Are you looking to create an eCommerce website? An eCommerce site can be a great gateway to sell products online. For local stores, it will be a next level upgrade for their business. While for the entrepreneurs, it provides a good opportunity for investing on an interesting venture. But things are not as easy as it is said to be done, and creating an eCommerce website can be a daunting task if you are not using right tools. Also, you will need to prepare lots of things to run a fully functioning website. Here are some of them below:
Table of Contents
Choose the platform for Website Development
The first thing you need to do while creating a website is choose the platform for its development. It is very essential to choose a right platform as it would be used throughout the life of your website.
There are different platforms for where you can develop your eCommerce website. Among them, WordPress is the most popular one with over 33% sites using it for web development. It is mainly due to its flexible and easy to configure and customize functionality that allows even the non technical users to easily design a stunning website in no time. Also, WordPress has many free plugins like WooCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads to create online stores on any of the WordPress themes.
Here, we will use WordPress to enable even the non coders to follow the guide and build an eCommerce store.
Register a Domain Name and Choose a Hosting Plan
Now that you have chosen the platform to develop your online store, it’s time to register a domain name for it.
A domain name is a unique identity of the website that serves as the address for the visitors. Normally, the web owner uses the name related to the brand as their domain name.
You can register the domain name from the websites like Domain.com and GoDaddy.
After you have registered the domain name, you need to purchase good web hosting to allocate the space for making your website available online.
There are several hosting provider companies that provide hosting for WordPress websites. You can check out the article: 10+ Best WordPress Hosting Service Providers to find the perfect hosting provider for your eCommerce website.
Choose a Perfect WordPress Template
Now that you have registered the domain name and purchased the hosting service provider for your eCommerce site, it’s time to select a perfect WordPress theme.
WordPress has an abundant number of themes available for free on its repository. However, you need to make sure that the theme you are choosing should have all the features and functionalities required to build your online store. Also, the theme design should be very much appealing as it plays a major role of keeping your potential customers on your website.
Here, we will use Meta Store to show you how to create an eCommerce store in WordPress:
Meta Store: Overview
Meta Store is a free WordPress theme perfect for online stores/shops. It is packed with the combination of beautiful designs and advanced functionalities to build spectacular eCommerce websites without having to touch any codes. The theme is fully Elementor based and allows you to build the website using the drag and drop functionality.
Great Features of Meta Store:
- Modern and Multi-Concept Demo
- Dynamic Color Option
- Category Search Options
- 3 Trendy Header Designs
- Perfect Shop Layouts
- Inbuilt Elementor Widgets
Creating eCommerce Website Using Meta Store
Step 1: Install and Activation:
The first thing you need to do is download Meta Store and install it on your WordPress website.
If you have any difficulties while installing your WordPress theme, you can check out its documentation or go through the article: How to Install a WordPress Theme?
Once the theme is installed on your site, activate it.
Step 2: Demo Import:
As mentioned above, Meta Store comes with one click demo import functionality to help you install demo data on your WordPress website.
Demo Import is a real time saver as you can start the customization of demo layout installed on your website. However, if you are intending to create the website from scratch, you can skip this step.
To install the demo data, go to Meta Store Settings and click on Import Demos tab. There, click on Install & Activate button below Install Swift Demo Import section.
Once the plugin installation is completed, click on “View All Demo” button. Now choose the demo that you want to install on your site. You can get a quick preview by clicking on the preview button. To install the demo, click on the “Install” button.
But before the demo is installed, you will be asked whether you want to reset your website or not. If you do not have important contents, we recommend you to reset the website. It will delete all the contents and make the demo import process work flawlessly.
It will take a few minutes to import the demo on your website. However, if you face issues while importing the demo, you can check out the article: Demo Import Process Failed. Why does Demo Import fail? for solution.
Once the demo import is completed, check out the website to see if everything is fine or not.
Step 3: Configuration and Customization
Meta Store is packed with tons of features and functionalities to configure and customize almost every element present on the template.
The customizer panel of the theme looks something like this:
Typography Option:
Meta Store comes with advanced typography options that lets you choose the font size, font family, font color, text transformation, text decoration, line height and line spacing of your web contents. This provides you full control to choose the font look on your website.
Header Settings:
Another premium like feature available on Meta Store is its header configuration. Normally, a free WordPress theme comes with only basic features to configure the header section. However, Meta Store comes with 3 different header layouts to choose from.
You can select the Header layouts from Header Settings > Header Layouts.
Besides, you can also configure the top header, middle header, bottom header and the header contents.
In the top header, you can add various contents such as date & time, social icons, widgets, HTML texts, and menu.
In the Middle header, you can configure the spacing between the top header and bottom header.
While, you can pick the suitable color for the bottom header.
Additionally, you can also show/hide different contents such as category search, mini cart and toggle menu on your site’s header.
Homepage Configuration:
Meta Store is an Elementor based WordPress theme that lets you build a beautiful homepage using Elementor page builder. Also, the theme comes with 12+ inbuilt elements to help you design your website even more easily.
To configure the homepage, Page > All Page and choose the page that you have assigned as the front page of your website.
Note: If you have imported the demo, Elementor will automatically be installed on your website. But if you have not imported the demo, you need to manually install the Elementor page builder plugin.
Footer Configuration:
Meta Store comes with 4 different footer layouts to choose from. For each footer, you can place attractive widgets to make it more attractive and engaging.
Also, you can add the custom copyright footer text.
Adding Product on Your eCommerce Website
Now that you have created your eCommerce website, it’s time to add products.
In order to add and showcase products on your website, you need to have WooCommerce plugin installed on your website.
Note: If you have imported the demo, WooCommerce will automatically be installed on the website. If not, you need to install WooCommerce manually.
To a new product on your website, go to Products > Add New.
Give the title, slug and description for your new products.
Now select the product data and set the price for your product. If you want to keep the product for sale, add the sale price as well.
Then, go to the inventory tab and choose product status to let your customers know if it is in stock or not.
Also, choose the product image, product gallery, and product category.
Once done, click on the Publish button to make your product live.
