WooCommerce Setup: Install, Yen Currency, Shipping, Payments and Launch

This article is a localized edition of the Japanese original. Read the Japanese original

WooCommerce is a plugin that adds online store features to WordPress. This article walks through the initial setup, from installation until the store can take orders, following the screens of WooCommerce 11.2.2 (the latest version as of November 2026; it requires WordPress 7.0 or later and PHP 7.4 or later). Item names and locations may change between versions.

Back up the whole site before you start. If you are adding WooCommerce to a live site, it is safer to try it on a staging environment first.

Step 1: Install and activate

In the admin area, go to Plugins → Add New Plugin, search for "WooCommerce", then install and activate it.

With WP-CLI, use the following.

wp plugin install woocommerce --activate
wp plugin get woocommerce --field=version

On activation, WooCommerce creates its database tables and automatically creates the Shop, Cart, Checkout and My account pages.

Step 2: Go through the initial setup screens

After activation, a setup screen starting with "Welcome to Woo!" appears. Click Set up my store and the following questions appear in order.

If you choose a Japanese prefecture as the store location, the currency (Japanese yen), currency position (left), thousand separator (,), number of decimals (0), weight unit (kg) and dimensions unit (cm) are set to values for Japan. You can also click Skip guided setup and enter everything later in the settings screens.

When setup finishes, WooCommerce → Home opens and shows a task list, such as adding products and setting up payments.

Step 3: Check the address and currency on the General tab

In WooCommerce → Settings → General, check the following items.

Click Save changes when you are done.

"Currency position" only moves the symbol; it does not replace ¥ with the Japanese word for yen. If you want prices shown as "1,000 yen" in Japanese style, your theme or a plugin has to handle it.

Step 4: Check the Products tab

In WooCommerce → Settings → Products, check the following items.

• Weight unit and Dimensions unit: kg and cm are common in Japan. If you use weight to calculate shipping, enter product weights in the same unit.
• Reviews: whether to accept product reviews. If you check "Reviews can only be left by "verified owners"", only people who bought the product can write a review.

Step 5: Create shipping zones and shipping methods

In WooCommerce → Settings → Shipping, click Add shipping zone and set shipping costs per zone.

Zone regions can be countries, states/prefectures or postcodes. An order's address is matched against the zones from the top of the list down, and the shipping cost of the first matching zone is used. If a zone higher up covers the same region, a zone below it is never used, so watch the order.

You can choose Flat rate, Free shipping or Local pickup as the shipping method. Free shipping can require a minimum order amount or a coupon.

Step 6: Enable payment methods

In WooCommerce → Settings → Payments, enable the payment methods you will use.

• Offline payment methods: Direct bank transfer, Check payments and Cash on delivery, which are included in WooCommerce. When you enable bank transfer, fields for your bank account details appear.
• Online payments such as credit cards: add and configure a plugin from a payment provider. Supported payment methods, fees and whether a contract is available to a company in Japan differ by plugin and provider, so check each provider's official information.

Troubleshooting steps for payment errors are covered in "What to check when WooCommerce payments do not go through".

Online payment plugins often have a test mode in which no real charges are made. Before launch, run through an order and payment in test mode, and turn test mode off once you have finished checking.

Step 7: Check the automatically created pages

On activation, WooCommerce creates the following pages and assigns them in Page setup under WooCommerce → Settings → Advanced.

A Refund and Returns Policy page is also created as a draft. Write its content before publishing it.

If you deleted a page by mistake, go to WooCommerce → Status → Tools and click Create pages next to "Create default WooCommerce pages" to recreate the missing pages.

Step 8: Check and change settings with WP-CLI

WooCommerce settings are stored as regular WordPress options, so you can read and write them with wp option.

# Store country and state (for example, JP:JP13 is Tokyo, Japan)
wp option get woocommerce_default_country

# Currency display
wp option get woocommerce_currency
wp option update woocommerce_currency JPY
wp option update woocommerce_currency_pos left
wp option update woocommerce_price_thousand_sep ','
wp option update woocommerce_price_num_decimals 0

# IDs of the automatically created pages
wp option get woocommerce_cart_page_id
wp option get woocommerce_checkout_page_id

Valid values for woocommerce_currency_pos are left, right, left_space and right_space.

Commands starting with wp wc use the WooCommerce REST API from WP-CLI. For permission checks, pass an administrator's username with --user.

# Create a test product
wp wc product create --name="Test product" --regular_price=1000 --status=draft --user=admin

# List the Status → Tools items and recreate the pages
wp wc tool list --user=admin
wp wc tool run install_pages --user=admin

Step 9: Launch the store

On a site where WooCommerce was newly installed, the store starts in "Coming soon" mode. In this mode, visitors who are not logged in see a coming-soon notice when they open the store pages.

Once test orders work without problems, select Live in WooCommerce → Settings → Site visibility and save, or launch from the Launch your store task in WooCommerce → Home.

When removing WooCommerce

Deleting the plugin in the admin area leaves the data behind: products, orders, WooCommerce pages, tables and more. If you also want to delete the data, add the following line to wp-config.php before deleting the plugin.

<?php
// Also delete products, orders, pages and other data when WooCommerce is uninstalled
define( 'WC_REMOVE_ALL_DATA', true );

Data removed this way cannot be restored. Back up the database first. Remove this line once the deletion is complete.

Summary

• In the setup screens after activation, enter your situation, store name, industry and location. You can change them later in the settings.
• In Settings → General, set the currency to Japanese yen, the currency position to left, the thousand separator to , and the number of decimals to 0.
• Set up shipping zones, shipping methods and payment methods, and try an order in test mode.
• New stores start in "Coming soon" mode, so once you have checked everything, set Site visibility to Live.

Questions about WordPress? The publisher of this site is based in Japan and replies in Japanese. Contact (Japanese)