Selling on your website

Your website can take money. A visitor picks a thing, types their card, and pays. The card details go to Stripe, never to your website.

This page is the map. Each part has its own page.

The pieces, and where each one lives

Piece	Where
Everything about the shop	Plugins, then Commerce. It sits in the Store & Bookings group.
The things you sell	The Products tab. See Products and Plans.
The Shop page itself	Content, then Pages, entry Shop. See The Shop page.
Your Stripe keys	The Stripe keys → button on the Settings tab
Buyer sign-in accounts	Plugins, then Accounts
Sales at a glance	The Sales and Commerce activity cards on your Dashboard
The card payment	Your own Stripe account
Shipping labels, if you use them	Your own Shippo account

The Commerce screen has these tabs: Orders, Subscriptions, Products, Shipping, Customers, Reports and Settings. Shipping only shows when your store ships goods.

Commerce is for admins. An editor account cannot use it.

What the shop can do

More than you may need. Start simple, and add the rest when you want it.

• Things bought once, and plans paid monthly or yearly. See Products and Plans.
• Sizes, colors and add-ons, each with its own price and stock.
• Stock counts, if you want them. A product with no count never runs out.
• Sale prices, volume pricing, and prices worked out from a size.
• Kits and sets of products sold together.
• Files to download. See Digital products.
• Shipping by flat rate, weight, order price, or live carrier rates, and in-store pickup. See Shipping.
• Discount codes, made in the panel. See Commerce settings.
• Referrals and affiliates. See Customers, credits and referrals and Affiliates.
• Product reviews, proofs for custom work, and reminders for carts left at checkout. See Orders.

What it cannot do:

• Sales tax is for US orders only. There is no VAT or duty for other countries. See Stripe key and sales tax.
• Bookings are a separate add-on, and a booking cannot take a payment. See Bookings.

If either of those is the way your trade works, tell us before you start.

The order to do it in

Work down this list. Each step needs the one above it.

1. Connect Stripe. Stripe is the firm that takes the card payment. You make two keys in Stripe and paste them in. Then one button sets up the rest. Stripe key and sales tax lists what the key must be allowed to do.
2. Fill in the settings. Money, tax, your invoice details, and the countries you sell to. Every shop starts selling to the United States only.
3. Set up shipping, if you post things.
4. Add your products and plans. One entry for each thing you sell. Publish the ones you want on sale.
5. Put Shop in your menu. Nothing links to your shop until you add the link.
6. Buy something yourself, as a test. Stripe has a test mode with fake card numbers, so you can run a whole sale without moving any money.

When an order comes in

Four things happen.

The sale shows up under Plugins, then Commerce, on the Orders tab. Orders covers what you can do with it.

You get an alert. Where it goes is set under Plugins, then Notifications. See Notifications.

The buyer gets a receipt from your website. It comes from your own address, with your name on it. Customer emails covers what each email says, and when.

The buyer gets an account on your website, made from the email they paid with. They sign in to it at /account. See What your customers see.