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How To Plan Your WooCommerce Store

A WooCommerce website allows you to present products for sale online with support for real time credit card payments and/or offline payments.

Simple WooCommerce websites might have just a few products and manual pick/pack/ship processes. More sophisticated WooCommerce websites might have thousands of products and automated pick/pack/ship services from a 3rd party warehouse.

Here’s some things to consider when you’re planning your on-line store.

Design: Who are you selling your products to? A well designed WooCommerce website looks appealing to your target customers, helps them feel confident in buying from you, and above all makes it easy for customers to find what they are after.

Product Categories: What categories of product will you be selling? The type and number of categories of products you sell will influence how your products are presented, and need to be clearly defined.

Products: How many products will you be presenting on your website?

Images: Do you have category images to help explain your range and any special features and benefits of your range to your customers? Do you have images of your products? How many images per product?

Countries: What countries do you want to be able to ship to?

Shipping and Payment: Standard WooCommerce websites can use free shipping or establish simple shipping cost rules, and use PayPal as a payment processor to accept Visa/MasterCard payments. See note below for more advanced payment options.

WooCommerce Terms & Conditions

When you launch an online store that sells products or services, you should consider your terms and conditions as well as your policies and business processes. Like any aspect of running a business, there are many factors to consider, and you may need advice from specialists depending on your own business circumstances.

Some businesses publish a single Terms & Conditions page that covers all related policies. Others publish separate pages for specific policies (such as Shipping, Returns or Privacy). The choice is yours.

To develop your policies, document what is important to your business. You might review the policies being used by other businesses that you consider relevant. Once you have drafted and refined your own policy (or policies), consider whether you need a review from relevant business advisers such as legal, accounting or export specialists.

Defining your business policies is a big decision. Overall you are responsible for deciding on what your policies should be and preparing them. Every business has different factors to consider, and you should always analyse your own situation and come to your own decision about going into business online. Do your research and make your own call.

Traffic

How will your customers find their way to your website?

Content Development:  Product descriptions will help your customers find what they are looking for online. How will these be produced? What problems can you solve for your customer? What resources can you produce that people will link to?

Blog: Will you use an integrated blog to talk about new products and build search engine rankings?

Email Marketing: Will you use an integrated email marketing tool to promote special offers and new products?

Social Media: Are your customers active on social media? What role will it play in your marketing strategy?

More Advanced WooCommerce Websites

Shipping Costs: Free shipping is still a good option for advanced sites, but automated shipping rate calculators such as Australia Post/ USPS/UPS are also available – you’ll need to supply the weight and as-packed length/height/width for each product to use these services). Is a custom cost model for shipping going to suit your business?

Inventory: Will you be setting inventory levels (how many in stock) so item inventory levels can be managed?

Pick/Pack/Ship: Will you be be picking, packing and shipping your products? An alternative is to send your stock to a 3rd party warehouse and have orders picked/packed/shipped for you.

Payment Gateway: There are hundreds of payment gateways available. Which one is the best for your business needs?

It is worth thinking through these issues before you approach your web developer. You can then work through your options with them and come up with a thorough website brief which in turn will lead to an accurate quote and a smooth website build for your WooCommerce store.