Woocommerce has gained immense recognition in recent years and its popularity is not hidden from anyone. It is one of the world's favorite e-commerce systems with all the basic and advanced features. In fact, WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin, yes it is a plugin that converts WordPress into an online store.
Very flexible and intuitive, it provides a user-friendly interface with powerful features. To make it easier for online retailers, Woocommerce has taken a step forward to allow anyone to open an eCommerce store in seconds. Let us dive into the WooCommerce Theme Development Tutorial and enjoy the benefits of this great plugin for free:
Importance of WooCommerce
Since WordPress is useful for building all types of portals, Woocommerce can help online retailers design their online store with advanced security features. In addition, with Woocommerce, it is possible to keep a history of monthly sales, taxes and daily activities. With the growing popularity of digital media, people are investing their time in creating unique online stores. And how is this possible? With Woocommerce, custom theme development is done, which even start-ups can use. Here are the mind-blowing features:
1. It is an open source content management system
2. To benefit from the latest features and options, a certain amount is required while the basic features are free. So, to build your own store, WordPress Woocommerce site is a profitable business model.
3. The shopping cart is secure to provide a pleasant experience.
4. Many themes are available for easy customization.
5. To improve functionality, features and endless lists can be added accordingly
6. Featured with multi-shipment gateway to deliver the products to various countries.
In addition, the multi-payment option allows you to pay via various platforms.
What is Woocommerce Theme Development?
Woocommerce is a CMS that is integrated with WordPress to provide an easy shopping platform for e-merchants. By creating a custom theme in Woocommerce, you get an amazing theme which can then be used to build your own store. With Woocommerce, you can really expect your business to grow in leaps and bounds, but only if the theme development is up to par, engaging, and highlights all the important features. The most essential characteristics that each theme must have are:
Nice website layout that when viewers see it feel good and spend more time exploring your product line.
To provide an amazing shopping experience, the website should have categories and subcategories so people can refine the filters.
A beautiful website increases the chances of conversions and sales.
Integration of Google Analytics for better monitoring
Fast page loading to decrease the bounce rate.
Developing Woocommerce themes is not that difficult as you might think. All it takes of your time and effort to get the whole process started and the results are impressive when:
- WordPress and Woocommerce are both installed on your desktop
- Basic know-how of Woocommerce themes. If you don't have it, read the tutorials to learn more.
- Good knowledge of HTML and CSS to modify the coding part.
Stages of Woocommerce Theme Development
Now let's start by creating Woocommerce themes as this will give you complete control over the look of your website.
Woocommerce support statement
To get started by creating a WooCommerce theme, it is essential to declare Woocommerce support first. This is to make sure that users will get a pop-up in the WordPress dashboard to indicate that the Woocommerce plugin development does not support the theme. To create or develop a theme, this step is of crucial importance. If you want to declare support, add this encoding in a functions.php file in the theme:
Now, after declaring support, you should start creating a WooCommerce theme. Since Woocommerce is packed with great features, you can use the default styles to create new ones. Once you have completed the Woocommerce plugin update, you will lose all changes if any changes are made to the original files. I would suggest not modifying any files, but instead creating a new file to replace the existing files in the source theme directory. Two steps are there to create a new file:
Create custom CSS
If the changes are low level, this method works for you.
- Create a new CSS file
- Name it: custom-woocommerce.css
- Save it in the wp-content / themes / directory / css
- Now in foundation.php file include this.css file
Finally, to override the default style, add your CSS to this file.
The second method is to create a WordPress child theme. Basically the child theme has the characteristics and functions of another theme called parent theme. To change the default themes, child themes are highly recommended.
Create a WordPress child theme
- Create the directory of the child theme and add "-child" to avoid compilation errors. Make sure you don't leave any spaces in the name.
- Put it under wp-content / themes
- Create a child theme header
- Now queue child and parent theme stylesheets
Everything is ready! You need to activate the child theme now by logging into the site admin panel. Go to admin panel> appearance> themes. Here you will see the child theme ready for activation.
WooCommerce Theme Development Conclusion
Learning how to create a custom theme in Woocommerce is definitely a daunting task for those who aren't that keen on coding. In order to have to create a theme, you need to have good coding skills. With this tutorial, you get an advanced overview of WooCommerce theme development. Now it's easy to make your website look exceptional in terms of layout and functionality, right? Enjoy the process!