WooCommerce Essentials: Setting Up WooCommerce Pages
However different they may be, all the online stores have one thing in common – a set of default pages that includes all the necessary online shop functionalities. These are the pages that provide the customer with an overview of their order, where they can check their personal data, choose payment type, and similar details that are essential for the final transaction to take place. WooCommerce has all of these pages, and we will show you how to set them, but first let’s just clear the way by answering some essential questions that will help everyone who is not sure how to start an online store.
In this article you will learn:
These are the pages that the WooCommerce plugin creates automatically when we install the plugin. Without these default pages, the shop simply cannot function. So, in the case of WooCommerce, this set of necessary pages includes:
- Shop page
- Cart page
- Checkout page
- My Account page
The Shop page does not require any data entry. It actually contains all the products we brought into our online shop. This page allows the customers to view all the products at once.
Depending on the theme and your preference, the shop page can also contain a sidebar with the widgets you need, in addition to the products.
The Cart page is the page where you can see your cart content and the details of your order. This is where you can also set the quantity of the product you want to buy, see how much it will cost you in total, and also check the shipping details.
The Checkout page is the page that is one step away from the purchase. It is where you enter details like name, country, address, phone number. You can also specify where you want the goods to be shipped on this page, or add a special note about your order.
On the My Account page, you can see all the data you entered and the history of your orders. This is also where you can edit your account details like the address or phone number or set a new password.
It is highly recommendable to have links to these pages in a menu or a visible place so that the customers can access them easily, with just one click. These pages contain information that is very relevant for the customers, and naturally, they will want to see them.
Although these pages appear in your pages (Pages > All Pages) immediately after installing the plugin, you should also set them in the Woocommerce options, so that you know exactly what they refer to and what kind of data they contain.
To set which of your pages will be a shop page, even though WooCommerce has already created one, you need to go to the WooCommerce > Settings > Product tab and choose which page will be the Shop Page. The shop page can be any of the pages you have already created. It is important you understand that the plugin recognizes it as the shop page and assigns it a list of products.
As for setting other pages, all settings are in one place WooCommerce > Settings > Advanced tab. Here you can select destinations for specific pages and let the plugin know which data to deliver where.
To summarize: When the WooCommerce plugin is installed, it automatically inserts default shop pages into your pages (Pages > Add new), but you need to select in the settings which pages are intended to display this specific data.
In case a default page was not created by default or you accidentally deleted it, this is not a problem. The easiest thing to do is to go to the WooCommerce > Status > Tools tab and find the Create default WooCommerce pages option.
Clicking on Create Pages creates all the missing pages. When you do this, you just need to set them in the settings as we explained above.
Another way to add missing pages is to create a new page and insert the appropriate shortcode into it.
This is an example of inserting a Cart page with a shortcode. After the shortcode is inserted, you publish the page and that is all.
WooCommerce shop page shortcode that you have available are:
[woocommerce_cart] – shows the cart page
[woocommerce_checkout] – shows the checkout page
[woocommerce_my_account] – shows the user account page
As in all the above cases, after creating a page this way, you need to specify in the settings that these are the pages for these purposes.
You may have noticed that the Shop page has no shortcode. To create it, all you have to do is publish a blank page and set its value in the settings.
The Order Tracking page is not a default page but it is very useful for the customers and makes you look more reliable, so it is recommendable to have it. You can easily create it by adding a new page with a shortcode [woocommerce_order_tracking].
This is the page where customers can check if their order is on the way, and in which phase of the shipping process it is.
Another page that doesn’t come by default but can be extremely useful is the Wishlist page. Wishlist is a very useful functionality that can significantly improve your shop conversions. It allows users to select and remember the items they like but that they can’t buy just yet, so they can perhaps purchase them on another occasion. Wishlists can also be shared, which is convenient for occasions like birthdays, weddings, etc.
Creating a wishlist page requires adding the wishlist feature first. Since this doesn’t come by default, you need to use a plugin or an extension. We recommend using QODE Wishlist for WooCommerce, an excellent plugin that comes with multiple wishlist functionality, rich customization options, the choice between two layouts for the wishlist page, the ability to automatically remove an item from the wishlist once it’s added to cart, and so on. Shop admins can require login for creating wishlists (this is useful for building email lists and nurturing leads) or allow wishlist creation to everyone. There’s even the “Ask for Estimate” button that can be activated if needed, and the plugin helps with promotional email campaigns too.
The plugin is easy to use and quite intuitive so after installing and activating it you shouldn’t have difficulties setting everything up the way you like. Of course, for the actual Wishlist page, you will create one like you create any other page and the plugin will populate it.
In Conclusion
Now that you know how to set the four essential pages necessary for any type of online store, you can start thinking how to make your store unique. Stay tuned, as more articles covering various aspects of WooCommerce sites are on the way! And, feel free to ask questions and share experience with WooCommerce in the comment section, we look forward to hearing from you.
We hope that you found this article to be helpful. If you liked it, please feel free to check out some of these articles as well!
