How to sell on WooCommerce: from a WordPress site to your first sale

What you need before you start

WooCommerce runs inside WordPress, so the store is a website you own: your domain, your hosting, your theme. That is the trade. Nobody takes a share of the sale, and nobody brings you shoppers either.

Have these ready before you open the setup, and the first product goes live the same day:

• A WordPress site on hosting you pay for. WooCommerce's pricing page puts that at $25 to $350 a month for most stores, scaling with traffic.
• A domain name, since the store's address is yours to choose.
• A way to take payment: WooPayments, or another provider you already use.
• Your first product's photos, price, and the facts a shopper asks for: size, materials, what's in the box.
• A store name and an email address for the setup.

Source: WooCommerce pricing ($0 platform fee, 0% revenue share, hosting $25–$350 a month for most stores, extensions $29–$299 a year each), checked 1 November 2026

Set up the store, step by step

Once WooCommerce is installed and activated, its onboarding wizard walks through the first questions, and a setup checklist on the WooCommerce Home screen takes over from there. In order, as WooCommerce's documentation describes them (read 1 November 2026):

Source: WooCommerce docs: Onboarding wizard and the store setup checklist, checked 1 November 2026

What it costs to sell on WooCommerce

WooCommerce itself takes nothing from a sale. The costs sit around the store: hosting by the month, extensions by the year if you add any, and the payment provider's fee on each payment. With WooPayments and a US card, a $40 sale leaves you $38.54 and a $100 sale $96.80, before hosting, shipping and the cost of the item (our calculation from the published rate).

Fee calculators for every marketplace, side by side →

Sources: WooCommerce pricing ($0 platform fee, 0% revenue share, hosting $25–$350 a month for most stores, extensions $29–$299 a year each), checked 1 November 2026 · WooPayments: Fees (US cards 2.90% + $0.30, +1.50% international, +1.00% currency conversion, $15 dispute fee), checked 1 November 2026

Add your first product

Go to Products, then Add New. For a single item with one price, keep the product type on Simple product. Grouped products bundle others, External/Affiliate products send the buyer to another site, and Variable products are for the same item in several sizes or colours, each with its own price and stock.

Fill the fields a shopper and Google both read, in this order, then publish and open the page to look at it as a buyer would:

• Product name: the product first, in the words a shopper searches, then the one or two details that set it apart.
• Regular price, and a sale price only while a sale runs. Keep both out of the name.
• Description: what the product is and who it is for first, then the details.
• Short description: a few lines beside the photos, each saying something the name doesn't.
• Categories and product tags: one or two categories, a few precise tags.
• Product image: the photo the shop grid and the product page lead with.

Check the product name against our 70 characters → · Short description vs description: what goes where →

Sources: WooCommerce docs: Adding and managing products (simple, grouped, external and variable products), checked 1 November 2026 · WooCommerce docs: Product editor settings (the name, the slug, the two descriptions, categories and tags), checked 1 November 2026

Write the product page for Google, not for a marketplace search

On a marketplace your title competes inside one search box. On WooCommerce each field turns into part of a web page, and Google reads the page. WordPress makes the product name the page's title, followed by a hyphen and your site name. WooCommerce makes the web address from the name the first time you save, and its documentation says renaming the product later does not change it.

WooCommerce publishes no length for the name, the descriptions or the tags, so any number you write to is somebody's choice. Ours are up to 70 characters for the name, aimed at about 60 to leave room for the site name, and 10 tags of up to 30 characters, since each tag gets a landing page of its own on the store. Try a name in the box below.

• Name: page title, heading and web address in one string. No price, sale words or store name in it.
• Short description: WooCommerce's own structured data gives it to search engines as the product's description.
• Description: sent to Google Merchant Center by default if you use Google for WooCommerce.
• Tags: each one is a page on your store, so near-copies make near-identical pages.

WooCommerce SEO: the name, the two descriptions and the tags →

Sources: WordPress developer reference: wp_get_document_title (post title, a separator that defaults to "-", site name), checked 1 November 2026 · WooCommerce docs: Managing product categories, tags and attributes (each category and tag has a landing page), checked 1 November 2026

How buyers find a WooCommerce store

With no marketplace behind it, a new store starts with no traffic, and every buyer has to come from somewhere you can name. The routes that cost nothing per click are Google Search, Google's free product listings, and the links you share yourself.

The Google for WooCommerce extension connects the store to Google Merchant Center, syncs your products, and, once the accounts are set up and eligible, lets them appear in free listings on the Shopping tab. Google's help says free listings can appear at no cost, and that a shopper coming from the Shopping tab completes the purchase on your own site. Paid Performance Max campaigns can be started from the same place, on a budget you set.

• Google Search: the product page itself, read through its name, descriptions and structured data.
• Google Shopping free listings: through Merchant Center, with the long description as the product's description by default.
• Shopping ads: paid per click, on a budget you choose.
• Your own links: social posts, email, and a marketplace shop alongside if you already have one.

Google Shopping SEO: the same products in your Merchant Center feed → · WooCommerce vs Shopify SEO: what each does with the product page →

Sources: Google for WooCommerce (sync products to Google Merchant Center, free listings on the Shopping tab, Performance Max campaigns), checked 1 November 2026 · Google Merchant Center Help: Free listings for products, checked 1 November 2026

Before you launch: a short checklist

Open the product page as a buyer and tick these off. Each one is a mistake that costs a sale or hides the page from Google.

What Sellura writes for a WooCommerce store, and what it doesn't

Describe the product once, in a few words or with a photo, and Sellura writes the WooCommerce product page's text: a name of about 60 characters, inside the 70 we allow, up to 5 short description points of up to 100 characters, a plain-text description inside 5,000 characters, Google Merchant Center's cap, and 10 product tags of up to 30 characters. The numbers other than Google's are ours, since WooCommerce publishes none. The same product can be written for Google Shopping, Etsy and the other marketplaces Sellura supports, each to its own rules.

Every generation comes back with a 0–100 score and the name preview, free and without a card, and the product name checker and Listing checker are free too. A credit unlocks the finished listing: Starter is $15 a month for 25 credits or $150 a year, and Pro is $24 a month for 65 credits plus bulk, or $240 a year. Sellura doesn't build your store, install on WordPress, take payments or track where a page ranks, has no research database or ads analysis, and is not affiliated with WooCommerce or WordPress.

Write your first WooCommerce product, with the score free → · Plans and credits →