WooCommerce Web Design London

The basics

What is WooCommerce?

WooCommerce is a plugin for WordPress. A plugin is an add-on that gives a WordPress website new abilities, and WooCommerce adds everything needed to sell. Once it is installed and set up, your website has a shop page, product pages, a basket and a checkout, and you have an orders screen where every sale appears.

Because WooCommerce is part of WordPress, your shop and the rest of your website live in one place. The same login manages your products, your blog, your about page and your contact page. That matters for search engines too. Guides, buying advice and brand pages sit on the same domain as the products, and all of it helps the shop rank.

The core software costs nothing. What you pay for is hosting, the design and build, and any paid extensions your shop needs, such as a booking system or a subscription tool. We tell you about every paid extension, and what it costs each year, before you agree to anything.

Who WooCommerce web design is right for

WooCommerce suits a wide range of sellers, but it fits some especially well.

• Shops that already have a WordPress website. Adding WooCommerce keeps your existing pages, your rankings and your login.
• Businesses that want to avoid monthly platform fees. You pay for hosting, not for a licence to trade.
• Sellers with unusual products. Made-to-order items, personalised goods, bundles, deposits, bookings and subscriptions are all possible.
• Brands that rely on content. If guides, recipes or how-to articles bring your visitors, WordPress is the strongest base for them.
• Businesses that want full control. Your data, your design and your checkout are yours to change.

It suits you less if you want somebody else to handle all the technical upkeep and you are happy to pay a monthly fee for that. In that case Shopify may be the better choice, and we will say so. We build on both.

What we set up in every WooCommerce shop

Product pages that sell

A product page has to answer every question a shopper would ask in a real shop. We lay out the photos, the price, the options, the delivery information and the buy button so that the important parts are visible without scrolling on a phone. Descriptions are written in plain English, with the details that searchers type into Google.

Categories and filters

Shoppers need to narrow down quickly. We plan your categories around how customers think, not how your stock list is organised, and add filters for size, colour, price and brand where the range is large enough to need them.

A short, clear checkout

Every extra field at the checkout loses orders. We remove the fields you do not need, allow guest checkout, show delivery costs early and offer the payment methods people expect, including Apple Pay and Google Pay on phones.

Payments

We connect your shop to a payment provider such as Stripe or PayPal. The money goes from the customer to your own account with that provider, and then to your bank. We never handle your takings. Card details are entered on the payment provider's secure system, not stored on your website.

Delivery, collection and VAT

We set up your delivery zones and prices, free delivery over a set amount, local delivery by postcode and click and collect if you have premises. VAT is configured to match how your business is registered, with prices shown the way your customers expect.

Order emails and invoices

Customers receive a confirmation when they order and an update when the order is sent. You receive an email for every new order. All of these carry your logo and your wording.

Stock and variations

Each product can have its own stock level, and so can each size or colour. When an item sells out it can be hidden or marked as out of stock automatically, so you do not sell what you do not have.

Being found

SEO for WooCommerce shops

An online shop with no visitors takes no orders. Search engine optimisation for a shop is different from SEO for a service business, because a shop has many more pages and most of them are products and categories.

We set up the foundations on every WooCommerce shop we build, so that the shop can be read and ranked from launch day.

• Category pages built to rank. Most shop searches, such as "men's leather wallets", match a category, not a single product. Each category gets its own title, description and introduction.
• Product titles and descriptions. Written for people first, using the words they search for.
• Product schema. Structured data that tells Google the price, the stock status and the review rating, so they can appear in the search results.
• Clean web addresses. Short, readable links for categories and products.
• Image optimisation. Product photos compressed and labelled, because slow shops lose both rankings and sales.
• Google Merchant Center. We can connect your products to Google's free shopping listings.

Launch SEO gives you a sound base. Climbing above established shops takes ongoing work on content and links, which is what our monthly SEO service is for.

Speed and security

WooCommerce shops have a reputation for being slow. The cause is nearly always the build, not the software: a heavy theme, dozens of plugins and uncompressed photos. We use a light theme, keep the plugin list short and test the loading speed of the home page, a category page and a product page before launch.

Security is handled in layers. Every shop has an SSL certificate, so the padlock shows and data is encrypted. Card details are handled by the payment provider. Logins are protected, and backups are scheduled. After launch, the software needs regular updates. You can do these yourself, or our care plan covers them for £45 a month.

Moving an existing shop to WooCommerce

If you already sell on another platform, or on an old WooCommerce shop that has become slow and awkward, we can move it. Products, categories, customers and past orders can usually be transferred. Old page addresses are redirected to the new ones, so links from Google and from other websites keep working and you keep the rankings you have earned.

If your present website is on WordPress but has no shop, WooCommerce can be added to it. If the site itself is dated, a website redesign and a new shop can be done as one project.

What we need from you

You know your products better than anyone, so the shop is built from your information. To start, we ask for:

• A list of products with names, prices, sizes or options, and stock levels. A spreadsheet is ideal.
• Product photos. Clear photos on a plain background work best. Phone photos are fine if they are sharp and well lit.
• Your delivery prices and the areas you deliver to.
• Your returns policy, or the points you want it to cover.
• Your logo and brand colours, if you have them.
• A business bank account, for the payment provider to pay into.

You create the payment provider account yourself, because it is tied to your identity and your bank. We guide you through it and then connect it to the shop.

Selling on Amazon as well?

Many brands sell on a marketplace and on their own shop. The two support each other: Amazon brings reach, and your own WooCommerce shop gives you a home you control, a customer list and better margins on repeat orders. We build both sides. See our Amazon account management service if you sell there or plan to.

Hosting for a WooCommerce shop

A shop asks more of its hosting than a brochure website does. Every basket, login and checkout is worked out fresh for each visitor, so cheap shared hosting that copes with a five-page site can struggle on a busy sale day. We advise on a hosting plan that matches your product count and expected traffic, and we tell you the yearly cost before you commit. The hosting account is opened in your name, so the shop stays yours whoever looks after it.

We also set up daily backups that are stored away from the shop itself. If an update goes wrong or a product list is deleted by mistake, the shop can be restored to the previous day.

Why choose Website Designer 1 for WooCommerce web design in London

We are a new London agency, based in East Ham, and we keep things plain. You see the price before you contact us. You deal with the people who build your shop. You are shown the design before it is built, and the finished shop belongs to you, along with the domain and the logins.

We also understand what happens after launch. The same team can run your Google Ads, your social adverts and your SEO, so the shop and the marketing are planned together instead of by separate suppliers who never speak.