How to Add an Ecommerce Website to a WordPress Site

The ecommerce niche is one of the most lucrative in digital marketing, and with the right approach, you can incorporate an ecommerce store into your overall marketing strategy and drive tons of traffic to your site.

You don’t need a separate ecommerce website to sell your own products. Instead, you can use the same platform to build and maintain your blog, and then effortlessly funnel product purchases into your financials. In this article, we’ll discuss the steps to add an ecommerce store to a WordPress site.

The Basics

Before you can begin the process of adding an ecommerce store to your site, you’ll need to decide how you want to approach it.

Do you want to create a simple landing page with a single product and a call to action that takes the user to a shopping cart?

Or do you want to build out an entire ecommerce website, including a blog, and use Shopify, Woocommerce, or a similar platform to build out your store?

The first step is to determine if you want to create a store for your own products or for others.

Create a Product List

If you choose to create a store for your products, the next step is to create a product list. The list will serve as a catalogue for your products — essentially a digital version of the physical list that you’ll find in a retail store. As you add products to the list, you’ll want to make sure that each item has the proper information about it. Think of the information you need to include as you would for an Amazon product listing. This includes the product’s title, description, and price.

You can use the same software (Amazon Product Adder for example) that you use to create your product lists to create your online product catalogue. Simply visit the Add Products page in your Amazon account.

Find Product Images

Now that you have a product list, the next step is to find the product images. You’ll need to consider several factors when choosing the perfect images for your products. First, make sure that the image is of good quality. If you plan to use the image as a header for your website, look for high-quality stock photos that you can use without having to do too much post-processing.

Make sure that the product images you find are of good resolution and that each product is visible. If you have a standard resolution for product images (such as 600 pixels or more), look for images that are at least that resolution. Don’t worry about the aspect ratio of the image — for now, you can crop it later if it’s not perfectly square.

Create a Layout For the Product List

Once you have a product list with all of the products you want to include, the next step is to create a layout for the page. A layout is essentially a design for how you want the page to look — similar to a mood board, but with more focus on design.

We’ll use the sample product list from the Shopify ecosystem. If you visit the Shopify blog, you’ll see a post on the process of creating shop layouts. Essentially, you want to find a way to display your products in a way that feels clean and polished.

Categorize Your Products With Tags

To add an ecommerce store to a WordPress site, you’ll want to use categories to organize your products. Think of categories as keywords or tags that allow you to filter your product list by product — similar to how you might use a keyword to find a specific article on a topic.

You can add multiple categories, and you can organize your products within those categories. When adding the categories to your product list, be sure to choose wisely. If you’ve chosen popular categories such as apparel or accessories, you might have a tough time keeping track of the products you have compared to those you need. Consider choosing less popular categories such as electronics or furniture to keep your product list fresh.

Add Custom CSS To The Website

The last step in adding an ecommerce store to a WordPress site is to add custom CSS to the site. The CSS you add will allow you to fully design the layout of the product list and to add any specialized design elements you might want. You can use a tool like WordPress Custom CSS to make it easier to add CSS to your site.

As a general rule of thumb, you shouldn’t need to edit the HTML of a WordPress site to make changes. Instead, use the Custom CSS tool to make changes instead.

Now that you have an idea of what adding an ecommerce store to a WordPress site entails, you can begin the process of building your own ecommerce store.