Take Your Brick & Mortar Business Online

Hello! Welcome to the second part of our tutorial on how to take your brick and mortar business online!

In this video, I will show you how to set up WooCommerce, add a product and change your e-store’s theme. 

Let’s start by setting up WooCommerce. 

WooCommerce is the eCommerce extension of WordPress. It’s a free plugin that will turn your website into a fully functional eCommerce store.

Ιn our case WooCommerce is pre-installed because it is included in the hosting plan we bought earlier. 

You can find it in the plugins section.

Normally though, WooCommerce needs to be installed. It’s very easy and fast, as most of the plugins you will need. From the Plugins tab click Add New. 

Search for the plugin you want to install and click Install Now on the top right corner and then click Activate.

Whether you install WooCommerce yourself or it is pre-installed, the next step is to set it up. 

Let’s see how. 

Go back to your WordPress dashboard and click on the Run the Setup Wizard button.

Fill in all the requested information and click Let’s Go!

In the next step, you are going to select one or more payment methods to offer in your WooCommerce store.

In the Setup Wizard, you can choose between PayPal and Stripe or both. You can also install additional payment methods later.

In addition to online payment methods, you can also activate Offline Payments.

Click on the drop-down menu to choose from a range of offline options.

Νow it’s time to configure the shipping details

You can either choose a Flat rate or the Free Shipping option.

In this step, you can also select the metric you want to choose for the dimensions and weight of the package. 

Choose the ones that are commonly used in the geographic location most of your customers come from and click Continue.

Next, you can add some additional plugins/themes to make your Woocommerce experience even better. These 2 steps are optional so for now, we’re going to skip them. 

That’s it! You’re ready to start selling!

Now that your e-store is ready, it’s time to add your products! Let’s see how you can do this. 

On your WordPress dashboard, you will notice two new tabs. 

The first is WooCommerce, where you can see all the orders coming through your store.

The second is Products. Hover your mouse over this tab over and click add new.

You will land on this page, where you must enter your product’s title and description.

When you’re done, scroll down to the Product Data Panel. Choose virtual or downloadable if they apply to your product.

Next, click on the Product Data dropdown menu, and choose the product type.

The options are: Simple product, Grouped product, External/Affiliate product, Variable product.

Choose Simple product which is the most common type used.

Now let’s see how to fill all the information needed, tab by tab. 

In General fill in the product’s original price or the Sale price if any. Click on the Schedule button to set the exact duration of your sale price. 

When you’re done, choose the Tax status and Class and move on to the next step. 

Next is Inventory.

Through this section, you can manually add various important information.

SKU is a unique identification, usually alphanumeric, of a particular product that allows it to be tracked for inventory.

Manage stock determines whether you want to track your product’s stock via WooCommerce. 

Stock status is the current status of your product’s stock. It’s only visible if Manage stock is disabled.

If you enable Manage Stock you need to fill:

Stock quantity where you set the number of items in stock for the specific product. 

Allow backorders means that customers will still be able to purchase your product, even when it’s out of stock. 

Low stock threshold is the number upon which you wish to be notified. 

Sold individually means setting options to limit how many pieces of the product a customer can buy at one time.

When you’re done move on to Shipping.

Here you can define the product’s weight and dimensions as well as its shipping class. 

The shipping class is used by certain shipping methods to group similar products. 

In linked products, you can promote other products, in order to upsell or cross-sell. 

The exact location of where these products will be appearing on your e-store will depend on your theme.

In both fields, when you upload more products, you can just start typing the name of the product and WooCommerce will find it for you.

Next, in the Attributes section where you can assign multiple details for your product, like color, or size.

You can either create the attributes in advance from the Attributes category under Products and find them in the dropdown menu, or create a custom attribute for this product directly in this tab.

Let’s create a color attribute.

Click Add to create a new attribute and name it.

Then type in the value of your attribute and click Save Attribute.

In the Advanced tab and Get more Options tab you can add some additional information and add some extensions. We will skip this for now and move on to the Product Short Description.

This description normally appears next to product imagery on the listing page and it’s best to keep it short, as the title implies. 

When you’re done, scroll up and locate the Product categories at the right of the page. From here you can select the category of your product or add product tags. 

For our example, I am going to choose the Bags category. 

These categories appear after you have created them on the Categories tab in the Products section. 

If you haven’t done that, you can easily add new categories directly from here too.

Now it’s time to set your Product Image. Click on the Set product Image.

Drag and Drop an image or click select files to select an image from a local file.

Choose the image you want and when it’s uploaded click Set product image.

After completing these steps, click Preview to see if everything looks good. Click Edit product to return to the Product page.

When you are ready, click Publish to publish your first product!

While you’ve already chosen a theme for your eCommerce website through GoDaddy, you might want to change it to something different. 

Your theme is of utmost importance because it represents your brand, it helps capture your customers’ attention, and enhances the user experience if chosen correctly. 

Let’s see how you can change your theme in a few clicks!

From your dashboard, hover your mouse over the Appearance tab and click Themes. Click Add New.

There, on the left top corner, you can see some categories. Choose Feature Filter and choose the industry that suits your business to see the best fits. Then click Apply Filter.

Browse the themes to select the one you prefer.

Once you decide, click Install and when the installation is completed click Activate. Before activating it you can click Preview to see how it looks. 

Congratulations! Your e-store is now fully functional, beautiful and ready to attract new customers!