At WooCommerce we’re passionate about the idea of eCommerce being open. By that we mean open to all budgets and an array of development skill levels, open to all locations, and open to everything from the simplest to most customized business ideas you can throw at it.
Today we’re proud to announce Facebook for WooCommerce, a free integration that opens up Facebook’s audience of more than 1 billion people to Woo store owners. It’s a significant step in our quest to democratize commerce on WordPress.
Read on to learn more about the two powerful ways this extension helps grow businesses.
As manufacturers pack more power into mobile devices — and they become readily available worldwide — our tendency to use them for everything possible has risen dramatically.
Why pick up a laptop or sit in front of a desktop computer if you can accomplish the same task on your cell phone? Larger screen sizes and improved hardware mean they’re just as easy to use for games, research, note taking… and shopping online.
But a consumer viewing your store from their phone is much different than them buying from it. An iAquire and SurveyMonkey study found that 40% of mobile users will leave a website and go back to their search results if the first site they visit isn’t mobile-friendly.
Imagine reducing your bounce rate by 40%. Now imagine what keeping more of those visitors on your store might do for your sales.
If your WooCommerce-powered store isn’t accommodating to mobile visitors, you’re leaving money on the table. Fortunately, there are a few simple ways to improve your store — without undergoing a costly redesign — that will help you keep more shoppers on your store, plus potentially improve the number of purchases they make.
Let’s take a look at how you can unlock WooCommerce’s hidden power for mobile shoppers using built-in design options, ideal payment gateways, and a few amazing extensions.
Potential customers consider a lot of factors before making a purchase, from the visual appeal of a product to its cost to your store’s shipping speed and fees. And if they’ve never purchased from you before, they probably also read reviews — both about you and the item they’re considering.
Both positive and negative reviews have a big impact on whether or not shoppers make a purchase. (Image source: Zendesk)
Both positive and negative reviews can help someone make a decision, with positive feedback making a slightly bigger dent (90% vs 86%).
What does this mean for you? Something big: reviews can make a serious impact on your sales. The more you have, the better a shopper can evaluate a product. And better evaluations mean more purchases and less returns.
Collecting feedback is crucial for your WooCommerce store, and there are some optimal ways to do it. And once you have reviews aplenty, there are some amazing ways to use them, some of which go well beyond the product page.
Let’s take a look at some best practices for collecting and using your reviews with WooCommerce, whether you’re new to selling online or an eCommerce expert.
There are some huge advantages to selling digital products. There’s no need to package and ship anything, fewer costs associated with stocking and managing products, and you can usually get new items added to your store in way less time.
But these products come with their own set of challenges. Have you ever tried to photograph a digital product? Or write a compelling product description about a downloadable file? It’s not so easy.
Setting up an amazing digital goods store with WooCommerce (or simply selling a few downloadable items) takes some smart choices. Lucky for you, we’ve got a whole bunch of extensions that will help make those choices easier, and maybe even kick your sales up a notch.
Here are four extensions we think are must-haves for digital goods stores, whether you’re a seasoned pro or just getting started.
TL;DR: A major update is available for WooCommerce! When you’re ready, Update via your WordPress Dashboard. To make the process as smooth as possible, view our documentation on how to update, make a backup, update your extensions, and finally update WooCommerce.
When you find something online you want to buy, you probably plan on making your purchase with a debit or credit card. Plastic is the preferred method for most of us — it’s convenient, it’s safe, and it’s lightning fast.
But what if the store you’re buying from doesn’t accept credit cards? What do you do then?
Surprisingly, many stores outside of the United States look at taking credit cards as optional, if not something to avoid entirely.
On top of this, plenty of consumers worldwide don’t have credit cards — or even refuse to use them online.
Today we’re going to look at a few ways that your WooCommerce store can accept payments without getting credit cards involved. We’ll also talk about why these alternative payment methods are so important, and how they could boost your sales (or keep shoppers from walking away).
Venture to either end of Pearl Street in downtown Boulder, Colorado and you’ll find one half of the same treat: Cured, a shop that has set its focus on “preserving a personal connection to food” through the sale of fine meats, cheeses, wine, and other unique grocery items.
Opened in 2011 by Will and Coral Frischkorn, a former competitive cyclist and graphic designer respectively, Cured has grown from a single store to a multi-channel business. Their team of 24 now operates two physical locations, an online store, and even offers catering plus courier delivery to hungry locals looking for same-day snacks or party supplies.
Meet Will and Coral, the proud owners of Cured, who were kind enough to share their story with us.
We sat down for a chat with Will and Coral about how they’ve grown from a single store to a veritable meet-and-cheese empire, and their story is truly inspiring. Have a read to learn about how Cured began, how they successfully began selling online with WooCommerce and Square, and what it’s like to run a business as busy as theirs.
We’re also proud to be the first open source platform to integrate with Apple Pay. Open source is the default for us, but it’s exciting to continue that level of openness with such an important payment solution.
Read on for more about Apple Pay for WooCommerce, how to activate it, and why it exactly as awesome as you may already suspect.
When we ask for feedback about WooCommerce, one of the things we hear praised most is its default set of features. For a free plugin, it’s quite powerful, enabling you to sell virtually anything, anywhere, to anyone.
And if you need to go beyond what’s baked-in, that’s where our extensions come into play. These free or paid add-ons extend the functionality of WooCommerce, giving you the power to sell new product types, enhance your store’s performance, and much (much!) more.
There are quite a lot of extensions that you might want to try when you start using WooCommerce, but narrowing them down to the ones you’ll find truly useful can be tricky. So we’re here to lend a hand.
Here are ten powerful extensions we recommend for your new WooCommerce store.
Quitting our day jobs to start our own business is something many people dream of doing. But few of us have the courage, much less the tenacity and staying power to pull it off.
Then there are the ones who refuse to let their dream die. Meet Monique Bernstein and Eli Zauner, the co-owners of Universal Yums. Launched in October 2014, this subscription snack company has gone through a few ups and downs, but has ultimately endured to become a smash hit with foodies — and, surprisingly, redditors!
Meet Monique and Eli, the brains behind the tastiest subscription box on the Internet.
Have a read to learn how one couple turned a small investment into a unique subscription, why they think the little details set them apart from other monthly food boxes, and their advice for starting your own dream business.
We’ve written in the past about how WooCommerce can be used for unique store setups — memberships, nonprofits, subscriptions and more. But a lot of you choose Woo because it’s a great platform for a simple store selling physical goods.
WooCommerce gives you a fantastic way to start selling and shipping your products fast, no matter what you sell or where you want to sell them. Sometimes, though, you might need a few more tools to take your store to the next level.
In this post, we’ve collected some of our favorite extensions for stores specializing in physical goods. Have a look and see if you find a new favorite!
Some of you might have spotted a change to WooCommerce.com made last week, on Thursday to be precise. WooCommerce.com now requires a WordPress.com account to manage your purchases, tickets and subscriptions.
tl;dr: We believe this change brings many benefits, and are dedicated to improving the account management experience for developers. If you need help merging a WooCommerce.com account read our documentation.
Email marketing has long been — and remains — a popular method for acquiring customers and boosting sales. And it’s no small wonder, with 91% of consumers in the United States checking their email every single day.
Finding the right strategies to use in your emails is a tricky thing. You need to think about what messages your customers will respond to, what calls to action they’ll click, and what will even make them open an email in the first place. You also need to review and improve upon your strategies so you keep making money.
Here at WooCommerce, email is a big part of what we do — it’s how we communicate with our customers, not to mention the community. Over the last few years, we’ve spent a lot of time experimenting with and learning from email. Now we’re ready to pass those learnings along to you.
Today we’re going to share some of the best things we’ve learned about email subject lines, graphics, and length so you can use our experiments to grow your own store and improve your customer communication.
Resources are limited for many nonprofit organizations. It’s crucial for these companies to do their best work while making the most of what they have.
Since WooCommerce is free to use, open source, and works with WordPress, it’s the platform of choice for many nonprofits. WooCommerce lets these businesses accept donations online, sell products to support their cause, or both.
Building a robust, fully functional nonprofit website with WooCommerce isn’t hard — but you have to know what you really need. Which extensions will increase your donations, spread the word about your cause, and get more people involved with your organization? You don’t want to spend money on something only to find out it won’t help.
In thise post, we’ve collected seven extensions that we think will help nonprofits using WooCommerce be more successful online. Keep reading to find out what they are and how you can start using them now.
Once you’ve made the decision to build a store with WooCommerce, you don’t want anything to slow you down.
If your store isn’t built with longevity in mind, however, you could run into trouble as time goes on. You might see product pages load slowly, extensions stop functioning, or even encounter serious issues like data loss or security breaches.
These are all issues that will ultimately lead to one thing: a decline in — or complete loss of — paying customers.
To keep your WooCommerce store profitable, you need to build it with long-term stability, safety, and performance in mind. Let’s take a look at how you can build a WooCommerce store that will last for months, years, and beyond.
Your store would be nowhere without your customers. They determine which products sell, how much money you make, and how successful you’ll ultimately become.
If you want your store to be more successful — and to make more money — you should start thinking about building relationships. Creating and nurturing long-lasting relationships can lead to higher sales, better shopper satisfaction, and the acquisition of even more loyal customers.
Let’s take a look at a few ways you can start building solid customer relationships. We’ll also explain the ways these connections will benefit you in the long term, even if you sell products shoppers will only buy once and hopefully never purchase again.
