A lot of the top ecommerce websites have one thing in common – they feature hundreds of products for you to purchase. However, it’s entirely possible to run a successful store featuring only a single item for sale. How do I know this? 🤔 Because I’ve been running a single product website for more than ten years now (if you’re curious about the backstory, you can read some of it here).
By featuring only a single product, you can streamline your whole operation. Inventory is easier to deal with, as is managing product expectations. Plus, you won’t need to update your catalog as often. Last but certainly not least, it makes developing a dedicated site for your product simple.
In this article, I’m going to talk about when it makes sense to build a website for a single product. Then I’ll teach you how to do it using WordPress and a plugin called WP Full Pay.
Ready? Let’s do this! 🚀
Quick primer on single product websites 🛒
One-product sites can be just as lucrative as those with larger catalogs, and a lot easier to manage.
The term ‘single product website’ is fairly self-explanatory. It’s what you call an online store that sells only one item, and it’s more common than you might think.
Logic dictates that the more products you offer for sale, the better your chances are of converting visitors. However, having a broad product catalog also requires more work on your end. A website for a single product, on the other hand, can be much easier to build and maintain.
The caveats are that you need to pick a product that you (a) will be able to build a marketing strategy around, and (b) you feel confident will sell. In theory, you can build a website around any kind of item. However, single product stores tend to work better in specific niches or scenarios, such as:
- Digital products that don’t have any shipping or manufacturing costs (this is what I do)
- Highly niche products that target a particular type of consumer or address very specific pain points
- Products with powerful branding (or where branding can be made powerful through a solid marketing strategy)
Keep in mind that you will need excellent copy, high-quality product images, and a clear call to action (CTA) if you want your product to sell. That is always the case, of course, but it’s even more important with one-product sites. Let’s talk about how to build your website next.
How to create your own 🏗️
Before we move forward, you’ll need to know what product you want to build your website around. Once you’re clear on that point, the rest of the process is much more straightforward than you might imagine.
1. Choose a web host and install WordPress
The first thing you’ll need to do is choose a web host. Fortunately, top-notch WordPress hosting can be found for pretty cheap these days. Ideally, whichever provider you choose will offer you excellent performance and support, and will be WordPress-friendly.
With most web hosts, all you have to do is pick a plan, sign up, and log into your account. Then, you’ll be able to install WordPress with just a few clicks. The process is usually simple, but you can check out our full WordPress installation guide if you have any doubts.
There are even some web hosts, like Bluehost for example, that make an already easy process even easier by pre-installing WordPress for you when you sign up. In short, there are a variety of solid options out there and they all do their best to hold your hand through the initial stages of this process (i.e., picking a plan and installing WordPress).
My personal recommendations
We’ve reviewed plenty of hosting companies in the past, but if you want some quick recommendations based on direct experience:
- I personally use Namecheap and I know a few of my colleagues who do as well. We all like their service. Although they don’t offer phone-based customer support, their live chat is very responsive and the reps are top-notch. The prices are also very attractive.
- Hostinger is another popular option from among the Themeisle crew. I even wrote up a comprehensive Hostinger review based on a few mini interviews I did with my colleagues who have hosting with them.
- On a company level, we use several hosting companies. For example, the site you’re on right now is powered by Rocket.net. Overall, we are satisfied with it, but for a single product website it’s probably overkill (at least initially). However, if your product gets popular and your traffic numbers skyrocket, then keep it in mind for future reference.
Otherwise, if you want a more comprehensive breakdown of options, check out our detailed list of the best WordPress hosts.
2. Find a suitable theme
⚠️ If you don’t want to learn how to pick a theme yourself and just want my recommendation, you can skip down to it.
The next step in the process is one that you might be tempted to rush, but it’s better to take your time with it. Think of a WordPress theme as your website’s foundation and overall design blueprint.
It controls how your site looks, how everything is organized, how visitors will navigate through your pages, and how your product will be presented. This is why rushing this step can cause headaches later: changing themes after you’ve built out your site often means having to redo significant portions of your work.
Perhaps the most fundamental decision you’ll need to make in this regard, is whether to use a classic WordPress theme or a more modern block theme. This choice will significantly impact your development process – especially if you opt for a classic theme. Here’s why…
Classic themes vs block themes
Classic themes are from the pre-Gutenberg era of WordPress and follow the traditional approach to website building, while block themes were released with WordPress 5.9 (in January 2022) and are built specifically for the newer Full Site Editing (FSE) capabilities that were released at the same time.
With classic themes, your choice becomes more crucial since you’ll be somewhat bound by the theme’s built-in structure and styling. If you go with a classic theme, you’ll need to ensure that it already closely aligns with your vision, as customization options might be limited to what the theme developer has specifically enabled.
However, if you choose a block theme, this initial decision becomes less critical. Thanks to Full Site Editing (FSE), you’ll have the freedom to customize virtually every aspect of your site’s appearance and layout using WordPress’s visual interface. This means you can start with almost any block theme as a foundation and mold it to match your exact requirements, regardless of its initial design.
With that said, if you do go the block theme route, I wouldn’t pick just “any block theme” and then spend countless hours trying to get it to look like what you want. It’s much better to start with something that already closely resembles your desired outcome and then tweak around the edges.
More specific considerations
While making the high-level decision between a classic theme or a block theme, you’ll also want to take into account some more specific factors that will influence what your final website will look like.
As mentioned already, block themes will be more forgiving in this regard because you’ll ultimately be able to change almost anything you want about them, but for classic themes, it’ll be that much more important to pay close attention to the following:
- Homepage layout preferences (e.g., full-width hero section, traditional blog-style)
- How your product images will display on different devices
- Navigation style (e.g., hamburger menu, traditional top bar, or side menu)
- Color scheme and typography choices
- Space for product photos and whether you need a gallery or slider functionality
- Available widget areas for important elements like testimonials or product features
- Footer layout options for contact information and trust signals
- Pre-built product page templates that match your vision
- Options for displaying customer reviews and ratings
You’ll often find some – though probably not all – of these details in the info pages for the themes. This includes both their pages in the WordPress repository and also on the theme developers’ websites.
For example, if you go to the repository page for our flagship Neve theme, you’ll get a lot of concise information from both the written description and the features section:
But you can also go to our info page about Neve, and get a more aesthetically pleasing overview of what it has to offer:
Just about every reputable theme developer will have this type of dual setup for their themes (i.e., repository page + in-house page). Although there are some premium themes that don’t have repository pages and are sold exclusively through specialty shops like ThemeForest.
Where should you begin?
I just a threw a lot of information at you. If you’re feeling overwhelmed by it – don’t worry! Getting started with picking a theme is easier than you think. Dare I say, it’s even fun.
⚠️ Here’s what to do (you can even do this now):
Go to TasteWP and whip up a WordPress test site. It’s 100% free, takes less than 10 seconds, and you don’t need to create an account:
Once you access the site, take a look at the lefthand menu. Then go to Appearance → Themes → Add New Theme:
On the next screen, you’ll get a direct feed that taps into the official WordPress repository for themes. You can begin browsing in the default setting, which is “popular,” or you can apply various filters.
For example, if you want to explore only block themes, then you can click on the appropriate filter:
If you see a theme that catches your eye, hover over it and click on Install, followed by Activate.
You can now play around with it to see if it fits your vision. If not, just go back to Appearance → Themes → Add New Theme and repeat the process from above. You can do it as many times as you want until you find a theme you like.
💡 Friendly tip: Keep in mind that every time you install a theme on the site that it also installs files in the site’s database. Not all of those files are removed just because you install another theme. This might not be an issue if you test out two or three themes. However, if you get overly enthusiastic with testing theme after theme, then the various files might start clashing with each other and create unexpected errors.
This is also why it’s smart to do this testing process using TasteWP and not on your live site. That way you can go back to your website and only install the one theme you’ve decided upon. It’ll keep your database clean (which is crucial for performance).
If you do find yourself wanting to go heavy on the theme testing, I recommend installing a plugin called WP Reset on the test site. It will allow you to reset the database between theme installations, thus preventing any potential file clashes.
My personal recommendation
If the thought of browsing and testing themes doesn’t excite you like it excites me and you’d rather get a recommendation to speed things up, here’s what I’d do if I was in your shoes right now:
Given that the goal is to create a single product website, I’d go with Neve FSE on this:
I love Neve FSE for several reasons and use it for my own personal blog. It looks great, loads fast, and is easy to customize. On top of that, it comes with a setup wizard that makes it ridiculously easy to have at least a skeleton version of your site ready within maybe a minute. Two minutes max.
The setup wizard lets you do things like choose the design of your homepage and customize your site’s color scheme:
In addition, there’s a step where you can add pre-built pages like an About page or a Contact page:
So you could, for example, add either the Portfolio page or the Services page and then edit them to turn them into a product landing page where you’ll showcase whatever it is you’ll be selling.
The convenience of being able to start your website this quickly with Neve FSE cannot be overstated.
I can also vouch for the theme’s excellent support because I know the people who work on it. 😎
And yes, while there might be some personal bias there, it’s not exactly a reach to say that the theme is objectively awesome. If it wasn’t, it wouldn’t have over 153,379 downloads with an average user rating of 94%.
Give it a go. Otherwise, if you’d prefer to try a classic theme, then my recommendation is the flagship Neve theme, which I referenced earlier. Or if you’d like to try a different block theme, then give Raft a shot. I’ve been using Raft for the single product website I mentioned in the introduction and it’s been great thus far.
3. Set up WP Full Pay and connect it to Stripe
With hosting and your theme out of the way, the next important step is to install a mechanism that will allow you to take payments from your customers. The way to do that in WordPress is through the use of plugins.
While there are a lot of ecommerce plugins out there, not all of them are ideal for the needs of a single product website. My recommendation is to go with a beginner-friendly Stripe payment plugin like WP Full Pay. It has a very modern user interface that makes it easy to sell your product.
To get started, you’ll need to install and activate it. You’ll also need to connect it to a Stripe account. Here’s how…
Install and activate
In terms of installation, WP Full Pay works like any other WordPress plugin. From the WordPress dashboard, go to Plugins → Add New Plugin. Then type “WP Full Pay” into the search bar. Double check to make sure you’re choosing the correct plugin (see above 👆🏻) and click on Install followed by Activate.
Connect WP Full Pay to Stripe
There are slightly different ways to approach this, depending on your individual situation. Each scenario has its own tutorial.
If you fall in the “no Stripe account” camp, then you’ll obviously need to open a Stripe account as part of the process. Be prepared to set aside a few minutes to complete this because Stripe makes you fill out a fairly comprehensive business profile:
4. Create your single product
After you complete your business profile, you can get started on adding your product to your Stripe account. From the Stripe dashboard, go to Product Catalog → Create Product:
Then add your product details, set your price, etc:
When you’re finished, you can head back to WordPress and the WP Full Pay plugin to create your first payment form.
5. Create and customize your payment form
To begin, from the WordPress dashboard menu, go to Full Pay → Forms and then click on Add Form:
Next, decide the type of form you wish to create. You can choose from four different types. For most of you reading this, the one-time payment form will probably be the appropriate one for your product:
On the subsequent screen, you’ll be able to customize the form. Just as importantly, it’s also where you’ll connect the product you made in your Stripe account to WP Full Pay so that you can actually start selling it:
As long as you were able to successfully connect your Stripe account to WP Full Pay using the previously mentioned tutorial, then the product you made should automatically populate in the popup window. Select it and click Add Products:
You’ll now see it reflected on the payment form:
And that brings us to the final step…
6. Publish your payment form and start selling
From the WordPress dashboard menu, go to Full Pay → Forms.
Then click on the shortcode icon < > to open up the popup window. Tap Copy Shortcode:
Now go to whichever page or post on your site that you’d like to add the payment form to. This could either be directly on the homepage (if you choose to build a one page website), or it could be on a dedicated product page.
Find the section of your page where you want to add the form, click the little + sign and search for “shortcode.” Select the shortcode block and then paste the shortcode you copied into the block:
When you’re finished, click Save on the top right of the page.
Finally, check the frontend of your site to see what it looks like:
And that’s it. Obviously the screenshot above is overly simplified. When you do this for real you’ll want to make your product page look nicer and ensure it has all the elements it needs to convert your visitors into paying customers.
Final thoughts 💭
We covered a lot of ground here. I hope that with the knowledge you’ve gained that you now have the confidence to move forward and implement the information.
Take it from me: you don’t need hundreds of products to run a successful online store. As long as your website has strong copy, excellent photos, and an attention-grabbing CTA, you can be quite successful with selling only a single item. Plus, it makes store management a lot simpler.
If you’re interested in creating a website for a single product using WordPress, here’s a recap of the steps you’ll need to take:
- Choose a web host and install WordPress
- Find a suitable theme (recommended: Neve FSE)
- Set up WP Full Pay and connect it to Stripe
- Create your single product
- Create and customize your payment form
- Publish your payment form (using shortcodes) and start selling
Do you have any questions about how to run an online store using WP Full Pay and Neve FSE? Ask away in the comments section below!
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