Marketing Archives - Business Bloomer

Unlocking WooCommerce’s Full Potential: Addressing Its Weaknesses

Greetings from a seasoned WooCommerce user, developer, and advocate with over 12 years of experience!

I “play” with WooCommerce daily and believe there’s room for improvement. Simply catching up with competitors isn’t the right goal—STANDING OUT (yes, in all caps) is what we should be aiming for.

When you’re focused solely on closing the gap, you risk being seen as “the alternative to” rather than a standout in your own right. WooCommerce, with its unique ecosystem and flexibility, has the potential to thrive by embracing its strengths instead of chasing a moving target. By stepping away from the “catching up” mindset, you can create a truly exceptional product—one that isn’t just comparable but incomparable, one that leads rather than follows.

So, let’s take a step back.

I believe ecommerce software should let you sell ANYTHING (products) to ANYONE (customers around the world), while getting PAID and being able to DELIVER the package asap.

If Woo can address all that, it can really become outstanding, a piece of software that is worth talking about, and that doesn’t need to be compared to others. Because it’s unique.

There’s a reason why you can’t compare pears to apples—yet you could argue that diamonds outshine gold.

So, here’s an overview of key areas where WooCommerce might have weaknesses compared to other ecommerce platforms, together with some context.

Key Insights from WooCommerce’s Black Friday/Cyber Monday Survey

In a recent Business Bloomer Club discussion, members examined WooCommerce’s shared findings from its Black Friday/Cyber Monday (BFCM) survey.

As one of the biggest eCommerce events worldwide, BFCM presents immense opportunities and challenges for online stores, particularly for WooCommerce users.

Analyzing WooCommerce’s survey data can offer insights into what strategies have been most effective for other merchants, potentially revealing trends and techniques to apply for future sales events.

WooCommerce: A/B Testing, Statistical Significance Formula, Case Studies

If you’ve never run an A/B Test (“Split Test“) on your WooCommerce website, this article is for you. Also, if you want to discover how I run my tests without third party software on this same website, feel free to read on.

So, why A/B Testing a WooCommerce website?

Because your design, development and business decisions should be based on data-driven hypotheses and experimental validation as opposed to “everyone-is-doing-this-thing-so-I-should-do-it-too” theories.

In this article, I’d like to introduce you to the concept of split-testing, go through some statistics formulas, describe my first ever A/B test here on Business Bloomer, and finally share the PHP snippets I use for running quick A/B tests on this same WordPress / WooCommerce website, so that you can learn a thing or two about this very important topic.

Enjoy!

WooCommerce: 7 Different Ways to Run a Survey

Understanding your audience’s needs and preferences is a key component of any successful WooCommerce business.

Surveys are perfect tools for this, providing valuable insights that can improve your product, enhance customer service, and ultimately create a more effective eCommerce operation overall.

But what approach should you take to run these surveys?

From traditional methods to modern tactics, there are numerous ways you can reach out to your customers for their opinions, but we’ll be focusing on online forms.

In this guide, we’ll explore these different methods individually to help you choose the best fit for your business needs.

WooCommerce Development: 8 Trends & Advancements

In the sphere of WooCommerce development, innovation continues at a breakneck pace, so it’s important for businesses to stay updated on current trends and advancements.

From enhancing in-app customer support solutions to embracing AI (Artificial Intelligence), sustainability practices, and voice search optimization, the future is packed with possibilities.

To improve your understanding of what lies ahead, read on as we provide you with insightful knowledge about significant trends shaping this field.

Our goal is to make you learn at least one new thing about the future of WooCommerce and the ecommerce ecosystem – feel free to share what that is in the comments!

WooCommerce: Choosing The Right Instagram Growth Service

Could an Instagram growth service help boost the potential of your WooCommerce store?

Today, Instagram has emerged as a powerful platform for business owners looking to boost brand awareness, capture audience attention, and increase sales.

Instagram data even found that around 70% of online shoppers use the platform when looking for inspiration to make their next purchase.

As a WooCommerce store owner, you have an incredible opportunity to use Instagram not just as a promotional tool, but as an additional sales channel, thanks to native integration options. However, before you can start leveraging the benefits of Instagram for growth, you need to ensure you can grow an engaged following online.

That’s where an Instagram Growth service comes in.

WooCommerce: How to Leverage Instagram to Get More Sales

Once you’ve got your WooCommerce store up and running, the next important step is to promote it – so you can reach your target group and maximize your sales and revenue.

And Instagram is an excellent platform for businesses like you to showcase their products, different use cases, and customer reviews.

That’s not it. Whether you’re planning to start an Instagram page for your store or already have one, you can increase the impact of your Instagram content – by using social media feed plugins.

Allowing you to display Instagram posts on your website, these plugins take Instagram’s power to highlight your store and products to boost your sales up a notch.

This article will explore five such plugins that will help you add content from Instagram to your website and use it to its full potential. But first, let’s understand what social media feed plugins do and how they can help you.

WordPress: Growing Your Plugin (Part 2: Integrations)

If you use the word “integration” or “compatibility” with a seasoned plugin developer, chances are you might make them flinch. You can’t blame them. More often than not, these terms bring to mind an inbox laden with emails asking for compatibility with one plugin or another, day in and day out.

But what’s the big deal?- you ask. You, the proud developer of a newly released plugin, would kill to have an inbox full of customers. You would gladly trade places.

Well, the fact of the matter is that the prospect of an integration can be daunting. It means a plugin developer may have to become familiarized with a codebase that falls far short of their own standards (we all know what open-source, at its worst, can lead to). After that, resolving the compatibility issue in question ranges from cakewalk to descent into the underworld. Usually, it’s somewhere in between. The last step, of course, is to get back to the customer in question. Imagine the battle-tested plugin developer’s remorse when, on occasion, they never hear so much as a peep from that customer again. Sure, the resolution to this issue may pay dividends in the long-run, but as the veteran developer knows full-well, there is no guarantee of that.

In a word, ensuring your plugin plays well with others is no joke. That’s why you don’t hear many old-timers advising folks to make integrations and compatibility a focus, or at least that’s my hypothesis. But regardless of whether my suspicion is true or not, the fact that this is a neglected growth lever is beyond dispute. You don’t need to take my word for it either. Just ask Chris Lema, who recently stated as much in one of his blogposts (which I briefly covered in WooWeekly).

The message is simple: it pays well to ensure your plugin plays well with others. Even if that sounds like bad poetry to you, it’s true.

WordPress: Growing Your Plugin (Part 1: Website + SEO)

If you build it, they may come – but not in as great a number as they would otherwise.

I have seen WordPress developers reach as many as 10,000 active installations without spending a single minute on dime marketing. However, on every occasion that I hear such a story, I pause to wonder: how big would this theme or plugin be if the developer behind it thought about distribution?

Maybe their product spawns a company and they become the next YITH or Yoast, toasting after a major acquisition not thought possible in their wildest dreams.

The first hurdle to overcome as a developer is the fallacy that your product is tainted by even the slightest speck of marketing, as if it was a glass of unadulterated, pure spring water sourced from the streams of Mount Olympus.

The WordPress ecosystem is not the plains of Dion – it’s more like the dregs of Romulus. More and more, it is guaranteed that you will face competition from the optimates, the big guys who come in the form of hosting providers, prolific WordPress development companies, super plugins, site builders, etc.

The best themes and plugins don’t always win in the face of superior brands and warchests. In fact, the more disillusioned among us would say that they rarely do these days.

The good news is that the best themes and plugins can win, even if their developers are unknown and resource-constrained. But it all begins by bringing the horse to water. After that, if the product is good enough, the horse will drink. If it does not drink, there is more development to do.

WooCommerce: How to Increase Your Word-of-Mouth Sales

You know word-of-mouth is hands down the most cost-effective, lucrative, and fastest way to convert prospects into customers. You have repeat customers that seem to love you, but they hardly engage or spread the good word around. Your mailing list isn’t growing, your products have a negligible number of reviews, your referrals are a bust.

You want to drive traffic and hope to establish strong sustainable word-of-mouth channels to find new customers – but nothing you have tried so far has worked as well as it should have.

If this sounds like you – you’re at the right place. This article will look at some of the key aspects of sharing that help promote word-of-mouth sales and how your store can optimize these to scale your business easily and convert your prospects faster.

WooCommerce: Top 5 Marketing Strategies

So you’ve got your WooCommerce website up and running and all is going OK….

But OK isn’t good enough, is it? What you really want is to be a thriving business with a website that consistently receives high volume traffic.

What you need is a bit of good marketing. Fine. But generic advice just won’t do. You need expert insights into WooCommerce to give you that edge over the competition.

In this article, we’re going to cover the top five methods for marketing WooCommerce websites. Pay attention now! The following information could change everything.

WooCommerce: 8 Best Email Marketing Services

Emails are a vital part of a successful eCommerce store. Successful store owners nurture their potential customers using email automation and send them the right information in right time to nudge them towards purchase.

They setup automation to create a relationship with their customers by sending emails (Welcome emails, Discount emails/Upsell Offers, Abandoned cart emails, Order confirmation emails,Post-Purchase Follow Up) based on buyers journey they are in.

WordPress: Top 5 Plugins for Email Automation

You need email marketing to build your connection and generate more and more leads. But email marketing isn’t as easy as people make it out to be. It takes a considerable amount of time, energy, and resources.

In fact, statistic shows that over 68% of companies spend a week (or more) on the production of just one email.

This is a whole lot of time. Do you have this much time on your hands?

And the problems do not end here.

More often than not, people put in so much effort, but don’t see deserved profits, resulting in a measly conversion rate.

This is where automation comes in.

In this article, we will discuss some of the best WordPress plugins for email automation so that you can optimize your email marketing process.

WooCommerce: 4 Reasons You Should Use a .STORE Domain

This is a guest post by Suman Das of Radix – if you like the article, make sure to thank him in the comments!

Now that you’re planning to sell online, you need to create your own brand. And while WooCommerce can help you develop a slick ecommerce website, building a great brand starts with picking a great domain name.

When it comes to effective brand building and harboring customer trust, your domain name plays a crucial role. It’s the first touchpoint for your customers and helps them get an understanding of what awaits them on your website. Paid marketing campaigns and special offers can help you convert traffic quickly, but to thrive in the long run it’s essential that you build an outstanding BRAND.

Your WooCommerce website is a virtual storefront, so why not use a brand new and very relevant .STORE domain name instead of a .COM? It’s a smart way to highlight the fact that you sell something on your website… without having to explain it through your brand name.

So, here are some reasons you should consider registering a .STORE domain for your WooCommerce website.

WooCommerce: How to Run an Affiliate / Referral Program?

There is no doubt – one of the fastest, most affordable and easiest ways to increase your WooCommerce sales is to “hire your own customers”.

You’ve probably heard of affiliate commissions, referral programs, influencer marketing, brand ambassadors and so on. Online brands are doing all they can to promote this strategy and tap into their fans’ communities.

As a WooCommerce store owner, no matter whether you sell digital or physical products, you should definitely give an affiliate program a go. Besides, what if I told you enabling such a complex system was actually super easy?

With a simple plugin you can immediately add an affiliate marketing program to your WooCommerce website, give registered affiliates their own dashboard with statistics and revenue, pay them via PayPal or Stripe either manually, immediately or monthly and basically do absolutely no coding or complex set up.

Decide your referral commission (e.g. $10 per product, or 15% per order), install the affiliate plugin, contact all your existing customers, subscribers, fans, followers and see your sales grow.

For such a little investment, your returns might be reasonable enough and there is really nothing stopping you from implementing this today.

In this article, we’ll take a look at some of the most reliable WooCommerce Affiliate plugins. They all do the trick, so it’s up to you to make that final choice.