Search Results for: Add to Cart

WooCommerce: Which Subscriptions Plugin Should You Buy?

Setting up a recurring revenue stream is one of the hottest ecommerce money-making strategies. And there is no doubt that, no matter whether you sell cakes, audio books, services, rentals, there is always room for a “subscription” product.

Think about selling a product once, and then seeing automatic renewal orders come through. And where the customers’ credit card is automatically charged. Yes, this can be done with a “WooCommerce Subscriptions” plugin.

Though, it comes at a cost (besides, it’s a subscription you have to purchase from a WooCommerce plugin developer to guarantee on-going bug fixing, support and maintenance!), with the reason being you can’t really code such a delicate functionality on your own (with a snippet for example). Subscription plugins are about money, revenue, automatic charge operations, tokens, error handling, retrials and other complex things – at this stage you have no other choice than purchasing an out-of-the-box solution: a reliable WooCommerce Subscriptions plugin.

The hard part here is deciding which subscription plugin is the best fit for you as a user and for your WooCommerce store. You also need to consider things such as integration, compatibility, UX, payment gateways, support (my favorite), code quality, functionality roadmap, maintenance, long-term reliability and – also – price.

This ultimate review guide goes through my top 3 choices. From $49 to $199, you have a full range of products, and each one offers the same exact thing: recurring payments.

So, what’s the difference? Which one should you pick?

Continue reading WooCommerce: Which Subscriptions Plugin Should You Buy?

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? 🙂

Continue reading WooCommerce: How to Increase Average Order Value?

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?

Continue reading WooCommerce: Disable Theme’s WooCommerce Template Overrides

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: 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 + Jetpack: Exclude Image From “Lazy Load”

If you don’t use an “Image Lazy Load” plugin, it’s time you install one. And if you happen to pick Jetpack’s free Lazy Load module, you probably did the right thing.

However, since I installed Jetpack Lazy Load, I noticed a little “jump” in my Storefront theme header section, where in fact there is an image – my Business Bloomer logo. The same might apply to any WooCommerce image: a category thumbnail, a single product featured image, a cart icon in the header, a homepage hero image, and so on.

Thankfully Jetpack has a useful “filter” you can tap into in order to exclude image classes from lazy loading (yes, I found this out today, it’s not that I know everything!). So, here’s the fix. Enjoy 🙂

Continue reading WooCommerce + Jetpack: Exclude Image From “Lazy Load”

WooCommerce: How to Create a iOS / Android App?

This is a guest post by Saleeh K. of Appmaker – if you like the article, make sure to thank him in the comments!

If you own a WooCommerce website, this is the best time to creating an app for your existing and potential customers. According to statista, Google Play store had 3.8M applications and Apple store carried about 2 million apps in Q1 2018. The total app download number was 178+ billion and the same study revealed that this figure will grow to 258 billion by 2022.

While making sure your website is 100% responsive and looks great on mobile phones and small devices, a WooCommerce app can allow your customers to benefit from:

  • faster access
  • personalized content
  • optimized user experience
  • push notifications
  • purchase without logging in
  • better user engagement

However, the major issue faced while getting an app done is definitely its development cost. Right now, hiring a development agency to develop a simple app can cost you USD $5,000-10,000. Apps are not cheap.

Besides, the number of app development agencies is constantly increasing (given the potential earnings and the growing market demand) – and unfortunately the chances you might run into a not-so-professional team of developers are also getting bigger.

Well, have you ever thought of creating an app without worrying about anything (including its price)? The great news is that you can now create a WooCommerce app without any coding skills. And this is exactly what we’ll see in this tutorial. Continue reading WooCommerce: How to Create a iOS / Android App?

WooCommerce: How to Improve the Speed of my Store?

This is a guest post by Simon Tomkins of CommerceGurus – if you like the article, make sure to thank him in the comments!

The speed of your WooCommerce store is incredibly important when it comes to converting visitors into customers. Research has shown that even a one second delay can result in 7% of lost orders.

If your WooCommerce site is making $1,000 per day, that one second delay in load time could potentially cost you $25,000 in annual lost sales – not small change! If you are the lucky owner of Amazon, a one second delay in 2017 could have meant a $178 billions * 0,07 = $12.5 billions loss in net revenue…

Once again, a slow WooCommerce website is costing you money.

I spent a great deal of time researching website speed and performance optimization before creating our Shoptimizer WooCommerce theme. Some of the statistics are staggering:

  • 73% of mobile users have abandoned a site due to it taking too long
  • 47% of people expect a site to load in 2 seconds or less
  • 79% of people who encounter a performance issue won’t return again to buy

So, a slow WooCommerce site means unhappy visitors and the loss of potential revenue to competitors.

And today we’ll briefly see what you can do to speed up your WooCommerce website – these are proven performance optimization tricks that can have an immediate impact on your sales conversion rate 🙂

Continue reading WooCommerce: How to Improve the Speed of my Store?

WooCommerce: 15 Best Food & Restaurant Themes

The most efficient way to turn your restaurant / food business into a money-making machine is to cater to your customer’s needs better than you do now. Supposing you have a modern interior design, tasty food, friendly atmosphere, professional personnel, etc… what else can you do for your business?

You need a bombastic online presence. You need to – maybe – rebuild your restaurant website. Thankfully, if you don’t know much about web design, it’s not a big deal. No need to do anything from scratch nowadays (we entrepreneurs value our time and effort, right?).

If you want to enable online food ordering, sell restaurant gift cards, turn your takeaway into an optimized online booking system, or give online users the freedom to build their custom pizza, it’s time to switch to a WooCommerce theme.

By picking one of the 15 themes described in this article (oh, by the way – here’s the full list of 50+ restaurant WooCommerce themes you can pick), you can immediately take advantage of the most popular ecommerce plugin (WooCommerce) and its free or premium extensions to increase your food business sales and profitability. Continue reading WooCommerce: 15 Best Food & Restaurant Themes

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!

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

WooCommerce: How to Sell ANYTHING with WordPress (WP Dublin 2018)

I had the pleasure to speak at the Dublin WordPress Meetup in March 2018. The presentation title was “How to Sell A-N-Y-T-H-I-N-G with WordPress + WooCommerce”, aimed at both beginners and more advanced designers.

Some of those who are only starting with WordPress didn’t know you can transform ANY WordPress install into an Ecommerce website in a matter of minutes.

Those who are pretty familiar with it, on the other end, they’re maybe entrepreneurs who want to set up a Marketplace, a Membership site, a Classified Ads platform or implement some of those Ecommerce features only Amazon and Ebay seem to be able to code with their million dollar budgets. Continue reading WooCommerce: How to Sell ANYTHING with WordPress (WP Dublin 2018)

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!

Continue reading WooCommerce: Multi-Vendor / Marketplace Solutions

WooCommerce: How do You Sell Gift Cards / Vouchers?

Let’s be honest – if you run a B2C WooCommerce store and you don’t currently sell gift cards, this is the right time to get started.

If you do a quick Google search about “Gift Card Statistics”, you will probably notice a huge trend: gift card sales are on the rise (we’re talking billions), as well as the percentage of customers spending more money than the redeemed amount.

The good news is – you can enable gift cards with a simple click of a button or, alternatively, purchase a premium plugin to get a more efficient, automated, integrated system.

Either way, there is really no excuse: you should start selling gift cards (or “vouchers”) from today, or at least test it away. Sometimes – trust me – ecommerce marketing is pretty simple: see what works (specifically on Amazon and Alibaba), and copy it.

In this post we will analyze different solutions. We’ll see how to use a simple coupon code (oh yes, you can do that), as well as taking a look at the best free and paid plugins out there.

Continue reading WooCommerce: How do You Sell Gift Cards / Vouchers?

WooCommerce: “Is This a Gift?” Checkbox @ Single Product Page

A client of mine asked me to code a checkbox on the single product page called “Is this a gift?”. They noticed that their customers who want to gift the product to a friend get confused with the “Shipping to a different address” form in the WooCommerce checkout.

So, what about renaming “Shipping to a different address” into “Who is this gift for?” if a “gift” is in the cart? Well, this snippet does just that and you can adapt it / customize it to your specific case. Continue reading WooCommerce: “Is This a Gift?” Checkbox @ Single Product Page

WooCommerce: Turn Checkout Field Into a Drop-down

Talking about UX optimization, the WooCommerce checkout is where you should focus most of your time. Shopping cart abandonment is a huge issue – think about hidden charges, lack of payment methods, checkout bugs and, also, too many checkout fields to fill out manually.

Today, we will see how to turn a checkout text field into a select dropdown. Why not let customers pick from a list instead of typing in? Enjoy!

Continue reading WooCommerce: Turn Checkout Field Into a Drop-down

WooCommerce: How to Edit Product Prices in Bulk?

I’m pretty sure that during one of those Black Friday sales all you wanted to do was to apply a bulk discount to your WooCommerce products without having to generate a coupon code.

Let’s not forget that despite coupons are trackable and you can assess your marketing efforts with their usage statistics, requiring the user to take one additional step at checkout (entering the correct coupon code) reduces your sales conversion rate (the same applies with useless checkout fields by the way – less work to do, higher conversion rate).

In today’s post, we’ll see what are the 3 options I recommend in order to apply bulk store discounts. It pretty much depends on your product types (simple vs variable for example) and whether you want to do this via the settings or with a little bit of PHP.

Continue reading WooCommerce: How to Edit Product Prices in Bulk?