WooCommerce + Elementor: Let’s Build Cool Stuff

Do you want to tweak and design your WordPress website without hiring a developer? Good news: it’s completely possible with WordPress page builder plugins. 

A WordPress page builder plugin comes with an intuitive drag-and-drop interface to create beautiful custom pages and websites. Thus, regardless of your skillset or technical know-how, page builder plugins make designing your ideal website a breeze without writing a single line of code. 

Now, if you’re wondering which WordPress page builder plugin you should consider, you’re in the right place. In this article, we’ll review one of the most popular options: Elementor, which is considered the gold standard. Elementor is the second most-installed WordPress plugin with 2 million active installations – used by around 15.9% of WordPress websites

We’ll start with Elementor’s brief overview and further review the plugin’s interface, features, and pricing to help you determine whether it’s the right choice for your site. Let’s go!  

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WooCommerce vs. BigCommerce: Which Ecommerce Platform is Better?

Do you intend to create an online store? Cannot pick between self-hosted WooCommerce and cloud-powered BigCommerce? Don’t worry, you are not on your own. 

The only way to truly determine which of these two eCommerce solutions is more suitable, is to compare them side by side – we will take a look at their features, price, convenience of use, cost, support, security, customization, and many other factors.

In this article, we’ll help you determine which ecommerce solution more appropriate for your business requirements. Self-hosted or cloud? Subscription or free in theory? Customization or integrations? Huge or small community? There are lots of questions you may have.

So, are you ready for the battle of WooCommerce vs. BigCommerce? Let’s get started.

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WooCommerce: How to Send Newsletters to Your Customers

Sending emails (newsletters, broadcasts or similar) to customers is an integral part of a WooCommerce marketing strategy. Email marketing is an outstanding tool that allows you to connect with your customers, keep them informed about your products, services, or discounts, get them to return to your site, and drive new sales. 

Unlike other popular channels, like social media – emails provide a personal touch and let you reach your target consumers directly in their inboxes. Statistics suggest that while 87% of B2B marketers leverage email as a distribution channel – 79% of B2C marketers use emails to promote their new blog posts and articles. 

And one such critical email marketing solution is email newsletters. They are extremely beneficial to stay in touch and build trustworthy relationships with existing and potential customers. 

So, if you’re looking for solutions to send automated newsletters to your WooCommerce customers – you’re at the right place. But first, let’s learn more about the benefits of actually sending newsletters. 

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WooCommerce: Switch Shop Columns Responsively

Ok, I may need an English language refresher… But the point I was trying to make was that yes, there is a way to switch the number of columns in the WooCommerce shop page, however that’s static.

What if I wanted to show 5 columns of products on large desktops, 4 columns on desktops, 3 on tablets and 2 on smaller devices? Well, this “dynamic” behavior is – this time around – managed by CSS. Let’s see how it’s done!

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WooCommerce: 10 Crucial Issues That Should Be Fixed Right Now

I just spent the last 3 days in Porto with another 2,300 WordPressers at the first in-person WordCamp Europe since Berlin 2019. I had a blast, held a nice (yet long) workshop, spoke to many, but got tired too soon.

Later on, I realized that that tiredness was something more serious – in fact I tested positive against COVID for the first time in my life, and I’m now in self-isolation hoping it won’t last long… Another 7 days without my kid – send help!

Anyhow, what really struck me at WCEU 2022, and based on various chats and some data that I’ll share below, is that the WooCommerce ecosystem is in trouble.

A nicer way to put that? WooCommerce is not moving forward as fast as it should, and unless some key issues are addressed right now, in a few years time we all may pay the consequences.

Please note, this is not a rant. It’s a proper analysis, full of actionable information.

@ WooCommerce team - if you're reading this - my plan is to give you constructive feedback and tell you what the community (really) thinks, needs and wants, so that you can get a better picture of the current situation. I know you've already started working on this, so this is just a recap/reminder and a way to get the whole community realigned. 

In this post, I will share my worries, my fears, the current WooCommerce issues, some data I collected at WCEU 2022 and then a list of actionable solutions that may be implemented in order to clear the backlog and get back on track – asap. Enjoy!

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WooCommerce: 10 Most Popular Free Plugins

WooCommerce is one of the most popular eCommerce platforms that allows you to launch your online business, build high-functionality online stores for your clients, or take your brick-and-mortar store online.  

Powering over 28.19% of all online stores, WooCommerce’s versatility and open-source nature allow businesses to build their dream store, add unlimited products and consumers, take orders, and increase sales.

The core WooCommerce plugin holds 68% of the usage distribution – the highest on the internet. However, despite its popularity, the official WooCommerce plugin lacks several features you might need for your eCommerce store. But to make up for that, it offers several plugins that allow you to enhance your store’s functionality and improve customer experience. 

But choosing from over 4228 WooCommerce plugins from WordPress.org can get overwhelming. So, to make your job easier, we’ve hand-picked the best free WooCommerce plugins you can use on your store to take it to the next level. Let’s dive in!

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WooCommerce: Why Use A Product Configurator Instead of Variations

One of the biggest marketing trends in recent years is the increasing shift towards delivering customized and personalized product experiences to customers. 

Customers are increasingly looking for online and eCommerce stores that provide order customization options for gifting purposes and the ability to add their personal and unique touch to their orders. While 90% of the U.S. customers find the idea of personalization appealing – impersonal shopping experiences frustrate 71% of customers

Thus, as a WooCommerce store owner – it’s important to strive and meet the increasing consumer demands to prevent dissatisfaction, improve their shopping experiences and increase the overall sales.  

This article will see some easy yet impactful ways to deliver a personalized customer experience and order customization. But first, let’s see how it can benefit your WooCommerce store. 

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WooCommerce: Top Product Filter Plugins For Your Store

As your WooCommerce store grows – so do its product variants. On average, a WooCommerce store owns hundreds of inventory items and product variants for sale. 

While your goal might be to offer maximum product options to your visitors, with such a wide range of product variations – it can get challenging for your customers to find the exact product they’re looking for. 

This is where product filters come into play. Statista suggests that 61% of buyers consider the ease of finding products the most important aspect of an online shopping experience.  

No one has time to browse through the long product listings as it’s easier for customers to switch to another store that facilitates product discovery. Thus, product filter options enable your customers to browse through products of their preferences – positively impacting the user experience and increasing the chances of sales. 

This article shares the top product filter solutions for your WooCommerce store. But first, let’s learn more about their benefits and how this simple option can affect your store’s bottom line. 

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WooCommerce: How to Enable Apple Pay and Google Pay

Not offering different payment options for your customers on your WooCommerce store is a call for a high cart abandonment rate and lost sales and customers. 

Your store’s payment gateway has a direct impact on the customers’ buying decisions. Don’t take our word for it – statistics suggest missing payment methods is the reason for 7% of cart abandonments in eCommerce stores. 

As a result, the more payment options you offer to your customers – the more sales you can win for your store. 

Besides PayPal and credit cards – digital and UPI mobile payment options like Apple Pay and Google Pay are amongst the most popular and widely adopted payment methods by customers. Statistics anticipate that from 2021 to 2025 – the number of mobile proximity payment users in the United States to grow from 100 million to a whopping 125 million.

Thus, as customers become increasingly reliant on mobile payment solutions like Apple Pay and Google Pay – it’s important to integrate these payment options in your WooCommerce store to ensure high customer satisfaction.

So, in this article, we share the top ways to configure Google Pay and Apple Pay in WooCommerce. But first, let’s learn more about the benefits of this configuration for your store. 

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WooCommerce: Replace Variable Price With Active Variation Price

Surprisingly enough, variable products with a price range display two prices: at the top right you find the “parent” product price, displayed as a range; but once you select a variation, a second price appear just above the variation add to cart. Somewhat confusing.

In today’s solution, we’ll see once and for all how to replace the top right variable product price with the one of the current variation, while also hiding the variation price. Therefore, you’ll see a single price on the single product page for variable products. Enjoy!

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WooCommerce: A Guide to Selling LearnDash Courses

It’s no secret that selling online courses is a lucrative business. According to Forbes, the online course industry’s revenue in 2018 alone reached a staggering $46 billion dollars.

So, how can you take advantage of this growing market? 

With the wide range of easy-to-use learning management systems and e-commerce solutions available, it is easy for any educator or knowledgeable expert to start monetizing content.

Using WordPress as a starting point, LearnDash and WooCommerce make a powerful duo for running an e-learning business.

In this guide, we’ll take a brief look at how you can use LearnDash to sell online courses and walk you through the steps you need to follow to set up LearnDash with WooCommerce.

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WooCommerce: How to Add Custom Fields to Variations

When selling products on your WooCommerce store – you want to provide as much product information as possible to your customers. This is especially because, unlike a physical shop or a brick and mortar store – your online customers cannot physically touch or experience the products before buying them. 

Hence, providing additional information and keeping customers informed about the multiple facets of your products is essential. And an effective way to enhance customer experience is by adding custom fields for product variations. 

Product variations are product attributes – including the product’s size, color, pattern, texture, and style. On the other hand, WooCommerce custom fields allow you to add additional data for individual products – to display on a single product page. 

Custom field variations let you add data unique to an individual product – which can include anything from the product’s ISBN, additional product specifications, radio buttons, and checkboxes. Thus, custom fields for product variations could either mean: 

  • Fields to display additional product variation’s information, or 
  • Fields to accept customer input to customize the product variation through dropdowns or radio buttons. 

So, in this article, we share simple yet efficient ways to add custom fields to product variations. But, first – let’s see how adding fields for product variations help your WooCommerce store. 

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WooCommerce: How to Set Up Order Delivery Slots

If you run an eCommerce store, one of the most crucial factors to provide a great customer experience and minimum cart abandonment is adding delivery order date and time slot options for your customers.  

According to a UPS Survey, 12-28% of customers abandon their shopping carts because of the absence of estimated delivery dates before checking out. Your customers want to know when they can expect their orders or select a suitable date and time of order delivery per their convenience. 

In fact, even eCommerce marketplaces like Walmart and Amazon display anticipated delivery dates and the calendar slots on checkout and product pages based on the customer’s location. 

Hence, displaying delivery days and slots are essential features to ensure customer retention and sales – as they’re determining factors in customers’ purchasing decisions.

One of the most seamless ways to add the date and time slots before the checkout is through WooCommerce order delivery date plugins. But first, let’s see the different ways these plugins can benefit your online store, and your customers’ shopping experience

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WooCommerce: Which PayPal Gateway Plugin is Better?

As a WooCommerce store owner, providing multiple payment gateway options to your customers is more than necessary to ensure high customer satisfaction. And one of the most widely accepted payment systems is PayPal. 

You don’t have to take our word for it – research suggests customers are 54% more likely to purchase your products and services if you accept PayPal payments in your store. So, the potential loss of customers and sales is significant if you don’t accept PayPal payments in your online store. 

PayPal lets you accept debit cards, credit cards, and even money through the wallet. Many businesses rely on it as customers have a lot of trust in the PayPal brand.

However, despite being an excellent payment gateway, enabling PayPal on your WooCommerce store and making it work as intended isn’t always easy, considering frequent PayPal checkout errors and the fact that the most popular WooCommerce PayPal plugin is no longer supported

To tackle these issues, we share the top WooCommerce PayPal plugins you can use in this article. These plugins will eliminate checkout errors and ensure high customer satisfaction. But first, let’s understand why using the official WooCommerce PayPal plugin is no longer the right choice. 

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WooCommerce: How to Enhance the Product Gallery

Product featured and gallery images are important components of your online WooCommerce store – because most online shoppers base their product purchase decisions on product images. 

Don’t take our word for it. According to Etsy, 90% of online customers say the product image quality is a decisive factor in an online sale. Thus, it becomes imperative to improve your product images and the visual appearance of your online store to boost clicks, maximize conversions, and increase sales. 

Unfortunately, the standard WooCommerce product gallery provides a basic interface – making it difficult to boost your product images. So, if you want to turn your simple WooCommerce product gallery into a responsive and stunning carousel slider – this article is for you.

We share the top plugins you can use to customize your WooCommerce product gallery and create appealing product images that drive sales. But first, let’s see how improving gallery images can help your online store. 

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WooCommerce vs. Shopify: Which Ecommerce Platform is Better?

Shopify and WooCommerce are top of mind for any business owner considering ecommerce for the first time. These ecommerce platforms are convenient and easy to use; however, each comes with its own pros and cons.  

While Shopify offers ecommerce infrastructure as a service, powering 1% of all websites, WooCommerce is open-source and grants users more flexibility, powering 4.9% of all websites

So, while each platform comes with its own strengths and limitations, choosing the one that suits your needs and provides the features you require is important. Here are some of the key factors you need to consider when determining the right platform for your business: 

  • Ease of use 
  • Budget
  • Payment methods & checkout experience
  • Scalability 
  • Integration options

In this article, we’ll cover the essential factors mentioned above to help you determine which ecommerce solution is best suited for your business requirements. But first, let’s begin with a quick overview of both ecommerce platforms.

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WooCommerce: How to Enable Distraction-free Checkout

It’s always a sign of success when customers show interest in your products, add them to their carts, and proceed to checkout. But what’s the point if they drop off and leave your site in the middle of the checkout process? Unfortunately, cart abandonment is common, and one of the major reasons behind incomplete purchases is a complicated and distractive checkout procedure. 

According to the Baymard Institute research, 26% of online shoppers abandon the carts because of too complicated or too long of a checkout process, significantly impacting the eCommerce sales and revenue – losing $18 billion annually, to be precise. 

Losing valuable customers and such a tremendous amount of revenue is no joke – and one of the best ways to prevent this situation is by redesigning the WooCommerce checkout.     

The idea is to remove as much clutter and distractions through the checkout procedure – so customers can focus on completing the checkout entirely and end up buying your products. 

But first, let’s understand the use of these plugins and how they help your WooCommerce store and eCommerce business. 

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WooCommerce: How to Add Breadcrumbs

Ensuring a positive customer experience has become the top priority of eCommerce businesses in 2022 – even overtaking product price and quality as a key brand differentiator according to some analysts.

And one of the most important factors that ensure a positive customer experience is intuitive and seamless website navigation. According to Top Design Firm’s 2021 findings, 38% of customers look for the page’s navigational links and layout when visiting the site for the first time.   

So, if your WooCommerce store has a confusing layout or difficult-to-find navigation links and menus, visitors may abandon your store even if you have exactly what they are looking for.

This is when breadcrumbs come into play. Breadcrumbs are website navigational links that appear at the top of your WooCommerce store, product pages, and blog posts. Enabling breadcrumbs makes it easier and quicker for your customers to move around and navigate through your WooCommerce store and find the page or products they’re looking for. 

This article shares how you can add breadcrumbs to your WooCommerce store. But before getting into it, let’s see how your store can benefit by adding breadcrumbs. 

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WooCommerce: How To Migrate From Shopify

WooCommerce and Shopify are two of the greatest and most popular eCommerce platforms that allow you to create your online store and generate significant income. 

However, as businesses grow – the need for a customizable, flexible, and feature-packed eCommerce platform that offers better control arises. And this is why some entrepreneurs migrate their online store from Shopify to WooCommerce. 

Approximately 29% of all online stores use WooCommerce, signifying the sheer popularity of WooCommerce. However, there are still many merchants out there who are not using WooCommerce but have every reason to. The only problem is that switching eCommerce platforms and migrating your store’s products, orders, and customers requires the utmost care and precision to prevent data losses and ensure a smooth migrating process. 

So, if you wish to switch your eCommerce platform and sell your products through WooCommerce – this article is for you. In this article, we share some plugins you can use to migrate your store from Shopify to WooCommerce with ease. 

But first, let’s look at some reasons and benefits behind considering Shopify to WooCommerce migration. 

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WooCommerce: How to Get Started with WooCommerce Blocks – PART 1

Since WordPress 5.0, the default page/post editor has been completely redeveloped. Surely, you’ve heard about Gutenberg.

Bad news is that WooCommerce joined the new editing experience much more slowly, and there are still major things to develop in order to make it Gutenberg-friendly.

The compatibility progress can be tracked via the WooCommerce Blocks official plugin, which states “You can use this plugin if you want access to all the available blocks for WooCommerce – including experimental ones. Our current “stable” blocks are bundled into WooCommerce, and can be added from the “WooCommerce” section in the block inserter“, because you can find their “beta” blocks in there, those they call “experimental” and that will be officially released into WooCommerce once they are approved.

In this article, we’ll specifically dive deep into WooCommerce Blocks – what they are, why they’re important, how many blocks are available, and how you can use them. 

Since this is a huge topic – we have twenty WooCommerce Blocks to cover – we’re dividing it into two parts. This article will evaluate the first ten Blocks you can use in your store. But first, let’s identify what WooCommerce blocks are and investigate why they are so important.

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