WooCommerce is my go-to plugin for processing orders on almost every membership site I build. It is so flexible that it is hard to beat.
I used to use ThriveCart, but ended up eventually finding it too limiting. Plus, the fact that it wasn’t fully integrated into my site proved to be way more trouble than I needed.
I’ve worked with a lot of membership site plugins that are themselves capable of making sales. But, most of them aren’t capable enough.
WooCommerce is powerful. It is insanely flexible. It integrates beautifully into my tech stack (which includes WP Fusion, FluentCRM, among others). And by putting CartFlows on top of it, I can make it work exactly the way that I want.
But, here’s the thing…
When you install WooCommerce, it is pretty much a blank slate. It is set up more for physical products at first. There’s some add-ons we need to install. Plus, it does a lot of advertising for WooPayments and other things I don’t care about.
So, let me share with you the actions I take after doing a fresh install of WooCommerce. Since most sites I am building are selling virtual products (like services, memberships, courses, etc.), that’s what we’re going to aim for. And we’re going to turn off everything we don’t need.
In This Post…First things first… install the WooCommerce plugin. It is free. Just search for it in the plugin database and install and activate.
You will first be presented with a welcome wizard.
Now, I don’t usually go through this wizard. Instead, I click the link in the upper right to “skip guided setup”. When you do that, it will still force you to choose a location for your business. So, I do that and get out of the wizard.
You’ll then be dropped into the WooCommerce welcome screen. It has a setup checklist, an “inbox” so Woo can promote to you, etc. We’re going to see about turning almost all of this off. We’ll start by hiding the setup list on the “home” screen.
You can do the same almost down the whole screen. Hide the task list. Dismiss everything in the “inbox”. When you’re done, the WooCommerce “home” screen is way simpler and it isn’t bugging you all the time.
Next, you’re going to see that the “Payments” menu item is showing a “1” next to it for something pending. That’s because they really want you to use WooPayments.
Now, personally, I prefer to use Stripe. WooPayments works fine, though. This is just a matter of preference. Woo makes some money when you use WooPayments. And it is well integrated into WooCommerce. So, this one is up to you. But, I pretty much dismiss it by hitting the “No thanks” option.
When you do that, it gets rid of the “Payments” menu, too. Makes things even simpler.
Another thing…. but the WooCommerce “home” screen also has a Stats Overview section. But, they use it to promote Jetpack. I strongly recommend you not use JetPack. It often bogs down sites and it sends a ton of data to Automattic so it is a big privacy violation. So, hit the “No Thanks” on Jetpack, too. You can get basic sales stats without Jetpack.
OK, things are looking cleaner. Now we’re going to head into the settings…
WooCommerce Setup: The SettingsOnce we pop into the Settings area for WooCommerce, we can disable some other things we’re not likely to use on a site selling virtual products.
First things first, though… enter your business address.
Then on the Products tab, I disable Product Reviews. No site I build has a need for this functionality since we’re only using WooCommerce for order processing and not a product catalog.
Next, I head on over to the Inventory section under “Products” and I disable stock management.
Next, I pop on over to the “Accounts & Privacy” section. I make the following changes:
Next, I head on over to the “Advanced” tab. And I make these changes:
By default, the “high-performance order storage” option on this screen is enabled and you should definitely leave it this way. It is a much more efficient database setup. The only purpose for the “legacy” setup is if you simply have to use some old extension for Woo that isn’t compatible with HPOS. But, frankly, you shouldn’t use such a plugin because that means they may not be maintaining it.
Core Plugins I Almost Always Add To WooCommerceOne of the great things about WooCommerce is all of the extensions. You can basically make WooCommerce do and act however you want.
That said, extensions can be quite expensive. Plus, the more of them you have, the beefier the setup gets and that can be a drag on performance.
Here’s what I almost always add, though…