5 Important Steps to Launch Your WooCommerce Blog

Woodworkers often stress that prepping is crucial by saying you’re supposed to measure twice and cut once. When it comes to starting a blog, preparation matters just as much.

To start your blog off on the right foot, you should carefully plan what you want in your blog and how it should look.

Unlike the hasty woodworker who measures poorly, though, you can remake your blog if you don’t get it quite right the first time. Nothing is set in stone. Don’t be afraid to experiment, but remember that the faster you can set it up correctly, the faster it will promote your business.

Before starting your blog, choose the topic and structure first. It determines your other decisions about the blog’s design and how to use it to market your store.

WordPress Makes It Easy

You can set up an online store and a blog in different methods. It’s daunting to choose the best WooCommerce platform with these available options. But, a WordPress blog with the WooCommerce plugin is one of the easiest ways to get started.

The setup method is pretty straightforward and works so well that many websites within the top 1 million sites choose WooCommerce as their eCommerce solution.

And this WooCommerce platform works on the WordPress framework. You can use WooCommerce on its own to power a web store without adding a blog, but why would you do that? A blog can help you sell more by driving traffic to your site and making your business more discoverable. 

Let’s look at the benefits of business blogging to understand the importance of launching your blog ASAP.

The Benefits of Business Blogging

Whether you sell rare vintage stamps and coins or a single make-money-online information product, a blog can help your business. Blogging regularly can improve your eCommerce website in different aspects. For example – 

• Improve your site’s SEO ranking and drive more traffic to your store.
• Give you a bigger platform for announcements than your site’s sales pages.
• Offer a free way to market your store.
• Let customers get to know you or the company a little more and create a private community.
• Provide a platform for demonstrating your expertise on the products or a related topic.
• Engage customers and interest them.
• Help develop your company’s branding.

The better your site is optimized, the more traffic Google and other search engines will drive to your site from relevant searches. So, publish relevant contents on your website and rank higher on search engines. 

You can use your WooCommerce blog to announce new products, sales, which products you’ll no longer carry (so get them now!), and news about your industry. Customers will enjoy the more personal touch that a blog provides, especially if they get interesting and helpful information from time to time. 

Using WordPress and WooCommerce for a store and blog is a free way to take advantage of one of the most powerful online marketing opportunities available.

5 Important Steps to Launch Your WooCommerce Blog

Like the woodworker who measures twice, your prep work can set the blog up for failure or success. That’s why the first step to launch your WooCommerce is to decide the kind of content you plan to publish.

Step 1: Brainstorm Content

Whether you plan to add a blog to your existing WooCommerce site or you’re starting from scratch with the intent to monetize a blog, the content in your blog matters more than anything else. 

A content-first design ticks all the boxes required to create a blog that engages your customers while driving traffic to your site and solidifies your branding. So, how to start making a content-first design? 

Think of a newspaper and a fashion magazine. Now imagine trying to fit the images of haute couture and full-page perfume ads into a newspaper’s column inches or a magazine page with nothing by columns of text.

That’s an extreme example, but it makes the point that the type of content in your blog should decide its style and not the other way around. Your content will determine the theme and style of the blog, the colors, and the overall branding.

Plan to Use Keywords

Keywords are the soul of a WooCommerce website. Before starting the WooCommerce blog, make sure to perform extensive keyword research. It helps to brainstorm topics and find a way to connect them naturally on your WooCommerce blog.

Keywords are important, but a blog stuffed with keywords won’t serve you very well. Your goal should be providing some interesting topics and keeping the visitors engaged on your website. It’s better to publish several posts before the launch and regularly post new content.

You can hire a professional writer to create posts for you if you don’t have enough time to write yourself. Send your selected topics and keywords to them, and they will write the blogs on your behalf.

You don’t need a year’s worth of quality content before you launch your WooCommerce blog, but you do need ideas. What angles will you use for blog posts relating to the products you sell?

Aim for Customer Engagement

Here’s an example. If your store sells novelty cookie jars, your list of topics might contain cookie recipes, baking tips, and posts about collectible jars. You could write reviews of cookie jars, kitchen canister designs, other kitchen and dining collectibles, etc.

Customers can also engage with polls that let people vote for their favorite or least favorite cookies. These type of posts are helpful to start discussions, and ultimately it initiates users engagements. After all, more engagement means more traffic, aka more profit!

Step 2: Choose a Domain Name

If you already have a WooCommerce site, WordPress is installed on a domain already. If you’re starting from scratch, research keywords and pick the best domain name for your website.

The domain needs to be a simple .com site that’s easy to spell, not hyphenated, and contains at least one relevant keyword to your site. When you find the domain you want, purchase it. Now it’s time to look at hosting for your domain.

Step 3: Choose a Host

Almost every hosting organization supports WordPress hosting. But, try to get a WooCommerce dedicated hosting service for your online shop. These hostings offer one-click WordPress installation through their control panels. 

Another significant hosting-choosing fact is SSL certification. Before choosing a hosting, ensure that you’ll get a free SSL certificate for your website. Though most service providers offer that, you should still add this option to your checklist. 

Also, look at the customer supports too. Because you will need support from the professionals to avoid nasty surprises from the hackers or unauthorized introducers. The situation will get just better if they offer live chat and phone support. It’s better than email-only support and a two-day wait for help. 

However, don’t pay for more hosting than you need. Start small and upgrade to plans with more storage and bandwidth as needed. 

Once you purchase hosting from your chosen company, you’ll go into your domain account and direct the DNS to your new host. They’ll provide the information you need to set this up.

Step 4: Install WordPress and WooCommerce

Follow your host’s instructions in their dashboard or cPanel to install WordPress. If you picked your host wisely, it should take seconds to install WordPress. If you need to install it manually, refer to the download instructions for WordPress and install the necessary files.

The easiest way to install WooCommerce is to go into your WordPress dashboard and choose “Plugins” on the left-hand side. Select “Add New” and search the “New Plugins” for WooCommerce.

WordPress will install the plugin for you and prompt you when it’s time to adjust settings and activate it. You can also download WooCommerce and upload it through the WordPress Plugin panel, or create a WooCommerce account and auto-install it through your account.

You can expand WooCommerce by adding a payment gateway, appointment scheduling, or subscription plans, etc via the WooCommerce extensions. Use those extensions to grow your business.

Step 5: Choose Your Theme and Branding

Since you’ve already planned your content strategy, you’ve made this step easier.

Your WordPress Theme

Some WordPress themes work best with image-heavy blogs like portfolios, and some are best for news setups like magazines. To choose a perfect theme, you need to know what types of blog sites you’ll make. Overall, every decision comes down to the content you plan to share.

Colors and Branding

If you have an existing WooCommerce store, you can use your established branding and color palettes. If you’re starting a WooCommerce site and blog from scratch, look at the competitors and draw inspiration from them.

WordPress is free and easy to use, but you might want to invest in your branding. A designer with experience in WordPress and business branding can help you achieve the right look and feel for your website and WooCommerce blog. If you decide to outsource your branding efforts, this website can provide information and resources to help you find a reputable branding agency that can meet your needs.

Test the Layout and Theme

While choosing the theme, you must choose a WooCommerce compatible theme for your online store. Before using a theme, make sure it can attract your customers without affecting the loading speed of your website.

However, you can make some minor changes to your theme for the greater good of your WooCommerce website. From the header menu to the blog section, you can customize anything you want.

However, if you are uncomfortable making these changes to your site, you can hire a freelance designer or WordPress developer to help.

Start Blogging!

At last, your blog is ready now! Start writing and publish those on your blog. By the way, WordPress has a built-in post editor with WYSIWYG functionality. You don’t need to know HTML or even minimal coding to use this editor. Write on the post editor and let WordPress do the formatting for you.

If You Already Have a WooCommerce Store

If you already own an existing WooCommerce site, you must have WordPress installed. Check step #1 above, brainstorm content, and plan some posts you’ll add to your site. 

You can also customize the blog title, linking, formatting, image section, or many more based on the theme functionality. You can also add a banner with your blog’s direct link on the front page. 

To add a blog to an existing WooCommerce store, follow these steps:

• Go to your WordPress dashboard. 
• Add a new page and give it a title like Blog, News, Updates, or whatever you choose. 
• Navigate to “Settings” and click “Reading.”
• Choose the page you created in the dropdown menu next to the “Posts” page.
• Click the button at the bottom of the page that says “Save Changes.”
• Select “Posts” and “Add New” to create a new post with your content.

Since the store is your main page, you need to link to the blog so people can find it from your storefront. 

• On the side, select “Appearance”
• Select “Menus”
• Click the box next to the page you just created in the primary menu. 
• Select “Add to Menu”
• Click the “Save Menu” button. 

The page title will now appear in the menu on the home page.

Final Tips to Launch Your WooCommerce Blog

Once you’ve set up your blog and have ideas for content, post new content regularly. Every post doesn’t have to be a thousand words long, so don’t let the idea of posting intimidate you. 

You can also posts short articles if they are relevant to your blogging niche. You can also post current events and news stories related to your products to keep your blog active. 

Now you know the five important steps to launching your WooCommerce blog. What are you waiting for? Get started now to create a blog your customers will engage with that drives new traffic to your site.