7 Ways to Rise Above the Ocean of Competing Products

Online sales in the age of Amazon can be tough for sellers of common products like candles, chocolates, and coffee.

By devoting some extensive and uninterrupted planning time to your marketing, audience, and product line, you can learn how to make your online store stand out and keep people coming back.

To get you started, here are seven ways to boost your sales and avoid getting drowned out by similar, mass-produced products competing for the same buyers. 

It’s tempting to focus solely on your WooCommerce store rather than expand to other marketplaces.  You can retain control, connect with people who love your products, and not worry about additional fees and third parties.

But you’re missing out!  

Using marketplaces like eBay and Amazon in addition to your WooCommerce store allows you to reach audiences you may not otherwise access and build an additional revenue stream. Plus they offer tools that are particularly useful to new store owners.

If Pinterest isn’t already part of your marketing playbook, you’re missing out on an opportunity to tap into a highly-engaged community. Over 250 million users log in each month, actively looking for inspiration and new ideas. 

Pinterest for WooCommerce is a new extension that creates a seamless, secure connection between your store and Pinterest. Get set up in minutes, and start driving sales from Pinterest users as they discover your products.

What is Pinterest, and why does it matter for eCommerce?

Pinterest is a social network that enables you to share and discover visual content, such as images and videos. It’s a bit like sharable bulletin boards: You can pin interesting or relevant content to thematically-organized boards.

Many people use Pinterest as a visual mood board to plan an event (such as weddings or parties), a space, or a creative project. It’s also a great place to explore your own interests – from recipes to tattoo ideas, you’ll find boards full of inspiration.

Branded content with visual appeal finds a comfortable home on Pinterest. Users are open to exploring what brands have to share, and product photography features prominently.

Around 70% of “pinners” say that they use Pinterest to discover new products. Pinterest also drives more referral traffic than other social platforms (33% more than Facebook, 71% more than Snapchat, and 200% more than Twitter).

Want to spend more time managing your WooCommerce store, and overseeing day-to-day business, than handling taxes? The road to compliance need not be paved with bumps and setbacks. It can be as simple as syncing WooCommerce with a software solution and automating the sales tax collection process.

Before thinking about automation, you need to understand the basics. Thankfully, Internet sales tax is just a pass-through tax exchanged between seller and state. You’re not on the hook for paying anything out of your own pocket. You are, however, responsible for collecting the right amount, in the right state, and remitting in a timely manner.

Your eCommerce store can gain revenue from two types of customers: New customers and existing customers. In both cases, you can dramatically increase sales by offering helpful and relevant product recommendations in the form of upsells or cross-sells. 

What’s the difference between an upsell and a cross-sell? 

In brief, an upsell means you offer the same type of product at an increased price. This could be a more robust, more feature-rich, bigger, or more customized version of the product. “Would you like to upgrade to a larger size?” is a simple example of an upsell from takeout restaurants. 

In contrast, when you offer additional product recommendations that complement the original purchase, you are offering a cross-sell. So upsells relate to different versions of the same product. Cross-sells relate to different products.

Consistently upselling and cross-selling to new and existing customers can increase revenue double digits, depending on your business. Not using this time-tested marketing strategy means you’re leaving money on the table. 

A sudden surge in website traffic is every online store owner’s dream.

If you’re already working to promote your site using social media, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), and other marketing strategies, you’ve probably seen a steady growth in your traffic over time.  But what if your store gets a sudden surge of traffic?

Is your website equipped to handle it?  If not, you could encounter a number of problems that could cause you to miss out on sales or damage your reputation:

• Your site’s performance may suffer and your pages may load slowly
• Your website could go down entirely
• Users may experience issues at checkout and with their cart

So, to avoid all of these, it’s important to try to gauge when a spike might happen and learn how to prepare your eCommerce site for a surge in traffic. 

One of the biggest benefits of running an online store is the ability to serve customers across the world. It’s also an opportunity to set up your store to handle international transactions in the local currency.

Do you have concerns about selling worldwide? Don’t.

According to data shared by Pitney Bowes in 2017, 70% of online consumers purchase from international retailers. That’s a 6% increase over the same study from 2016.

Not only are more people shopping internationally online, they’re also spending more. According to Statista, the average order value of international sales is $147.

That’s 17% higher than your average domestic eCommerce order.

There’s a lot of revenue potential, and those statistics prove that customers expect online retailers to sell and ship worldwide. Your competitors are catching on, as 93% of online retailers either plan to or already offer international commerce.

If you want to stay competitive, then you need to meet consumer expectations.

Shoppable Posts Offer a Powerful Way to Connect Followers to Your WooCommerce Store

Over one billion users log on to Instagram each month, and half of those use the popular image app every single day. With the addition of shoppable posts and stories on Instagram, those 500 million users can now more easily become your customers.

A recent Facebook study showed that 70% of Instagram users find new products and services using the Instagram App, and over 130 million visitors tap shoppable posts each month.

Not using Instagram to sell your products? It might be a lot easier than you think.

As developers and online store owners, we often treat accessibility as a bonus.  But it’s really a requirement! Each piece of a website build should be considered from the perspective of all site visitors, no matter their age, capabilities, or impairments. After all, it’s important that everyone can easily use your store and purchase your products.

When it comes down to it, accessible content is defined as:

1. Perceivable.  All information must be presented in ways that users can perceive, no matter what user agents (browsers, screen readers, or other software) they operate or what disabilities they have.
2. Operable.  Visitors need to be able to navigate around the site and use all functionality even if they don’t utilize a traditional mouse.
3. Understandable.  Content, forms, menus, links, and other site components need to be easily understood by users.
4. Robust.  A variety of tools, including screen readers, voice recognition software, and braille readers should all be able to read your content.

But how does accessibility become a core part of the development process?  What factors should be considered and how do you adapt an existing store? What tools can be used to test for web accessibility? 

All of those questions will be answered below, but if you’re interested in a more in-depth look at why accessibility is so important, take a look at The Importance of Accessibility for Your Online Store.

Your website’s designed, you have all of your products created, and you’re ready to launch your eCommerce site.  But with how much work goes into launching a new online store, it can be easy to miss something.  Who knows, you may even be missing something you didn’t know you were supposed to do!

Forgetting a small detail can be as easy as missing that crucial item at the grocery store – but the consequences are much more severe. 

So, to make sure you never get that sinking “what did I forget” feeling, we’ve put together the essential pre-launch checklist. Just like a rocket, don’t launch until you’ve gone through the entire checklist – twice!  

Increase Online Sales Through Strategic Upselling, Discounts, and Bundling

It’s a lot easier to increase revenue from your existing customer base than it is to attract new customers. One way to do that is through upsells at the point of purchase.

The key to successfully increasing eCommerce sales through upselling is to add value to your customers’ shopping experience with your product and add-on recommendations. Trying to sell additional products without demonstrating their value may cause you to lose the sale altogether. 

However, when your recommendations are relevant to your customers’ needs, they will appreciate having options, and reward you with future purchases. 

Here are four types of strategies you can use to increase online sales:

People like fast sites; search engines like fast sites.  Everyone on the Internet likes fast-loading sites.

Think about how you use the web:  If you’re specifically looking to purchase something, waiting even 10 seconds for a page to load can be insanely frustrating.

As an eCommerce site owner, how can you easily improve the speed of your online store?

By optimizing all of your images for web.

Why is this important?  How do you get started, and what do you have to do?  You’ll find answers to all of these questions below.

By the time a visitor finds your product, you’ve overcome one of the biggest hurdles for eCommerce store owners.  Out of all the millions of products, they’ve landed on yours! 

But now they’re at a critical decision-making point, and it’s your job to guide them from casual interest to making a purchase.  Ultimately, you want to convince them to add a product to their cart and check out.

To do that, you need to write product descriptions that not only describe what you’re selling, but also connect with your customers on an emotional level. 

You’ve been able to overcome the challenge of getting people to your eCommerce store. Congratulations! That’s a big step in the right direction. But what if those site visitors aren’t making any purchases?

Without sales, it doesn’t really matter what your site traffic looks like – it’s just a metric. Sales are what bring in money and keep your business going!

So how do you get more people to buy?

Part of marketing involves getting seen by people searching for a solution to a problem that your product or service can solve. But what happens if people find your eCommerce site and your marketing has nothing to say that draws them in?

One of the best marketing strategies is simply having ‘news’ to share. A new and timely message leads people to turn their heads and give you their attention, even if just for a few moments.

But how do you come up with relevant news that will increase your sales?

We’re excited to announce the arrival of WooCommerce Bookings Availability, a new add-on extension for WooCommerce Bookings.

A long-time request from users on the ideas board, our team has worked tirelessly over the past few months to make it a reality. We hope this gives Bookings users a new way of marketing their availability while allowing their customers to quickly find a booking that works for their schedule.