How to Make an Eccomerce Website With WordPress Hosting
WordPress is the most popular content management system (CMS) in the world and the perfect choice for any professional who needs to build a website. With dozens of free themes and plugins available online, anyone can launch a professional-looking blog in no time at all. But with all the goodness that WordPress has to offer, why would anyone want to build their own website when they can get a high-quality one for free?
You might ask yourself the same question and wonder how to make an eccomerce website, or simply want to learn more about the subject. Luckily for you, we’re here to help with 9 simple steps that’ll have you setting up a professional-looking blog in no time at all. Once you’re done, you can even launch a membership site and sell your own products from there.
Get A Domain Name
As we mentioned above, WordPress is the perfect choice for any professional who wants to build a website. One of the best things about WordPress is that it has an amazing hosting service that allows you to build a website and launch it quickly and easily. You don’t need to worry about buying your own domain name or purchasing hosting separately.
WordPress also comes with a free premium hosting plan, which provides you with unrestricted bandwidth, a free domain name, and the ability to set up multiple email accounts (including a free one through Gmail). Now, you might wonder if the free version is enough for you and whether you should opt for the premium version. Opting for the premium version gives you all the benefits mentioned above plus a free SSL certificate, which provides you with a secure website.
Install WordPress
Once you have a free domain name and you’re sure that you’ll use it for your blog, the next step is to install WordPress on the domain name you secured earlier. To do this, visit http://wordpress.com/ in your browser. You’ll see a screen similar to the one below.
You can use your mouse to click the Install button to start the WordPress installation process. Once completed, you can log in to your new WordPress installation using the provided username and password.
One of the great things about WordPress is that it’s very easy to use. Even if you have no technical background, setting up a basic blog using this CMS is a straightforward process. After you log in, you’ll see your dashboard, as shown in the screenshot below.
From the dashboard, you can click the Settings button to access the settings page for WordPress. Here you can configure various options to control the look and behavior of your blog. For example, you can choose the theme that you want to use for your site (from the wide selection of free themes that come with WordPress by default), change the background color and design, and decide if you want caching or site maintenance features enabled.
If you click the Posts button you’ll see your blog’s content along with the Add New button at the top right corner. To add new content, just click the button to open up a floating window where you can start typing.
Set Up Your Blog’s Theme
After you launched your WordPress blog, you’ll probably want to start customizing it with a new theme. To do this, head back to the dashboard and click the Settings button again. Once there, you can choose from a wide range of free themes that come with WordPress or download and install a new theme from http://themes.tridiong.com/.
When selecting a WordPress theme, make sure that the theme’s design is consistent with the rest of your site. If it’s not, it can ruin the whole look and feel of your website. Also, check if the theme is compatible with your chosen hosting plan (most themes are designed for the free version of WordPress which comes with limited functionality).
One of the best things about WordPress is that it has a large and vibrant community of designers and developers who are constantly creating new themes and plugins to enhance your blogging experience. If you’re looking for a good starting point when choosing a theme for your blog, try out one of the free themes that comes with WordPress (and look for updates to ensure that it stays fresh).
Install And Configure The WooCommerce Plugin
WooCommerce is one of the best e-commerce plugins available for WordPress and is very popular among Shopify users who want to built an online store. What is WooCommerce? It’s a free and open-source plugin that provides you with everything you need to launch an online store or boutique. That includes a shopping cart, inventory management, order processing, and more.
Among other things, the WooCommerce plugin will install a shopping cart tab on your WordPress dashboard (shown below). You can use this tab to browse products that you’ve uploaded to your online store and purchase them simply by entering your payment details.
If you click the Shopping Cart tab on the sidebar, you’ll see your store’s current inventory along with the Add to Cart button at the top of the page. To add new products to your cart, just click the button to open up a new window where you can start typing. Make sure to keep an eye on your cart as you browse the web since it automatically updates as you move items around.
Secure Your Site With The Right SSL Certificate
Do you run an unsecure blog or website that you just launched? You need an SSL certificate to encrypt your website’s traffic and prevent cyber attacks. An SSL certificate also provides you with a trust mark (shown below) to convince visitors that you really do want them to trust your site.
You have two choices when it comes to buying an SSL certificate. You can either use a trusted third party to secure your site or launch a free SSL certificate through LetsEncrypt which automatically provides you with a secure connection whenever someone visits your site. For a free certificate through LetsEncrypt, visit https://letsencrypt.com/ in your browser.
We recommend the free certificate option since it saves you time and money in the long run. Besides, WordPress comes with a free premium SSL certificate that provides you with all the features mentioned above plus a brand new design for your site’s logo and favicon.
Make Money With Affiliate Marketing
WordPress is a fully supported platform for affiliate marketing, which simply means that you can promote other companies’ products and services and get a commission when someone clicks a link or makes a purchase after being redirected to the seller’s website by your affiliate marketing campaign.
The great thing about affiliate marketing is that you don’t need to have a huge audience to get started. You can take advantage of affiliate marketing even if you have only a few customers. The key to success with affiliate marketing is to keep your audience engaged and interested in your content.
WordPress comes with several affiliate marketing tools that’ll help you get started. From the moment you install the plugin, you’ll be able to follow the step-by-step instructions to create your own affiliate marketing campaign. You can then access your affiliate dashboard, where you’ll see all the information you need to manage your campaigns including the products you’ve chosen to promote.
If you click on Report button, you’ll see a chart with numbers that represent the number of successful and failed affiliate marketing campaigns. You can use this tool to access detailed analytics about each of your campaigns and determine the ones that performed the best. From there, you can learn more about improving your affiliate marketing performance in the future.
Build An Email List
You can use email marketing to grow and maintain your audience. This option allows you to sign up for a service like Aweber that’ll make it easy to manage various email lists and send out automated emails based on the actions you take.
The great thing about email marketing is that you can target the right audience depending on what you want to promote. For example, if you sell wellness products and would like to promote a new spa that you discovered, you can create an email list for people who match the profile of the typical spa customer. Then, you can send out an email promoting the new spa with some special offers and discounts for people on your list.
WordPress comes with several built-in email marketing tools that’ll make it easy for you to start building your email list. For example, you can choose to receive daily emails from the admin area with the latest news and events from WordPress.com or you can sign up for a free Aweber account and start using their simple to follow email marketing templates to create customized emails.