Running an online store with WooCommerce can feel overwhelming if you’re unfamiliar with its settings. Every option, from basic configurations to advanced features, affects your store’s performance and customer experience.
This guide will take you through all the essential WooCommerce settings step by step, helping you easily set up and manage your store. Whether you’re just starting out or looking to fine-tune your store, this guide covers you. Let’s simplify WooCommerce so you can focus on growing your business!
Getting Started With WooCommerce Settings
Before proceeding to the WooCommerce settings, make sure you have installed WooCommerce on your website and completed the initial setup.
Once that’s done, go to your WordPress dashboard, click on WooCommerce, and select Settings from the menu.
Configure General Settings
Store Address
When you open WooCommerce settings, you’ll find several tabs, each dedicated to specific settings. We’ll go through all of them step by step. Let’s start with the General Settings.
The first thing you’ll need to do here is enter your store’s address, including details like your postal code, city, state, or country. This information is essential because it helps WooCommerce calculate tax and shipping rates accurately for your store.
General
In the general settings, you can choose where to sell your products. You can sell to all countries, select specific countries, or just a few.
Next, you can set up your shipping preferences, deciding whether to ship to specific countries or all countries or even turn off shipping altogether.
You’ll then set the default customer address. It could be based on geolocation, your shop’s country, region, or other options.
Finally, you can enable or disable tax and coupon options in your store. If you turn off taxes, the tax settings page will also be hidden.
Currency Options
In the currency option, start by selecting the currency that will display the product prices on the front end of your store.
Then, you can also manage the position of the currency symbol & select the thousand and decimal separator. When displaying prices, choose how many numbers to display to the right of the decimal.
After that, save your changes.
Products Settings
When you click on the “Products” option in WooCommerce, you’ll find all the settings for managing your products. These settings are organized into different sub-sections, which we’ll discuss below.
General
Under product settings, you can manage options like shop pages, measurement units, and product reviews. This section of the menu offers these settings.
Shop Pages
Before configuring the Shop page settings, ensure you have already added products to your WooCommerce store.
Start by choosing the page you want to set as the default shop page for your WooCommerce store. This is where your product archive will appear. When you install WooCommerce on your website, it creates the Shop Page by default. If you don’t select a specific page, WooCommerce will automatically use that page.
Next, customize the “Add to Cart” button settings. Decide whether you want customers to be redirected to the cart page when they click the button or if you prefer them to stay on the same page. You can also enable the option for Ajax to add the product to the cart without the page reloading.
Finally, enter the image’s URL or attachment ID as the default placeholder image when a product doesn’t have a picture.
Measurements
In this section, choose the unit of measurement for your product’s weight and dimensions from the available options in the dropdown menu.
Reviews
In the reviews section, you can allow customers to leave reviews on your store. You can also choose to display a “Verified Owner” label on reviews from customers who are verified. Additionally, you can set the option to only allow verified owners to leave reviews, excluding others.
Additionally, you can enable star ratings and require customers to leave a rating when submitting a review.
Inventory
In the Inventory section, you can manage settings related to your stock. First, you’ll need to enable stock management by checking the “Manage Stock” box. When enabled, the inventory count will be visible in your store. If disabled, only the stock status (like “In Stock” or “Out of Stock”) will appear.
If you enable stock management, you’ll see a few additional options. The “Hold Stock” option lets you set a time limit (in minutes) to hold a product in the cart. Once that time limit is reached, the product will be automatically canceled if not purchased. Leave it blank to disable.
You can also enable notifications to alert you when stock is low or out of stock. To do so, enter the email addresses where you want to receive these notifications (you can add multiple emails separated by commas).
Next, you can set the stock level that triggers the low-stock or out-of-stock notification. Once your stock reaches this level, you’ll receive an email alert.
Finally, choose from the available formats to display the stock notification on your store and save the changes.
Downloadable Products
In this setting, you can manage how your store handles downloadable products. The first option lets you decide how customers will receive their downloads. By default, WooCommerce uses a “forced” download method, where files download automatically, and their URLs remain hidden.
If the forced method doesn’t work, you can choose from two types of redirects to provide the downloads. There’s also an option to allow or restrict downloads for guest users, meaning you can require them to register before accessing files.
By default, WooCommerce gives access to downloads once payment is completed, even if the order is still marked as “processing.” For security, you can enable a feature that adds a unique string to each file’s name.
Managing Tax in WooCommerce
Setting up taxes in WooCommerce is simple, but you must first enable the tax option. Go to the general settings and enable the taxes feature. Once that’s done, you can configure the tax settings to match your store’s requirements.
Tax Options
In the Tax Options settings, you can choose how to handle taxes for your store. First, decide whether your product prices will include tax or exclude it. Then, select how taxes will be calculated—based on the customer’s billing address, shipping address, or your shop’s base address.
WooCommerce also lets you create custom tax classes. Multiple tax classes are available by default, but you can add more by listing them on separate lines. The standard rate class works for most cases, but you can add or edit classes if you sell products requiring different tax rates. However, the standard rate class cannot be deleted.
You can also show product prices on the shop, cart, and checkout pages with tax included or excluded. Additionally, you can set a price suffix to appear after the product price on the website. Finally, decide if taxes should be shown as a single total during checkout or broken down into a detailed list. Once everything is set, don’t forget to save your changes.
To add a tax rate in WooCommerce, follow these steps:
- Go to the Standard Rates section and click on the Insert Row option to add a new tax rate.
- Start by entering the 2-digit country code where you want to apply the tax.
- Next, add the 2-digit state code. If you want the tax to apply to all states, leave this field blank.
- Enter the postcode/zip code or city where the tax will apply. You can list multiple cities or zip codes by separating them with semicolons.
- Add the tax percentage. For example, if the tax rate is 30%, enter “30”. Then, give this tax rate a name.
- Set a priority for the tax rate. Only the first matching rate for each priority level will be applied. If you want to set multiple rates for the same area, assign a different priority number to each rate.
- Check the Compound box if this tax is a compound rate.
- Finally, note that the Shipping option is enabled by default, meaning this tax rate will also apply to shipping costs.
Managing Shipping Settings
WooCommerce includes built-in settings to help you manage shipping for your store. These settings let you customize how products are shipped to your customers.
Shipping Zones
The most important setting in Shipping is adding a shipping zone. A shipping zone is a geographic region where particular shipping methods and rates apply. You can think of a shipping zone as a geographic location where a certain set of shipping zones & shipping methods are applied.
To learn more about every shipping setting in WooCommerce, check out our detailed article on setting up Shipping. It provides a thorough understanding of every setting related to shipping, which is mentioned in the shipping settings.
Setting up Payment in WooCommerce
Setting up payment methods in WooCommerce is simple. Toggle the switch next to each payment option to enable or disable it. Clicking on payment methods that require additional setup will take you to their configuration page, where you can complete the setup process.
When you click on the name of any payment gateway in WooCommerce, you are taken directly to its settings page. You can also access these settings by clicking the Manage button, which also redirects you to the payment setup page.
You can also rearrange the payment gateways by dragging and dropping them. This allows you to control how they appear in the table, which lists all installed gateways in table format for easy management.
For a more detailed explanation about payments in WooCommerce, check out our in-depth guide.
Accounts & Privacy Settings
The Accounts & Privacy settings let you manage everything related to customer accounts. You can start by deciding whether to enable guest checkout, which lets customers make a purchase without creating an account. There’s also an option to allow customers to log in during checkout.
Next, you can set up account creation. You can choose to let customers create an account while checking out or give them the option to do so on the My Account page. These settings help you control how customers interact with your store.
You can choose whether to send customers a password reset link when they create an account in your WooCommerce store.
Additionally, you can allow customers to request the removal of their data. If this option is enabled, the user’s data will also be deleted from any orders they are associated with.
The same applies to downloadable files—if the option is turned on, any downloadable data linked to the user will be erased. A new bulk action has also been added to the Orders page, making it easier to remove personal data in bulk.
Personal Data Retention
It allows you to decide how long to keep customer data when it’s no longer needed. If you want to keep the data forever, leave the fields empty. Otherwise, you can set a time limit by entering a number and selecting a duration (days, weeks, months, or years). Once the set time has passed, the data will be removed automatically. Remember to click the Save Changes button to apply your settings.
Configuring Emails in WooCommerce
WooCommerce makes it simple to set up and customize your store emails to match your brand’s style. You can update the sender’s email address and even design the email templates to look exactly how you want.
In WooCommerce, you can customize different types of emails. To make changes, click the Manage button next to the specific email you want to edit. This will open a range of settings you can adjust to personalize the email.
For a detailed guide on customizing WooCommerce email templates, check out our detailed article on How to Customize Email Templates in WooCommerce.
Integration Settings
The integration settings allow you to add your license key for the MaxMind Geolocation tool. This section may also include settings for other extensions or integrations you’ve added.
For more information, refer to the guide on making the most of the MaxMind Geolocation integration.
Site Visibility
The site visibility settings let you choose whether your store is live or in “coming soon” mode. The “coming soon” mode is perfect for setting up your store before officially launching. It gives you time to properly organize everything without immediately making the store public.
In this mode, you can share a private link to the store with others if necessary. It is also helpful when multiple people are working on the website, as you can easily share the link for collaboration without making the store fully visible to customers.
Advanced Settings
The advanced settings in WooCommerce allow you to manage several important configurations.
Page Setup
The Page Setup section in WooCommerce allows you to configure key pages such as the Cart, Checkout, My Account, and Terms & conditions.
Here, you choose which pages customers will be directed to when they perform specific actions. For example, when someone clicks the cart button, you can set a particular page to display the cart details. Similarly, you can assign a page for the checkout process, a page for user accounts, and one for displaying your store’s terms and conditions.
You can also enable a setting to force secure checkout for pages not served through HTTPS.
Checkout Endpoints
Checkout endpoints are extra parts(slug) added to the end of a URL in WooCommerce. They help the platform display specific content based on the action being performed. For example, they handle tasks like processing orders or managing payments during checkout. The only rule is to ensure each endpoint has a unique slug so there’s no confusion. These endpoints are essential for smoothly managing actions during checkout and payment.
Account Endpoints
Account endpoints manage specific actions on the account page. They are set up by default and usually don’t need to be changed unless there’s a particular reason to do so. Each endpoint must be unique to avoid conflicts.
Rest API/Webhooks
In the advanced settings, you can create an API or webhook for your store. The REST API allows your store to connect with other APIs through WooCommerce. A webhook, on the other hand, sends event notifications to a URL you choose. It can be helpful for connecting with third-party services that support webhooks.
Check out the plugin’s documentation for more details on generating the REST API and Webhooks.
WooCommerce.com
Usage Tracking
This setting allows you to let WooCommerce collect information about your store for development purposes. If you prefer, you can turn off the “Show Suggestions” option, which will stop WooCommerce from showing extension recommendations while you’re setting up other plugin settings.
Features Settings
In the Features Settings, you can select how your store stores order data and whether to turn on or off features like Analytics, order tracking, and the site visibility badge.
Experimental Features
This setting allows you to try out new features that are still being developed. What’s available here may vary depending on your version of WooCommerce. If you want to test these features on your site, it’s a good idea to try them on a staging site first, as they could cause bugs or errors on your live website.
Start Setting Up Your WooCommerce Store
In conclusion, understanding and configuring your WooCommerce settings properly is essential for running a smooth and efficient online store. By customizing these settings to fit your business needs, you can enhance both your customers’ shopping experience and store management.
