Do you have products, either physical or digital, that you want to sell online but don't know where or how to get started? Then this tutorial is for you. I'm Elizabeth, and today we will walk through how to create an e-commerce website on Wix.
From choosing a design to uploading your products and accepting payments, you'll be able to launch your business using Wix with ease. Building a website with Wix is free, but you will need to purchase a plan once you are ready to open your shop, accept payments, and ship products. To get started, you'll need to create a free Wix account.
You can use the link here or down below in the video description. Once you have created your free account, Wix will guide you through the setup process. First, they will ask what type of website you want to create.
This just helps Wix provide you with template options. You can either select a store at this step or pick something else related to your business, and you can add the storefront later. Continue to follow the prompts in order to set up your website.
Wix will ask questions to help better customize your experience, and they'll ask questions such as what type of products or services you're offering. Once you've answered all of their questions, you can continue setting up on your dashboard. Wix will prompt you to pick a custom domain from your dashboard.
You can choose to explore domains now or skip this step and begin the design process. I do want to note that using a custom domain requires upgrading from a free account to a paid one, and we'll talk more about that at the end of this video. But for now, I want to skip and begin the design process.
You will have two options to get started. One is using a template, and the other is to use the Wix AI feature. Today, we are going to be building our e-commerce site using a template.
Here, you can pick a template that you like the overall aesthetic of. Don't worry about what type of site it is being called. You'll be able to customize everything on the page once you've selected the template, including pictures, text, and what features the website offers your visitors.
If you don't like any of these, you can continue to explore and search for templates using keywords related to your business. Once you've selected the template that you wish to use, you'll be taken to the Wix Editor. Wix will ask if you want to use an AI text generator for your site, which can be a good way to get started, but you can ignore it as well and just X out.
I'm going to tell Wix a bit more about my business. On the left-hand side is your navigation bar. We'll walk through these different sections as we build out our website.
A good first step is determining what you want on your website and editing the site menu. When I double-click on this menu, it will open up part of the navigation bar called "Site Pages and Menu. " This is where it lists all of the different pages that comprise your website, chosen by Wix, dependent on the type of template you chose in the last step.
This is a good time to decide what pages you want to make up your website with. In this case, the template has "Shop," which I want to keep, as well as "Our Story" and "Contact. " I want to remove this "Sale" section, and I could see that "Terms and Conditions" and "Search Results" are currently hidden from view.
If I want to change that, I could select the three little dots and either select "Show in Menu" or "Delete" in its entirety. I also want to add a photo gallery at a later stage, so I'll click on "Add Page" and select "Blank Page" for now. I can then come back to the Site Menu and add "Gallery.
" I can change the layout of the Site Menu and the Navigational Bar by selecting and moving these around. Once you're happy with how your menu looks, you can X out to see what it looks like on the homepage. Next, I'm going to upload my logo.
Here, there's a logo that's included in the template. I want to go ahead and remove this and then upload my own image. I'll select everything here and delete it.
And then, I'll go over to my navigational bar and add an element. In this case, I want to add an image. I do want to note that if you don't already have a logo, you can build a custom logo for free on the Wix platform.
In this case, I want to upload an image directly from my computer. Once you've uploaded your image, you can adjust the size of that image and then relocate it wherever you want on the page. In this case, I'm going to move it to the left-hand side of my navigational bar.
This tutorial is going to focus on creating an online store, so we're not going to walk through how to build the entirety of the website. And, we aren't going to walk through editing each one of these pages. But if you want to explore an additional Wix tutorial that goes into detail on how to edit your entire site, you can find the link to that video here or in the video description below.
You can explore adding additional elements to your page, like links to social media and additional graphics. You can also add sections to your page, such as adding an "About Me" section or client testimonials and business information. But let's get started with how to upload products to our e-commerce shop.
Now, let's begin setting up our storefront. There are two ways to get started. If you have an existing website and you're not creating one from scratch, but you need to add a storefront, then you would start by going over to pages and menu, adding a page, and then once you add that page, you add a section.
In this case, when you add a section, you would scroll down here and select "Store. " Then, once you look at. .
. The different designs of the various storefronts, you simply drag and drop it onto the new page. If you are starting a brand-new website, like we're doing in this tutorial, then you navigate to the left-hand side under Pages and Menu, and we'll click on Shop.
This will take us to the templated shop that Wix created for us. This template has already created 12 products as placeholders. There are a handful of ways you can get started to add your own products.
I'm going to show you two different ways to get your products loaded, and the option you choose will largely depend on how many products you have to add. For both options, you will start by selecting Manage Products. The first option, which may be the best for beginners, or if you don't have too many products, is the manual process.
You can click into each one of these test products in order to edit, or you can add a new product. Then, you can choose whether you have a physical product to sell or a digital product. Today, we'll be exploring adding physical products to our website.
To add a product, you'll follow the prompts from Wix, first by adding the name of your product. In this case, I'm adding a rustic wooden board to my site. You can then choose images or videos from your computer to add to your listing.
When you add these, you can either add them from your computer or ones that you've already uploaded to the Wix platform. You can also edit and adjust these, as well as create your own videos directly in the Wix platform. Then click Add to Page.
As you scroll down, you'll see that they've already added the name based off of what you put above. Next is an optional input called the ribbon. The ribbon is whether you want to call out on your product.
An example would be the word "sale" or "new. " Most of the time, you'll probably end up leaving this blank. I'm going to add "new" just so you see what it looks like in the finished product.
Next is going to be the product description. You can enter your own text or ask Wix for help in generating text. You can keep it simple here in terms of your formatting, or you can make this much longer than I've done here and use some of the stylistic editing tools at the top to really make this listing pop.
You can also choose to add an optional info section. In this case, I'm going to add a return policy. You can title your info sections with anything you'd like, and you can also have multiple info sections depending on how much information you want listed with each product.
Similar to the text up above, you could style this any way you choose, inserting links or tables, which could be helpful if you have multiple size options or a lot more complicated data that you can't just have in simple text. The next section is pricing. I'll go ahead and insert the cost of this product.
You can indicate whether or not it's on sale and for how much. Depending on the type of product you have, you can also show the price per unit. This next section is really for your own internal process, which is where you can insert the cost of goods to see what your profit and margin look like.
I'm going to go ahead and skip this for now. The next section is custom text. If you have a product that you allow customers to personalize, let's say, for example, this rustic wooden board had a customizable option, I could then put in here, "What would you like engraved on your wooden board?
" I would insert a character limit and choose whether or not this is mandatory for this particular product. If you don't have a custom text option, just skip it. Next is product options.
Here you can add variants for your different products, if you wish. Let's say I have two different sizes of this board. I'll select Size, and I want those options to be presented to my clients in a list or dropdown format.
I can then add the different sizes here, separating each option with a comma. You'll see that Wix provides some suggestions for you, but you can type whatever you want into this box. I'll be able to change the pricing and inventory for each of these options in a later step.
Now let's say instead of a rustic wooden board, I was selling a shirt, and I wanted to provide my customers with options for size as well as color. You can add both. Let's add color first.
You can choose to have those options in a list or dropdown format or present it as a color swatch. Wix will provide suggestions for you, or you can enter your own. Since I asked Wix to provide a color swatch, it will then bring up this color wheel, and you can pick the color that most closely resembles your product.
Once you've added your different colors, then we can go back in and add an additional variant. So here I could put in the different sizes, such as small, medium, and large. And again, you can enter whatever text you wish there.
You don't have to use the Wix pre-populated options. You can add as many different options as you want, and in this next step, we'll manage the pricing and inventory for each of these product variants. I'm going to delete these for now and instead put back the sizes of my board so that we can better manage the inventory together.
Again, I'll go back to Add Options, select Size, and then put in my two different size choices. And we're done. The next step is to ask Wix to help manage the pricing and inventory for each of these product variants.
It will show here that the cost of my basic product is $105. If I want that to be for this first size, I can leave it as is. The larger size, I want to add a $20 surcharge to.
So, I would put $20 here, which then brings the price of the product to $125. If There's no price difference between your products; then you don't have to touch anything in this first column. Again, you can add the cost of the product for you, which will then allow you to see the margins that you're making.
But this is completely optional. You can also add SKUs for each of your products here as well, and also indicate whether or not this product is currently in or out of stock. Another way to manage inventory is to click on this button, which then allows you to enter the number of each one of these products that you have.
Let's say I have 20 of this and 15 of this. I enter these, and then if, let's say, 20 people were to buy the 12x12 board, it would automatically show this product as being out of stock. You can add the shipping weight here as well, or worry about that later on.
If you sell out of a product or you're not able to have it on your site anymore, you can also hide the variant temporarily from your store. When you're done with this step, click on Apply. As I continue to scroll down, there are some more advanced features.
One of those is a pre-order option, although you won't be able to select this if your inventory is currently showing as in stock. The next one is creating a subscription option for your customers. This is an advanced business plan feature, so you'll need to upgrade to an advanced business plan account.
But I do want to show it as an option. You can select how often a delivery is sent to your customers and include all of the pricing information as well. You can also manage all of that subscription inventory in the Wix system.
Once you've completed entering all of the information for your product, click on Save, and then you'll be brought back to your product dashboard. Note that all of the products that Wix pre-populated in the template are still showing up here. I'll want to click on all of my products and deselect the one I just added.
I then want to delete all of those other products. Let's take a quick look at how this appears now on the page. Here's what this new product looks like on my website.
Here's the ribbon I mentioned to you earlier, saying "New. " If we want to change how this layout, text, or add to cart looks, click on the product and select Settings. Here, you'll literally have hundreds of different options to play around with.
You can choose what's shown on the page. Let's say I decide I don't like the way these ribbons look. I can deselect it, and the ribbons are removed.
You can change layout options, text colors, alignment, and certain filters or ways that products are shown. We're not going to walk through each one of these, but there are lots of options to play with. And the good news is if you ever make a change and decide that you don't like it, you can come up here in the editor and simply click Undo or Redo.
Let's take a look at what this would look like to a customer on a live site. On the top here, select Preview. This will then take you to a live environment, even though we haven't published the website yet.
But this is exactly what customers would see. If I click on this product, I should then be taken to the Variant page with all that information we entered earlier. Here, I can select the size, and you'll see that this price adjusted.
Down below is the return policy and the description I added. If I want to change the layout, text, or any other elements on this page, such as removing this social bar, I'll come back here and select Back to Editor. If I want to make edits, I can select Settings, and you'll have lots of options to pick from—again, too many options to go through all of them now.
But we can customize the page. So, for example, let's say I don't like the layout here, and I want to look at some of the other options that Wix will pre-populate for me. You can click on those options, scroll down, and see what it looks like.
Once you've selected a new page layout, you can X out to see what that looks like, or go back to the Preview button to see what it would look like on the live site. Some of the additional settings that you have include, again, layout, how the product images look, what type of settings you have for a customer, and whether or not you display a social media bar. One of the neat options, too, is that you can add a wish list for your customers, where they can then log into the site and create a wish list in a members-only area.
And there are additional design elements that you can play around with as well, such as changing the color and font and button styles. Once you're happy with the product, you can either save it, or in this case, I have auto-save on, so I don't need to worry about that. If I want to go ahead then and add more products, I'll click on Manage Products, and it will bring me back to my product dashboard, where I can continue adding as many products as I wish.
But I want to show you another way that you can add products, which can be very beneficial to someone who has many products in their store or a lot of different variants. This is also a great option if you already have a different online store and have things already in an Excel format. Under More Actions, I'm going to select Import.
This is where you'll have the option to download the Wix CSV template file. This template allows you to upload products in bulk to your store at one time. Go ahead and download the blank Wix .
CSV file template to your computer. I know this form looks daunting, but we will walk through it together. On the form you download from Wix, there will already be product information, but this is a helpful way.
To see how columns get filled out correctly, just delete them to start your form. I’ve already filled out a template with products. Let's walk through how to fill this form out together.
You can also review more details on how to use this CSV form by following this link or in the video description below. You will start by listing all of your products under Handle ID. If you have one product with multiple variants, whether that's color, size, or something else, ensure that you have the same name for that product.
Here, I have a standard board that I have listed three times. It will show as the same product, but I'll continue to add additional details as we fill out the form. Next, you'll say whether the product is a standalone product or a variant, again, a variant being the same product, but in a different variation, such as size or color.
You'll then list the name of the product as you wish customers to view it, followed by a product description, which is limited to 8,000 characters. You can add images to your Wix file, but only if the image is in URL format. So, if your images are currently on a live site, you can copy and paste the image URL here.
Otherwise, you'll need to manually upload your images, like we did in the previous step, where we manually inputted products one at a time. And then you can leave this field blank. You can then choose to assign your products to a collection.
This will also appear on your live site in different ways that customers can sort your products. You can include a product in multiple collections; just separate them by a semicolon. Because Wix will manage inventory for you, you have the option to create unique SKUs for each product and variant.
You can just make these up if you don't have them. If you want to indicate whether a product is new, on sale, or maybe a limited edition, you can list that under the ribbon column or choose to leave it blank. Next, you'll add your pricing.
If you have variants of a product, you can add a surcharge, which is either a positive or a negative number. For example, if this product is $75, but depending on the size, it could be $90 or $105, I would then enter $15 and $30 in the surcharge column. Again, this number can either be a positive or a negative number.
The visible column is whether you want the product to show as live at the time you upload this CSV form, and you will either use true or false. I indicated that this product was on sale, so I can then indicate whether this product has a percentage or amount off, and what that percent or amount is. One thing to call out here: let's say at the holidays, you want to have a site-wide sale.
Instead of going in and manually editing each product, you can download this form from Wix, come to this column, and add an amount or percentage across all or some products. Then you would just upload this form again, and you've updated your entire storefront in just a few minutes' time. Next, we have inventory.
You could choose whether you want Wix to manage this, but it does ensure that someone can't buy a product if they have sold out. I've left the weight column blank and will add shipping details manually, but if you know the product weight, you could choose to add it here, and then an internal data point for the product cost if you want Wix to keep track of your margins. If you added product variants, this is where you can begin adding them.
In this case, my product variant is size. Wix has two options here: the first being color and the second being drop-down. I highly recommend using this resource guide I mentioned above.
It's also in the video description so you know exactly how to format this information in your file. There are a ton of different options that will require some trial and error depending on your product type. In the product option description 1, you add all the variants for that particular product: colors, or in this case, sizes, separated by a semicolon.
Then, under each variant, you list that corresponding size or color. I'm now going to skip ahead to the custom text field for the last product that I have, which is a wooden board that you can personalize. I will add my text and a max number of characters for the buyer's response, and then true, indicating that this is a required field.
Before we upload our file to Wix, make sure that it's saved to your computer. When you've finished, you can upload your CSV file to Wix, located on your computer, and click open. You'll then press continue and wait for it to upload.
If there are any errors—and there might be the first few times you try it—Wix will indicate where those errors are and provide suggestions on how to fix it. If there are no errors, you can just click import. If there are errors, you can either choose to edit your file again or manually edit the products like we did earlier.
Once your products have been added, you can click into each product. In this case, I'm going to add the missing images since I wasn't able to upload the URL file from earlier. You can add images or edit additional information like we did earlier.
Now that you have all of your products in the management system, you can manage it easily in the product dashboard, such as adjusting the inventory without having to go into each product, and creating new product collections or adjusting the current categories, including editing images, deleting them in their entirety, or simply editing them to make it easier for both you and your clients to find and sort your products. Before you can begin selling your products, you'll need to connect a payment method in Wix, because after all of this hard work, you better be getting paid. Select Connect Payment Method.
Select whether you want to accept credit and debit cards or just PayPal. You'll then need to select what type of payments you're willing to accept, and then select Continue. This next step is where you'll need to upgrade your site to either a core or a business plan to start accepting payments with Apple Pay, credit and debit cards, and Google Pay.
When you purchase one of these two plans, you also get a free custom domain, so your website will no longer have any Wix branding or trademarks. A good way to compare which plan would be best for you is to compare all of the plan features. Once you've upgraded your site and published it, you can begin making sales.
You'll need to set up shipping so that you can print shipping labels, if you wish, directly in Wix. Once you start making sales, you'll be able to track them here in your sales dashboard. You can also manually create an order, so if you were to accept an order offline, like at a market or on the phone, you can keep track of your inventory and still ship using Wix for your inventory management.
There are lots of helpful reference guides in Wix from multiple countries, so once you get the basics figured out, which hopefully this tutorial covered for you, you can then continue to expand your business and explore all of the integrations that Wix offers. I wish you great success in the launch of your online shop. If you have created a shop in Wix, let me know in the comments below.
And don't forget to subscribe to our channel so that you can see more videos on topics like this. Thank you for watching.
