Want to launch an online store with WordPress in 2026? You’re in the right place.
WordPress powers more eCommerce stores than any other platform, even Shopify. Pair it with the free WooCommerce plugin and you can build a fully functioning store without touching a single line of code.
This guide walks you through the whole process step by step, from picking a domain to taking your first payment. By the end, you’ll have a store that looks something like this:
Let’s get started.
How to Create an eCommerce Website With WordPress (Quick Answer)
To build an eCommerce website with WordPress in 2026, you’ll need to:
- Get hosting and a domain name. Pick a WordPress-friendly host (Cloudways, SiteGround, or Bluehost) and register a .com domain.
- Install WordPress. Most hosts offer a one-click installer.
- Install and activate the WooCommerce plugin. It’s free and adds full store functionality.
- Pick a WooCommerce-compatible theme. Free options like Botiga work well out of the box.
- Add your products. Go to Products, then Add New in your WordPress dashboard.
- Configure payments, shipping, and taxes. WooCommerce walks you through each in its setup wizard.
- Optimize for speed. Use a caching plugin like WP Rocket and a fast theme.
The rest of this guide covers each step in detail, with screenshots.
What Is WordPress eCommerce?
WordPress eCommerce is the process of selling products or services through a WordPress website, usually with the help of an eCommerce plugin. The most common setup is WordPress combined with WooCommerce, which adds a shopping cart, checkout, payments, and product management to any WordPress site.
Does WordPress have eCommerce out of the box? No. Core WordPress is a content platform, not a store. But once you install WooCommerce (or another eCommerce plugin), your WordPress site becomes a complete online store with no extra software needed.
What You’ll Need
Before you start, get these basics in place:
- A domain name (around $10 to $15 per year)
- WordPress hosting (starting around $5 to $10 per month for small stores)
- WordPress 6.4 or higher installed (this tutorial was tested on WordPress 6.7 and WooCommerce 9.4)
- A way to accept payments (we cover Stripe, PayPal, and WooCommerce Payments below)
- Product photos and descriptions ready to upload
You won’t need any coding skills. Everything happens inside the WordPress admin.
How to Create an eCommerce Website with WordPress (Step-by-Step)
Now let’s dig into the full step-by-step tutorial. This guide will take you from “zero” to a fully functioning eCommerce store powered by WordPress.
1. Set Up Your WordPress Site (If You Don’t Have One Already)
If you already have a basic WordPress site, you can click here to skip ahead to the next section and learn how to add eCommerce functionality to that site.
However, if you don’t have a WordPress site yet, you’ll need to set one up before you can turn it into a fully functioning eCommerce store.
To do that, you’ll need to do three things:
- Choose the domain name for your eCommerce store. This will be its permanent address on the Internet. For example, ours is athemes.com.
- Purchase web hosting. This is what powers the WordPress software and makes your eCommerce store available to visitors from around the globe.
- Install the WordPress software. This will get your basic site up and running. Once you set up the core WordPress software, you can continue with turning it into an eCommerce store.
Choose and Purchase a Domain Name
To purchase your domain name, you can use a service such as Namecheap or Cloudflare Registrar.
If you’re struggling to come up with a good domain name that’s still available, you can use a domain generator such as LeanDomainSearch.
Purchase Hosting
For WordPress and WooCommerce hosting, we recommend Cloudways as a good affordable option that still offers excellent performance.
SiteGround is also a solid option for beginners, as it’s a bit simpler to use (though Cloudways is still pretty accessible).
Install WordPress
Once you have your web hosting, you can use your web host’s WordPress auto-installer tool to install the basic WordPress software.
If you’re using Cloudways, you can follow this documentation to install WordPress.
You’ll also need to install a free SSL certificate to enable the secure HTTPS protocol on your website. Cloudways and most other quality hosts make this very easy to do. It usually just requires clicking a single button. Here’s how to do it at Cloudways.
2. Install WooCommerce and Configure the Basics
At this point, you should have your basic WordPress site set up. Now, it’s time to turn it into a functioning eCommerce store by installing the WooCommerce plugin.
WooCommerce is available for free at WordPress.org, so you can install it like any other WordPress plugin:
- Go to Plugins → Add New in your WordPress dashboard.
- Search for “WooCommerce”.
- Install and activate the plugin.
Once you activate WooCommerce, it should automatically launch its guided setup wizard. If it doesn’t, or if you accidentally closed it, you can manually open the guided wizard by following these instructions.
Now, let’s go through the setup steps.
Store Details
On the first step, you’ll enter some basic details about your store’s location:
Industry Details
Next, you’ll be asked to enter some details about your store’s industry:
Product Types
Then, choose the types of products that you want to sell.
Most stores will just want to check the Physical products box. If you’re selling digital products, you can select Downloads:
Business Details
Finally, you’ll enter some additional business details about your store:
WooCommerce will also prompt you to add “free business features” to your store. You can click the accordion to expand the options.
For most people, we recommend installing all of the “basics” as these will help you with payments, shipping, and similar tasks. The “grow your store” section is totally optional.
The “basics” include WooCommerce’s dedicated services for payments, shipping, and taxes, which are the simplest way to set up these key areas of your store (though you can use other tools or plugins).
If you don’t want to decide now, you can uncheck all of them. You can always install them later on:
Theme
Finally, the setup wizard will prompt you to install a theme.
Just skip this section by clicking Continue with my active theme. We’ll cover setting up your WooCommerce theme in the next section:
If you’ve installed the “free business features”, you’ll be prompted to connect your WooCommerce store to your WordPress.com account. If you don’t have a WordPress.com account yet, you’ll also need to create one.
This account is free, but it’s required to use the dedicated services for payments, shipping, and taxes:
3. Choose a WooCommerce Theme
At this point, you have a functioning store, but it probably doesn’t look like an eCommerce store yet.
To fix that, you’ll need to install a purpose-built WooCommerce theme.
There are a few things to look for in a quality WooCommerce theme, including:
- Design. You want your theme to have a great design that matches your desired aesthetic.
- Features. You’ll add most eCommerce features using plugins rather than your theme, but you’ll still want to look for basic functionality, such as whether the theme provides a user-friendly product search option or how its product filters look.
- Performance. Your theme plays a large role in your store’s load times, so it’s important to choose a lightweight WooCommerce theme that won’t slow down your store.
We created our Botiga theme to do a good job in all of those areas:
- It looks great, with a modern, minimal design. You can also choose from different importable demo sites to get the perfect look for your store.
- It has all the features an online store needs from a theme, such as shopper-friendly product search, useful product filters, sales badges, and lots more.
- It’s built to load fast. It weighs just 44.3 KB, minifies its own code, and achieves strong performance scores out of the box.
Botiga is our go-to recommendation, but a few other free WooCommerce themes are also worth a look depending on the look and feel you want:
- Botiga: Modern, minimal, fast. Best for most stores.
- Astra: Lightweight and highly customizable. A good fit if you plan to use a page builder like Elementor.
- Storefront: Built by the WooCommerce team itself. Plain visually, but guaranteed compatibility with every WooCommerce feature.
For the rest of this tutorial, we’ll use Botiga. We’ll stick with the free version, but there is also a premium version that adds more features if you want them.
Install the Botiga Theme
To get started with Botiga, go to Appearance → Themes → Add New in your WordPress dashboard.
Then, search for and install the free Botiga theme from WordPress.org.
Import a Demo Site
Once you activate the Botiga theme, you’ll see a prompt to import one of Botiga’s demo sites. This is optional, but it will have you up and running with a stylish store from day one.
If you want to import a demo site, click the Starter Sites button:
It will automatically take you to the starter sites area. Or, you can go to Appearance → Starter Sites.
To import a site, just hover over it and click the Import button:
This will launch a popup where you can choose exactly which content to import. Finalize your choices and then click Import again:
If you imported all of the demo content, your store should now look exactly like the demo site that you chose.
Customize the Demo Content
Now, you can make the content your own.
To customize the theme styles, such as fonts and colors, you can go to Appearance → Customize.
And, to customize the individual pages, you can go to the Pages area and edit them just like any other WordPress page. All of Botiga’s demo content uses the native WordPress editor, which helps your store load as fast as possible.
4. Add Your Products
Now that your store actually looks like an eCommerce store, you’re ready to start adding products.
There are a few other details you’ll want to configure, but it’s always motivating to see your first live product, which is why we’re putting this section first.
Note: if you imported a full Botiga demo site, Botiga will import some example products as part of the process. You can use these example products as inspiration and delete them when you’ve added your own products.
To create a product, go to Products → Add New.
Here, fill out the product information. Pay special attention to the following areas:
- Title
- Short and long description
- Price
- Product image
- Product categories
- Product tags
- Product type (available in the dropdown at the top of the Product data box). For example, whether it’s a simple or a variable product (such as a t-shirt with multiple sizes)
You can also use the tabs in the Product data box to configure other details such as inventory, dimensions, weight, linked products, and more.
Don’t worry about messing anything up. You can always come back and edit these details later on.
When you’re happy with how everything looks, click the Update or Publish button just like you would for a blog post. As soon as you do that, your product will be live on the frontend of your store.
To add more products, all you need to do is repeat the process.
If you have hundreds or thousands of products, you can also import your products via a CSV file, which can save some time.
5. Configure Other WooCommerce Settings
Now, it’s time for the most boring part of this tutorial: setting up the nitty-gritty details such as payments, taxes, and shipping.
While this can be a little tedious and time-consuming, it’s important to the functioning of your store, so you can’t just skip it.
How you’ll do this really depends on your store’s location and configuration, so we can’t show one specific tutorial for every variation. However, we’ll cover the highlights so that you generally know what you need to do.
A good starting point is to go to WooCommerce → Home in your dashboard, where you should see a checklist:
Let’s go through the key settings.
Payments
The easiest way to set up payments is to use the official WooCommerce Payments service (which is based on Stripe). If you installed that as part of the setup process, all you need to do is click the Get paid with WooCommerce Payments option in the checklist above to launch the setup wizard.
If you want to configure a different gateway or use Stripe directly, you can go to WooCommerce → Settings → Payments:
You can also install other third-party payment gateway plugins if needed, which can be helpful if there’s a certain local payment gateway that you want to use.
Shipping Rates
There are two main ways that most stores approach shipping on WooCommerce:
- Table-rate shipping. You can enter a set of shipping rules. For example, packages under 1 pound cost $5, packages between 1 and 5 pounds cost $10, and packages above 5 pounds cost $15.
- Real-time rates. You can calculate real-time shipping rates based on the actual dimensions of each order. You can integrate with USPS, UPS, FedEx, and others.
WooCommerce does have its own built-in features for shipping rules. However, you’ll probably want a separate shipping plugin because the built-in features don’t support table-rate and real-time rates.
If you want to explore the built-in shipping settings, you can go to WooCommerce → Settings → Shipping.
First, you’ll define shipping zones, which are groupings of one or more geographic areas. For example, you might have one zone for the continental USA:
Once you’ve created a zone, you can add shipping methods for that zone, which will only be visible to customers in one of the selected geographic areas.
There are three options:
- Flat rate
- Free shipping
- Local pickup
Once you add a method, you can enter its cost.
However, the built-in shipping feature doesn’t let you change the cost based on the weight or dimensions of a package, which is why you’ll probably want either a table-rate shipping plugin or a real-time rates plugin.
You can also consider a full order fulfillment service such as ShipStation or TrackShip.
Taxes
The last major settings area to consider is your store’s taxes. In many legal jurisdictions, you’ll need to collect some type of sales tax or VAT from your customers.
For simplicity, you’ll probably want to use a plugin here. The popular options are WooCommerce Tax and Avalara:
WooCommerce also has a manual tax option, though it tries to hide it because it’s complex. To enable manual taxes, you need to click the Set up tax option and then select the manual option.
Once you do that, you’ll get a new settings area at WooCommerce → Settings → Taxes:
The fastest way to add manual taxes would be to import a CSV of tax rules. For example, you can purchase a regularly updated CSV of USA tax rules from this site.
Other Settings
While payments, shipping, and taxes are some of the most important settings for WooCommerce stores, they’re far from the only things that you can control. So we highly recommend exploring the other options in the WooCommerce settings area.
For a lot of the settings, you’ll be totally fine to leave them as the defaults.
However, you might discover some settings that you think would be better to adjust.
For example, if you go to WooCommerce → Settings → Emails, you can customize the content of the emails that your store sends to customers and admins, such as the email that a shopper receives after they place an order:
6. Install Plugins to Add More Features
One of the best things about using WooCommerce for WordPress eCommerce is the massive library of official and third-party plugins that you can use to extend WooCommerce.
Your store will absolutely rely on plugins to add key features. There isn’t a single store that doesn’t have at least some WooCommerce plugins.
Note that WooCommerce plugins are just regular WordPress plugins. We’re only calling them “WooCommerce plugins” for simplicity’s sake, but you’ll install them like any other WordPress plugin.
We already touched on plugins in the previous section. You’ll generally want to use plugins to set up your store’s payment gateways, shipping rules, and tax rates.
However, you can also find thousands of other plugins to help with all areas of your store, including the following:
- Marketing your store more effectively
- Adding helpful features for shoppers, such as wishlists or in-dashboard order tracking
- Improving your store’s admin processes to manage everything more effectively
- Getting more control over your store’s designs
For example, the freemium Merchant plugin offers a toolkit of 35+ different modules that you can use to boost conversions at your store and create a better shopping experience for your customers.
Here are some of the many helpful features that it can add:
- Display a “Frequently bought together” box, much like how Amazon does.
- Create special discounts like “Buy X, Get Y”, volume-based discounts, and more.
- Add countdown timers for sales to boost urgency.
- Improve the checkout and cart experience on your store.
- Boost trust with trust badges, payment logos, and more.
- Add size charts, product videos, and product audio to provide shoppers with more information about products.
- Offer real-time product search to make it easier for shoppers to browse your products.
- Let customers save items to a wishlist.
- And lots more. Check out all of the features here.
We can’t recommend a single set of plugins for all stores because there are so many variables. The key detail here is that you shouldn’t be scared to use plugins to extend WooCommerce, because all WooCommerce stores rely on plugins, typically dozens of them.
So how can you find the best plugins for your WooCommerce store?
First off, check out our collection of all the best WooCommerce plugins for different use cases, including product search, filtering, wishlists, order management, sales funnels, and other key eCommerce features.
Beyond that, you can try browsing these popular plugin marketplaces:
- WordPress.org has thousands of free plugins tagged with WooCommerce.
- The official WooCommerce Extensions Store lists both free and premium plugins and includes official extensions as well as those from third-party developers.
- CodeCanyon has over 1,400 premium plugins in the WooCommerce category.
We recommend starting the process by searching for the specific functionality that you need. Then, read the reviews and check the developer’s reputation, just as you would for any other WordPress plugin.
Because these plugins can affect the security and functioning of your store, we recommend only installing plugins from reputable developers.
7. Optimize Your Store for Performance
At this point, you should have a fully functioning eCommerce store that’s ready to start receiving customers.
However, if you want your store to be a success, it’s important that you optimize it to load quickly.
How quickly your store loads will affect a range of different areas, including the following:
- Conversion rates
- Search engine rankings
- User experience
- Bounce rates
Don’t worry. If you’ve followed this guide, you’re already halfway to having a quick-loading store because you’re using a fast theme (Botiga) and performance-optimized hosting (Cloudways or your preferred host).
For the simplest way to cover the rest of the important optimization strategies, you can use the WP Rocket plugin. While WP Rocket is a premium plugin, we think it’s worth the investment (our review) because it offers the simplest way to speed up your store.
To learn how to use it, you can follow our tutorial on how to speed up WooCommerce with WP Rocket and Botiga. In that guide, we run actual speed tests after enabling the various optimization features so that you can see what effect they have on your site’s performance.
WooCommerce vs. Other WordPress eCommerce Options
WooCommerce is the default choice for most WordPress stores, but it isn’t the only option. Here’s how it compares to the main alternatives:
| Plugin | Best for | Pricing | Digital goods | Physical goods |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| WooCommerce | Most stores (physical and digital) | Free core, paid extensions | Yes | Yes |
| Easy Digital Downloads | Digital-only stores | Free core, $99+/year for pro | Yes (specialized) | No |
| Ecwid | Beginners with simple catalogs | Free tier, $25+/month | Yes | Yes |
| BigCommerce for WordPress | Multi-channel sellers (Amazon, eBay) | $39+/month | Yes | Yes |
| Shopify (external) | Hosted alternative outside WordPress | $29+/month | Yes | Yes |
For most readers, WooCommerce is the right starting point. It’s free, flexible, and has the largest ecosystem of compatible themes and plugins.
Common Issues and Fixes
Most WooCommerce setups go smoothly, but a few issues come up often enough to call out. Here’s how to fix them:
Payment gateway shows “Not available” at checkout
This usually means the gateway’s currency, country, or minimum order rules don’t match the customer’s cart. Go to WooCommerce → Settings → Payments, click your gateway, and check the country, currency, and minimum amount settings.
Checkout page is missing or shows a blank cart
Go to WooCommerce → Settings → Advanced and confirm the Cart and Checkout pages are set. If those pages were deleted, click Tools inside WooCommerce and run “Create default WooCommerce pages.”
Tax rates aren’t applying
First, enable taxes at WooCommerce → Settings → General. Then go to WooCommerce → Settings → Tax and confirm your rates are entered. If you’re using WooCommerce Tax for automatic calculation, double-check that your store address is set correctly.
Theme styles look broken after activating WooCommerce
Your theme may not be WooCommerce-compatible. Switch to a WooCommerce-ready theme like Botiga, Astra, or Storefront. You can also go to WooCommerce → Status → Tools and run “Regenerate shop pages.”
Store is slow once you add products
Heavy product catalogs slow down hosting fast. Install a caching plugin like WP Rocket, switch to a fast WooCommerce theme, optimize your product images, and consider moving to managed WooCommerce hosting if traffic grows.
WordPress eCommerce FAQs
Does WordPress have eCommerce built in?
No. WordPress core is a publishing platform and doesn’t include shopping cart or checkout features. To sell online with WordPress, you install an eCommerce plugin. WooCommerce is the most popular choice, and it’s free.
Do I need WooCommerce to create a WordPress store?
Not strictly. You can use alternatives like Easy Digital Downloads (for digital goods), Ecwid, or BigCommerce for WordPress. WooCommerce is the recommended starting point for most stores because it’s free, well-supported, and has the largest ecosystem of compatible plugins and themes.
How much does a WordPress eCommerce store cost?
A basic WordPress store costs around $10 to $15 per month to run, mainly for hosting and a domain. WordPress and WooCommerce are both free. Most stores spend an extra $100 to $500 per year on premium plugins, themes, or extensions, but it’s possible to launch on a tighter budget.
Do I need to be a developer to create a WordPress eCommerce store?
No. The whole process happens inside the WordPress dashboard. WooCommerce has a setup wizard that handles most of the heavy lifting, and themes like Botiga come with importable demo sites so your store looks finished from day one.
How long does it take to create a WordPress eCommerce store?
You can have a basic, functioning store live within an hour, especially if you already have a WordPress site. Configuring shipping rates, tax rules, payment gateways, and adding products usually takes the longer half of the work. Most stores are fully ready to launch within a weekend.
Is a WordPress eCommerce store secure?
Yes, as long as you use reputable hosting and follow WordPress security best practices. Credit card payments are handled by third-party processors like Stripe or PayPal, so you don’t have to manage PCI compliance directly.
Can a WordPress eCommerce store load fast?
Yes. Use a lightweight WooCommerce-compatible theme, a caching plugin like WP Rocket, optimized images, and quality hosting. Botiga, for example, is built to load fast with WooCommerce out of the box.
Create Your WordPress eCommerce Store Today
You now have everything you need to build a working WordPress eCommerce store: a domain, hosting, WordPress, WooCommerce, a theme, products, payments, and basic optimization. Once orders start coming in, you’ll see them under WooCommerce in your dashboard and get email notifications too.
Next steps:
- Browse our roundup of the best WooCommerce themes if you want to switch designs.
- Check out the best WooCommerce plugins to add features like wishlists, product filters, and abandoned cart recovery.
- Follow our guide on how to speed up WooCommerce once your catalog grows.
- If you sell digital products, see WPBeginner’s review on Easy Digital Downloads as a WooCommerce alternative.
Have a question we didn’t cover? Let us know in the comments.
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