How to Start an Online e-Commerce Shop in Less Than 30 Minutes

If you’ve been postponing the decision to start a small e-commerce business because you assume it will be too difficult or time-consuming for a newbie, don’t worry. Creating a personal website or even an eCommerce site is remarkably easy to set up on a WordPress content management platform using WooCommerce. Actually, most people with almost no technical knowledge can go from start to finish in less than 30 minutes — without any special training.

Being the most popular CMS system, WordPress also give small business owners much easier way to start an e-Commerce website.

Let’s Go Straight to The Point and Build Your WooCommerce Store

This tutorial will walk you through all the required steps (just 5 actually) for launching a self-hosted website from choosing and registering the right domain name and host with  Bluehost optimized WordPress hosting to the final working online shop.

Step 1: Choosing & Registering a Domain Name

Your domain name is the web address of your website. It’s actually what people type into their browser to get to your website. Don’t be tempted to choose something funny or flashy. Starting an online business is a serious job, so pick a domain that both represents your brand, is easy to remember and makes it easy for people to understand what it’s all about and find you.

For example, “janespastry.com” is much better than “janesyummycakesandtreats.com” because searchers that are looking for Jane by name or for food ordering online are more likely to find her. The decision to register your domain name will depend on your reasons for building the web store.

One of the best things about using a full service hosting provider like Bluehost (which is one of the recommended by WordPress) is that you can purchase your domain name and hosting service from the same place, without the need to explicitly point the domain to the host. Simply choose and type in your desired domain name, click on the “next” button, and the system will verify whether your choice is available or not. Of course, if you already have a domain, you’d just need to point it to your new hosting service or order a domain transfer as part of the hosting registration.

Start with the domain name

Step 2: Set Up a Hosting Account and Purchase a Suitable Plan

Once you have registered your domain name, you are one step closer to your goal to create an online shop. Next you’ll need to create an account for your hosting plan. Enter your personal data into each field and then scroll down to the package lists (Basic, Plus, or Business Pro) and choose an option that fits your budget and project requirements. Prices may vary across different hosting providers, but most of them offer add-ons, like extra security features, tools to boost search rankings, credits for marketing, free domain name for new users and site backups.

The Bluehost’s Basic plan should be enough for a simple blog, but for an e-commerce site using a modern theme (we’ll discuss this a bit later) and advanced plugins and features, it’s good to start a bit bigger. We recommend the Plus plan and upgrade later if needed, according to your project growth.

Choose a hosting plan

TIP: It’s always more affordable if you purchase your hosting plan on annual basis than month by month. The bigger the pre-paid period, the lower the price.

Choose the options you need by checking the appropriate boxes and scroll down to enter your billing information. Take a moment to read through the terms of service, cancellation policy, and privacy notices, then mark the box to confirm that you agree with them. Follow the on-screen instructions to create a password and, voila – you are ready for the next important step: choosing your WordPress theme.

Finish the process by choosing your password.

Step 3: Choose The Right WordPress / WooCommerce Theme

If you’ve chosen Bluehost as your web host, WordPress will be automatically pre-installed and ready for you. All you have to do is log in to your new website and choose a theme. if you aren’t ready for this step, don’t worry! You can always go back and change it any time. WordPress comes with few basic themes to choose from, but they are not really suitable for online shopping. There are themes specially made and/or adapted to be used with WooCommerce. For a really simple shop, you can start with the default WooCommerce theme called Storefront (the lower-right corner on the next screenshot). It’s a free theme and offers pretty much everything you need to start selling online.

Storefront is a good starting point for really simple e-commerce websites

The next screen will ask if you are building your website for Personal or Business reasons. This will help Bluehost provide you with accurate recommendations to help on your website building journey. You can skip this step as it only provide some basic information and mostly oriented to cross selling other services.

A More Professional Approach to Building Your First WooCommerce Website

However, if you’re serious about your new online business (you should be), choosing a specialized premium WooCommerce theme would be better. If you manage to find a niche theme built for your business type, that would be really the optimal starting point.

For the sake of this tutorial, we used “Jane’s Bakery” dummy business as an example. In this case, the best option would be finding a theme with industry-specific design, features and layouts like food related product add-ons, nutrition info, allergens in products, order hours if you offer delivery etc. A good example for such a theme would be Lafka – Fast Food and Pizza ordering WooCommerce theme as it offers everything we mentioned above.

LEARN MORE ABOUT LAFKA

Step 4: Learn Your WordPress Admin Dashboard

Now that you are ready to start working, you should find yourself on the WordPress Admin Dashboard, or the back-end, for your newly created website. This is the main administration area that allows you to control what your website visitors will see when they land on your pages. Spend some time learning this dashboard by reviewing features that you will use most often. Even if you don’t any website building/managing background, WordPress is a beginner friendly system and most of it’s options are pretty self-explanatory. Just take your time and explore the admin area.

Step 5: Install WooCommerce and Customize Your Shop

Now, this is where the fun part begins! You have already done the hard job and it’s time to fine tune your new website with color options, font styles, special modules and features etc.

Before you do that, there is only one mini-step left – install WooCommerce and turn your website into a real online shop, where people can browse and buy your products, checkout and pay and set delivery options.

Installing and configuring WooCommerce for the first time is a pretty straight forward job.

• Navigate to Plugins > Add New from your WordPress Dashboard left menu
• Type WooCommerce in the right-hand side search box.
• When the WooCommerce plugin appears on the list, click on Install Now button first and than Activate when it’s ready.

When the installation and activation process completes, you’ll be taken to the WooCommerce configuration wizard. The only thing you need to do now is follow the on-screen instructions and make your shop fully operational.

Conclusion

These 5 easy steps will have you running a ready to sell WordPress based WooCommerce shopping website for your small business in just about 30 minutes. Sounds like one the best time investments you ever made, right? Get your domain name and self-hosted service package at Bluehost and start your jorney today!

DISCLAIMER: This article may contain affiliate links. We only share our unbiased opinion and never post “sponsored” content, but, we may receive a small commission if you decided to purchase software or services through these links.

About the Author: Althemist

Dimitar Koev is a graphic and web designer, front-end developer and marketing expert. CEO & founder of the Althemist team (previously known as Koev) - an independent envato market author, focused on building WordPress themes with strong e-commerce accent.