by Starting a business is tough and starting an online ecommerce store considerably tough if you are planning to do it all yourself on a tight budget. The good news is it can be done if you know where, and what, to look for.
Create your own online business selling whatever product or service you like. Follow this method to start a lean startup shop on a tiny budget.
Minimum input for maximum output
Shop Startup
What you need – The basics for a functioning shop
Hosting – Business shared hosting package with cPanel from Hostpapa (a small initial cost but increases dramatically after 3 years). I searched high and low for the best deal that would provide the speed and storage resources for an ecommerce site. I had read many articles that suggest shared hosting to be bad for ecommerce, but after some trial and error this hosting package has more than enough speed and resources for our small shop to get started, getting under 1500 unique visits per month with under 20 products, we can upgrade later if necessary.
Domain name – Choose a name that tells your users what your business is or at least related (included with this hosting package)
Email account – You can use a free email like Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo etc, to set your accounts up but then you should look at using email accounts using your domain name for a more professional look and feel to your business (unlimited web mail accounts with this hosting package which can be forwarded to other emails)
SSL certificate – Secure socket layer to give you that padlock symbol in the browser and for taking payments (Lets encrypt AutoSSL free with most hosting packages)
Website – WordPress installation with Woocommerce plugin and a selection of other plugins to add extra functionality to our site without having to pay a ton of money (all free).
Bank Account – There are lots of free business bank accounts out there now, you can easily set one up from your phone if you download their app. My favourites are Monzo and Starling (all free).
Payment processor/gateway – You will need to take payments from your ecommerce site, the easiest and most cost effective way to do this is with a payment processor like Paypal, Square or Stripe. Just create an account and you are ready to go. You can accept Paypal payments straight away with Woocommerce and a plugin is required for Stripe. They have low transaction fees and some plugins will let you take payments via many other services like Applepay etc.
Nice to haves
– Improve the basics with some cool freebies
Image optimisation – Before and after uploading to the website. I usually use Sqoosh online to take a massive image down to something useable, 5000px 4mb digital photo down to 1400px 300kb. Then with an image optimising plugin this gets squashed down again really helping the load times, it’s one of the biggest speed issues on websites. There is a list of free plugins I used below (all free).
Website caching/CDN – Using a free plugin to cache your WordPress site is necessary for ecommerce due to the large amount of data it has to fetch and display, any speed improvement is an advantage. There are many choices here, but you should be careful that you do not cache your shopping cart and checkout or other features that need to be dynamically updated for the user, as this will break your shopping experience. A list of the better plugins below (all free). You can opt to use a CDN (Content Delivery Network) like Cloudflare which can be achieved via their website or through a plugin.
Website backups – Important to consider now that you are responsible for peoples data and also the treat of updates or plugin installs breaking your website. Unfortunately one of the only down sides to WordPress, but it’s the price you pay for managing your own website and having that ultimate control. A good free option is a backup plugin that stores the data to a folder on your server, you do have options to copy the data to another service in the cloud like Google or Amazon or purchasing a backup option on the host but these do cost.
Building the Woocommerce Site
Theme
Once you have installed WordPress (You can use Softilicious app installer from Hostpapa control panel) and with Woocommerce plugin activated you should consider a theme to make styling your shop’s visual appearance. This can be another minefield of hidden costs and trial and error to get what you really want to achieve. For this job I used the Neve theme (free version), created a child theme and added some extra functions to get what I wanted without paying for anything. The Themeisle documentation can help out with this. If you are short for time or not worried about money I recommend purchasing a theme, although you do still have to create your site you will have more options. If you don’t want to get your hands dirty with code using the Guttenburg blocks plugins and/or website builder plugins like Elementor can speed things up and give you more visual and functional options.
I have struggled a lot before trying to customise themes like Storefront, the official Woocommerce theme as they are so complicated and very restrictive. They are made for you to buy the extension plugins and not hack in an easy free way.
Child theme
In order to add custom functions and easily play around with styling the site using a child theme based on an existing theme is a quick and efficient method.
There is a ton of stuff you can do with a free theme customised by a child theme and plenty of source code you can find to tweak your free theme with premium ecommerce custom options.
Plugins
I chose the best or most popular free plugins for this site, the aim being to use the least amount possible while adding the most functionality without having to pay anything out. Woocommerce does some amazing things for you but with some choice plugins you can make it really much better.
Speed and Functionality
Caching plugins that work with Woocommerce are very useful, WP Fastest Cache is great and I used W3 Total Cache for this project. The automatic setup is more then enough to give real loading speed results. If you need to further optimise your images I recommend reSmush.it Image Optimizer, a free plugin that lets you set the amount you want to smush images down and definitely helps the smooth loading of your site if its picture heavy.
Other functional plugins like Advanced Shipment Tracking for WooCommerce allow for exactly what the name suggests and Kadence WooCommerce Email Designer brings an otherwise generic style of automated emails a brand style of your own.
Search Engine Gold
To enhance the search ability of the site I plumbed for Site Kit by Google and Yoast SEO. Both beef up an already greatly optimised site, with a little work to set each plugin up and adding content for pages with Yoast you are ready to shine.
Security and Backups
iThemes Security is one of my favourite plugins I have come to rely on over the years. The basic set up is perfect for most security needs, protecting you from brute force attacks and giving you the ability to blacklist malicious IP addresses. One recommendation is to add a unique admin login URL. The default WordPress one “wp-admin” is often targeted by bots, changing it will throw them right off the scent.
For peace of mind, especially if you are going to do some WordPress updating is to have backups. A nice backup plugin is UpdraftPlus – Backup/Restore. It has a free version which is good enough to offer this without any price tag.
Accepting Payment
Stripe For WooCommerce is a great plugin that allows you to accept credit cards, Google Pay, Apple Pay, ACH, Klarna and more via a Stripe account. It
You may come have to purchase a plugin or two if you really need some specific functionality but with everything so far you will have a perfectly functioning ecommerce store ready to sell products or services and take payments.
Conclusion
I could go on for hours and list a considerable amount of plugins that will give your online store extra features and neat functions but I will end with a word of warning and a message about conflicts and how to avoid them.
Some plugins have programming conflicts with others. Some can break the functioning of your website and others can break the visual look of your site. For this reason I encourage a you to back up your site before making any changes, especially adding or removing plugins.
That said there are many great plugins that can really add value to your website. Try to use caution when selecting a plugin, look for how popular the plugin is, what bad reviews it has and when it was last updated. Stick to the well trusted plugins and check that the functionality they add is essential. The more plugins you add the more potential unnecessary code gets added which in turn can slow down the loading time of your site. You can use this check conflict plugin if you have any issues.
With great power comes great responsibility, remember you will be in charge of your customer’s information. Try to keep this data safe.
Customer service can make or break a business. Make sure your customer’s remain happy by engaging with them and responding promptly.
If you are prepared to put in the time you will get to know and love your new portal onto the world where you can list items and take payments from anyone in the world. With a minimal financial investment you can launch your own online store right now, so go for it!
