Pricing physical products is easy. You know how much it cost to produce the product, and you base your price on how much profit you want to make. With digital products, it’s a whole different ballgame.

You can’t price your digital product the same way you sell physical products. They’re different beasts altogether. Many new merchants make this mistake, and it costs them, vital customers.

There’s an undeniable allure of digital products. There are no materials (other than digital applications needed, of course), no shipping costs, no manufacturing, no complex storage, etc. You make it once and you sell an unlimited supply.

With so many benefits, it’s easy to see why digital products are becoming a huge trend in eCommerce. So what are people selling? These are the digital products we’ve been seeing all over the web recently:

• Online Courses
• eBooks
• Software
• Graphics and Digital Arts
• Photography

With so many options, how do you know where to begin when it comes to pricing? The go-to philosophy of pricing physical products doesn’t always translate. Where does that leave your online store?

If you’re trying to break into the world of eCommerce for digital products, you need to get your pricing strategy right. Pricing is one of the famous Four Ps of Marketing, so don’t overlook its role in your business.

Here are six strategies guaranteed to sell your digital product.

When Chris Harvan and his wife – both artists – went through a painful season, losing a number of people close to them in a short space of time, their response was to make art.

Woodwork, sculpture, and creative expression helped them navigate their grief, and they decided to find a way to share this discovery. Today, Memento’s striking cremation urns and commemorative products can be purchased in funeral homes and online.

There’s a rocket-shaped child urn that will stop you in your tracks. It is incomprehensible how someone in a position to need a child urn must feel – yet these are Chris’s customers.

His mission is “to nourish human need and hopefully ease even the smallest bit of anguish in times of loss.”

Here’s the story of how this empathetic and inspiring deathcare industry business came to be – including learnings, challenges faced, and the power of shared experience.

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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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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When shoot day arrives, there are a few steps you need to keep in mind when it comes to styling, lighting, and camera settings.

Styling and backdrop

Traditional product images are shot with a seamless white or neutral backdrop. This simplifies the editing process and gives the product a clean and focused appearance.

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Have you ever found yourself browsing an online store because a beautiful image showed up in your Twitter feed? Welcome to the power of eCommerce product photography!

If you’re launching a WooCommerce store, photos are one of your most impactful sales tools.

Good eCommerce photography attracts the right customers, tells a story, and lifts the overall quality of a store. Bad eCommerce photography can erode trust, turn customers off, and even be misleading, causing returns and hurting your bottom line.

What if you know nothing about product photography?

Then you’re in the right place — learn how to plan a photo shoot and get publish-ready photos.

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Neil Whippey and Shami Radia, the founders of Eat Grub, are on a mission to “change the way the West eats”. With their successful eCommerce business, this London-based duo is promoting insects as a sustainable and nutritious source of food – one delicious snack at a time.

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The search for healthy food is no piece of cake.

It’s easy to get trapped, bouncing between grocery stores with tiny “Health Food” sections (what exactly is the rest of the store offering?) and stopping at multiple, specialized shops along the way, possibly never really finding what you want.

Around the world, healthy food store owners strike out with a vision of helping their clientele eat better. But it can be hard to make an impact — and a profit — selling specialized products in a small location.

That’s where WooCommerce swoops in to make a connection. You might think that it would be tough for stores with perishable goods to tap into eCommerce, but here are seven fresh and engaging retailers that have found success in this growing segment of the market.

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So you’ve made the decision to launch a new store using WooCommerce. The first few things you’ll do are choose a hosting solution and order your new domain name, then you can get started on setting everything up, and getting ready for launch.

But wait! What if someone visits your site while you’re working on it?

Welcome to to the useful world of Coming Soon or pre-launch landing pages. Let’s take a look at why it’s a good idea to set one up and how to add one to your store for free.

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Every new shop builder has the same goal: to make money from their eCommerce site. However, the first few transactions can sometimes be the most difficult to make since these are the sales that put your strategy, your store, and your patience to the test.

Luckily, the early days of any business offer the perfect opportunity to listen, learn, and experiment with different sales tactics. To help you get started, we’ve compiled ten ways to make your next sale with WooCommerce that will help you now and throughout the lifetime of your online store.

Let’s put some wind in your sales.

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One of the single best ways to create repeat customers for your eCommerce store on WooCommerce, or any eCommerce platform, is to give them an effective post-purchase experience. After all, retaining a customer is easier than acquiring a new one.

Let’s explore four ways to keep your customers engaged post-purchase.

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You generate more data the longer you run a store, but when you’re first opening shop and finding your feet, you have very little of it: no orders, no customers — just infinite potential. As your business grows and orders begin to come in, the amount of data you’re handling daily increases exponentially.

Those first five, ten, perhaps even one hundred orders are easy to handle — you could probably remember each and every customer and order off the top of your head! But analyzing your store’s data from memory doesn’t really scale.

I have a saying that applies not just to the eCommerce world but also any problem you run into while running a business:

The first step to making anything better is understanding it.

I want to talk about understanding your WooCommerce data through the art of segmenting. Once you have a handle on data segmentation, you’ll start to see your store and its customers in a completely different light. These revelations can be used for acting on your data, whether it’s figuring out which products need to be restocked or proactively finding orders that need your attention.

We’ll start with the basics of segmenting and why it’s important, then move on to how to get started and whether Metorik might be a good addition to your store.

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As an online seller, chances are you buy the products you sell from a wholesaler or other supplier. Or, if you’re a crafter or manufacturer, you most likely buy the component parts of your products somewhere.

The good news is that, in the U.S., you can buy products or component parts you intend to use for resale without paying sales tax. You can do this by presenting a resale certificate – also known as a “reseller’s permit” or, more broadly, an “exemption certificate” – to your vendor.

The slightly less good news is U.S. sales tax is governed at the state level, and that means rules and laws on using resale certificates vary from state to state. However, there are some general rules of thumb when it comes to using resale certificates, and we pulled together state-by-state guides to using resale certificates in the 45 U.S. states and Washington D.C. that have a sales tax.

Let’s dig in!

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You’re a WooCommerce store developer with a lot on your plate. The last thing you need are sales tax questions or omissions – an often-forgotten but vital aspect of a website throwing off your development timeline. That’s why we put together the last cheat sheet you’ll ever need for helping clients set up sales tax on their online store.

5 Sales Tax Questions to Ask Clients

There are five essential questions to ask clients before setting up sales tax collection in their WooCommerce store. We’ll go over each one and why you need to know the answer to best provide a full-service sales tax setup.

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In a survey of 1,164 U.S. business owners by Mercury Analytics last year, 42 percent stated that they take credit cards online, while 76 percent reported that they accepted credit card sales in person. In the blend of online and brick-and-mortar sales, what is the state and stance of your business? Perhaps you’re thinking of making a leap from digital to physical (or the reverse) and are weighing your options.

Let’s dive into how to build an omnichannel business and, in particular, how to do it with WooCommerce and Square.

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“Automation” gets thrown around like a dirty word when used in relation to your business:

• “I don’t want to automate customer service, I hate not talking to a real person.”
• “I don’t want to automate emails, they’ll lose their personal feel.”
• “I won’t automate these fulfillment workflows, I want to be sure they’re accurate.”

Too often, we equate automation with call menus — “press 4 if you want me to repeat these options…” — which can be frustrating to work with as a customer. But automation doesn’t have to be synonymous with poor quality and impersonality. It is an investment: automating parts of your business is a way for you to purchase attention, so you can focus on other parts of your company.

As a business owner, maximizing your time spent on innovation or high-impact tasks helps you dedicate time to improvement and growth. Most merchants need to focus on a niche or USP to compete in eCommerce, and hone in on building a brand around what makes them unique. Automating lower priority tasks means you and the people who work for you can spend your time focusing on the things that will really help you compete.

As a shop admin (or a developer helping shop admins!) there are several opportunities for automation to consider, and some strategies to uncover those opportunities.

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