Mastering WooCommerce: Build, customize, and launch a complete e-commerce website with WooCommerce from scratch

✍ Scribed by Patrick Rauland

• Publisher: Packt Publishing Pvt Ltd
• Year: 2024
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 352
• Edition: 2
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Elevate your e-commerce journey with this comprehensive guide covering installation, product setup, sales management, POS integration, speed optimization, themes, landing pages, plugins, security, and much more
Key Features

Harness the power of WooCommerce and its plugins to build fully functional e-commerce websites
Optimize your website's speed and performance through image optimization and static information caching
Master access control and risk mitigation for WooCommerce store security
Purchase of the print or Kindle book includes a free PDF eBook

Book Description

Author Patrick Rauland is a WooCommerce expert with a deep-rooted passion for the platform. Drawing from his multifaceted experience as a customer, WooCommerce support team member, core developer, release leader, and conference planner, he presents the latest edition of this guide to help you master every facet of launching and managing a successful WooCommerce store.

From initiation to seamless integration of essential components such as payments, shipping, and tax configurations, this book takes you through the entire process of establishing your online store. You’ll then customize your store's visual identity, optimizing for search engines and advanced sales management through Point of Sale (POS) systems, outsourced fulfillment solutions, and external reporting services.

You’ll then advance to enhancing the user experience, streamlining reorders, and simplifying the checkout process for your customers. With this new edition, you’ll also gain insights into secure hosting and bug fixing and be prepared for updates. That’s not all; you’ll build a promotional landing page, ensure store safety, contribute to the WooCommerce community, and design custom plugins for your unique needs.

By the end of this WooCommerce book, you'll emerge with the skills to run a complete WooCommerce store and customize every aspect of the store on the frontend as well as backend.
What you will learn

Grasp the fundamentals of e-commerce website development with WordPress and WooCommerce
Configure the essential payment, shipping, and tax settings
Set up various product types depending on your store
Use Gutenberg product blocks to display products across various categories on your website
Develop WordPress plugins to customize your website's functionality
Use product data syncing for enhanced user experience and store performance tracking
Promote your products effectively using search engine optimization (SEO) and landing pages

Who this book is for

This book is for web developers, WordPress developers, e-commerce consultants, and anyone familiar with WordPress interested in building an e-commerce website from scratch. Working knowledge of WordPress development and general web development concepts is required.

✦ Table of Contents

Mastering WooCommerce
Contributors
About the author
About the reviewer
Preface
Who this book is for
What this book covers
To get the most out of this book
Download the example code files
Conventions used
Get in touch
Share Your Thoughts
Download a free PDF copy of this book
Part 1: Exploring the essentials of an ECommerce Store
1
Installing WordPress and WooCommerce
Technical requirements
New features in WooCommerce
WooCommerce Admin
WooCommerce Payments
WooCommerce blocks
HPOS
Importance of test sites
Migrating the files but not the database
Testing with a publicly accessible URL
Creating an ad-free experience
Jetpack without promotions
Disable marketplace suggestions
Making your own custom plugin
Installing WooCommerce
Setting your store address and store details
Payment settings
How many payment gateways?
Installing Stripe
Add tax rates
Get more sales
Personalizing your store
Summary
2
All About Configuring Products
Simple products
Product data fields
Optional fields
Inventory and stock
Shipping
Understanding taxonomies
Adding images
Product description and short description
A fully configured simple product
Variable products
Attributes
Variations
Editing individual variations
Images for variations
Multi-attribute variations
Troubleshooting variations
Digital products
Defining digital products
Downloadable but not virtual
Configuring virtual and downloadable products
Large downloadable files
Accessing downloads
Product bundles
Grouped products
Product bundles
Configurable bundles
Product kits
Subscriptions
Creating a subscription product
Adding a recurring payment option to a product
Subscription settings
Manual versus automatic renewals
Subscription switching
Synchronization
Retrying failed payments
Summary
3
Organizing Products
Technical requirements
Categorizing and tagging
Mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive
Tagging products
Optimizing product archive pages
Writing descriptions for product categories
Context matters
Meta-description for categories
A pretty category description
URLs
Redirects in WordPress
Adding product filters to your Shop page
Hidden widgets
Active product filters
Understanding product blocks
Single product pages
Customizing product blocks
Featuring a product
The value of blocks
Summary
4
Attracting Traffic with Search Engine Optimization
Technical Requirements
Why you should invest in SEO
One-off marketing strategies
Always-on marketing
Keyword research for e-commerce
Creating a list of keywords
Comparing search volume
Optimizing for keywords
Configuring breadcrumbs for search engines and users
Adding custom PHP code
Using a plugin
Creating and sharing an XML sitemap
Submitting an XML sitemap to Google
Keeping an eye on Google Search Console
Summary
Part 2: Managing an Online Store
5
Managing Sales Through WP Admin
Technical requirements
Fulfilling orders
Exploring new order notifications
New order badge in the site admin
Browsing orders
Viewing shipping information
Packing the boxes
Printing shipping labels
Dropping off packages
Marking orders as complete
Refunding orders and payments
Refund requests
Building a refund process
Viewing sales data
WooCommerce analytics
What sells
Gross profit
Taxes
Using third-party reporting platforms
Exploring Metorik
Pick one
Summary
6
Syncing Product Data
Exporting out of WooCommerce
Exploring a CSV file
Including content in a CSV file
Importing products via CSV
Importing a CSV
Integrating with an ERP
Finding an ERP
Configuring Finale Inventory
Importing products into ERP
Using an ERP
Summary
7
Configuring In-Store POS Solutions
Technical requirements
Setting up WooCommerce POS
Accepting credit cards
Setting up payment for Stripe
Selecting WooCommerce POS
Setting up Square
Connecting with Square
Setting up Square for WooCommerce
Syncing data
Syncing data in-store and with WooCommerce
Single database systems
Mastering synced databases via an API
Manually syncing data
Summary
8
Using Fulfillment Software
Sending and updating shipping information
Sending shipping data
Sending emails
Configuring webhooks
Building a custom integration
Updating data
Processing a daily email
Retrieving order data through a custom integration
Configuring Shippo
Signing up for Shippo
Configuring Shippo’s setup information
Fulfilling orders with Shippo
Configuring ShipStation
Integrating with ShipStation
Fulfilling packages with ShipStation
Printing pick lists
Using the ShipStation app
Summary
9
Speeding Up Your Store
Technical requirements
Monitoring speed and performance
Finding a starting point with GTmetrix
Web Vitals
Testing changes
Minifying CSS and JavaScript resources
Setting up Autoptimize
Concatenate files if necessary
Optimizing images
Optimizing images with Jetpack
Optimizing images with Imagify
Using the bulk updater
Caching and e-commerce
Configuring caching plugins
Configuring caching via HTACCESS
Page caching
Optimizing content above the fold
Summary
Part 3: Customizing the Appearance and Functionality of Your Store
10
Setting Up Your Theme
Choosing a theme for WooCommerce
Exploring the Twenty Twenty-Four theme
Storefront
Exploring Astra
Rearranging the product page
Installing hook visualizers
Stop showing hooks
Browsing through code for actions
Demo – move the product price
Adding a product data tab
Installing a custom tab plugin
Adding a custom tab
Extensive customizations using child themes
Summary
11
Customizing the Product Page
Adding social proof (FOMO)
Setting up FOMO
Customizing notifications
Removing events
Adding a video tab
Installing a video tab
Adding an extra tab
Displaying 360-degree images
Installing WooCommerce 360° Image
Adding 360-degree images to products
Summary
12
Building a Landing Page
Building a long-form landing page
Creating a new page
Understanding the structure of a landing page
Add content to a landing page
Adding e-commerce to a landing page
Adding a featured product
Adding an add-to-cart button
Finding the product ID
Adding the button
One Page Checkout
Measure and test everything
An overview of a CRO experiment
Setting up scroll maps and heatmaps
Summary
13
Creating Plugins for WooCommerce
Technical requirements
Building a basic WooCommerce plugin
Creating a plugin
Checking whether WooCommerce is active
Customizing order statuses
Using the WooCommerce example plugin
Registering a post status and adding it to WooCommerce
Building a settings page with WooCommerce
Creating the main integration file
Creating the Integration child class
Creating a constructor
Adding field settings
Summary
14
Next Steps with WooCommerce
Technical requirements
Why and how to make your WooCommerce store accessible
Inclusivity
Legal liability
Business benefits
Prepare for demographic trends
How to make your store accessible
Keeping WooCommerce safe and secure
Check your hosting before you launch
Use an SSL certificate
Keep WordPress core and plugins up to date
Keep your version of PHP supported
Two-factor login for administrators
Scan for downtime
Staying up to date with WooCommerce and open source software
Follow the Developer Blog
Annual conferences
Contributing to WooCommerce
Office hours
Summary
Index
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