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WooCommerce: Advanced Order Search

When it comes to saving time, the out-of-the-box WooCommerce plugin doesn’t give you many options and features. For example, searching through your WooCommerce orders is not straight forward enough because the search options are fairly limited.

By default, you can go to the WooCommerce Orders admin page (wp-admin/edit.php?post_type=shop_order) and use the basic search bar.

You can look for a customer name, a customer billing email and a few more, but that’s pretty much all you can do. You can’t look for multiple fields, you can sort, you can’t filter by order total, and so on.

You get the picture – for a store manager this Orders dashboard is not handy at all. Each extra minute wasted in trying to find something could be better invested – in marketing spend for example.

That’s why we want to show you a quick alternative in order to do advanced searches in seconds. You won’t need any PHP snippets – just a quick plugin that turns your order list into an intuitive and easy-to-use spreadsheet so that you can do all the filtering and manipulation you desire.

WooCommerce: Why Rotating Payment Methods Can Protect your Revenue

By now, you probably know that you should never run WooCommerce with a single payment gateway. We’ve already seen in the “PayPal or Stripe?” article that (spoiler alert!), the best solution is “PayPal AND Stripe”. Which means you need to understand that different customers prefer different kinds of payment methods (and this could increase your conversion rate dramatically).

Now we move to the next step: the chargebacks issue, and the risk of having your payment gateways banned by their providers.

A user recently told us that he has a WooCommerce subscription-based business, which is great. The problem is that sometimes customers don’t read that part and think they’re making a one-time purchase. And sometimes, when they realize they purchased something different than what they had in mind, they ask their bank or credit card company to issue a chargeback.

The Stripe website explains it like this:

A chargeback happens when a cardholder makes a claim to their bank or credit card company that a payment made on their card was fraudulent. When a chargeback occurs, the business to which the payment was originally made is required to repay the full purchase amount, plus a chargeback fee.

While you can really do your best to avoid chargebacks by being transparent on your website and order receipts, sometimes – especially for WooCommerce Subscriptions – that’s not enough. Investors say: “Don’t Put All Your Eggs in One Basket” and the same applies here: you’d better record your active subscriptions under PayPal, Stripe, Authorize, and so on, so that all your recurring revenue is not in the same account.

WooCommerce: 6 Tax & Accounting Tips to Save You Time This Tax Season

If just the thought of tax season gives you a headache, you’re not alone. In fact, 60 percent of small-business owners don’t feel confident about their accounting knowledge (Small Business Report – Accounting).

We understand the feeling – tax season is approaching and you’re frantically trying to add up and categorize all of those shoe boxes full of receipts. Or maybe you’re not even completely sure of your business’ financial position as you haven’t accurately tracked your orders/sales.

Whether you’re behind on your accounting, unsure of what your business income is, or simply want to save yourself the time and headaches that tax season entails, this guide is for you.

We have compiled our top WooCommerce accounting tips to save you time this tax season (and every year there after…)

Ready to dive in?

WooCommerce: Move Order Notes @ Checkout

We already saw how to hide Order Notes on the WooCommerce checkout page. This time around, however, our goal is to “move” them – and specifically remove them from their default position (under the shipping form) and add them back under the billing form.

As you can imagine, this is a combo snippet: (1) we remove them (and we’ll use the snippet as per the link above) and (2) we create a new billing field. Finally, (3) we also need to “save” this new field value into the original order notes custom field meta.

If this is difficult to understand don’t worry – just copy/paste the snippet into your functions.php and see magic happen. Enjoy!

WooCommerce: Rename “State” Label @ Checkout

Here’s a super quick snippet you can use to rename the WooCommerce checkout “state” field label for both billing & shipping.

Of course you can learn by example and apply the same snippet to other checkout fields, all yopu need to change is the field ID. Enjoy!

WooCommerce: Set Checkout Field Value @ Order Creation

This is a very specific function. Sometimes, you need to “set” a checkout field value upon order creation (because it was not required and left empty for example). In some other cases, you might want to override what the customer input if you have certain requirements.

Either way, overriding the checkout fields on order creation is super easy. Here’s how it’s done – enjoy!

WooCommerce: Flat Rate Calculation Based on Weight (Without a Plugin!)

We already talked about weight based shipping and in this post we found out how to charge different flat rates based on shipping weight thresholds.

But now I want to show you how you can use the default “Flat Rate” to calculate shipping costs based on cart weight, thanks to a multiplier. For example, your shipping rate might be “$5 for each Kg” – as you know the default “Flat Rate” only allows you to define one rate e.g. $10.

So, what if you want to calculate shipping charges by weight? Well, here’s a simple workaround for you. Continue reading WooCommerce: Flat Rate Calculation Based on Weight (Without a Plugin!)

WooCommerce: 10 Easy Snippets to Increase Your Sales

I had the pleasure to speak at WordCamp Prague 2019. I spoke about “10 PHP Snippets to Increase WooCommerce Sales” and managed to show some simple coding to the audience. Trust me – increasing your WooCommerce sales can also be done with a free, short, easy PHP snippet.

So, given that I want to share all the snippets I talked about, this is a quick recap. Copy them, test them (a must!) and then use them. And let me know if your conversion rate and/or AOV (average order value) increased!

At the bottom of the page you also find my talk slides. Enjoy:)

WooCommerce: How to Set Different Prices Based on User Role?

B2C WooCommerce stores can also have a B2B section. Wholesalers can offer different prices based on different criteria. Subscription stores can offer lower prices to current members.

Either way, setting different WooCommerce prices for different users (“based on user role”) is not that difficult. All you need is a plugin (or a stack of plugins, depending on your custom requirements), and you can immediately show different prices if the logged in user has a specific role or “capability”, as well as targeting active memberships, active subscriptions or other criteria.

If you want to learn more about user roles and capabilities, I suggest to take a look at the WordPress documentation: https://codex.wordpress.org/Roles_and_Capabilities – you’ll know WordPress has 6 default roles (administrator, editor, etc.) and that WooCommerce adds another one (customer). Other plugins can set additional roles – for example https://wordpress.org/plugins/members/ by Justin Tadlock, a very popular WordPress developer.

So, while “targeting” user roles is quite easy, the only difficult part is to choose the right “user role based pricing” product. As usual, when picking a plugin, you always need to consider its functionalities as well as the quality of its support team, long-term reliability, code cleanliness, frequent updates and total number of sales.

Today, we’ll take a look at the plugins I recommend, together with their pros and cons. If you use different stacks or custom functionalities, feel free to interact via the comments.

WooCommerce: How to Blacklist Scammers, Emails, IP, Phones?

A WooCommerce email notifications pops up – yet another new order, money, revenue, happiness. However, hold on a second – money is not technically in your bank account until you’re forced to give a refund. Even worse, until you realize not only you had to give a refund, but also getting the item back costs you a fortune. And who knows how many times this is going to happen, mostly when you ship physical products.

Fortunately, there are ways in WooCommerce to blacklist customers, deny purchasing from specific countries, block certain IP addresses and do whatever you can to save money.

In the era of Amazon and online shopping we constantly hear of scams and frauds, so this is definitely a topic that shouldn’t be underestimated. A small plugin investment or a few lines of code could actually make a big difference.

Besides, choosing the correct online payment methods (which should give you some sort of anti-fraud out of the box) and avoiding offline payments (bank transfer, cash on delivery, check) are important measures you should already have in place.

So, moving beyond the actual online payments, there is something else we could do to stop scammers placing an order (yes, even before paying or trying to pay). Prevention is better (and more affordable) than cure, right?

I’ve put together a list of WooCommerce plugins and settings you should look into from today on. And sooner rather than later. Enjoy 🙂 Continue reading WooCommerce: How to Blacklist Scammers, Emails, IP, Phones?

WooCommerce: How to Increase Average Order Value?

AOV a.k.a. Average Order Value is one of the most important ecommerce metrics. It describes the average order total in a given period of time. If this year your WooCommerce website converted 150 orders and made $30,000 in revenue, your AOV for this year is $30,000/150 = $200 (i.e. on average, you can expect each order to be $200).

FYI, the meaning of AOV is the same for any ecommerce platform, but in this article we’ll talk just about WooCommerce. In our opinion WooCommerce is a better, more cost-effective solution than Shopify or other counterparts.

If you don’t know what your WooCommerce store AOV is, immediately go to WordPress Dashboard > WooCommerce > Reports > Orders > Sales by Date > Year and divide “net sales in this period” by the number of “orders placed”. But be careful – those reports are sometimes not correct (I know WooCommerce is working on this at the moment). Mine is giving me AOV = €2… and I know that’s not right.

Your best bet is your Google Analytics account (as long as you’re using the official WooCommerce – Google Analytics integration) and/or your Metorik reports (here’s an article you should read if you need to know how to install reliable WooCommerce tracking, reporting, filtering and segmenting: https://businessbloomer.com/advanced-woocommerce-tracking-analytics-reports-exports-segmentation/). My Metorik dashboard tells me my WooCommerce website AOV for this year is €233 so far – I can trust this one for sure.

So the question is: how can we get our WooCommerce customers to spend more? Well, here’s a list of WooCommerce plugin alternatives you can install right now to boost your AOV.

In fairness, who wouldn’t want some extra revenue? 🙂

WooCommerce: Disable Theme’s WooCommerce Template Overrides

A client purchased a premium “WooCommerce-ready” WordPress theme. Unfortunately, this theme comes with a /woocommerce folder, which means theme developers completely override WooCommerce template files by copying them to the folder, and customizing each of them by hand to match their design and functionality needs.

As you know from my “How To Become an Advanced WooCommerce Developer?” article, however, themes should NOT come with a /woocommerce folder – instead they should use “hooks” (actions and filters) to amend default WooCommerce plugin layouts and behavior. This is a huge problem for best seller themes and their legacy coding – and also a reason most themes break when you update WooCommerce…

So the question I asked myself was: how can I disable the entire /woocommerce folder (i.e. ALL WooCommerce template overrides) in a given theme or a single template, so that I can use the default WooCommerce ones instead?

WooCommerce: 5 Ways To Increase B2B Conversions

This is a guest post by Matthew Abdalah of Rumbleship – if you like the article, make sure to thank him in the comments!

Customers live in a world of digital distractions and the last place you want your customers to be distracted is during checkout.

Consumer ecommerce (B2C, business-to-consumer) has taught the B2B (business-to-business) world a lot about what a distraction-free, conversion-friendly checkout looks like: we should reference these lessons for best practices.

Due to its ubiquity, your wholesale buyers are conditioned to expect a comparable level of service to what they experience on B2C websites such as Amazon and eBay.

Tactics like 30-day terms, free shipping and bulk discounts are some of the techniques referenced in this article but we’ve compiled a few extra ones.

Here are 5 creative ways to reduce wholesale WooCommerce shopping cart abandonment, increase your sales conversion rate and grow your profits. Continue reading WooCommerce: 5 Ways To Increase B2B Conversions

WooCommerce: Cart and Checkout on the Same Page

This is your ultimate guide – complete with shortcodes, snippets and workarounds – to completely skip the Cart page and have both cart table and checkout form on the same (Checkout) page.

But first… why’d you want to do this? Well, if you sell high ticket products (i.e. on average, you sell no more than one product per order), if you want to save an additional step (two steps convert better than three: “Add to Cart” > ~~“Cart Page”~~ > “Checkout Page” – and this is not rocket science), if your custom workflow and ecommerce objectives require you to manage Cart and Checkout all together, well, this tutorial is for you.

There is a mix of shortcodes, settings and PHP snippets you can use to make this work out of the box. And trust me, this is easier than you think.

While many developers decide to turn the checkout process into a “Multi-Step Checkout” (ehm, not sure why – the more steps the more likely it is to have a cart abandonment), in here we’ll see the exact opposite.

So, how do they do it?

Here’s the complete, easy, step by step guide to put Cart & Checkout on the same page. Give it a go, do some WooCommerce testing and tracking, and see if it converts better 🙂

WooCommerce: How to Keep Your Customers Loyal?

This is a guest post by Michael Lazar of ReadyCloud – if you like the article, make sure to thank him in the comments!

Customers are the backbone of any ecommerce store, but loyal customers are the shining stars. They cost less to retain, and they are easier to sell to – not to mention that they’ll do some of your marketing for you via social media.

The biggest names in ecommerce right now are thriving because of their loyal customers. Amazon Prime, for example, has over 100 million subscribers, and Zappos does 75% of their business with repeat customers.

Have you ever wondered how these internet giants have captured and retained customers?

Surprisingly, their tactics are not as expensive and time-consuming as you might think. Even as a small WooCommerce e-tailer, you can provide a shopping experience that will keep your customers coming back.

And here are five ways to make it happen. Continue reading WooCommerce: How to Keep Your Customers Loyal?

WooCommerce: How to Display Custom Product Badges (e.g. %OFF, NEW, FREE)?

You would know by now ecommerce customers buy products for different reasons. Your store products might be cheaper than your competitors, maybe you offer better shipping rates, possibly you restock products more quickly than anyone else – or simply you’ve got a great product people keep buying.

One way to display your product features and benefits on the Shop page is by using “product badges”, a series of display messages that are able to communicate with the user immediately.

You’re probably already familiar with the “SALE!” badge that WooCommerce gives us by default. What if you wanted to show the exact percentage amount of that offer?

You’re also aware of the “Featured” option for WooCommerce products. Yes, they show in the “Featured” product shortcode, but what if you wanted the shop to display these special products in a different way, i.e. by using a special badge?

Well, there are millions of examples on how you could improve your products page (and single product page) by making the most of product badges. Thankfully there are snippets and plugins that can help you with that.

A little investment might mean better click-through rates and therefore higher conversion rates!

WooCommerce: Get Order Info (total, items, etc) From $order Object

As a WooCommerce development freelancer, every day I repeat many coding operations that make me waste time. One of them is: “How to get ____ if I have the $order variable/object?“.

For example, “How can I get the order total“? Or “How can I get the order items“? Or maybe the order dates, customer ID, billing info, payment method, order status, and so on… hopefully this article will help you save time as well!

As we’ve seen in other articles, get product info from $product object and get cart info from $cart object, not always you can have direct access to the $order variable.

Sometimes, you may have the $order_id available for example. In that scenario, you can “get” the order object with the wc_get_order WooCommerce function.

It’s also possible to gain $order information if you are in an email template. This can be helpful to show additional $order information in your transactional communications or trigger custom functions. Either way, enjoy!

WooCommerce Advanced Tracking: Analytics, Reports, Exports, Segmentation

If your WooCommerce store already generates a few orders per month, then it’s probably the right time to step up and start analyzing your ecommerce data.

Despite the “WooCommerce > Reports” tab within the WordPress dashboard can give you sales figures, stock takes and customer lists – we all know that’s a very basic, limited functionality. It gives you CSV export but no automation. There are no filters and no segments. It’s accurate but still not enough.

Data plays a vital role on your WooCommerce website. If you can get access to a wider range of figures, reports, screens, calculations, exports, filters, integrations, then it’s very likely you can understand how to increase your profits.

Data can help you identify problems (hello, cart abandonment – biggest responsible for low conversion rates), can help you select popular products for your cross-sell and up-sell strategy, can give you a hint on how to improve the user experience and have them check out faster – as well as giving you a hand analyzing patterns, performances and customer behavior.

In this (very long) post, we’ll take a look at ways to gather ecommerce data beyond the default “Reports” section, generate email digests, print advanced reports, filter and segment orders and customers, and much more. I will be referring to the two biggest tracking software for WooCommerce: Google Analytics and Metorik. Continue reading WooCommerce Advanced Tracking: Analytics, Reports, Exports, Segmentation

WooCommerce: Multi-Vendor / Marketplace Solutions

Building the next Amazon is everyone’s dream.

Allowing sellers to use your online platform to reach wider audiences without holding stock, investing in shipping and warehousing and – let’s be honest – with a few dollars budget… is actually possible in WooCommerce.

The WooCommerce Multi-Vendor/Marketplace scenarios are many – not a surprise. And sometimes, a plugin is all you need to build an Etsy-alike website. Not bad for a small investment – you can focus on the marketing while the WooCommerce plugin does the rest.

However, building a full website, no matter its project specifications, is never easy. Many WooCommerce and ecommerce entrepreneurs underestimate how much work, caution, attention, patience and money are needed to develop an online marketplace.

Nothing is free – if something looks doable with a $79 plugin you also need to consider the cost of time, outsourcing, marketing and third parties (such as picking a reliable hosting).

Anyway, today we’ll take a look at some of the best plugins for turning a WooCommerce website into a multi-vendor marketplace, as well as a simple PHP snippet that might just be enough for you. Enjoy!

WooCommerce: Display Order Delivery Date @ Checkout

Here’s how you can add a “calendar” field on the WooCommerce checkout page, let people decide the delivery date, and save this value in the order.

It took me ages to implement this for a client (it was much more complex, with available dates, different calendars based on different shipping zones, max weight per day, etc) so I thought of sharing the basic snippet with you! Enjoy 🙂