Hi everyone, in light of recent events, businesses all over the world are finding themselves in a state of abrupt change. COVID-19 has rocked humanity on a global scale and people are feeling the strain.
Many of you may have considered moving your business to an online platform in order to continue providing for your customers and to keep your business afloat. I’m here to tell you that is a great idea. Ecommerce is a very quickly growing industry and provides an almost unlimited boost to the potential of your brand.
Best of all, when things return to normal, you can keep using your online store for as long as you wish!
It has also never been easier to set up an online store, there are hundreds of ways to do it. I’ll be explaining the most popular with you today and that is ‘WooCommerce’ for WordPress.
But How?
The first few things you’ll need are a domain, web hosting and lastly an SSL certificate. With all three you can create a website for your business with an online store to sell your product.
You can register a domain with hosting-australia.com for $17.90 for 2 years, this is your site’s address, for example, fredfrypans.com.au. Your customers will use this to navigate to your website and it is the first thing you’ll need.
Secondly you’ll need hosting, one way of describing web hosting is like renting some floor space in a shopping centre. You pay a fee to the owners of the centre to have your shop set up there. It’s the same concept, you pay your host for space on their server to house your website/emails. You can’t have a website without both domain and web hosting.
You can purchase hosting with hosting-australia.com for $14.90 month, so far our total cost is up to $32.80
Lastly, you’ll need an SSL, this is crucial as it encrypts all information transferred between your customers and you. Things like payment info and personal details are the first thing that come to mind. You want to look after your customers, they want to know their information is safe.
Our web hosting comes with a stock SSL that you can use for free.
Installation
With all 3 you’re ready to install WordPress and get started with WooCommerce.
To install it on your website, head to the ‘Add Plugins’ menu of WordPress search ‘WooCommerce’, click the ‘Install Now’ button. Wait for it to finish installing then click the ‘Activate Now’ button that has replaced the install button.
Now that you’ve got WooCommerce installed, it’s just a matter of setting it up and tailoring it to your business needs.
If you’d be interested in finding out how to do that, I’ll be writing another article to step you through it next week. So stay tuned.
Of course, Hosting Australia can do all this for you…just get in contact with us on 1300 761 930 to discuss further.
