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A complete Idiot's guide to get started with WooCommerce


Creating Virtual and downloadable products using WooCommerce

 

As we have discussed in the previous chapter that physical goods are something that you have to ship. Virtual goods are something that you don't have to ship once purchase is complete. Any kind of Subscriptions, Software, eBooks fall into this category.

In this chapter will will be creating a virtual and a downloadable product that we will be able to sell.

Let us give you an example of Virtual products and Downloadable products and how they differ

  • A reader subscription is a virtual product because you can not download anything.
  • Cloud Subscription is a virtual product that you are not able to download.
  • Any kind of software that you are willing to sell can be both virtual and downloadable.

We assume that you have setup your WooCommerce install properly following previous chapters.

Let's get into it.

Adding a Virtual Product

Goto Products > Add new product

As you see that we've checked Virtual Checkbox, added product title and description. We've also created a new category called Subscriptions. We've entered the SKU and price for our product.

Make sure that under inventory tab, Manage Stock checkbox is unticked as shown below

As discussed in previous chapter you can up-sell or cross-sell other products by linking those products. We've done that in our next step

Cross sell virtual products WooCommerce

We will move on to Advanced tab to add any notes or product ordering details. We've done that as shown below

Screenshot did not show all the text we wrote in Purchase Note field. We provided a link to where customers can go to start their subscription. This could be a Paypal landing page or a page to your website which is integrated with 3rd party Subscription manager such as Stripe or Braintree.

With subscriptions you be good with WooCommerce Subscription Extension, Here is a nice way to get understanding on Subscriptions. The free Groups plugin will help you manage how people access areas of your website and Groups for WooCommerce extension will integrate the Groups and Subscriptions.

Once I publish my product here is how it look

Let's now add a downloadable product

Adding a Downloadable Product using WooCommerce

Virtual products setup as you saw was quite similar to setting up physical products except from the inventory manage. Downloadable products such as Wordpress themes, Software etc all involve a download process.

Goto Products > Add New Product

Let's set up our downloadable product by giving it a title, description, category, selecting both Virtual and Downloadable checkboxes from Product Data Meta box

We have set up Price and added file that customer will be able to download once purchase is completed.

Make sure that under inventory tab, Manage Stock checkbox is unticked as shown below

We will not be setting Linked products, attributes for this product, but you can if you have something to up-sell or cross-sell. 

Lets jump to Advanced tab and this is how we set it up

This is how our product looks

Now customer are able to buy your downloadable product and WooCommerce will automatically send Invoices, Purchase receipt, Download link emails.

We will list some alternatives to WooCommerce in next chapter and conclude.

 

Description

You are running a Wordpress blog and all of a sudden you want to sell few things through your blog. You ask yourself what plugin should I go for to start selling immediately. How much would it cost and so on.

We are going to show you a plugin called WooCommerce which could just be right for you and in this turorial we will cover a few topics in chapters below

  • Installing WooCommerce
  • Setting up WooCommerce
  • Creating Physical Products
  • Creating Virtual and downloadable products using WooCommerce
  • Alternatives

You can also take a Quiz to test your knowledge on WooCommerce

 



Environment

Wordpress 4+

Prerequisites

Understanding on using Wordpress Admin panel.

Audience

If you want to set up a quick shop through your WordPress blog this tutorial is for you.

Author: Subject Coach
Added on: 8th Dec 2014

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