Longreads is an online publication dedicated to the best storytelling in the world.

Now, in addition to purchasing memberships, Longreads supporters can wear their loyalty on their sleeves (literally) by shopping for totes, caps, shirts, and more — Longreads recently launched a merchandise store powered by WooCommerce and Printful.

How are they able to run an eCommerce shop with limited time? Was it easy to set up? What did they learn about sales tax and anti-fraud? Read on for these answers and more.

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They say necessity is the mother of invention. For Dutch entrepreneur Marien Klootwijk, this rings true: In 2012 he needed to replace an expensive pair of sunglasses, was disappointed with the selection within his price range available in The Netherlands, and was inspired to launch Mariener Eyewear.

From clear vision to competitive company

Even in the beginning, Marien had a clear idea of what his company was about. “Mariener offers no-nonsense eyewear with a clean, high-performance design at entry-level prices,” he says.

Representing The Netherlands in his branding was also important, demonstrated by generous splashes of orange, the national color of the country, throughout his website.

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Many WooCommerce merchants know about chargebacks and how to prevent them — but in case you don’t, here’s a quick overview of the key details regarding chargebacks and some preventative steps you can take today.

Why do chargebacks exist?

A “chargeback” is when a customer recalls a payment. While they can be extremely costly for retailers when abused, chargebacks exist to offer consumers protection for purchases.

The Fair Credit Billing Act of 1974 established rules for disputing credit card charges. Protections provided by the act include:

• Giving consumers 60 days to dispute a charge that was unauthorized, for the wrong amount, or for a purchase that was never delivered.
• Allowing consumers to instruct their credit card issuer to withhold payment during a dispute with a merchant.
• Limiting the amount of time for acknowledging a dispute and investigating it.
• Requiring written notification of a credit card dispute, unless the card is stolen.

The result of these protections? Chargebacks.

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Could a minor adjustment increase your online store’s profits by 10%, 30%, or even 50%?

Some of the world’s biggest companies, including Amazon, say yes. A few tiny changes can boost order size and profits, and help build better customer relationships.

One way to do this? Cross-selling. If you’re not doing it yet, you should be. Let’s look at how cross-selling works, why you need it, and how to get started.

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From military-grade shelters to DNA testing for dogs: we use WooCommerce to help all kinds of clients grow their businesses. Here’s the story of how we worked with Micah and Adriana to turn their own passion for dogs into an online canine genetic testing service, so all dog lovers can learn more about their canine companions.

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You’re exploring whether Instagram and its one billion users can help grow your business, right?

If you have a WooCommerce store, you have even more Insta-opportunity: Shopping on Instagram makes it simpler than ever to move people from your photos to checkout.

Let’s leverage the power of Shopping on Instagram for your business!

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Wondering if your business should be on Instagram? The short answer is that whatever you’re selling, you should consider it. Instagram now has over one billion monthly users — as of January, 2018, 7 percent of internet users in the United States accessed Instagram once every few days.

And if you’re in certain eCommerce categories or selling a visual product, you definitely should.

Here are six questions to ask if you’re weighing whether Instagram should be part of your marketing strategy.

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Google Shopping ads  — those graphic product ads you see at the top of a page of search results — are a visual, dynamic way to attract online shoppers to your store right from Google.

If you’re selling with WooCommerce, your products can show up there too! To run Shopping ads you’ll need a feed of your products to share with Google — and there are extensions, like WooCommerce Google Product Feed, specifically created to help you do that.

Google Shopping Ads Increase Visibility and Conversions

Shopping ads appear before Google text ads, and include basic product data like titles, images, prices, and reviews, as well as promotions:

You control the product information displayed, which makes it easier for customers are  to find the exact items they’re looking for — and therefore more likely to make a purchase.

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You’re spending a lot of time and money to drive quality traffic to your website. Your product pages look great, and customers love your products. WooCommerce’s stability and performance provide a frictionless shopping experience as visitors navigate your website, adding products to their shopping cart.

And then more than 70% of those shoppers exit your website, leaving those products in their cart.

This is not a new phenomenon. eCommerce merchants have been battling abandoned carts since the first online store opened.

One of the best and most popular ways to encourage people to recover their abandoned shopping carts is with a well-crafted email re-marketing sequence. There’s a problem, though: most other merchants are using the same tried-and-tested re-marketing methods and tools to try and bring down their cart abandonment rates. And there hasn’t been much innovation in this space recently, creating two major stumbling blocks:

• When your competition uses similar strategies and tactics, it’s much harder for you to stand out and clinch that sale.
• Consumers have become conditioned to expect a post-abandonment email that includes a discount.

Can you stick to what you’re already doing? Sure. But by not tweaking and improving the way you are recover abandoned carts, you’re leaving money on the table — to giving it away to your competitors.

At Conversio, we’re focused on helping eCommerce merchants with email marketing and having worked with more than 20,000 customers, we’ve noticed a few emerging ideas that have helped them improve their abandoned cart recovery rate. Here are five of our favorites.

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When you begin to suspect “the way things are” in your industry no longer serves you or your customers, do you keep your head down — or buck the trend?

Earlier this month we chatted with WooExpert Neuralab and today we hear from Herdl: a U.K. agency born from of a desire to shake up the status quo.

Having co-founded Herdl just over five years ago, here’s what co-founder Gareth Morgans had to say about productivity, brand archetypes, WordPress, and WooCommerce.

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This week we’ve been looking at some of the thing business owners should consider when choosing an eCommerce platform. To close things out, let’s walk through how to set up a WooCommerce store — a two-part process.

If you are starting from scratch, head to WooCommerce.com/start to get a basic site in place. If you already have a self-hosted WordPress site or a WordPress.com site with a Business plan, head to the Plugins section of your dashboard to search for, add, and activate the WooCommerce plugin.

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WooCommerce and WordPress are both free, open source software. While this can represent considerable savings, when it comes to WooCommerce pricing, there are still some costs involved in launching a new store.

One of the reasons many people choose WooCommerce is because, like the software itself, costs are customizable — you have a lot more control over what you spend and when than with most other eCommerce platforms.

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Open source technologies are accessible to anyone — free to download, free to use.

They provide a solid framework for your innovation, creativity, and growth and have outlasted scores of competitors, but they do require a bit of hands-on work. In part three of our eCommerce for WordPress series, we explore three topics key to setting yourself up with open source eCommerce: hosting, updates, and security.

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Are you starting an eCommerce business? Or have you outgrown the software you used to launch your site?

Maybe you’re feeling locked in having just learnt that the platform you use owns your content. Or sales are booming and you want to reduce transaction fees!

Today we’re covering how to choose the right platform for your business, the second part of our series for those exploring WooCommerce.

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New to WooCommerce? It’s a free plugin that transforms WordPress websites into customizable eCommerce stores. First released in 2011 by WooThemes, a WordPress theme development agency with roots in Norway, the United Kingdom, and South Africa, it was later acquired by Automattic, makers of WordPress.com and Jetpack. In the U.S. alone, WooCommerce powers a whopping 55% of all eCommerce sites and nearly 2.3 million online stores.

Over the next few days we’ll look at some key questions and topics, starting with an introduction to eCommerce for WordPress. Welcome to Woo!

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What does it feel like to build and launch the official All Blacks Shop for the New Zealand Rugby Union in just four weeks? Blake Skjellerup and Meta Digital could tell you: they built allblackshop.com on WooCommerce with impressive turnaround time.

What did it take to get the iconic sports apparel store game-ready on WooCommerce? Determination, research, and the right partner and platform.

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