Most people fail at this because they install plugins in the wrong order and then spend Saturday night untangling conflicts. The order matters more than the plugin choice. Here’s the sequence I use, and the specific things that break when you skip a step.
Start with hosting and a clean install, nothing else. Pick a host that gives you one-click WordPress and free SSL — most do now. Before you touch a single plugin, go to Settings > Permalinks and set it to Post name. Do this first because half the plugins you’ll install assume pretty permalinks and quietly misbehave if you leave it on the default. Then set your timezone in Settings > General, because your order timestamps and any scheduled sales will be wrong otherwise, and you won’t notice for a month.
Now the plugin order. Install WooCommerce first and let its setup wizard run to completion, including the address and currency fields. Skip the wizard and you’ll wonder why tax calculations are odd later. After Woo, add a payment gateway plugin (Stripe or PayPal, pick one to start, not both). Only after payments are working do you add anything visual.
The setting everyone forgets: WooCommerce > Settings > Accounts. By default, customers can’t check out without creating an account, or the guest checkout option is buried. Turn on guest checkout unless you have a real reason not to. You will lose sales otherwise and never see the abandoned carts because they never got that far.
Next, emails. WooCommerce sends order confirmations from your server by default, which means half of them land in spam. Install an SMTP plugin, connect it to a transactional email service, and send a test order. If your confirmation email hits spam, your customer thinks the order failed and emails you angry. Ten minutes here saves you a week of that.
Then currencies and tax. If you’re selling digital goods to a global audience, decide now whether you’re collecting VAT or not. This is genuinely complicated and I’m not going to pretend otherwise — but the minimum is turning on the tax settings in WooCommerce and being honest with yourself about what you owe. Don’t leave it default and hope.
Now products. Add two test products before you add your real ones. One simple product, one with a variation (size or license tier). Buy both with a real card in test mode, then in live mode for a small amount. This is where you catch the variation stock bug that bites everyone — if a variable product shows ‘out of stock’ at checkout, it’s almost always a missing stock entry on one variation.
Pages next. WooCommerce creates Cart, Checkout, and My Account pages automatically, but check that they actually exist and aren’t blank. Go to WooCommerce > Settings > Advanced and confirm the page assignments. I’ve seen a dozen stores where the checkout page was deleted during a theme switch and nobody noticed until the first customer complained.
Theme last, always. Pick a lightweight theme, install it, and resist the urge to add a page builder on top. Every page builder you stack on WooCommerce adds weight and a new place for the cart to break. A clean block theme with a decent product grid is enough for a first store.
Finally, the boring pre-launch pass. Place one real order from your phone on cellular data, not wifi. Open the confirmation email on your phone. Click the download link if you sell digital goods. If any of those three fail, you’re not done. Do this before you tell anyone the store exists.
The whole sequence, done without distractions, is a weekend. The people who take three weeks are usually rebuilding the theme four times or debating plugin choices they could have just tested. Pick one, ship it, fix it after the first sale.