how do i add a shop to a website that already exists

business · 2026-10-04 · 3 min

adding a shop to an existing site is usually one of three things: a plugin that turns the site into a store, a hosted store with a buy button you paste into the pages, or payment links for a handful of products. the choice depends on how many products, how they ship, and who is going to manage orders at nine in the evening.

the options

woocommerce is the wordpress route: free plugin, then a stack of extensions for shipping, invoices and payments, and a server that can handle it. shopify is the hosted route: monthly fee, apps for everything, and a buy button you can paste into an existing site so the catalogue stays on shopify. snipcart and stripe payment links sit in between: you keep the site, they handle cart and payment.

the part nobody quotes

a shop is not a page with a cart. it is stock, shipping zones, taxes, invoices, returns, and someone answering when a parcel is late. in italy the electronic invoice goes through the right system, vat rates differ by product, and shipping costs more than people expect once you count packaging and the trip to the post office. decide these before choosing the software.

start smaller than you think

if you sell five things, a page per product with a stripe payment link and a form for the address is a legitimate shop. it does not scale, and it will teach you what people actually order. move to woocommerce or shopify when the manual work becomes the bottleneck, not before.

faq

can i keep my existing site and add shopify?

yes, with the buy button: products and checkout live on shopify, the button is a script you paste into your pages. you pay shopify and you keep your design. the downside is two systems to update and a checkout on another domain.

is woocommerce cheaper?

the plugin is free; the running cost is hosting that can handle it and the extensions you end up needing. on a small shared host, a woocommerce store with a few hundred products will feel slow, and that shows up in sales.

do i need a shop at all?

if you sell one product or a service, a page and a payment link are enough. a catalogue of ten things with variants and shipping is where a real store starts to pay for itself.