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Create online store free of charge
From installation to navigation
In the following tutorial, we will show you how you can create an online store for free. We go through all the relevant steps for you – from hosting, installing important plugins, creating products and categories, setting up shipping and payment methods together with you, navigation and finally the heart of every store – the theme. You can find out which PageBuilder is the most suitable here. Your online store in under 30 minutes ✅
Create an online store for free - The domain and hosting
Let’s start with the absolute foundation of your store, namely the domain and hosting.
The domain is basically the URL that a customer has to call up to get to your store. For Amazon this would be Amazon.de, for eBay this would be ebay.de etc. The domain costs you approx. 15 €.
At All-Inkl, for example, a .de domain costs €9.90 per year, while a .com domain costs €14.90. This means that you could also book a domain and hosting in one go, such as with All-Inkl. There are of course other providers, such as SiteGround, IONOS, STRATO etc. This is an individual decision, WordPress will work on all hosting servers. But what exactly is it? Ultimately, with web hosting you are renting part of a company server to store your website on and have the option of making it accessible to everyone online. This is because the servers display your website and all the content on it, such as text, images and videos, 24/7 and allow your site to load as quickly as possible.
You should definitely pay attention to this
When choosing a provider, you should pay attention to speed, an SSL certificate, uptime and security settings. Virtually everyone now offers an SSL certificate, but some of them have to be booked in addition. I think the speed is clear and can be found out through reviews. Just like the uptime, i.e. how many failures are to be expected. Security is provided by WordPress itself, but should also be provided sufficiently by the hosting provider. Find out what experiences other WordPress users have had with the respective hosting services.
Create an online store for free - Install WordPress
Once you have secured your domain and booked the required web space, we can start installing WordPress. This is relatively unspectacular, but can vary depending on the hosting provider.
With All-Inkl, for example. WordPress is downloaded and installed directly without you having to download anything yourself.
To do this, go to the “Software installation” area and select WordPress. Then all you have to do is select your previously purchased domain and you can continue. In step 3, a new database is automatically created for this WordPress installation. In the last step, simply enter your user name and password + a valid e-mail address to be able to log in in the future. Then check the two boxes and read through the terms and conditions before clicking on Install.
Create an online store for free and log in to the backend
That’s all you need to do with this hosting provider. You will then receive an admin link that you just have to copy and paste into the URL bar in your browser. Then you should find this layout. This is the login area for the WordPress admin area. Enter your user name and the password you have previously assigned and log in. This completes the installation. If you have e.g. just want to try out WooCommerce, then take a look at our video linked above on the right. There we have shown a solution for Mac to set up a WooCommerce store without a hosting server and domain. We also use these options for the following video.
How to install WooCommerce
First of all, we install WooCommerce in the backend. WooCommerce is a plugin that turns a CMS, i.e. content management system, into a store system. If we click on Plugins in the left-hand column and select “Add new plugin”, all available apps will be displayed. Almost like an app store. In the “Popular” section, we also find WooCommerce directly. Click here on “Install now”. Now it’s a short wait. We then have to activate every plugin that we have installed in WordPress. No sooner said than done. You should now also see “Active” next to the plugin. You can also check that everything went smoothly by looking in the left-hand column and you should now also see WooCommerce. Click on it and go through the setup process step by step.
Making an American store legally compliant
As this information may vary from person to person, we cannot give you any information on what applies to you. For us, only WooPayments is relevant for the time being, as we can use it to activate important payment methods in our store. Everything else is less relevant for now, so let’s remove the tick. And continue afterwards. Your WooCommerce plugin is now successfully installed. Before we go through all the important general settings for WooCommerce, let’s install a plugin that you absolutely need as a German retailer, namely Germanized. Then we search in the app settings, install and activate it. The setup process then opens automatically. Here, too, the values are individual. However, we would recommend leaving the first two and the last toggle switch activated. The plugin uses this to create, for example Legal texts, such as general terms and conditions, but also integrated German tax rates.
Germanized Plugin Installation
WordPress is a North American store system or CMS. You can find out whether the One Stop Shop is right for you in our detailed video, which we have linked for you at the top right. Here we explain what the OSS is all about. Here, too, it depends on whether you qualify for the small business regulation and whether you want or need to make use of the double opt-in. This automatically encrypts our data. You must have already thought about which shipping service providers you want to work with in advance. If this includes DHL and Deutsche Post, activate both. For all others, you need the Pro version of the Germanized app. And that was it. If you want to change any settings afterwards, you can adjust them in the WooCommerce settings in the “Germanized” tab.
Create online store free of charge - General settings
Now you need to take care of the general settings before we continue with the product creation. This means, enter your address data here in the WooCommerce settings under General. All other parameters, such as the currency, have already been adjusted by Germanized. The two tabs we will now look at in more detail are the Shipping and Payments tabs. In the “Shipping” section, we have the shipping zone, shipping options and shipping classes.
A shipping zone is essentially an area to which certain shipping charges apply. This means that if your warehouse is located in Germany, the shipping costs for German customers will be lower than for American customers. This can be regulated with the shipping zones.
Create an online store for free - Shipping
We will create a shipping zone for Germany for this tutorial. This means that we assign the name “Germany” and also select Germany as the zone region. In order to be able to define costs, we need a shipping method for this country. Free delivery, flat-rate shipping and collection on site are available as standard. Plus the conditions for the shipping service providers you have activated. Let’s create the shipping method “flat rate shipping”. You can now give it a different name that can also be seen by customers. You can set whether shipping should be taxable or not and specify a flat-rate cost amount. However, if you have very different products in your range, the shipping price may vary. That’s why I’m about to show you how to integrate several packages into WooCommerce. At the end, just select the shipping service provider.
Shipping zone vs. shipping type vs. shipping class
We have now set up a shipping zone, namely for Germany, and created a shipping method. To avoid having to send heavy products and light products for the same price, there are so-called shipping classes. Here we create the heavy shipping class and the light shipping class in quick succession. We can see what has changed as a result when we go back into our shipping zone. Here we now have the option of determining the costs per shipping class in the shipping type. So for example. for light 5€ for heavy 10€. You can then decide whether the calculation should be done per class, e.g. if an order contains products of two shipping classes, the shipping costs are then added together or calculated per order. However, you can specify not just one shipping method within a shipping zone, but several. So you can e.g. determine that no shipping costs have to be paid above a certain purchase value. To do this, select Free delivery and choose a minimum order value of e.g. 50 € from.
Create an online store for free - The payment methods
However, payment methods are needed so that the whole thing can be paid for in the first place. You can find them here.
To e.g. to activate the direct bank transfer, you must click on the toggle switch and enter your bank details there so that the customer knows who the transfer is going to. Then click on Save changes and this method is activated for the store. For example, what here? is not included is PayPal. There is a separate plugin for this. You need to install this and create a connection to your PayPal Business account within the plugin. This means you have to log in to your PayPal account, find out your merchant ID there and enter it in WooCommerce. You also need to create an app that will give you a client ID and a secret key. Copy Pasted everything from PayPal to WooCommerce and then save the changes. PayPal would then also be linked to this and could be used as a payment method.
WordPress agency
So much for the general store settings. Unfortunately, we cannot go through every single point because, as mentioned, some of them are not universal but individual. However, if you still have questions, you have two options. Either let us advise you by making an appointment on our WooCommerce agency page or write a comment under the video. We are happy to support you as a WooCommerce or WordPress agency.
Create online store products for free
Now we come to the actual products. How to create a product in WooCommerce?
There is a separate menu for this in the left-hand column. Click on Products and Create. We create a T-shirt once as a product and assign the name accordingly. We then have 3 different descriptions underneath. The detailed product description, the short description and the shopping cart description. The further you scroll down, the shorter the text you should write. If we then publish our product, we can view it by clicking on this permalink. This is what the whole thing looks like now. However, neither the price, nor the stock, nor the tax class is now specified. We can store this data here.
How product creation works
We can specify a price and, if necessary, a strike price. This means that the offer price would be current and the regular price would be crossed out. Depending on the product, the standard tax rate or the reduced tax rate applies in Germany. 7% is paid, for example. only on tea, fruit, fish and meat, honey, etc. In other words, select the correct tax class depending on the product.
Base price units also make sense for comparability, especially in the case of food. For example, how expensive is 1L of the product. But that makes no sense for a T-shirt. Let’s continue with the inventory. If you want, you can enter an article number here. You must activate stock management to be able to enter the stock. Now the question is whether you want to allow overselling. You can select this here. When it comes to shipping, you can enter the weight and dimensions, but the shipping class is always important so that the correct price is entered. Delivery times can be created here and can then be selected here in the product tab.
Create online store for free - Create category
In order to be able to work with filters within the store later, properties must be assigned to the products. So for example. the color. If you want to add further properties, click on Add. Now we want to add a main product image and 3 more images to the gallery.
In the gallery, you can easily change the order of the images by moving them.
What is also important for products to be able to find them easily in the store are the categories. This could possibly be “clothing” for a T-shirt. If we now update the product and look at it in the store, we see that the product “Black T-shirt” has been assigned to the “Clothing” category. This category already exists, as we can see, for example. from the URL, but is not yet listed in the header. This setting, i.e. the optimization of the footer and header, is part of the theme settings that we will now take care of.
What is the Elementor PageBuilder?
We recommend using Elementor as the page builder for the WooCommerce theme. A page builder helps you to customize the theme according to your wishes. To have a good basis first, we install the common Hello theme for Elementor. This also changes some things in the left-hand column, for example. the administration when we go to the design menu. Here we now have the sub-item “Menus”. This allows us to easily customize the header. You can see all the pages created so far on the left. So for example. the legal text pages that Germanized has created for us. If our category page is not yet available here, but you want to link to it, you can, for example copy the URL in the store and save it as an individual link. Then enter the name “Category” as the link text and add it to the menu. If you now save, the category page will be found in your header and will direct visitors to the desired page.
Customize the navigation
You can then do the same for the footer by clicking on the link for “create a new menu” at the top. Now name this “Footer” and add e.g. add your legal texts such as terms and conditions, withdrawal policy, imprint, etc. You can assign your menus under “Manage items”. Here you can assign the menu to the correct position. So that the whole thing looks like this in the end.
The Elementor Pro version - these are the advantages
But much more is possible with the Elementor PageBuilder. Provided you have the Pro version. All WooCommerce elements can then also be used with this. Such as product images, product reviews, add to cart button, similar products, etc. This means that if you go to Templates and Theme Builder in your admin area, you can create a universal page structure that applies to every product. This means you don’t have to redesign it for every single product. This means that in order to be able to use the Theme Builder as well as the Pro Elements within Elementor for product pages, category pages, blog posts and everything else, you need a Pro Plan. The cheapest costs €99 per year. This is because the ecommerce features are only included with this.
Create an online store for free - Create and design a site with Elementor
To give you a rough idea of how Elementor works, we’ll go through the basics with you at the end. We are creating a new page for this. To really be able to design them with Elementor, we have to click on the blue button above. And the Elementor PageBuilder editor opens, which we can now use to design our page. A distinction is made here between a container and the widgets. A container can, for example contain several widgets. An entire page, in turn, usually consists of several containers. But to make this clearer, let’s create a new one. To do this, we click on the plus in the middle. This allows us to give the container a structure. Should this consist of one large element or one half-size and two smaller ones or 6 small ones of the same size. We simply decide on 2 half-size fields within the container. This means that we have a large container with 2 sub-containers, which are all empty so far.
Elementor - Widgets vs. containers
To fill these with content, we need the widgets. To get to the widgets again and again, no matter where you are, you have to click on the 9-square symbol. Now we can, for example put a picture on the left-hand side and text on the right-hand side. But one heading is not enough for me, so I’ll adapt my container structure again. Now I can insert an image here and place a text section on the right and a heading above it. You can see from the solid lines which area a container covers. The main container comprises one, two or three sub-containers. One sub-container contains an image widget, the other a headline widget and the last a text editor widget. For example, if you want to to customize the style of the main container, click on it. If you want to change the background, for example, this will affect the entire container. However, if you click on the sub-container, the adjustments only apply to this container.
So if you change the font of one text element, this change does not affect the other. If you now want to add another container, click on the plus sign below it again and continue. This is how all pages are put together, whether product pages, blog pages, category pages, or or or.
Here you can find even more ready-made Elementor pages
The principle is always the same. Only the type of widgets will change. For example, if you want to add an image, click on the sub-container, go to the placeholder on the left and select an image or upload a new one. I think these principles are self-explanatory and apply equally to all sides. This makes it so easy to work with Elementor. With the Pro version you also get some templates that are already pre-designed, which you can then use as a basis for your store pages. If the variety here is not enough for you, there are also sites like Envato Elements, where you can find entire theme packages for specific product ranges specifically for WooCommerce in conjunction with Elementor.
Create an online store for free - Summary
So now you’ve learned how to buy a domain and which hosting providers you can use to store your WooCommerce store online and make it quickly accessible 24/7. Once WordPress is installed, it’s time to install WooCommerce and Germanized. All general information must be entered within WooCommerce, and shipping, tax and payment options must be configured. You have learned how to create a product, how to assign it to a category and how to call it up in the store so that you can track all changes live.
What you have learned
You now know that a theme is directly linked to a specific page builder, which can then be customized according to your wishes. We at eBakery recommend using the Elementor Pro Pagebuilder for WooCommerce. This makes it easy to customize the navigation, i.e. the header and footer, but also to create pages quickly and easily so that they can be used globally. This means that every new product has the same structure and does not have to be redesigned. At the end you will have learned how to use the page builder, how it is set up and which basics need to be observed. You now have all the basics you need to create your own free online store.
Create an online store for free - The prices
Finally, I would like to say something about this. A store will never be completely free, but only inexpensive, which is the case with the WooCommerce store. We have about 15€ per year for the domain, 10€ for hosting and 99€ per year for Elementor. If you want to see what the whole thing can look like in sandbox mode, you can also save yourself the hosting and domain fees and do the whole thing, for example. on the Mac on MAMP as a virtual hosting server. As already mentioned, we have explained how to do this in the linked video.
Make an appointment now
If you have any further questions, please let us know. Either comment below the video or contact eBakery.
We are happy to help as a WooCommerce agency, but also as a general online store agency for other store systems. Make an appointment directly here.
Do you have questions or need an individual offer? Do not hesitate to contact us.
Haben Sie Fragen oder brauchen ein individuelles Angebot? Zögern Sie nicht, uns zu kontaktieren.
