Woocommerce has gained immense recognition in the recent years and its popularity is not hidden from anybody. It is one of the world’s favorite eCommerce systems, loaded with all basic and advanced features. Actually, WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin, yes it is a plugin which converts WordPress into an online shopping store.
Highly flexible and intuitive, it provides a user-friendly interface with power packed features. To make it easy for the online retailers, Woocommerce took a step forward to let anyone open an e-commerce store within seconds. Let us dig deep into WooCommerce theme development tutorial and avail the benefits of this super plugin for free:
Significance of WooCommerce
Since WordPress is helpful in making all types of portals, Woocommerce can help online retailers to design their webshop with advanced security features. Also, with Woocommerce it is possible to keep a track record of monthly sales, taxes and day to day activities. With the increasing popularity of digital media, people are investing their time in creating unique online stores. And how’s that possible? With Woocommerce, custom theme development is done which even start-ups can avail. Here are the mind blowing features:
1. It is an open source content management system
2. To avail the latest features and options, some amount is required whereas the basic features are free. So to build your own shopping store, WordPress Woocommerce site is a cost-effective business model.
3. The shopping cart is secured to offer an enjoyable experience.
4. Ample of themes are available to choose from which promote easy customization.
5. To enhance the functionality, infinite features and lists can be added accordingly
6. Featured with multi-shipping gateway to deliver the products in various countries.
Also, the multi-payment option allows paying via varied platforms.
What is Woocommerce Theme Development?
Woocommerce is a CMS which is integrated within WordPress to offer an easy shopping platform to the e-retailers. By creating a custom theme in Woocommerce, you get an astounding theme as a result which can then be used to build your own store. With Woocommerce, you really can expect your business to grow by leaps and bounds but only if the theme development is up to the mark, attractive and has all the important features highlighted. The most essential features which every theme has to have are:
Beautiful layout of the website which when the viewers see feel good and spend more time in exploring your product range.
To offer an amazing shopping experience, the website must have categories and subcategories so that people can narrow down the filters.
A gorgeous looking website enhances the chances for conversions and sales.
Integration of Google Analytics for better tracking
Quick loading of pages to decrease the bounce rate.
Woocommerce theme development is not that challenging as you might think. All it needs your time and efforts to kick-start the whole process and the results are awesome when:
- WordPress and Woocommerce both are installed at your desktop
- Basic know-how of Woocommerce themes. If you don’t have, read the tutorials to get some knowledge.
- Proper knowledge of HTML and CSS to modify the coding part.
Steps to Woocommerce Theme Development
Let us now start with creating Woocommerce themes as it will give you complete control over how you want your website to look.
Declaring Woocommerce Support
To begin with creating a WooCommerce theme, it is essential to declare Woocommerce support first. It is to ensure that the users will get a pop up in the WordPress dashboard to say the Woocommerce plugin development doesn’t support the theme. To create or develop a theme, this step holds a crucial importance. If you want to declare the support, add this coding in a functions.php file in the theme:
Now after declaring the support, you should start creating a WooCommerce theme. Since Woocommerce is loaded with handsome features, you can use the default styles to create new styles from them. Once you are done updating the Woocommerce plugin, you will lose all the changes if any modification is done to the original files. I would suggest not editing any file rather create a new file to overrule the existing files in the source theme directory. Two steps are there to create new file:
Create a custom CSS
If the changes are of a small level, then this method works for you.
- Create a new CSS file
- Name it: custom-woocommerce.css
- Save it in the directory wp-content/themes/
/css - Now in the foundation.php, include this.css file
Lastly to override the default style, add your CSS to this file.
The second method is to create a WordPress child theme. Basically, child theme has the features and functions of another theme which is called as parent theme. To change default themes, child themes are highly recommended.
Create a WordPress child theme
- Create the child theme directory and add “-child” to avoid compilation errors. Make sure not to leave any space in the name.
- Put it under wp-content/themes
- Create a child theme header
- Now enqueue the child and parent theme stylesheets
It is all ready! You need to activate the child theme now by logging into the site’s admin panel. Navigate to Administration 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 are not much aware of the coding. Having to create a theme needs you to possess good coding skills. With this tutorial, you have got an advanced insight to WooCommerce theme development. Now it is easy to make your website look exceptional in terms of layout and features, isn’t it? Enjoy the process!