Launching an online store is a game-changing step for businesses—and in 2025, it’s easier than ever. Whether you are starting a business from scratch, or modernizing your existing business, WooCommerce lets you start selling online in a single afternoon.
With access to entirely new customers and markets, the opportunities to scale and grow seem endless. Representing your business with a beautiful, easy to use online storefront is easy thanks to WooCommerce.
Follow this guide and you should be off on a whole new chapter in your business.
What is WooCommerce?
Let’s start with the basics.
WooCommerce is a free plugin that gives eCommerce features to any WordPress website. A WooCommerce store can sell physical and virtual products, accept payments, arrange shipping, and track orders.
Currently, there are over 4 million online stores running on WooCommerce, and the platform continues to grow in popularity and versatility.
Requirements for WooCommerce
If you are new to having your own website, think of it like building blocks for now. WooCommerce builds on top of WordPress, which builds on top of your hosting plan, which displays the finished set on your domain name.
So to get started you will need:
- A domain name (www.yoursite.com)
- A web hosting provider
- SSL certificate installed
- WordPress installed
Oh, and you’ll need products to sell. Start there if you haven’t already.
Step by Step: Launching Your WooCommerce Store
Purchase a Domain Name and Hosting Plan
Choose the perfect domain, and select a hosting provider that offers optimized options for WooCommerce.
Here are the most popular hosting options for WordPress:
- Bluehost
- SiteGround
- WP Engine
- Hostinger
Install WordPress on Your New Domain
Most hosting providers offer WordPress installs through “one-click install” wizards. Follow these prompts from your host and note your WordPress admin credentials somewhere safe.
If you need to install WordPress directly, you can download it from www.WordPress.org.
Install the WooCommerce Plugin
With a fresh WordPress install, login to the “wp-admin” dashboard with your credentials and navigate to the “plugins” section.
The admin dashboard is typically found at www.yoursite.com/wp-admin
- Go to Plugins > Add New
- Search for WooCommerce
- Click Install Now
- Click Activate
Configuring WooCommerce
WooCommerce has an easy to follow onboarding wizard that will walk you through setting up your store’s address, currency, and types of products (physical, digital, variable, simple, etc.)
Choose a WooCommerce Friendly Theme
- Go to Appearance > Themes
- Click Add New
Search for a design you like that is labeled to work with WooCommerce. Some popular free choices are:
- Astra
- Storefront
- Kiosko
Add Your Products
It’s time to add the actual products you will be selling.
- Go to Products > Add New
Every product needs to be set with:
- Product Title
- Detailed Description
- High Quality Images
- Price
- Inventory Levels
Use categories for organization, and tags for extra groupings.
(Beware: Category names and product tags are visible to customers on some themes)
Set Up Payment Gateways
When accepting payment online, you don’t actually interface with a customer’s credit card directly. It gets passed through a “payment gateway” instead.
WooCommerce supports:
- Stripe
- PayPal
- Square
- Apple Pay / Google Pay
Recently, WooCommerce has released their own payment gateway “WooPayments” to offer this service directly.
Configure Shipping and Taxes
Understand the logistics of your offline shipping process and where you will be able to ship to and the costs you incur. Then define the shipping zones, rates and methods for shipping accordingly in WooCommerce.
In WooCommerce > Settings > Shipping
- Set shipping zones (regions and countries)
- Assign shipping methods and rates
Determine if you will be charging sales tax, and which items that will apply to. Many plugins, like WooCommerce Tax are very helpful for these settings.
Test, Test, Test!
Before telling a single customer about the website, you should spend considerable time testing the checkout experience and ensuring it is as smooth as expected. You also want to be familiar with the checkout side of the process to offer better support when that time comes.
Add a product to your cart, checkout using a test payment method
- Go to Payments > Settings
- Enable Test Mode
- Use the test card numbers provided to test different scenarios
Check for unexpected errors, confirm that emails are sent when they should be, shipping rates are as expected, order processing makes sense, and make sure you feel confident in fulfilling a real order. Then you’re ready to go live.
Managing Your WooCommerce Store
Managing a WooCommerce store is a big undertaking, but there are several plugins and tools to help optimize the day to day of it all:
- WooCommerce Smart Manager for bulk editing
- ShipStation for managing shipments
- MailPoet for newsletters and marketing
- Google Analytics for WooCommerce for reports and analytics
Fulfilling Your First Orders
As your first orders begin to roll in, define and document your process. Earmark the potential places for automations and optimizations, and most importantly make your customers happy.
Here are questions you should ask yourself as you begin:
- Where will inventory be stored?
- How often will you ship? (daily, weekly, etc.)
- What repetitive steps can be automated first?
Always prioritize your customer satisfaction above automations.
Tips Before You Launch
A few final tips before you open your digital doors to the world:
- Use high quality product images
- Compress the files to maintain loading times.
- Use descriptive “alt tags” on every image.
- Test your site on Mobile and Desktop
- Make regular backups, especially before making big changes.
Launching your online store with WooCommerce doesn’t have to be overwhelming or overly expensive. Start small, scale at your pace and explore the expanding community of storefronts, business owners, extension developers, and customers that WooCommerce has.