Tag: Payment Gateways

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 Sell CBD Products

Since the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) removed cannabidiol, also known as CBD, from schedule 1 of the Controlled Substances Act in 2018, there has been a significant increase in CBD eCommerce in the United States. 

Studies suggest that the CBD industry will see a sustained compound growth rate of 55% over the next few years, with the market set to reach a whopping $2.1 billion by 2030.

However, since CBD products are highly-regulated, it’s not easy to sell them online, and you need to adhere to a special set of rules and regulations. 

WooCommerce is an ideal eCommerce platform for CBD sellers. However, even though you can sell CBD products with WooCommerce, Automattic — the parent company of WooCommerce, Jetpack, etc. — only supports the sale of CBD-related products under specific conditions.

You cannot use payment gateways like Stripe or PayPal to accept payments. This means that “WooCommerce Payments” prohibits CBD too.

Therefore, the real challenge lies in finding the right payment provider. Fortunately, there are several third-party payment merchants and even plugins that you can use to sell CBD products with WooCommerce. 

In this article, we’ll talk about seven different payment solutions that permit the sale of CBD-related products with WooCommerce.

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WooCommerce: How to Set Up Mail & Phone Orders (MOTO)

MOTO (Mail Order / Telephone Order) payments are payment transactions you take while the customer isn’t with you in person. 

MOTO payments are a vital way for many businesses to process customer payments. They’re accessible, secure and can help you expand your customer base by removing payment barriers. 

But what exactly are MOTO payments? 

Well, in this article, we’ll explain exactly that. Plus, we’ll talk about why they’re worth using and how to get them set up on your WooCommerce store.

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WooCommerce: 5 Must-Knows to Develop a Payment Gateway From an API

A payment gateway is a system developed to enable payment of goods and services for both offline and online merchants. It makes sure that there exists a smooth passage of all transactions through encryption of confidential information. It acts as the link between a buyer, a bank, and an online shop.

Online stores try their best to sell as many products as possible to their customers. WooCommerce comes with built-in functionality and features such as store management and payment options that merchants need to get their stores up and running.

A shop using the WooCommerce plugin is the payment portal while the bank is the payment processor. The payment gateway receives data from the buyer and redirects it to the right payment processor depending on the method of payment that the buyer chooses.

So, let’s see what’s required from a technical and legal point of view before writing a single line of code.

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WooCommerce: The Elusive Nature of 1-Click Checkout

Increasing sales and conversion rates is one of the major goals of every eCommerce store owner. However, it’s no secret that you can only achieve it by attaining a peak level of user and customer experience. 

While at the beginning of the dot com online shopping era, customers were elated with the mere fact that they could buy anything they desired from the comfort of their homes – no matter the payment method or how long the delivery takes. Customers today are very particular about their preferences and expectations – especially when it comes to checkout. 

Checkout is an essential factor in improving customer experience as it’s where your customers finalize their sales and pay for the products or services you offer. For example, Amazon – one of the biggest eCommerce giants, provides an optimal and one-click checkout experience to its customers. 

While many eCommerce companies still cling to the multi-step checkout process – one-click checkout delivers simplicity and speed in the customer checkout process. The key is to make checkouts smooth and quick – eliminating the hassle of entering card details repeatedly for your customers. Out of 69.80% of cart abandonment rate – 18% of customers abandon their carts because of a long and complicated checkout process. 

The solution? PeachPay, the one-stop-shop checkout & payment plugin for WooCommerce. 

An instant and less complicated checkout process significantly impacts conversion rates and boosts your sales. So, in this article, we’ll see how you can use and enable PeachPay – an excellent WooCommerce-funded checkout & payment plugin, to boost conversions and sales. 

But first, let’s quickly see how a one-click checkout solution will benefit your WooCommerce store. 

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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.

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WooCommerce: 6 Popular Payment Gateways

As you probably already know, WooCommerce offers the easiest way to build an online store with WordPress.

Depending on your individual needs, WooCommerce allows you to add digital products as well as subscriptions. One of the most important components of your store is the payment gateway you use.

This is what offers your shoppers a secure shopping experience by connecting your store to an online payment service where they can pay for their orders, safely and securely.

What is a WooCommerce Payment Gateway?

WooCommerce payment gateways work by verifying the billing information for every customer, approving requests and ensuring you get paid.

The type of WooCommerce payment gateway to choose depends on several factors which include how easy it is to integrate with WooCommerce, the target clients you serve, related costs and the level of security you need.

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WooCommerce: Enable Payment Gateway Only for “Order Pay Checkout”

I invoice clients via WooCommerce, and then send them the “Invoice Email”, which takes them to the “Order Pay” page. Of course, I want to give them the option to pay via “Bank Transfer” (bacs), but I don’t want this to be visible on the default checkout page.

We’ve seen in the past how to disable payment gateways given certain conditions… but how do we “enable” one? Here’s a snippet for that – enjoy!

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WooCommerce: Disable Payment Gateway For Specific Shipping Method

Today we take a look at the WooCommerce Checkout Page and specifically at how to disable a payment gateway (for example PayPal) when a specific shipping method is selected (e.g. “local_pickup”).

Specifically, you will learn how to “get” the selected shipping method on the go (thanks to “sessions”), and also how to “unset” a payment gateway. Enjoy!

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WooCommerce: Add Checkout Fee for a Payment Gateway (e.g. PayPal)

Here’s a simple PHP snippet to add a fee to the checkout for every payment or for a specific payment gateway.

Please do remember that for certain payment gateways such as PayPal, adding checkout fees is currently against their Terms of Service so make sure to check this first.

As usual, this needs to be copied and pasted in your child theme’s functions.php file. Enjoy!

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WooCommerce: Fixing Fatal error Call to undefined function wc_get_order()

I developed a custom payment gateway plugin for a client, who wanted to add a similar method to “cod” (cash on delivery). FYI, he wanted to add a method called “card on delivery”. I simply duplicated the code, added the PHP to a file, made a plugin and gave him the plugin zip file. And everything was working great… until he did a test checkout. Continue reading WooCommerce: Fixing Fatal error Call to undefined function wc_get_order()