Setting up your online store can be an exciting adventure! If you have chosen WooCommerce as your shopping cart, TechCare can help you put the whole thing together. There are many decisions to be made, and questions we will have for you. For example, we are going to ask you how you plan on charging for shipping: by the dollar amount, free shipping, by the weight, dimensions? You may have not thought of how you will charge for shipping and this is a good time to start thinking about that.
Here is a list of questions you should think about now with your team prior to approaching a website developer or starting this project yourself.
- Base Address: What is the BASE address location for the store - tax rates and shipping rates will use this address.
- Where would you like to sell your items - only in the US? Specific countries?
- Where will you ship your items (most likely this is all the countries you sell to!)
- Coupons: Would you like to enable coupons? If so, see our article all about setting up coupons!
- Types of Products: Will you sell physical products, downloadable products, or both?
- Inventory: Would you like to track inventory in the back end of your website? If so, how many minutes to you want to hold inventory for a visitor if they put something in their cart before it is cancelled and taken out of the cart? Would you like to enable low stock and/or out of stock notifications and if so, what number is the low stock threshold? Do you want to hide items out of stock from the store? What email address should be notified when an item is low in stock?
- Reviews: Would you like to enable reviews on products? Only from verified purchasers or anyone?
- Taxes: Do you need to collect taxes? How much and what about different states? What is the standard tax rate?
- Shipping: this is a big one.... and there are lots of options. Free shipping has been shown to sell the most across all stores online. You can charge by weight, by the total in the cart, by the item, and any other scenarios you can dream up. Are you offering local pickup? Would you like to use USPS, UPS, FedEx, or another provider? Do you have an account? We can pull shipping prices and calculators if you have an account with the shipping provider and also if you purchase the appropriate extension from the WooCommerce store.
- Payments: how would you like to accept payments? Check? COD? or another payment gateway such as PayPal, Stripe, or Authorize.net. Do you want to capture the money or authorize an amount and then charge it later? Do you have an account set up with this payment processor already? If you do not have a payment processor yet or if you are flexible, it would be best to look to see what vendors have already written software for WooCommerce and use one of those options.
- Accounts: Would you like people to create accounts when they check out or simply check out as a guest?
- Email Address for Store: What email address in your organization should receive order notifications? What will be the from name listed on emails
- Product Information: You will need to get ready the following items for each product you are planning to sell in the store:
- Title (use good SEO words here!)
- Brief description
- Longer description
- Pricing
- Main Photo/Gallery photos
- SKU
- Possibly the box weight, length, width, height if you are using these variables for shipping or you need to let the customer know the size of your product
- Is this a simple or variable product? Do you have choices such as color and size? What are the options? For each option do you have different pricing/photos/SKU?
- Categories this product should appear in (Womens, Outerwear)
- Tags for this product (Waterproof, Hood, Long Sleeved)
Extensions - Making Your Store More Functional!
In addition to the store setup, there are lots of extensions out there to enhance your store. Some are free but most are paid and can really make your store run smoothly! For example, would you like to have shoppers give you information when purchasing an item such as custom size info or monogramming? Would you like to print packing lists or invoices? How about offering special types of coupons that are applied when certain items are ordered? Here is a link to all of the extensions offered on the WooCommerce store, and in addition, there are even more extensions you can find on the Internet! All of those fun additions to your store are possible with WooCommerce and TechCare can help you implement these extensions!
Are you ready to jump in and begin selling online? Then contact us today!