Title: How to Make an E-Commerce Website | Online Shopping Store

In this article, I will be showing you the steps for creating an e-commerce website from start to finish which can be used for selling digital and physical products.

Any online business that is successful today actually starts and ends with a good website. If you didn’t create one before, don’t let that stop you. However, the first sale you will make isn’t going to come by itself and online shopping is standard and common for most product categories.

Joining the ecommerce industry now is your best opportunity in order to have a share of the growing profits. If you start as soon as possible, then you can develop your brand and get the word out.

With the Help of available tools on the market today, developing your ecommerce website is simple and more intuitive than before.

One of the most  popular ecommerce website building platforms in the world is WooCommerce. It is  free, but you need to have a web hosting and WordPress site.

So in this article, you will learn how to get the best deal on web hosting, install WordPress in one click, and launch your very own E-commerce website today.

After reading this article to the end, you will be able to make a website which has products and pages where customers will be able to add products to their carts and  they will be able to pay you through your website.

Very interesting right?

So let’s get started. It’s going to be very simple. We are going to make our e-commerce site in just four parts:

#1. The first part is to launch your website. Well, this is where we get a new website live on the internet. So in order to launch our site, we’re going to do two steps.

– The first step is to choose a name for your website and hosting as well. In order to choose your website name which is the domain name and hosting for your site, all you have to do is to Simply choose among the  hosting providers and domain registrars out there such as GoDaddy, namecheap, hostinger and so on . But I will however recommend  the hostinger service which is good.

Visit the hostinger.com website and buy your domain name and hosting.

Domain is the name of your website, which people need to enter to visit your site and hosting is the place where your website’s files are stored like your website’s images and files.So hosting is needed so that your website is visible on the internet and can be accessed by anyone. 

Hosting provides the space to store your website on the internet. You can then choose the hosting providers you want to use  ie hostinger or other services to sign up to and subsequently choose a plan so that you can order your hosting services and domain name as well.

Choose how long you want the hosting for. You can choose any length of time as you go on  and then after that, make payment to purchase the domain name and hosting.

Once you complete the purchase, your site will be live on the internet. So you can check that , by typing your domain name url that you  just purchased in the browser. 

You have to know that, sometimes it might take a few minutes for the domain to become active on the internet.

So this is just a brief explanation on how to buy a domain name and hosting on any hosting service providers out there. So once you’ve launched your site, we can now go to the second step of this tutorial.

#2. The second step is to start building your e-commerce site. Now, instead of building an e-commerce site from scratch, we’re going to first import a sample E-commerce site, and then we’re going to edit it to make our own site. So this is going to really speed up the process and it’ll let you build your site in a much faster way. 

So to import the sample site, we’re going to carry two steps:

 First, we are going to log into our website’s back end. So to login to your site’s dashboard or back end, all you have to do is type ‘/login’ After your site’s address(for example: nancy.com/login) and press enter, it will take you to the login page of your website’s backend.

Now here you will enter your username and password to log into your WordPress dashboard. Now, once your site is active, you should have received the login details of WordPress in your email. So check your email inbox and you will see that you have received the email with your login details which are the username and password.

Now to login to our website,  just copy our login details from your email inbox and paste them to login into your wordpress dashboard.

Once you login into your wordpress dashboard which is the place in which you can manage and control your website, then we go to step two.

Step two is to import a sample site, which is to install a theme in WordPress. So we’re going to install a team called Astra which will allow us to import the sample site.

So to install the theme, just go to “appearance” and click on ‘themes’, Then click ‘add new theme’ and then search for a theme called ‘Astra’ which we are going to use.

So to install the theme, just click install and then activate the theme. So now we’ve installed the Astra theme. Next to import the sample site, we click on ‘get started’ button:

After you click on the “get started” button,  it’ll take you to this page below, so just choose elementor l makes it easy for you to edit your site.

So let’s select that. And now it will take you to this page below where you can see different designs, which you can apply to your site.

Now, since we are  building an e-commerce website, let’s select e-commerce, and you will get different types of E-commerce site designs, so just select the design  you like. I’m going to choose this one;

And you can also see a preview of how your site is going to look once you import the sample site.

Now, to import the sample site into your site,  click import complete site and then click import.

And the sample of the e-commerce site will be imported to your site. So now we can see how the website looks

Remember this was how your site was before, i.e. empty. Now, if we click refresh, you can see that we have got the entire e-commerce site into your site. 

Now, this is a fully working E-commerce site which means if you click on any product here, you can see the product details  and you can add it to cart. And then we can view the cart and also proceed to checkout. So now we have successfully imported the sample ecommerce site okay? 

Once you have imported the sample site, we can now go to Step three.

#3. The Step three is where we see how you can start using the e-commerce site. So to start using your e-commerce site, you are going to first set up your store. Now the store is the place where customers can see your products and then purchase them. As soon as you set up your store, your website will have your own products and your visitors will be able to buy those products. 

So let’s go to your store and you will see that you have the sample products . Now to setup your store, we are going to carry out these four steps:

   – The first step is to delete all the sample products. So to delete them, let’s go to our dashboard And then click products And here you can see all the sample products which we have here.

Now, to delete the sample products, just click to select all the products and then  select move to trash and click apply and it will be deleted. 

So now that all the sample products have been deleted,  if you go back to your store and click refresh you will see that all the products have been removed.

Once you remove all the sample products, you can start adding your own products. 

Now to add your own product, just go back to your product’s page and click on ‘Add new’. Now to add a new product. Just enter the product name, its price and some details about the product.

So first let’s enter the product name. For example,  I want to sell a t-shirt so I’m going to enter that. and also  enter the price and then some details about the product.  As soon as you’ve added these details, you can now add your product image.

So to add the image, just click set product image and then drag, and drop your image from your computer. And as you can see, your image has been added.

So now, let’s click publish, and make it live.

If we click on our store page you will see that we have our product displayed. Now If we click on the product, you will see below that you can now add this product to your cart. 

So now we have successfully added our product,  you can then add any number of products you want in the same way. So to add a product, all you have to do is just go to products and click add new. 

– The third step of setting up our store is to change our currency. 

The default currency is usually displayed so to change this to your currency, just go to your dashboard and then go to woocommerce and click on ‘settings’. 

Now, this is where you can change all the settings related to your store. So to choose your currency, just scroll down the page and you will find the currency option.

To choose your currency, just click and then select the currency in which you want to sell your products and click on  ‘save changes’.

– Let’s go to the fourth step which is to set up our payment method. Now if we try to buy one of these products we added to our store by clicking add to cart, and then clicking proceed to checkout,  it will say ‘no payment methods are available’.

So in order to allow your customers to pay for your products, you need to set up your payment method. So to set it up, you need to create an account on a website called Stripe.

Once you create an account on Stripe, you will be able to receive payments directly to your bank account when someone purchases your product. 

So to create your Stripe account, just type in stripe.com to create your account,

Once you are in the home page of the  stripe website ,  click ‘start now’ and then fill  the details requested and then click  ‘create stripe account’. Now that we have successfully created our Stripe account,  in order to receive payments using this account, you need to activate it. So to activate it, let’s click start here and then fill out the details.

Then scroll down and enter your bank details where you want to receive your payments.  Now when someone buys a product from your site, that money will be sent to your account. As soon as you enter these details,  click on the ‘submit’ button to successfully activate your Stripe account. 

As soon as you’ve activated your Stripe account, Then you need to connect this account to your website. 

 So to connect it, let’s go to the  WordPress dashboard and then go to plugins and click on ‘add new’. 

And now we need to install the stripe plugin on our website So just search for a plugin called ‘Stripe for Woocommerce’. and you will get the plugin, install and then activate it.

After you install the Stripe plugin on your website,  click on ‘settings’ to connect this account to your website,

So this means your payment set up is now complete.  So we have successfully set up our payment method, and our customers can now really see our products and  also pay for them. 

Now let’s try to buy a product from our site  just as a customer would.  We will go to our store and then add products to cart.

We will then view the cart and click ‘proceed to check out and then  pay using our card. 

So just like a customer would,  enter your card details and click place order.

 You will see that the payment has been made and we have successfully ordered the product. So this is how a customer can buy a product from your site So now, you know how your customers can buy products from your site right? But what happens when someone orders your product? How do you know that you’ve got an order? 

As soon as someone buys a product from your site, if you go to your inbox of the email you entered while creating your site, you will see a message showing  that you have received orders and have received payment.

So this is how you can know when someone orders your product and once you get this email, you can go ahead and deliver the product to your customer.

So now you know how you can track new orders placed on your site, but what about your customer? how do they view and track their orders?

So next, let’s see how your customers can view the order after making a purchase. So let’s go to our customer’s inbox.

As soon as the customer has orders a product from your website, their account will be automatically created.  if a customer goes to their inbox, they’ll get an email with the order details and also another email with the details about their account. So if your customer opens their email, they will see that they have received the password, which they can use to log into your site. After the customer places an order, if the customer wishes to log  back into your website, all they have to do is go to your site and click on ‘my account’ and  they’ll be able to log back into your site. So they just need to enter their email and the password, which they  received in their email. So this is how your customers can view their orders on your site. 

We have successfully completed setting up our store which means that anyone visiting your site will now be able to buy your products.

And lastly, the final part of building our e-commerce site is how you can change the look of your website. So next, we’re going to see how you can change four different places on your site. So let’s go to our home page and see how you can edit the contents of your page.

Now, let’s say you want to change a text. How do you do that? To edit any page on your site,  make sure you’re on that page and click edit with Elementor and it will take you to the editing section. 

Now let’s say you want to change a text, all you have to do is just select the text and then start typing anything you want.

If you want to change the text on any button, just select that text and then replace it with your own text. So in the same way, you can edit any text you want on this page,all you do is just select the text and then start typing. Next, let’s say you want to change an image, all you have to do is just click the place, then make sure  you’re on the style tab. Now select the image you want to change and then drag and drop your image and the image will be changed. 

Now, once you’re done with all the changes, just click update and then go to your site and click refresh to see all the changes you made. This is how you can edit any page on your website.

So next, what if you want to show your products on your homepage? Now to add products to your home page, all you have to do is just go to your dashboard, then go to products and you will see all the products you’ve added on your site, now to display any of these products on your home page, what you should do is to click on the star button next to your product and then select   the products you want to display.  If you go to your site and click refresh you will see that the products you selected now appear on your homepage. 

You can even change your logo if you like. To change your logo, click customize, and you will get blue icons next to the items you want to change.

Now to change the logo, all you have to do is click on the blue icon next to it, and you can change the logo. 

If your want to have your own logo in text, You can remove the logo image and then show your site name by selecting the option.

 So next, let’s see. how you can change your menu. Now to change your menu, all you have to do is just click here – the blue icon :

Then select  ‘edit menu’. Now, once you’re here, if you want to remove any page on your menu, you can do it here. and the page will be removed from your menu. Now you can also rearrange this menu the way you want, and it’ll be changed here. Once you’re done just click publish and then visit your site to see it. 

So now we have a complete e-commerce site, which we have made in just a few minutes. So in summary,  to make an e-commerce site, all you have to do is first launch your site by getting your domain and hosting.  Then import the sample e-commerce site, set up your store and then finally change the look of your website. 

So that’s it is, this is how you can build your E-commerce site in just a few minutes,

I hope you enjoyed this article.  If you found this article helpful please leave a comment below and also share!!!!

And if you have any questions, you can also  comment down below with your Questions.