Once you have your products in place, you need to make sure you have a way to take payments when people want to purchase those products.
To do this, you’re going to need a payment gateway. Essentially, this is a service that can take the credit card (or even bank account) information and process the payment for you. That way you don’t have to worry about storing and securing credit card information. They do that for you.
You’ve probably used several different payment gateways if you’ve purchased products online before.
The one you’re probably most familiar with is PayPal. It’s really easy to get started with and start taking payments. And because most people have used it before, your customers will likely trust it the most and not have second thoughts at checkout.
I personally use Stripe for any online payments. Like Paypal, it’s easy to set up and get started. And it integrates right into your website, so you don’t have to send customers off of your website to complete the checkout process.
Finally, WooCommerce has recently introduced its own payment gateway. It works a lot similar to Paypal and Stripe, but you can check on transactions, recurring payments and more without needing to sign up for a third-party service. It is limited to 18 countries at the moment (including the United States and U.K). But it’s definitely worth taking a look at for your store.
Once you’ve decided what payment gateway you’re going to use, you will then need to sign up for that payment gateway. Once you’ve done that, then you will need to get the official WooCommerce add on for that payment gateway from the Extensions Store.
You’ll then need to install and activate it on your store. And then you’ll need to follow the steps to connect with your account for that payment gateway.
It’s really a good idea to only use one payment gateway for your store to keep things simple for you and your customers.
Once that’s set up, we’re ready to move onto the next step — selecting a theme to make your online store look amazing.
Related Sections
- Suggested WooCommerce add ons to use
- Finding a WooCommerce Theme
- Taking payments on WooCommerce
- Creating Products with WooCommerce
- Getting started with WooCommerce
