Expanding into new markets brings great opportunities and sometimes unexpected challenges. Here are some areas to research before deciding the next steps for your business.

Though the world has become more interconnected thanks to the internet, air travel, and other technological advancements, there are still many local cultural, economic, and geographic differences. And while tapping into new markets is important for growing your business, doing it the wrong way can be disastrous. 

There are five key considerations for successfully going global: language, infrastructure, payments, legal requirements, and cultural norms.

Another holiday season is right around the corner, and we know that it can be easy to start feeling a bit overwhelmed with all of the things you’ll need to do in the coming months. (Plan festive meals! Wrap gifts! Make a resolution! Keep your resolution!)

But if you sell stuff online—and you’ve connected your WooCommerce store to Mailchimp—you can rest easy knowing that you’ve already got the tools you need to sync your customer data, send targeted campaigns, and sell more stuff all season long.

Today, we’re going to share four tips that will help you take advantage of all these powerful tools and make the most of your marketing throughout this holiday season. Let’s get right to it!

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The holiday season is many things. For eCommerce businesses, it’s a golden opportunity to drive more sales as people search online for gifts and everything they need to celebrate the holidays.

Of course, holidays happen all year around depending on where you’re based! But November and December are typically a time of increased traffic and sales opportunities worldwide – and you’ll want to make the most of it.

Here’s how to make your WooCommerce store stand out online during the holiday season. 

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The holidays are your chance to test out all the new strategies and products you’ve been working on throughout the year.

The last thing you want to be during your busiest time of the year is uncertain. You need to go into the holiday season prepared. You need the data to back up each of the decisions you make. And you need to act quickly, or you’ll have to wait until next year to try again.

As the founder and developer of Metorik, I’ve worked with thousands of stores around the holiday season, helping them maximize and understand their results. In this post, I want to share with you some tips that will ensure you’re ready from a reporting perspective these holidays.

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Creating coupons with WooCommerce is straightforward, and coupons are effective tools to market your store and products, convert visitors into customers, and retain loyal shoppers.

But how exactly do you use them to drive revenue and customer loyalty? Here are some tried and tested customer retention tactics with coupons.

Start by collecting email addresses

Do you have email addresses for your store visitors? Collecting them is the first step to a good email marketing strategy: One of the most effective ways to market coupons and stay in touch with your customers is through email.

MailChimp for WooCommerce is your ally here. MailChimp is loved by marketers because it makes life easier. It also offers more than just email marketing tools — for free! Let’s learn how to use MailChimp to display a popup window offering your customers a coupon in exchange for their email.

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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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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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Customer engagement comes from the emotional connection between your customer and your brand. The more engaged your customers, the more likely they are to buy more, promote your brand, and become repeat customers.

You want every customer touchpoint to provide a consistent, inviting experience, so people want to come back for more. In a brick-and-mortar store, you have real-time, human connection. Online, you don’t have a chance to get in touch with a website visitor until they buy something, and your automations and triggers kick in. Right?

Wrong! Modern communication applications let you communicate with website visitors, drive conversions, and build longer-lasting relationships. One great way that you can build right into WooCommerce? Live chat.

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Conversion rate optimization is something we talk about, retweet about, and know we need to invest time in.

What does conversation rate optimization look like for a WooCommerce store? How much does it cost? Are there things that are quick to implement and will make a big difference?

Most importantly—if you have limited time to spend on conversion rate optimization, where should you begin?

Here’s a quick guide to conversion rate optimization (CRO) for WooCommerce, including how to measure your sales funnel, and redeem lost sales.

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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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Who doesn’t like spring? The sun is shining, birds are singing, and the flowers and trees are at their brightest. (Although if you have allergies, that last bit might not make the season seem so nice.)

It’s spring for those of us in the northern hemisphere, and we’re celebrating all it brings by collecting marketing extensions that will put a little bit of the season into your store.

From tools that help you grow your sales to extensions that will spruce up your product pages, here are twelve ways you can bring new life to any WooCommerce store.

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If you build it, will they come? Not without marketing they won’t.

New online stores often face the same dilemma: they desperately need marketing to increase awareness of their products or services, but have a tight budget with which to do so. Some form of marketing is necessary for even the newest of stores, but finding the right balance between “effective” and “cost-effective” can be tricky.

If you’re building or have built your store with WooCommerce and are aiming to start marketing on a budget, we’re here to help. Here’s how you can decide which marketing activity to invest in first — and how to spend just $50 to get started.

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When you start an online store, there are hundreds of things that demand your attention. Along with the basics — order fulfillment, customer service, restocking and producing products — there are also tactics designed to grow and improve your business.

Marketing is something that new store owners usually know they need to invest their time and energy in, but struggle to start with. Finding marketing tactics that work is tricky, as is making the time to apply said tactics to your store.

To lend you a helping hand, we’ve collected a few of the most ideal ways that you can spread the word about your new store, along with the WooCommerce extensions that make these methods possible. We’ve also included some info on how to tell if this is a good fit for you, plus additional reading on each tactic.

Keen to kick off your marketing? Have a look at the strategies we’re recommending for you.

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So you’ve created a Pinterest account for your online store. By this point, you might have a hundred or so followers, and you’ve likely been able to attribute a few sales back to your boards. Things are good… but they could be better, and you want a bigger piece of the pie.

If you’ve heard about the incredible potential that Pinterest has for brands, and want to better tap into this network’s 47 million monthly active users, it’s time to scale up your strategy. Successfully using Pinterest to attract new customers is going to mean doing much more than pinning beautiful photos and curating content. Luckily, these new strategies won’t take up too much of your time.

If you’re thinking about taking your Pinterest activity to the next level, read on to get some advice on how you can scale your strategy, attract more customers, and make better use of your pins to drive more profit.

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The truth remains that no matter how amazing your store and products, people are not just going to show up and throw money at you. Even Coca-Cola knows there’s no good time to take the foot off the gas and let up on marketing, establishing your brand, driving sales and working on UX to drive sales and secure customer loyalty.

It’s an attention jungle out there, and once your WooCommerce store is running, you’ll do well to commit money and time towards marketing.

This can take the form of serving up great content on social media, Facebook advertising, remarketing ads, or by adding extensions to your store itself.

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I’m going to name a few design elements. Tell me what companies come to mind.

• A red and white color scheme.
• A smiley face.
• Two black circles overlapping a larger black circle.
• Product names beginning with the letter “i.”

I’m willing to bet that you can figure out at least two well-known brands from those elements alone.

It’s no coincidence that the biggest, most influential companies often have the most iconic brands. That’s the reason why branding is universally considered one of the most important parts of running a business, and why people who can create iconic brands are often the biggest influencers in the business world.

Your brand is comprised of a story and an image, so before we get into the “image” part, we really recommend this post we’ve previously done on how to write the story. Your brand image is directly tied to your brand story, in fact, you could say it’s a visual complement to it, and it’s very important that you have one worked out if you’re going to work on the other.

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