WooCommerce Made Simple: A Step-by-Step Tutorial [+ Resources]

Do you want to start an eCommerce business using WooCommerce? Need a WooCommerce tutorial that’s easy to follow for non-techy users? If so, you’re in the right place.

WooCommerce is the world’s most popular eCommerce platform. It is super-flexible, cost-effective, and easy to manage even for beginners.

However, many beginners feel a bit intimidated by the idea of setting up WooCommerce themselves. Most users struggle to find out how to get started with WooCommerce and what’s the proper way to setup WooCommerce.

In this ultimate WooCommerce tutorial, we will guide you through how to set up WooCommerce with step by step instructions. We will also share WooCommerce resources like best WooCommerce themes, WooCommerce SEO tips, and other useful resources to help you grow your store.

Step by step WooCommerce guide for beginners

WooCommerce Tutorial (Overview)

Here is an overview of all the topics we’ll cover in this ultimate WooCommerce guide.

Ready? Let’s get started.

What is WooCommerce?

WooCommerce is a free eCommerce software that makes it easy for selling products and services online. Over the years, it has become the most popular eCommerce platform in the world used by millions of small and large businesses (online stores).

WooCommerce is developed as an extension of WordPress which is the most popular website builder on the market. This allows users to build an eCommerce website from scratch or add shopping cart functionality to an existing website.

As an open-source software, WooCommerce is free to download and use. However, while the WooCommerce software is free, you still need a domain name and web hosting service to setup a website, which costs money. We will talk more about WooCommerce pricing later in this article.

WooCommerce Review + Pros and Cons Comparison

WooCommerce has become the most popular eCommerce software in the world because it’s easy to use for beginners, and it comes with extremely powerful features.

Since WooCommerce is open source, not only is it 100% free, you also get complete freedom and control over your eCommerce website.

Unlike other proprietary eCommerce platforms, WooCommerce pricing does not include licensing fees. This means you can use it to create as many online stores and eCommerce websites as you like.

WooCommerce is plugin built on top of WordPress, which means you get to benefit from all the powerful features of WordPress as well. See our complete WordPress review to learn more about WordPress.

There are thousands of beautiful WooCommerce designs and templates that you can choose from to start your online store. Each of them comes with easy to use customization options and many of them are available for free.

One of the main reasons why business owners love WooCommerce is it’s flexibility. You can add additional features to WooCommerce by using various WooCommerce plugins (also known as add-ons). There are literally thousands of WooCommerce specific plugins that you can use to extend its functionality to add features like booking, subscriptions, shipping platform integrations, sales tax collection, etc.

Apart from addons made specifically for WooCommerce, you can also use thousands of WordPress plugins on your website to add features like contact forms, call now buttons, galleries, data backup, security firewall, etc.

Another advantage of using WooCommerce is that it puts no restrictions on how you run your business.

You can add unlimited products, make unlimited sales, import and export product data, add unlimited product images, videos, categories, and more.

Accepting payments online is a major hurdle for many users. For those users, the most important benefit of using WooCommerce is that it integrates seamlessly with dozens of payment services and gateways.

By default, it supports PayPal and Stripe out of the box. You can use dozens of other payment gateways through add-ons. There are even integrations available for some lesser-known and regional payment gateways.

Want to see how WooCommerce compares against other popular eCommerce platforms? See the following comparisons to check out how it stacks up against the competition.

That being said, now let’s take a look at what do you need to make a WooCommerce powered online store.

What Do You Need to Make a WooCommerce Store?

You will need the following three items to make a WooCommerce website from scratch.

A WordPress hosting account. This is where all your website files will be stored.
A domain name. This is your website’s address on the internet e.g. wpbeginner.com
A SSL Certificate to securely accept online payments

The above items are not free and cost money. Often beginners ask, if WooCommerce is free, then why do I need to pay for these things.

Well, you need to pay for these three things to build any type of website (not just WooCommerce).

The overall cost of your online store (WooCommerce pricing) will depend on which services you choose to purchase for your website. You can easily control the costs by only purchasing what you actually need.

Remember, you can add other things later as your business starts making money.

Normally, web hosting would cost you $7.99 / month for a starter site, domain name $14.99 per year, and an SSL certificate around $69.99 per year.

Now, this is a significant investment and every penny counts when you are starting a new business.

Luckily, Bluehost, an official WooCommerce and WordPress recommended hosting provider, has agreed to offer WPBeginner readers an exclusive discount on web hosting with free domain name and SSL. Basically, you’ll be able to start for $2.75 per month.

→ Click Here to Claim This Exclusive Bluehost Offer ←

Bluehost is one of the biggest hosting companies in the world. They host millions of websites on the internet along many of our own.

Now that we have covered the basic WooCommerce requirements, let’s see how to set up WooCommerce with step by step instructions.

Step 1. Getting Started with WooCommerce

First, you need to visit the Bluehost website and click on the Get started now button.

Do you want to start an eCommerce business using WooCommerce? Need a WooCommerce tutorial that’s easy to follow for non-techy users? If so, you’re in the right place.

WooCommerce is the world’s most popular eCommerce platform. It is super-flexible, cost-effective, and easy to manage even for beginners.

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