Set up a WooCommerce store for contact lens sales

Wondering how to sell contact lenses online? Our in-depth six-step guide walks you through the process of navigating legal compliance, finding trusted suppliers, setting up your contact lens store with WooCommerce, customizing product detail pages with prescription fields, managing orders efficiently, streamlining prescription verification, and more.

Contact lenses are probably the perfect product to sell. Think about it: of the millions of people who wear them daily, most consider them essential.

There’s ample data to support this. When asked to value 26 different product and service types, from personal health and beauty items to clothing and entertainment, 84% of people ranked their contact lenses as extremely or very important.

And since lenses must be replaced daily, monthly, quarterly, or every six months (depending on type), it’s relatively easy to build a subscription-based business and foster profitable, long-term customer relationships.

But here’s the challenge: Contact lenses are classified as medical devices. As such, selling lenses online isn’t as straightforward as selling fashion, gadgets, electronics, and other non-medical products. You must abide by regulations around prescriptions, strict supplier agreements, liability rules, etc.

In this guide, I’ll walk you through everything you need to know about how to sell contact lenses online. From understanding regulations and sourcing products to building compliant product detail pages, handling day-to-day operational workflows, marketing your business effectively, and more.

By the end, you’ll have a clear roadmap for selling contact lenses legally, efficiently, and profitably.

Here’s a rundown of how to sell contact lenses online.

Disclaimer: This guide is provided for educational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Before launching your store, consult with qualified legal professionals to ensure compliance with all applicable laws, licensing requirements, and prescription verification rules in your jurisdiction.

Step 1: Understand the regulations around selling contact lenses

Contact lenses are a regulated medical product in most parts of the world. However, depending on where you and your customers are based, there are huge variations in the rules regarding selling them. For instance, in:

• The US: You don’t need to be a licensed eye-care professional to sell contact lenses. However, you must follow the Fairness to Contact Lens Consumers Act (FCLCA) and the Contact Lens Rule, which mandate that you verify every prescription before fulfilling an order.
• The UK: Contact lenses can only be supplied by or under the supervision of a licensed optometrist, dispensing optician, or medical doctor. So you must have a registered eye professional on your team or a partner with licensed practitioners to be compliant.
• India: The Central Drugs Standard Control Organization (CDSCO) regulates lenses as medical devices. However, compliance is less centralized compared to Western markets, and major marketplaces like Amazon India offer prescription upload to cover liability.

You can get up to speed with the laws around selling contact lenses by (1) checking your government’s health or medical device authority website, (2) consulting your local consumer protection or trade commission, or (3) reaching out to an attorney who specializes in healthcare or ecommerce regulations in your country.

Step 2: Partner with reliable contact lens suppliers

Without trustworthy suppliers, your contact lens store won’t last long. Buyers want absolute confidence that they are buying authentic lenses. At the same time, regulators will shut you down quickly if you’re caught selling counterfeit products.

Here are your top two options for sourcing original, high-quality contact lenses.

#1: Contact lens manufacturers

You can go straight to the source and buy from major manufacturers like Johnson & Johnson (Acuvue), Alcon, CooperVision, Bausch + Lomb, etc.

The biggest advantage of this approach is the complete certainty that you are buying authentic products. Plus, you’ll get direct access to official product information and marketing collateral.

Of course, the downside of buying directly from a lens manufacturer is that they typically have high minimum order volume requirements. Without access to large amounts of capital and clear sales channels, investing funds to buy thousands of boxes upfront can be especially risky.

#2: Authorized wholesale lens distributors

Authorized distributors buy lenses in bulk from the manufacturers with the intent of reselling them to smaller retailers, making it a more practical entry point for most people.

You can usually trust that they are selling authentic products, and because they usually stock a wide variety of brands and product types, you get access to multiple brands under one roof. This lets you test demand without overstocking.

An added bonus: Some authorized wholesale distributors provide streamlined, low-cost shipping and dropshipping options, which can help you avoid the overhead of order fulfillment.

How to vet contact lens suppliers

Here’s a handy checklist to assess potential lens suppliers before you sign a partnership contract:

Step 3: Set up your contact lens store with WooCommerce

Most ecommerce platforms avoid liability by limiting or outright banning the sales of medical products (contact lenses included).

As a result, you won’t find many contact lens stores running on hosted platforms. For instance,

• Facebook bans all medical devices.
• eBay prohibits prescription devices.
• Amazon tightly restricts prescription contact lenses to approved third-party sellers.
• Shopify doesn’t permit the sale of medical devices via its platform in certain regions and can shut down stores without prior notice.

This leaves most people with one clear choice of a platform that offers complete control and compliance: WooCommerce.

WooCommerce powers 35% of all ecommerce websites globally, so you can be sure its platform can handle your store. And because it is a free, open-source platform, you own your store, its data, workflows, etc., and can customize it to handle prescription uploads and verification in line with regional regulations.

How to sell contact lenses online with WooCommerce

Here’s a brief walkthrough of the steps to set up your WooCommerce contact lens store.

1. Sign up with a reliable WooCommerce-optimized web host like Kinsta (which we use for our own website).
2. Get a professional on-brand domain name that signals trust.
3. Install WordPress and WooCommerce.
4. Run the WooCommerce setup wizard and configure your website:
   • Enter your online store’s details (address, currency, business type, etc.).
   • Configure Stripe, PayPal, and other appropriate payment gateways.
   • Configure shipping settings.
5. Pick a professional, responsive ecommerce theme like Astra, Kadence or Storefront.
6. Add relevant plugins to sell contact lenses in WooCommerce (more in the next section).

Step 4: Configure product pages to capture prescription data

Considering that the standard WooCommerce product detail page is built for non-regulated products like clothing, accessories, books, etc., you’ll need to configure it to be suitable for selling prescription contact lenses. Otherwise, you run into the following issues:

1. Compliance risks. You must collect the full prescription for both eyes (Sphere/Power, Base Curve, Diameter, and, if applicable, Cylinder and Axis) to legally verify each order.
2. Order errors. Missing or incomplete prescription details result in order fulfillment mistakes, unhappy customers, and brand damage.

The exact details vary across regions, but the process to sell contact lenses online is largely similar. You need a system in place to (1) collect prescription details from customers, (2) store those details securely, and (3) verify every prescription with the prescriber before shipping.

Below, we’ll outline two methods to customize your WooCommerce contact lens store’s product detail pages.

Method 1: Use WooCommerce Product Options to collect prescription data

WooCommerce Product Options lets you add structured fields, think: dropdowns, text boxes, file uploads, etc., to your store’s product detail pages to properly capture prescription information for every order.

It is fully optimized for mobile ordering. Fields are easy to tap, dropdowns display cleanly, and upload buttons work seamlessly across screen sizes so customers can order their lenses with ease. And an added bonus is that it improves users' experience on your site.

Once orders are placed, WooCommerce Product Options stores each customer’s prescription information in the order details section of your site’s backend.

Here’s are a few snapshots of how it looks on a demo WooCommerce store.

1: Standard daily or monthly lenses

2: Astigmatism lenses (Toric)

3: Prescription upload

Method 2: Speed up ordering with WooCommerce Bulk Variations

WooCommerce’s standard product detail page’s layout forces customers to select one variation at a time. This works fine for first-time or casual buyers, but it slows down repeat buyers who already know their desired prescriptions.

Worse, it increases the chance of errors because customers have to repeat the process multiple times. Instead of clicking through multiple dropdowns and fields every time they want to place an order, some customers simply want to purchase the right quantities as quickly as possible.

WooCommerce Bulk Variations solves this problem by taking all your product variations (think: Power, Base Curve, Left/Right eye, etc.) and presenting them in a simple, structured grid format. Shoppers can see all available options at a glance and simply enter their desired quantities directly into the grid cells that match their prescription instead of navigating through dropdowns.

The WooCommerce Bulk Variations plugin is best suited for stores that deal with a large number of:

Step 5: Manage your day-to-day ecommerce store operations

How you handle verification, fulfillment, and post-purchase communication will decide whether your business earns repeat buyers or frustrated one-timers.

Here, we’ll discuss the core areas you need to master to run a successful WooCommerce contact lens store.

The prescription verification workflow

If your store’s set up with WooCommerce Product Options or Bulk Variations, when you receive new orders, the prescription data you collected is neatly displayed in the order details inside your WordPress admin.

Here’s a run-through of the prescription verification process: The order is received in WooCommerce → Your fulfillment team verifies the prescription information with the optometrist → Your team updates the order status to reflect the next step, e.g, “Processing” or “On Hold” → The order is fulfilled after successful verification.

Best practices for shipping, handling, and returns

1. Use sturdy, tamper-evident boxes or mailers to make certain that contact lenses aren’t compromised during transit.
2. Offer tracked shipping options to reassure customers when they can expect to receive their orders.
3. Create a dedicated, easy-to-find Returns and Refunds Policy page on your site that spells out exactly which conditions allow returns and which don’t, how refunds are processed, and what customers should do if they receive defective products.

Step 6: Market your contact lens business and compete effectively

How to compete on more than just price

Attempting to undercut giants like Amazon or Walmart on price will quickly burn through your capital. A superior approach is to excel in areas corporate behemoths can’t always deliver: value and experience. This can be in the form of:

Marketing strategies to attract and retain customers

These practical strategies can help bring people to your store and keep them coming back.

1. Create content targeting long-tail, transactional product keywords and content keywords that answer common user questions to help establish your business’s expertise.
2. Set up email marketing workflows that remind customers to reorder before they run out.
3. Offers a loyalty discount (like 5 to 10% off) for customers who subscribe for recurring deliveries to lock in predictable revenue and delight customers.
4. Display phone numbers, email addresses, or even a live chat option to humanize your brand and make it easier for them to get in touch if needed.

FAQs about how to sell contact lenses online

Can I sell contact lenses online?

Yes, you can sell contact lenses online. But because contact lenses are classified as medical devices in most countries, you have to abide by specific regulations for your region.

For instance, in the US, the Fairness to Contact Lens Consumers Act mandates that you can’t ship lenses without verifying the customer’s prescription with their eye care provider. This means that your ecommerce store must have a prescription capture and verification process in place.

Skipping this step and shipping lenses without verification opens you up to significant compliance risks. Case in point: In June 2025, the FTC announced it had sent 37 warning letters to contact lens prescribers about potential violations of the Contact Lens Rule. Each violation could trigger civil penalties of up to $53,088.

How do I handle prescription verification?

Regulators in most countries expect you to ship contact lenses only after confirming that the customer’s prescription is valid.

There are 3 main methods to handle prescription verification:

1. Active verification. After an order is placed, you directly contact the prescribing eye doctor to confirm or deny the prescription.
2. Passive verification. If, after attempting active verification, you don’t hear back within the specified window (according to the Fairness to Contact Lens Consumers Act, 8 business hours in the US), the prescription is deemed automatically verified by law.
3. Direct upload from customers. Customers manually enter their prescription details or upload their valid prescription during the ordering process. Note that you may have to keep those records on file to prove that your business has completed the due diligence.

How do I find reliable suppliers for contact lenses?

Your chosen supplier has direct influence on your pricing strategy, product authenticity, shipping speed, and ultimately, your business’s reputation. Here are the 2 main sourcing options for contact lenses:

1. Set up direct accounts with lens manufacturers.
2. Purchase from authorized wholesale distributors that stock multiple brands and offer a broad product catalog.

That’s how to sell contact lenses online!

If you’ve made it this far, you have a clear roadmap of how to sell contact lenses online.

As we’ve covered, there is immense opportunity in selling contact lenses, and if you follow the steps outlined in this guide, you’ll be able to gain a foothold in the market.

Success in this niche depends on two pillars: compliance and customer experience. So you’ll have to make sure to get both right to stand out even in a crowded market.

Plugins like WooCommerce Product Options and WooCommerce Bulk Variations empower you to build product detail pages that collect accurate prescriptions, make the ordering process painless for your customers, and streamline order fulfillment whilst ensuring that your business remains compliant.

• WooCommerce Product Options lets you collect prescriptions, add upload fields, offer lens-specific choices, and make ordering simple. Customers can clearly provide their details upfront before placing their orders.
• WooCommerce Bulk Variations speeds up the ordering process for repeat lens buyers or eye-care professionals who want to order in bulk. Instead of having to select one product variation at a time, they can use a grid-style input to add exactly what they need in a handful of clicks.

Get both plugins and create your user-friendly, compliant contact lens store now!