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Believe it or not, creating an ecommerce website to sell products online is such a simple process, you can complete it in less than 5 minutes.  Whatever you have to sell, from eBooks to music, clothes to garden sheds, adding products that your readers can buy is an excellent way to increase your income stream and make a healthy income from your website.

WordPress is the ideal ecommerce website builder.  It’s simple to install, easy to customize and perfect for selling your products.  We’ve put together a step by step guide on how to create an ecommerce website in less than 5 minutes, which means you could be making extra money by the end of the day!

1.  Download Your Ecommerce Website Builder

Once you’ve decided on a hosting company, you’ll need to download WordPress as your free website builder program.  Once you’ve done this you’ll have your blank website, which you can begin customizing to suit your ecommerce needs.

2.  Choose an Ecommerce theme

The really great thing about WordPress is that there are so many themes to choose from, which basically give you the look and design of your website, to which you can add images and content.  Here are three ecommerce themes, which are all available to download through our themes page:

• Crafty Cart: designed to be used alongside the WP e-commerce plug in, which we will be discussing in just a moment.  This is a free theme with a fresh retro style, ideal for t-shirts, handmade items and vintage wear. 
• Ecommerce Theme: this is a premium theme, costing $79.95 for multiple websites.  It’s really easy to customize, is search engine optimized and ideal for selling any kind of products online, from eBooks to photos, music to gadgets. 
• The Shopping: this is another free ecommerce theme, ideal for combining product sales alongside a blog.  It’s bright, colorful and has an attractive header with a simple style, perfect for selling clothes, shoes, handbags and designer gear. 

Once you’ve chosen your theme, simply download it to your WordPress program.  For more information on how to do this, this article has everything you need to know about How to Install a WordPress Theme.

3.  Install the WP e-Commerce Plug in

The WP E-commerce plug in is the perfect tool for any website wanting to sell products.  It gives you everything you’ll need and is completely free to download from our resources page.  It provides a one page checkout, a shopping cart and easy to customize product pages.  You can also add premium widgets to suit various ecommerce styles and for extra control over customization.

To install the plug in, first log into the admin page of your WordPress website.  The address for this is  http://yourdomainname/wp-admin.  On the dashboard go to the plug in section, where you can install new plug ins.  Choose the ecommerce plug in and once installed you’ll see a new drop down menu on your side bar, saying e-commerce.

4.  Setting your WP e-commerce Plug In

This plug in gives you so many options for customizing your products pages and how your customers can pay.  Here are some of the most important setting you can adapt to suit your needs, which you can access by clicking on e-commerce in your dashboard:

• In the settings page, ensure you choose your country, the currency you wish to trade in and whether you want to add tax to your products.
• Payment Options: you can choose from PayPal, Google Checkout, PayPal-Express, Chronopay or Manual Payment.  The final choice gives your customers the option to make an order, then phone you to give their credit card details or send a cheque in the post.
• Presentation Settings: choose which product group you’d like to display on your main product page by default, or you can show all products.  You can also decide on your Cart Location, which can be inserted anywhere on the page or as a widget on the sidebar.  By clicking Show Breadcrumbs, this allows readers to navigate through product subcategories, which can be very useful if you have a lot of products for sale.
• Admin Settings: if you’re selling digital items, such as eBooks or music files, you can limit the number of times a customer can download the file once they’ve purchased it.  This could be just once, or any number of times.  It’s a good idea to lock the download to a particular IP address, to prevent customers from sharing the download with other people.

5.  Display Your Products

The final stage is to add your products, by entering the Products category on the dashboard.  You need to set the name, price, description, assign to a category and add an image.  Once completed your product is on your website and ready for your customers and readers to buy.

That’s it, your ecommerce website builder is now complete and it’s only taken you a matter of minutes!  Now all you need to do is drive some quality traffic to your site who’ll be interested in what you have to sell.  This article has 5 Secrets to Ecommerce Success using Social Media that any ecommerce website builder will find invaluable.