This is a step by step guide to Creating a WordPress E-commerce Website in Nigeria, including the Plugins you should download. How you can accept payments online and ship customers orders to their location
As a business person, you can also learn to create a WordPress e-commerce website for your clients or make money online using freelance websites where you can post a gig to start making money setting up online stores
Have you everted wondered how you can create an online shopping website like Jumia, Konga, Jiji? it’s called an “e-Commerce web site”, and I am going to give you a DIY ( Do It Yourself) guide on creating an eCommerce website in Nigeria using a popular web software framework known as WordPress
Since the release of WordPress in May 2003, it has evolved to a much bigger app, we can virtually use to be any kind of website outside a blog in this post I am going to show you step by step guide on how to create an e-commerce website in Nigeria using WordPress Platform.
This is a Do-It-Yourself Kind of guide, (DIY) from learner approach to a professional level, all you need is to follow this guide bit by bit ask questions using the comment form if you get lost or join our Facebook WordPress & blogging group to meet other like minds
Steps to Creating a WordPress e-Commerce Website in Nigeria
- Register your domain name online
- Buy a Web hosting account
- Install WordPress in your hosting account
- Install WordPress e-commerce Plugin
- Install E-commerce Theme
- Set up a Payment Processing gateway
- Upload your Products
- Promote your business
- Make Sales and Cash out
Register your Domain Name Online:
This is a straight-up tutorial, let’s cut to the cheese, your domain is the website address your customers will visit in order to place orders for your products. It’s always the ‘www’ Address like www.your-business-name.com you just have to come up with an easy to remember keyword, making it easier for your customers for next time revisit
Tips on Choosing a good domain name: ensure you it relates to your business name if your desired name is already taken just try to abbreviate or use possible related names
Best Place to Register your Domain name: When it comes to your business reliability I bet you wouldn’t wish to see frequent downtimes on your website, this is why it’s crucial to register with a reliable and competent domain registrar, for me,
I suggest you register with Namecheap, with less than ₦420 you can get a domain name for a year unlike our local web hosting company, going as high as ₦4000 a year! (Get a Free Domain Coupon with almost 99% discount from Namecheap)
If you wish to register for .ng domains then register with qservers.net or Smartweb.com.ng, I highly recommended all these local and international companies because I am using all of them,
If you are confused about choosing a domain name, follow this link to know everything concerning choosing a domain name
Buy a web Hosting account
Your web hosting account is your storage space online, where you get to upload your website contents, its where all your sites files are stored and retrieved from whoever a visitor type your domain name or search for your business online
After you have gotten a domain name, the next point on creating an e-commerce website using WordPress framework is to buy a web hosting account, to be very blunt with you regarding your choice of web hosting company, I do not advise you to host your eCommerce website with a local web hosting firm, no offense to Nigerian Web hosting firms, but I cannot risk my website shutting down unannounced (it has happened many times but am sure they have improved anyway)
How to Choose a good web hosting Company?
Your Web hosting Makes or breaks your Store Success do not make a mistake of hosting with a firm that is incapable of handling your growth or support
Your business roadmap should consider these three criteria namely; scalability, reliability, and affordability
Scalable; The web hosting company should have more offers which you can migrate to whenever your growth exceeds the present plan, this is your business we are talking about here, no sentiment, for me Namecheap has all I need from simple shared hosting to Business web hosting, WordPress hosting to even Cloud VPS and Dedicated Servers, So I can switch to any plan according to my needs
Reliability: for web hosting account to be reliable, it has to meet the minimum requirement of your business needs but we are looking at general web hosting reliability such as site uptime should be 99.99%,
The company Customer support should be less than 30 minutes, the web hosting space and features should give you enough disk space, bandwidth and Resources CPU for minimal growth plus More security against hackers, spammers, and hijackers
Affordability: This is the final criteria for selecting a web hosting company, because am getting all those reliability features doesn’t mean you should dig a hole in my pocket, am not suggesting it should come cheap but there should be a balance between reliability and pricing template
There are a lot of good web hosting companies that fit into this list but I will only recommend what I have used, so I suggest you used blue host or name cheap, trust me these guys are solid as per the scalability, reliability, and affordability (I also happen to get my hands on their discount coupons click here to for it)
Create a Hosting account with my Recommended web hosting
Best Nigeria Local based web hosting firm (from Experience)
If you are on a tight budget or maybe trying to get your hands on a small low key e-commerce website, or maybe you just want to patronize our local web hosting companies, here is my list of recommended Nigerian Web hosting company you can use to create an E-commerce Website in using WordPress
Smart Web Nigeria web hosting Plans
Domain king Affordable Web Hosting
These five are my most recommended local hosting, now we have gotten a hosting account lets to proceed to set up our e-commerce web site by installing WordPress
Install WordPress in your hosting account
This step is where the main task begins, for a beginner, you can read more about WordPress here to understand what it means but for the tutorial we are focusing more on setting it up, there are two ways to install WordPress inside your website, the first method is through your web hosting control panel App installer ( Softaculous) the second method is for semi-experienced users using the file manager
How to Install WordPress from your hosting Control panel
Soon after you ordered for your hosting account you will receive your login details to your website control panel; on a good day you can access your website control panel by typing yoursite.com/cpanel enter the emailed log in details sent to you by your hosting firm
From your, Cpanel go straight to Softacolous or app installer, on my NameCheap account is always down the list, locate WordPress on the next page click on install, there are few options here. For my expert advice select install on root domain, clear out any subfolder added by default
Select either https://yoursite.com or https://www.yoursite.com, you remember your building e-commerce, we need some security and https: ( SSL) adds an extra layer of security especially for payment processing
Because of reducing your redirect rate I recommend you pick https: without www. after all most people go direct to visit your site without adding www.yourdomain.com, its an SEO Skill that will help your e-commerce website rank good
Enter your site admin user name, Password m site title, leave the database settings as its auto-generated then click on install for the web installer to finish the process
Congratulations. You now have a fresh installed WordPress
How to install WordPress from file Upload
If you are very good with WordPress, you already know that WordPress is a PHP web script you could use to manage your blog or create complex web services such as an e-commerce website, you can direct the script from the official web site www.wordpress.org
From you Hosting control panel locate file manager, click on Upload to locate the downloaded WordPress zip file, select and wait for successful upload
Go back to your file manager to locate the uploaded WordPress zip folder, right-click and select “extract zipped files” refresh your file manager now go to your website address www.yourwebsite.com, you will be redirected to WordPress auto-installer
The first step will have required to connect to your database (where your data will be stored and retrieved), in order to fill these filed you should create it inside your control panel
How to create database table for WordPress installation?
Right from insider your Cpanel locate “create database using database wizard, follow the step as shown in the image to create a database table, user and password,
I build my websites on the local host before uploading to the hosting account, building WordPress websites offline is the best, you should consider reading this tutorial to learn how to save the cost of internet and deploy your eCommerce projects faster by building your website offline using XAMPP Server
After Creating Your wordpress Database from Cpanel
Enter your database table name, username, and password during the browser WordPress installation, this is not your site admin login details if you did everything right then click on next to proceed
On the next page, you have to pick a secure username and password for your online e-commerce store, fill in the site title and your email, allow your WordPress site to be seen by search engines
Congratulations, you can proceed to login, for the first time, in subsequent times if you wish to log in to your online shop admin panel go directly yourwebstore.com/wp-admin
Install WordPress e-commerce Plugin
Right now you are logged into your ecommerce administartive panel, its time to get building your wordpress e-commerce website for your business,
There are many WordPress e-commerce plugins, most times it gets confusing because WordPress has evolved there are a lot of developers bring out awsome and complex online store plugins, most times you spend time deciding on which e-commerce to choose for the purpose of this tutorial we will stick with Woocommerce because of its unique features
7 best WordPress Ecommerce plugins
- WooCommerce
- Easy Digital Downloads (EDD)
- Cart66 Cloud
- WP eCommerce
- Ecwid Ecommerce Shopping Cart
- WP EasyCart Shopping Cart and eCommerce Store
- BigCommerce WordPress Plugin
Our Pick is Woocommerce because its actively developed, it has thousands of ree plugins and you can easit get started, however if you plan on buiding a digital download market centre such as themeforest.net codecanyon kind of webstore for multi vendor you can chose Easy Digital Download
How to install Woocommerce from Admin panel
Click on Plugins a select ” Add new” from the drop-down list, then on the new page, type in ” Woocommerce” when the results display, click on install now beside the Woocommerce, after that, it will change to Activate, click on it likewise
Congratulations you have installed your first e-commerce plugin!, You should be redirected to the final installation wizard please follow each stage to fill up all your details, Location, currency the final setup.
Right now you are good to go, however, wouldn't you like to see some of my recommended themes for your new store? and however about how to accept payment online? keep reading to find out more
Install Woocommerce Theme
If you have some few dollars to spare you can get out of the box from free Woocommerce theme to premium theme, why would you want free themes anyway for an eCommerce website, your security and theme support should not be neglected, this is why I recommend premium e-commerce themes
For a quick jum you can find alot of proffessional e-commerce themes from theme forest
5 Best recommeded Woocommerce theme for simple Shop
Simple stores small business, and individual business owners without looking for a complex layout you wish to display your product right out of the box, then here are the best easy professional themes you should use
Astra WordPress e-coomerce Theme
if you are trying to build complex sites like Jumia, Konga, or Deal dey use complex themes such as Flatsome Multipurpose theme. Design is one of the most important aspects of your website, please take your time to select any theme you feel comfortable with however sure the theme is lightweight, the design is mobile responsive and appeals to the user
The theme must have active support from the developer in case you run into bottlenecks that need his assistance for customization
Each WordPress template/theme comes with a readme documentation guide, follow it to tweak your website to the best, then when you get your desired result lets fix one more plugin for receiving payments before you can start adding products
As a Nigerian, the most important thing right now for us is to have an easy any to receive our cash after each business deal, without stress or issues, so since we are setting up an online store version of our business we won't see our customers face to face to collect money,
We need to device a means to accept payment online considering we are creating our WordPress e-Commerce Website in Nigeria, there are Nigerian payment processors that will facilitate effective transactions between you and your customers, Paystack is my recommended Nigeria online payment gateway for Woocommerce
There are other Nigeria payment gateways which you can use to accept payment online however the easiest, developer-friendly and fastest to set up is Paystack, you can download it directly from your WordPress panel,
Activate, go to paystack register, you will be asked to upload a verification, bank account, other essential details, your account will be reviewed and approved,
How to Setup Paystack Payment gatway for woocommmerce
Install Paystack Woocomerce gateway and active it
Go to Woocmermece payment setting to select paystack, copy the API Secretes you got from your paystack account, paste in your Woocommerce paystack payment setting, save, and exit.
Upload your Products
This is the fun part, inside WordPress admin dashboard, click on products select add ‘new Products,' its as simple as that, type in the title and product details including SKU, the product category you can select downloadable products if its virtual goods, however, ensure you tweak your product to your taste, click on Publish,
In order to see how it loks click on the product link to see if everything came out great, then
Finally, There are some tweaking you need to do concerning your product URL or shop page, WordPress by default will display your store URL as yoursite.com/shop but you cant change that to anything you wish
Also, your product URL can be changed to anything you wish, all you need to do is to go to permanent link settings and change the Woocommerce permanent link After you are done the next thing is to promote your new online store right?
Promote your business
Business promotion and attracting buyers to your online shop is one of the most important segments of your success, you must bear in mind this will require your time and funds, its business you know?
Your first point of call should be to create a Facebook page and Instagram handle, grow your page fans give out free discount, and coupons, also engage your page fans, respond to their inquiries especially regarding the shipping methods
Run facebook adverts and post your shop like in various forums such as Nairaland, if you have little cash you can also send some sponsored post in big blogs relating to what you sale or advertise your eCommerce site on TVs, Radios, word of Mouth
Make Sales and Cash out
Finally please your business reputation is at stake here when your buyer or customers order for your goods ensure you honor it and send the products on time, state your delivery methods and extra shipping fee so both of you will be on the same page,
for cashing out Paystck pays you within 48hrs soon as you receive sales order login tom Paystack admin console confirm the payment is received, proceed to deliver the order because you are in good hands
In Conclusion
This is an in-depth guide on how to set up a WordPress e-Commerce Website in Nigeria if you are from outside the country the only difference in my tutorial here is the payment gateway, you can also set up your WordPress store using this method in any location
Frequently asked Questions ( FAQ)
Is owning an e-commerce site a good idea?
If you do not have an online presence at this age, your business is just nosediving, eCommerce website is the best idea you should set up right now, wake up! do not be comfortable with what you have now, its a great idea for any kind of business!
How much does it cost to build an ecommerce website in Nigeria
Building a 5-page website depending on the features will cost between $100 to $300 but building e-commerce requires the more, your buying premium plugins and themes plus an SSL certificate, with $500 -$2000, It's all about your budget and what you need, the best part is using this tutorial you can do it on your own spending less than 70% of the actual cos
Can You Guys Help me set up the ecommerce site?
Offers Yes, we can help you set up your website without bordering you on the whole process, we will register your website, Sinatll WordPress, select the best design according to your taste, configure your store payment processing so you can receive your money directly to your account and write documentation on how you can manage your store Contact us to discuss price
Hi, I am Joshua Nwankwo, The CEO of Startup Ng and the founder of Afripals Interactive, Well I am a Civil Servant in Day time, a farmer at noontime and a Blogger in the evening.
My passion for being free from Government paychecks and also helping my fellow young people to be self-empowered is why I run this blog
An Animal Scientist by Profession and a blogger by passion, you can always reach me on my contact page for help or support