Helping you sell digital goods

Written by Mark Forrester on May 17, 2012 Blog, Product News.

Today’s drop is a significant one as it’s geared around targeting a particular niche that we feel deserves some attention. Designed in-house by pixel wrangler Jay Koster ‘Capital’ is a WooCommerce theme which has been designed specifically to sell digital products. There are options to strip functionality right back which makes this the perfect theme for boutique software agencies. Capital has also been fully optimised for use on hand-held, touch screen devices.

The products page, geared around a small amount of listings.
Dedicated product galleries
Discount Coupon

Grab Capital with a 12% discount coupon, valid until 24th May, 2012. Just use CAPITAL12 as your coupon code on checkout.

Furthermore we’ve developed a powerful extension to work hand-in-hand with the Capital theme, and also released it today.

Software Add-on Extension

The WooCommerce Software Add-on gives you the ability to manage licence keys and activations via your store.

The Software Add-on extension lets you define your products as software via the edit product page, and after doing so lets you define software specific properties:

The software settings

Customers purchase software like any other product, but after doing so (when the order is completed) they will receive an auto-generated licence key from the system within their order-complete email.

Customer order email with their license key attached.

Order emails contain the key, activation email, and activations remaining. You can resend these emails using the in-built ‘send’ button in WooCommerce on the orders screen.

Activations report
If enabled, users can upgrade old keys for a reduced price

If you ever introduce a paid upgrade for software you can define valid upgrade keys, and an upgrade price, which your customers can make use of. They will just have to enter their licence details during their purchase:

The Software Add-on allows you to view purchased keys associated with orders, track activations and view sales reports, as well as having it’s own API for generating keys, activating licences, de-activating and resetting. This API can be integrated into your software/web app to validate licences. See the documentation for more details on the API.

Buy the Software Add-on Extension
Along with Capital, the Software Add-on extension will be freely available to all active club subscribers! Available immediately from your dashboard.

We hope club subscribers will appreciate it’s offering and welcome it is a great addition to their WooTheme toolkit they can use for client work & personal projects.

Please note: Capital does not depend on this extension, and functions out of the box with WooCommerce, but digital product sellers will appreciate the additional functionality it enables.

WooCommerce 1.5.6

We’re also releasing an incremental update to WooCommerce with some minor revisions to allow for the software add-on extension integration and future similar projects we have planned.

Aside from support for todays extension, WooCommerce 1.5.6 introduces a new shipping method display for the cart and checkout. We had feedback from several users that the ‘select’ box for shipping was going un-noticed, and we agreed that those methods could be presented better.

Therefore, we have introduced a new radio button display for shipping methods (pictured below). This lets the user see all available methods without having to click the select box. If you don’t like this change, don’t worry! You can put it back via the settings.

Shipping methods have been tweaked

You can view the full changelog for 1.5.6 here.

Affiliates Pro Integration Offer

Finally, our friends at itthinx are running a 20% off offer for their Affiliates Pro for WooCommerce extension up until June 1st. Check it out!

Discount Coupon

Get the Affiliates Pro for WooCommerce extension with a 20% discount, valid until 1st June, 2012. Just use WOOHOO as your coupon code during checkout.

cta-banner-10-product-page-v2_2x

62 Responses

  1. Rahul Sharma
    May 17, 2012 at 5:24 pm #

    Holy Shit!!! This is amazing!

    Awesome theme guys! 🙂

  2. Shane Gowland
    May 17, 2012 at 5:34 pm #

    Wow; this is hugely impressive.

    Is there any chance of getting some demo code for the software activation API for high level languages like Java or C#?

  3. Lee
    May 17, 2012 at 5:34 pm #

    Nice. But I was hoping for Canvas V5!

    • Adii Rockstar
      May 17, 2012 at 5:38 pm #

      That’s coming a little later this month if all goes well. 🙂

      • Don Dowell
        May 17, 2012 at 6:48 pm #

        don’t tease us with this unless you can deliver 🙂

      • Kevin Gilbert
        May 17, 2012 at 7:13 pm #

        Oh, you’re such a tease!! 🙂

      • Serg
        May 19, 2012 at 5:23 am #

        Excellent work!!!

        I’m testing this out and see if can use this theme to make publishers or software owners purchase their own ad. My idea is sell widgets for them to post their own ads.
        I started creating different banners but I need to be careful with the php code.

        Thank you for your advice!

  4. Ronny
    May 17, 2012 at 5:37 pm #

    woocommerce always woocommerce only. Slowly wirds boring. Is to be expected of you once again what else?

    • Adii Rockstar
      May 17, 2012 at 5:56 pm #

      “Did perpetual happiness in the Garden of Eden maybe get so boring that eating the apple was justified?” – Chuck Palahniuk

      • Ronny
        May 17, 2012 at 8:38 pm #

        and there will be this month or even a magazine theme again another Woocommerce?

  5. Sad
    May 17, 2012 at 5:54 pm #

    Wooooo Freaking Awesome

  6. The Frosty
    May 17, 2012 at 6:15 pm #

    The digital goods add-on seems awesome, since that’s what I am using WooCommerce for at the moment on thefrosty.com/. Might have to check it out and play with it.

    Will this work for older orders?

    • Coen Jacobs
      May 17, 2012 at 8:11 pm #

      You could add licences to older orders, but only manual for now. Considering custom code, you could add licences to older orders, based on previous purchases. So yes, it seems like a nice fit for your products, with a bit work also backwards compatible.

  7. lukek
    May 17, 2012 at 6:16 pm #

    Total hats off.

    Really, really good.

    Only wish I knew about this a few months back I would have incorporated it into the software I’ve got released.

  8. Wil
    May 17, 2012 at 6:45 pm #

    Wow! This is coming at just the right time, as I’m about to start a new project for a store that will be selling software – excellent!

    • Coen Jacobs
      May 18, 2012 at 11:38 am #

      Looking forward to seeing your project powered by our new goodies. 🙂

  9. Wootastic
    May 17, 2012 at 6:46 pm #

    The design looks great and the overall concept is pretty sweet.

    I do have a quick question though. Is there any other display options for products?

    I would love to see a grid option with two separate button under the image “add to cart” and “details” or something along those lines.

    Overall I think the theme is pretty cool.

    Good work

    • James Koster
      May 17, 2012 at 6:52 pm #

      There’s not an option to display products in a grid but you should be able to achieve that with some basic CSS tweaks. Be happy to help you out in the forum.

  10. Rickard
    May 17, 2012 at 6:58 pm #

    The license ( http://www.itthinx.com/single-use-single-domain-license-susdl/ )for the Affiliates Pro WooCommerce Integration Pack does not work for us. We need some of the functionallity of the plugin but can not handle such exeptionally restrictive license. Higher price less restrictions would have been fine.

    It would be really nice with a affiliates version of Commission King. One important feature for us would be the posibility to assign coupon codes to affiliates to give affiliates sales commissions.

  11. pedro67
    May 17, 2012 at 7:28 pm #

    I cannot see the theme in my developer-license Dashboard. Please check. Thanks

    • Jeff
      May 17, 2012 at 8:32 pm #

      Either can I.

      • Ryan Ray
        May 17, 2012 at 10:04 pm #

        Pedro & Jeff,

        I see the theme in my subscription, are you still having issues seeing it available in both yours?

        • pedro67
          May 17, 2012 at 10:23 pm #

          now I can see and download it. thanks

        • Jeff
          May 17, 2012 at 11:21 pm #

          Can see it now too. Thanks.

  12. Rachael Butts
    May 17, 2012 at 9:11 pm #

    This is awesome! Will definitely keep this in mind for future projects. There is still a hole in the cart community for WP, so looking forward to testing this one out 🙂

    • Ryan Ray
      May 17, 2012 at 10:08 pm #

      Thanks Rachael!

      Your site is really impressive, nice work on that! Cool to see that you skateboard as well. 😉

      We hope to see you using WooCommerce and this extension in the near future!

  13. YesSIR
    May 17, 2012 at 9:47 pm #

    I like your theme, but I am still waiting user-driven content sharing theme with front end uploading without registration? Is it possible?

    • Gordon
      May 18, 2012 at 1:17 am #

      Why can’t you add that with Gravity Forms integration?

  14. Calzo
    May 17, 2012 at 10:08 pm #

    I don’t understand the theme. There’s nothing that we couldn’t create with Canvas? Am I missing something?
    And to use the screenshots of SMPL is a bit confusing. Still, I’ll continue to pay my monthly subscription in the hope that something even more awesome comes out.

    • Ryan Ray
      May 17, 2012 at 10:17 pm #

      You could technically start with Canvas if you wanted. Just a lot of custom work to transform it to this. Lots of PHP and CSS, to integrate WooCommerce copy the styling and make responsive.

      The point of the theme is that we’ve already done it for you right? 😛

      Canvas V5 is coming next though. Hope that keeps you happy!

    • James Koster
      May 17, 2012 at 11:26 pm #

      You could theoretically create any theme starting from any other theme, no? 😛

      I think you’re missing the design, the layout, the typography and the mobile optimisation.

  15. Marien
    May 17, 2012 at 11:40 pm #

    Much better with the radio buttons.

    Now if only when free shipping is in act, it would automatically choose that, instead of having to choose it yourself.

    (old situation, haven’t tested the new version yet as to free shipping)

  16. John
    May 18, 2012 at 12:05 am #

    If only I could sell recurring subscriptions, then my life would be complete!

    • The Frosty
      May 18, 2012 at 12:21 am #

      Agreed with you on that.

      Also on that note how about paid access for the site or sites on MultiSite.

      • Ryan Ray
        May 18, 2012 at 3:38 am #

        If you guys haven’t yet shoot any ideas for WooCommerce this way. – http://woo.uservoice.com/forums/133476-woocommerce

        Recurring payments and subscriptions are something we definitely want to offer. When is the hard question to answer. 😉

  17. mash
    May 18, 2012 at 7:34 am #

    I have been waiting for almost a month for your digital goods theme, and I am just a bit disappointed with the design. This theme like you said is only designed to sell very few items and geared towards software sales. Yet it lacks templates specifically for that. There isn’t even a page template to highlight product features such as a template like apple feature pages for their products.

    For $75 dollars, was expecting a little bit more to be offered as far as page templates, like maybe a matrix/grid page template.

    Just to share with guys really nice design (in my opinion), here is a design on theme forest for an ecommerce site:
    http://themeforest.net/item/kinetico-a-responsivefriendly-ecommerce-theme/2303611

    • Adii Pienaar
      May 18, 2012 at 8:58 am #

      Capital is a V1 and our V1 strategy has always been to move closer to MVP (Minimum Viable Product). We also believe in KISS (Keep it Simple Stupid).

      The reason for this is that Capital covers a niche and we’re hardly experts of every single niche. So instead of guessing, we release solid V1’s and then extend on that based on user feedback.

      So we’d love to hear what additions / features (in detail) you would include in Capital?

      • mash
        May 18, 2012 at 12:23 pm #

        I am glad you don’t see my comments as a criticism but rather feedback.

        As far as what to look at, I would look for similar features you have available on your current woothemes site. I would definitely consider you guys experts at digital goods and not new to digital sales.

        Here are couple things I would look for in a store for digital goods.

        For the sake of the example lets say I am going to sell icon packs with variations of formats and colors.

        1. Each product to have a dedicated customizable page/post (columns, icons) describing the product.

        Similar to the format you guys have on your individual item pages.
        http://woo.com/2012/05/capital/

        2. A grid to show all the products available

        Similar to what you have
        http://woo.com/themes/

        3. A homepage that highlights key touch points of a brand:
        – Slider
        – The blog
        – Product matrix (or latest additions to the store)
        – Social links
        – Callout boxes to highlight unique selling points of the store

        The reasons I was disappointed with Capital from a design and functionality specifically are:

        1. The home page seems limited. Only highlights last post with no reference to previous 5 posts. Only seems to have a limited scope to feature products.

        2. Capital was the first theme that has a dedicated product page, but again limited as its all on the right sidebar (not the best place to highlight features as people usually ignore that area). And if I have a long list of features, even if I use columns it is constrained by the right box containers size.

        3. Main product / shop page is missing buttons for view more details or select options. I showed my girlfriend and sister the page and asked them to find out the details about the any product. It took them a while to realize they have to click on the item to see more details. Again hardly scientific user research, but the point is people shouldn’t have to guess where they have to look to find out more.

        4. When you go to a particular product page, the price is tucked away in the right corner at the bottom of the featured image.

        5. No product grid option.

        I understand that design can be subjective and these are just through my own perspective. The design is beautiful, but I don’t think its great from a usability perspective. Again my biased perceptions and opinion.

        James, I did have a look at the other woothemes. I was looking for a theme that allows me to showcase product features on a single page for each product. Similar to how you guys explain each of your themes: http://woo.com/2012/05/capital/

        Yes, I can pay to customize and build my own dream theme from woo canvas, but as a base if you are charging $75, my expectations are for you guys to bring something new to the table. I used to be a member of the woo club, but I haven’t seen any reason to renew my subscription, as I feel your themes aren’t brining anything new month to month.

    • James Koster
      May 18, 2012 at 10:54 am #

      Did you look at the product details page? There’s plenty of scope to add features there, indeed the built in ‘mini-features’ shortcode (which you can see on the homepage) is added just for that purpose. If you’re talking about Apples dedicated software feature pages; theoretically you could create something similar using the full-width template, our column shortcodes and some cleverly placed images. I’ll add something to the demo now as an example.

      Most software houses only have a handful of products which is why I designed the product archives this way. Pointless having products displayed in a grid if you’ve only half a dozen offerings, especially when the product images are likely to be quite similar. Having said that, if there’s enough demand for a grid layout, we’ll happily add it.

      The theme you’ve linked to is, imo not tailored for selling software or digital products. If you’re looking for something like that, why not check out our other WooCommerce themes which are more ‘generic’ in design & layout.

    • James Koster
      May 18, 2012 at 12:26 pm #

      Here’s a basic example of a product features page you could create using our shortcodes.

      • mash
        May 18, 2012 at 1:03 pm #

        Thats great!

        But is that possible for every single product?

        • James Koster
          May 18, 2012 at 1:12 pm #

          Of course, it’s just a standard page using our [add_to_cart_url] shortcode for the button and the column shortcodes for the content. Post on the forum if you like and I’ll paste the code.

  18. Sambo
    May 18, 2012 at 11:03 am #

    There doesn’t seem to be anywhere to put the coupon code for the Affiliates Pro Integration Offer…

    • mike
      May 18, 2012 at 12:01 pm #

      Its on their cart page.

      • Sambo
        May 18, 2012 at 12:16 pm #

        Indeed it is! I’d clicked add to basket then gone straight to check out before so had bypassed the cart page! Thank you

  19. Aranza Mendez Design
    May 19, 2012 at 5:18 am #

    The themes are really catchy to sell techy gadgets. I’m pretty sure this will really help a lot to sell your digital goods.. Love the design so much.. Nice job dude!

  20. Fabian
    May 21, 2012 at 12:25 pm #

    Hi,

    I was wondering how secure the auto-generated keys are. What kind of encryption is used? I don’t want to end up seeing key-generators for my software all over the net.

  21. safeer
    May 23, 2012 at 2:37 pm #

    The license keys are not coming with expiry date, How can we track the expiry date of every license which user purchased.

  22. wekhter
    May 24, 2012 at 2:11 am #

    The CSS for the gradient on the cart button (and all like buttons) is messed up in Opera and (presumably) IE10+. The third listed color in the linear gradient should be #EE7701 (orange) as it is in mozilla and webkit-based browsers, but it’s #0178EE (blue) in Opera and IE10+.

    I see that the non-prefixed linear gradient rules are all shades of blue so I assume it’s a holdover from an earlier color scheme.

    Additionally, for some reason you guys have used -ms-linear-gradient for the default state of the buttons but the filter:progid gradient effect for hover effects on everything… filter:progid isn’t compatible for border-radius so everything changes shape on hover and all the amount spans are the wrong shape all the time.

    TL;DR the design has some issues in Opera and looks terrible in IE9 and below.

    • James Koster
      May 25, 2012 at 1:30 am #

      We test all our themes in ie8 and 9 and whilst they don’t look as good as they do in other browsers I think “terrible” is hyperbole.

      I wasn’t aware that one filter supports border radius while the other doesn’t. I’ll have a look into that. Good old IE 🙂

      We don’t officially support Opera, but this should be an easy fix – I’ll take a look tomorrow.

      • wekhter
        May 25, 2012 at 2:08 am #

        Well OK, terrible is a bit of an overstatement (especially when it’s IE we’re talking about, hehe) but I thought I oughta put something a little attention-grabbing since it’s a week-old post. :3

        IE9: As you see, the “smpl” button allows border-radius because it has no gradient applied. The price allows border-radius but because it also has a gradient applied with filter:progid is doesn’t allow the border to actually cut the shape… (Usually I think that aesthetically speaking it’s best to drop the gradients and allow the rounded corners, which is also way more forwards compatible)

        IE8: Never allows border-radius, and also doesn’t understand opacity (except with proprietary rules). As a result, it becomes an accessibility issue as suddenly it’s hard to read.

        Opera: I know you guys don’t support officially, but I really appreciate that you guys still add in the properties! It’s seriously a quick fix.

  23. wekhter
    May 24, 2012 at 3:02 am #

    Oh, I forgot to mention, setting width:960px on #inside (for the demo switcher) really defeats the purpose of having a demo of a responsive theme, since it forces the theme to be at least 960px… or at least it does on my phone. It leaves a pretty poor impression. I have to close the demo switcher to actually get the theme to respond, which is really no fun as while on a phone I’d like to load fewer pages, not more.

    (the messed-up gradients are a glitch with webOS screenshots, not the actual site)

    • mash
      May 24, 2012 at 9:07 am #

      The columns shortcode do not stack either as you would expect from a responsive theme.

      • wekhter
        May 24, 2012 at 3:06 pm #

        That’s actually correct, in a sense. The columns shortcode is just a roundabout way of making floated divs. Although you may be using a responsive theme, the floats would override that. Essentially when a theme “responds” it’s just the CSS having different rules for different screen sizes, which are applied to the main layout.

        You could easily write up some rules to have the columns clear:both and then float:left for larger screen sizes. But at that point you might want to use your own code since there are 20 different column classes…

  24. Anonymous
    May 24, 2012 at 8:41 am #

    I am using an api to sell plugin so should i write code to restrict plugin features if licence is not activated.

  25. Michael
    May 30, 2012 at 7:02 am #

    Where’s this example page gone: http://demo2.woothemes.com/capital/product-features/

    I wanted to use it as an example to build up a similar page using the short codes!

    • James Koster
      May 31, 2012 at 11:20 am #

      Seems to have disappeared for some reason, I’ll see if I can restore it.

      • Michael @latteperday
        June 1, 2012 at 2:29 am #

        Cheers James, looking forward to it 🙂

  26. Hesham Zebida
    June 6, 2012 at 12:25 am #

    The Software Add-On is a fantastic idea, I brought it thinking I can finally secure my plugins in an easy way, then I found out that it’s hard to implement!

    I know you guys do great work, but this one need a well explained documentation and a working example! (or at least mention that it requires some level of coding experience to actually make it work).

    Really disappointing!

  27. Becca Bonneville
    June 13, 2012 at 11:42 pm #

    Great to see some wonderful new add-ons!

    Question: Are you guys planning on adding multiple downloads for virtual/digital goods anytime in the near future? I know this idea has been posted in the Woo Ideas area and is needed by several people. I am loving WooCommerce but really need to be able to have at least two downloads per product since my type of business the files are HUGE if they are only in one download.

    Keep up the great work!

  28. nanaismc
    June 28, 2012 at 3:48 am #

    dear

    would you mind extend woocommerce software add-on and Affiliates Pro WooCommerce Integration discount coupon until 2012-07-06?

    thanks

  29. nanaismc
    July 4, 2012 at 3:53 am #

    dear

    I have purchased this product
    don’t want license key auto send by itself
    need to check each order to add key then send by myself
    how to solve this

    do this because
    sell software Zero inventory strategy

    thanks