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December 6, 2018 - 10 Comments
Black Friday and Cyber Monday are behind us, but there are still plenty of holiday shoppers looking for the perfect gift. With many wanting their purchases by December 25th, it’s critical for you to plan around your carrier’s holiday shipping deadlines and set expectations with shoppers.
To help, we created this chart outlining the important send-by dates recommended by USPS for Christmas delivery.
December 4, 2018 - 3 Comments
Earlier this year, as we were planning for the year and beyond, one thing became clear: we could up our game when it came to understanding who we serve.
While we were already talking to customers, using our Ideas Board for feedback, and working with our customer service teams to hear what customers were saying to them, we wanted to add another dimension to be even more customer-centric: quantitative data.
To get there, we dug into the usage data that users share with us and then ran a comprehensive survey to layer in additional detail. In the process, we learned many surprising things that shape how we make products today – these are the top nine.
November 30, 2018 - 51 Comments
WordPress 5.0 will introduce the new block editor to WordPress. Through a complete revamping and modernization of the WordPress content-editing experience, content will be created as a series of blocks in a brand new interface.
For WooCommerce store owners and developers, it’s the start of an exciting process that will make large parts of the admin interface easier-to-use, and more dynamic – including customization and management of posts and products.
The transition to block-based editing will take place incrementally, and WordPress 5.0 has been delayed, but here is what you can look out for when it drops:
November 22, 2018 - 21 Comments
What happens when the brick and mortar shop you were banking on becomes obsolete? Reinvent yourself with a new eCommerce venture, of course!
For Chris Hugo, founder of Dogs Meow, launching a pet food subscription business was his way of adapting to a changing market. “I spent my life running the family business of DVD rentals,” he says. “As you might have guessed, it’s not the most sustainable business.”
To support his two young kids and three dogs, Chris needed to find a business idea that would keep them all happy. If it could involve animals, then even better.
November 16, 2018 - 28 Comments
If you’ve spent precious minutes in a supermarket trying to decipher which variety of near-identical dry pet food is right for your dog – and even if you haven’t – you’ll appreciate the simplicity of Scratch.
Founded by Mike Halligan and Doug Spiegelhauer in early 2018, this thoughtful Australian startup has three audacious goals: eliminate the guesswork, bureaucracy, and secrecy that dogs the pet food industry, to make customers smile, and to save the planet while they’re at it. And they do it all with WooCommerce and WooCommerce Subscriptions.
November 15, 2018 - 17 Comments
Buyers today can choose products from nearly any place in the world, but language barriers still introduce friction into the online shopping experience.
One solution to this problem is a multilingual eCommerce store, where vendors can sell their products on the international market.
But how do you create a multilingual eCommerce store, and which eCommerce platform is the right one to build it on?
November 8, 2018 - 60 Comments
Website performance is an essential aspect of web design that is often overlooked by agencies. If your site responds and delivers content very quickly, you’ll receive many benefits – including an increase in conversions and better rankings in Google.
At Herdl, we fully appreciate the benefits that high performance can offer across multiple marketing channels and consider performance optimization an integral part of our process.
November 6, 2018 - 18 Comments
If you’re based in the United States, get ready to expand internationally. Shipping internationally just got easier, faster, and cheaper: You can now print international USPS labels right in WooCommerce with WooCommerce Shipping.
November 1, 2018 - 21 Comments
“Should I be selling on Amazon or through my own online store?”.
This is a common question asked by online sellers. The answer? Both.
Today, successful online sellers are those that are reaching out to meet their customers everywhere they shop online, embracing multi-channel selling and giving their products as many chances as possible to be seen, bought and loved by more customers and there’s no better way to get started than by adding Amazon to your channel mix.
Whether you’re just starting out or you already have your own successful online store, here are five reasons why you should consider selling on Amazon.
October 30, 2018 - 19 Comments
Using the powerful WooCommerce platform, we’ve helped a host of businesses improve their existing stores and increase their online revenues.
We’ve also had a number of companies that have come to us for brand new sites in order to build their eCommerce presence from the ground up. Such was the case with Nuria Beauty, a worldly skincare brand dedicated to supporting girls’ education.
October 25, 2018 - 19 Comments
In all the productivity and preparation for the holiday season, some important elements of your business can be overlooked. Over in WooCommerce.com Happiness, we identified four focal areas — two physical, two technical — that can sometimes cause a few bumps in the road, and put a checklist together to keep you covered.
So, here are the four areas to watch over in order to keep your store running smoothly this holiday season.
October 23, 2018 - 46 Comments
Since our last minor release in May, we’ve been working on a variety of improvements to WooCommerce:
To ensure this update is stable, we’ve been doing plenty of testing and QA on our side including a public beta period, unit and integration testing, compatibility testing with our extensions and popular premium themes, running the latest version on WooCommerce.com, and working with customers to do managed updates.
WooCommerce 3.5 is a minor release, meaning it should be fully backwards compatible with all WooCommerce releases since 3.0. However, it’s still considered best practice, and recommended, to backup before updating.
October 20, 2018 - 27 Comments
Lots of posts about eCommerce over the holidays encourage you to get started early. We’ve published a number of these ourselves!
But the good news is it’s never too late to set up a sale, discount, or deal in your store. As long as the holidays are still happening, you can take a few minutes to get in on the holiday action.
Try these last-minute holiday sale ideas now, next month, or the next time a holiday rolls around.
October 19, 2018 - 26 Comments
Once the holidays are over, you can breathe a long sigh of relief. Things can finally settle down and go back to normal, right?
Well… not exactly. With projected record-setting holiday sales come record-breaking returns in January and February. This past year, UPS alone expected to process 6 million returns in the week after Christmas.
After the holidays end, your top priority needs to be satisfying the customers who have ill-fitting, unsuitable, or defective merchandise that they’d like to send back to you. An estimated 25 to 30 percent of online purchases are sent back! This means you have to have a plan to handle post-holiday returns — and handle them so well that these gift recipients turn into bonafide customers.
Let’s take a look at how you can handle these returns and exchanges smoothly. We’ll start with what you can do now, before the season starts, to get your website ready. Then we’ll look at how to properly handle returns and unhappy giftees.
Ready? Let’s get a move on.
October 18, 2018 - 23 Comments
Retailers acquire between 29% and 59% more customers during the holiday period, making the season make-or-break for you or your client’s year.
The first thing you have to ask yourself is this: can your site handle the increase in traffic? As an on-demand WooExpert, we have seen the good, the bad, and the ugly, when it comes to optimized sites, and we want to help you avoid the latter two.
There is no simple cure-all solution, but we’ve assembled a list of 6 proactive improvements you can make to your store right now. The more people that hit your site, the more noticeable the effect of these optimizations will be.
Let’s get started.
October 18, 2018 - 14 Comments
When it comes to online shopping, the holiday season reigns supreme. Between Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and general Christmas shopping, more people are going online to buy gifts for their friends and family. In fact, last holiday season, online shopping generated a record-setting $108.2 billion in revenue—almost a 15% increase from the 2016 holiday season.
Due to the overwhelming popularity of online shopping, you’d think running an eCommerce site was pretty easy, right? After all, nobody wants to deal with crowded malls and holiday traffic when they can order from the comfort of their own home.
But as the store owner, your job extends beyond helping the customer during their shopping journey. A large portion of your work should be spent not just attracting new customers, but also creating marketing and engagement campaigns that strengthen relationships with existing ones. And one of the best ways to boost retention rates is through post-purchase email marketing.
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