Hi Peter
If you're looking to build an online store, whether selling physical products, digital products, affiliate products, services, or drop shipping, then WooCommerce is probably the WordPress plug-in you'll use. It's the tool of choice for most e-commerce stores online. Yes, even more so than Shopify.
According to the WordPress plug-in repository, WooCommerce has over 5 million active installations. The best thing is, you can set up a store for free, using a totally free version of WooCommerce. All of the other plugins and theme I use in this course are also free. I'll even show you how to install WooCommerce on your own computer so you can learn without hosting or a domain name. What's stopping you? Certainly not the costs involved...
Over the last few years, more and more of my WordPress students have asked me about e-commerce, and how to sell things from their website. WooCommerce has come up in many conversations, but until now, I didn't have a resource I could direct people to. That all changed today when Udemy approved my latest course.
The course took me 8 weeks to complete, has 99 lectures, and over 9 hours of video.
It's aimed at all levels of experience but assumes a working knowledge of WordPress.
When I was designing the course, I envisaged 3 main parts:
Part 1. Theory
I wanted to include all the relevant theory that was needed before attempting to build an e-commerce store. This included installing WordPress, WooCommerce, and a couple of other plug-ins to keep the site safe. I also wanted to talk about the page editor built in to WordPress, because Gutenberg has some limitations and I wanted to provide a better, free alternative. For that reason I chose the free version of Elementor. I therefore needed to include a quick primer on getting you up to speed with Elementor. I also needed to cover the different types of product that WooCommerce can work with, because the store I was going to build wouldn't use all of them, but you might.
Part 2. Building the site
This part of my plan would contain the complete building of an e-commerce solution for my photography hobby. You can see the site we build in the second lecture of the course which I made into a free preview video. Just follow the link below and you can view it.
The videos in this section would cover every step leaving no stone unturned. You'd see me add products, but I also wanted to give you access to the product library that I used and instructions on how to import it yourself. That would allow you to replicate the site for yourself if you want to. We go through setting up taxes and shipping, and integrate different payment methods like PayPal and credit cards. We use Elementor to its strengths, and design a great-looking homepage with a unique header section. We end with mobile responsiveness, to make sure the site looks great on mobile phones, tablets, and desktops.
Part 3. WooCommerce Reference
Part 2 of this course built an e-commerce store, but didn't use all the features of WooCommerce. So the last part needed to be a reference section that covered every setting in WooCommerce, so if you got stuck, or just curious, you could load up the relevant video and hopefully get your question answered.
As I've already said, this course has been a long time in the making (far longer than the 8 weeks it took me to record it), but I'm happy to announce is now available on Udemy. It was approved a few short hours ago, and I want to offer you a discount coupon for the course. The coupon will be for the biggest discount Udemy allow me to offer my course, and will be valid for the next 5 days after which Udemy will expire all remaining coupons.
I've enabled a free preview of several lectures in the course if you want to have a look. Just follow the discount link below:
https://www.udemy.com/course/woocommerce-set-up-an-ecommerce-store/?couponCode=C0646A63C5B9CFDE878D
As always, my courses come with a 30-day money back guarantee if you are not happy with it.
Hope to see you on the inside.
Cheers
Andy Williams
