments, tax and shipping. All of these settings are also under WooCommerce → Settings.
Store settings
Go to WooCommerce → Settings. Save each tab with the Save changes button.
- General: store address, countries you sell to, enabling taxes and coupons, and currency (Indonesian rupiah).
- Products: weight unit (kg), dimension unit (cm) and stock settings.
- Tax: tax rates. This tab appears once taxes are enabled under General; skip it if your store does not charge tax.
- Shipping: shipping zones and the shipping methods in each zone.
- Payments: enable payment methods, for example bank transfer, and enter the account details customers pay into.
- Accounts & Privacy: customer account creation and privacy policy.
- Emails: sender name and address and the design of automatic emails, such as the invoice sent after checkout.
Adding products
- Go to Products → Add New Product.
- Enter the product name and description.
- Choose or create a category in the Product categories panel.
- Click Set product image and choose the photo. Give it a descriptive Title rather than the camera’s file name.
- Fill in the Product data section as described below.
- Write the Product short description, the brief summary shown near the price.
- Click Preview to check, then Publish, or Save Draft if it is not finished.
Product types
- Simple product: a single item with no variants, for example one abaya.
- Grouped product: a set of products that can also be bought individually, for example a set of plates.
- External/Affiliate product: sold on another website; its buy button links there.
- Variable product: one product with many variants, such as colour and size.
Tick Virtual for products that do not need shipping, and Downloadable for digital products the customer downloads, such as an ebook.
Product data tabs
- General: Regular price is the normal price and Sale price is the discounted price. Click Schedule to set when the discount runs.
- Inventory: SKU, Manage stock to track stock automatically, and Sold individually if customers may only buy one per order.
- Shipping: weight, dimensions (length × width × height) and a shipping class to group shipping rates.
- Linked Products: Upsells appear on the product page to offer a similar, pricier product. Cross-sells appear in the cart to offer add-ons, such as a screen protector for a phone.
- Attributes: add an attribute such as Colour and list its values separated by | (for example Black | Navy | Maroon). These attributes also create the variants of a Variable product.
- Advanced: a Purchase note sent to the customer after purchase, display order (Menu order), and Enable reviews.
Changing the store theme
Storefront is the free official theme from the WooCommerce team, so it is a good one to try before others.
- Go to Appearance → Themes → Add New Theme.
- Search for Storefront or another store theme and click Install. For a theme in a .zip file, click Upload Theme, choose the file, then Install Now.
- Click Activate.
- Adjust colours, logo and layout under Appearance → Customize.
Calculating shipping costs
WooCommerce’s built-in shipping methods do not calculate Indonesian courier rates. For that, install a local shipping plugin that fetches rates from couriers such as JNE, POS Indonesia, TIKI or J&T.
- Go to Plugins → Add New Plugin and search for ongkir (Indonesian for shipping cost).
- Choose a plugin that is still updated regularly and compatible with your WooCommerce version, then click Install Now and Activate.
- Go to WooCommerce → Settings → Shipping and open the plugin’s settings.
- Enable it, pick the couriers you want, enter the city you ship from, then click Save changes.
From then on, shipping costs are calculated automatically at checkout.
Some shipping plugins need an API key or a subscription from their rate provider. Read the plugin description before you install it.