Sell online — from a shop that is yours

Why a shop of your own

Selling on Shopee or Lazada is a quick start, but every order pays a commission, every shop looks the same, and when the platform changes its rules you change with it. With a shop of your own, customers buy from you directly, you set the prices and promotions, and the customer list is yours.

WooCommerce is a free, open-source shop that runs on WordPress. A lot of the world's online shops use it, and there is a plugin for nearly everything: shipping rates, memberships, coupons.

What the shop comes with

Usually the first sale waits on renting hosting, installing WordPress, setting up a database and finding a way to get order emails out. On Erawan that is done when you press the button.

• Thai, priced in baht. The country is set to Thailand and the clock to Thai time.
• Order emails to you and to the customer, with no mail server to set up.
• A database of the shop's own, shared with no other shop and backed up every hour.
• The shop's own https address, working as soon as the shop is up.

1. Create the shop, and set your email and password

Press this link to create your WooCommerce shop. If you have no Erawan account yet, you are taken to sign up first.

It then takes you to the shop's Secrets and waits for two values. You choose both: they are the email and password for the back of your shop. Press Set value and fill them in one at a time.

• The shop owner's email. Use your real email. It is your sign-in name, and the shop sends every new order to it.
• The password for the back of your shop. Make a new one here, long and used nowhere else. A password manager can generate it.

Once both are in, the rest happens by itself: it installs WordPress and WooCommerce in Thai and creates the administrator from the email and password you set. Setting them first means the back of the shop is yours from the first minute. There is no moment when someone else could open it and make themselves the owner.

2. The shop and its admin

Your shop has two addresses, both starting with the app name you chose when you pressed deploy.

• The shop, https://yourshop.erawan.app. Customers browse and buy here. At first it shows a “coming soon” page, because a new shop is not open for sale yet.
• The admin, https://yourshop.erawan.app/wp-admin/. You add products, see orders and set up the shop here, signing in with the email and password from step 1.

Both links are on your app's page in the console too: Open site goes to the shop and Open admin to the admin.

The first time in, WooCommerce asks about the shop: its name, what you sell and where it is. Then it gives you a checklist: add products, choose how you get paid, launch the shop. The currency is already baht and the menus are already in Thai. To run the admin in English instead, change Settings → General → Site Language.

The “coming soon” page and the theme's footer links (Blog, About, FAQs) are in English. Change them to your shop's own words in Appearance → Editor.

3. Take bank transfers

Most Thai online shops are paid by bank transfer, and WooCommerce has that built in, with no plugin to add.

In the admin, go to WooCommerce → Settings, open the Payments tab, find Direct bank transfer and turn it on. Enter the account name, account number and bank. Customers see these details after they place an order, and in their order email.

An order paid by transfer waits as On hold under Orders. When the money is in your account, open the order and change it to Processing. The customer is emailed that the order is being prepared. Once it has shipped, mark it Completed.

Email from the shop

Email comes with the Hobby plan: 500 a month, and each recipient counts as one. When a customer orders, the shop sends two, one to you and one to the customer, and when you change an order's status the customer gets another.

Mail goes out from an Erawan address, but the sender name customers see is your shop's, and a reply reaches the shop.

What it costs, and what is yours

One shop fits the Hobby plan, ฿99 a month during the launch, a flat price that does not rise with visitors. See every plan

Products, orders and customer details are in your shop's own database, backed up every hour. The shop is the same WordPress and WooCommerce other shops run, unmodified, so the day you want to move, you move it as you would any WooCommerce shop.

Your own domain

To put the shop on your own domain, such as shop.yourshop.com, add it on the app's Domain name tab, on Hobby and above. The .erawan.app address keeps working, and nothing in the shop needs changing. Setting up DNS is in Use your own domain.