Using WooCommerce in 2021
Getting WooCommerce ’21
Starting from scratch or upgrading your site to incorporate WooCommerce is no problem. From adding products and managing orders to offering coupons and creating reports, WooCommerce packs a lot of punch. There are plenty of exciting new WooCommerce plugins and extensions available to make your client’s online storefront attract and retain more customers.
From a web development perspective, WooCommerce offers tons of options to get your client’s storefront up and running. The sooner their storefront is live, the sooner they can start reeling in customers and giving them the shopping experience they need to keep them coming back for more. Sell products, services, subscriptions or bookings.
WooCommerce Settings
Needing to attract new and recurring customer is simple by using categories, product tags and attributes. As a site grows so does the demand and features the lives within the site and WooCommerce allows the configuration to be modified to meet customer expectations. No fear if you decide to sell and ship to different countries or even accept different currency with various payment gateway preferences. With that what all can you do with WooCommerece:
- Change countries to sell and ship to
- payment gateway preferences
- difference checkout options
- Dont forget coupons and/or discounts
Product Adding
From adding to organizing along with special offerings in your shop. Well guess who does it with very little knowledge, WooCommerce does. After installing WooCommerce simply select the “Products” within your dashboard. Furthermore WooCommerce walks the user through adding a product: name, description, category assignment.
Defined Product types :
- Downloadable products
- Shippable products
- virtual products
- Variable products
Using Coupons
How to promote the business and attract more customer to stop and buy? It simple offer discounts with coupons. Once on the dashboard select couplns and follow the prompts:
- Create your own details along with coupons codes
- Designate how oftern the coupon can be used by a customer
- Assign restrictions for example minimum or maximum total of an order
Advance Features
Also within WooCommerce there are ton of advance features to launch a business.
- Theme Customizations
- various woocommerce themes can be purchased and customized
- Shipping
- Designate options like pickup, local delivery or shipping
- PayPal Acceptance
- Enable PayPal checkout along with all major credicards
- Social Login
- Account creation/login process by allowing customers to use logins from the popular social media platforms
- Analytics
- Deep eCommerce insights including checkout flow analysis, sales by product and category, average order value, and more.
- Cart & Checkout add-ons
- Cross-sell related products after a customer adds an item to their cart using Cart Add-ons. Then offer upsells like insurance, gift wrapping, and more at checkout using Checkout Add-ons
Order Managements
Nothing is like getting a notification of a successful order being placed but managing and fulfiling the order isn’t as exciting. No worries through because WooCommerce simplifies this process when dealing with order management. Within the dashboard you can review the order process display, for example filtering orders by customer or date along with soting on any of the following with ascending/descending with order number, date or total. In addition with the email customizer you can setup and configure ceamless communcation with customers.
WooCommerce Reporting
Need a second set of eyes on the business growth, marketing strageries, as well as buget playing then you hired the right person, WooCommerce. WooCommerce delievers reporting like order and customer reports that are represeneted in various graph and charts that makes it easier to comprehend.
- Published in blog, E-Commerce
Machine Learning w/ eCommerce
We hear a lot about Machine Learning these days as it has become one of the hottest buzzwords around. However, we are approached by many people who don’t seem to have a clear idea on how it could be applied to add value to their business. Since it is a very broad topic with different types of applications based on the desired goals and objectives, we aim to create a series of blog posts, each targeting a different industry, and just touch on some of the different ways in which Machine Learning can help add value to a business within that particular industry. Today, we’ll start with eCommerce, as it is one of the low hanging fruits that can quickly be picked for enhancement via Machine Learning.
What kind of Machine Learning is applicable in eCommerce?
Machine Learning comes in several different forms such as Supervised Learning, Unsupervised Learning, Semi-Supervised Learning and Reinforced Learning. The scope of this blog won’t delve into the technical details, but we’ll just preface our eCommerce based solutions discussion with the information that while Machine Learning can be used to do things like drive cars, perform facial recognition, or identify a car’s license plate from CCTV footage, what we aim to do in our eCommerce implementation is to be able to identify user behavior patterns to perform predictive analysis and make proactive decisions driven by data. We’ll explain in further detail.
Recommendation Engine
Perhaps one of the biggest reasons why Amazon was able to demolish all its opponents in the eCommerce industry is/was largely due to their incredible recommendation engine which is entirely based on Machine Learning. A recommendation engine takes in past user behavior analytics information as training data and learns the different patterns and trends. After ingesting millions upon millions of records of these purchasing habits of users, along with their profiles (Supervised Learning), the system will be able to predict how a new user may end up browsing the website, or what products they may be interested in, based on their browsing habits, the items in the cart, and what people with a similar profile have done in the past. When the user completes their transaction, the recommendation will take into account if its recommendations were successful or not, and further improve its algorithm (Reinforced Learning).
A Recommendation Engine is similar to the rack you find during checkout at the grocery store (usually contains candy, gum, magazines, etc.). It is an opportunity to remind the shopper of an item that they may want/need but had forgotten about, or to entice them to buy something they weren’t even planning on buying in the first place. The more accurate these recommendations are to the shopper’s wants & needs, the more likely they are to purchase additional items.
Price Optimization
Another area in which Machine Learning is providing a great deal of assistance to the business team is in Price Optimization. Prices for products can fluctuate a great deal depending on dozens—if not hundreds—of variables. A pricing engine can be created to take into account a great deal of information from the shopper’s profile, current trends, competitor prices, product abandonment rates, and much more, and determine what percentage discount to offer the shopper on a specific product in order to increase the potential of making the sale, while keeping a healthy profit margin on the product. When dealing with a catalog of hundreds of millions of products & variants, with hundreds of factors going into pricing each one of them, you can see how quickly it can become infeasible for humans to do this task with full coverage. By utilizing Machine Learning to optimize pricing on a catalog of products, eCommerce stores can unlock a massive competitive advantage.
Retargeting, Discounts & Upsells
A shopper may not always complete the purchase. They may browse for a while, even add items to their cart, and eventually leave without completing the transaction. Machine Learning can help add value here as well. Retargeting campaigns can be executed to reach out to previous customers who have bought, abandoned a cart, or just browsed your website. These campaigns can be supercharged with Machine Learning by looking at historic data of similar shopper profiles and how they may have been converted in the past via retargeting. In some cases, Facebook or Instagram ads may have worked. In other cases, offering a discount valid for 24 hours on the products in their abandoned cart may have worked. It all depends on what the data is telling you, and that is where Machine Learning shines. As it is already analyzing hundreds of millions of past shoppers’ habits and outcomes, it will be able to predict what is most likely to work when attempting to convert a potential customer with similar habits & profile details.
Conclusion
These are just a few tips and tricks that are being used by eCommerce giants such as Amazon and Walmart, and more stores are jumping onboard with this line of thinking (for obvious reasons). With the availability of tools such as Google’s AutoML, and similar offerings from Amazon, Microsoft and others, Machine Learning is no longer the scary black box it once was and there has never been a better time to climb onboard the Machine Learning train as it leaves the station. If you are interested in implementing Machine Learning to add value to your business, reach out to us and we’d be happy to discuss the different options that may be available to you.
- Published in blog, E-Commerce
Building eCommerce Sites and Things To Keep In Mind
Nowadays, you can buy pretty much anything you want with a few mouse clicks or swipes of a touchscreen. From handcrafted goods to household staples, there is not much that you can’t purchase online and have conveniently shipped to your front door.
If you know how start an online store the right way, you’ll be able to boost your profits significantly and grow your business year after year.
Why is it important to understand how to start an online store if commerce is your game? Where should we start?
We are living in the midst of a digital age. In today’s world, consumers are no longer bound by one particular geographical location.
On the contrary, nowadays people have the power to connect with their peers, conduct research, consume content, and most importantly shop wherever they are in the world with a few swipes of a screen. And that means that in the current climate, if you’re an entrepreneur looking to grow your business, building an online store might be the best thing you ever do.
At present, 21.8% of the planet’s population shops online, and in 2021, this number is expected to rise to more than 2 billion online shoppers.
The current state of eCommerce
Before we delve deeper into how to start an online store, let’s explore these eCommerce stats, facts and figures that prove the power of online shopping:
- On average, men spend $220 per online transaction and women spend $151 per transaction. That’s a high-value average spend per customer.
- Online shopping is more popular than ever before and by 2021, eCommerce sales are expected to climb to 17.5% of retail sales across the globe. That’s plenty of profit up for grabs.
- During Q3 2018, smartphones made up 61% of retail site visits globally. If you’re online store is mobile-optimized, you’re likely to boost your conversion rate, big-time.
- The main reason people shop online is that they’re able to buy items or products 24/7, literally.
Realizing the full power of an eCommerce website
Just to reiterate (and we do so because absorbing this message will give you the best possible chance of easy eCommerce success): eCommerce stores give businesses the power to act big, but remain small.
Through professional and powerful, yet affordable, online storefronts, businesses can reach an extremely large market and sell to a vast and wide customer base.
Estimations of U.S. online sales for 2019 are projected to soar to over $560 billion — and that number is only expected to grow. The same projections put eCommerce sales at roughly $414 billion to more than $735 billion by 2023. Mind-blowing.
As mentioned, online stores give small businesses the opportunity to tap into a massive marketplace and an entire nation of shoppers.
Easy eCommerce: How to start an online store in 3 steps
It’s clear that if you’re a modern business, entering the eCommerce arena is a wise move. To help you start your digital journey, here’s our how-to guide to create an online store, broken down into three simple steps:
- Fine-tune your idea.
- Create your online store.
- Promote your online store.
1. Fine-tune your idea
At this point, it’s likely that you know what you want to sell. Start fine-tuning your idea by deciding on a business name, conducting market research, and finding your audience.
Consider these questions: What makes your brand stand out from others in your niche? What particular pain points do you solve?
Work out the answers to these questions and you’ll be able to move forward in the best possible direction.
Choosing your business name and domain name
When it comes to naming your eCommerce business, choosing a name that is digestible, memorable, relevant, good for digital marketing purposes and will work well as a domain name is a must.
Your domain name is the web address for your digital storefront. You want it to truly represent who you are and what you have to offer — at a glance.
There are myriad domain extensions (the part of the domain name to the right of the dot, like .com) available to help you secure the perfect name. Consider a domain extension that suits your industry or niche and that will help you stand out from the crowd. Think .shop or .store for general eCommerce, or get more specific with .jewelry, .clothing, .coffee and more.
2. Create your online store
Once you’ve considered all of the key ingredients of a successful web-based eCommerce business, it’s time to start thinking about making it happen, in a practical sense.
The simplest and fastest way to get your online shop up and running is by using a templated eCommerce store.
With this option, you get it all in one quick install. An eCommerce website package includes an online shop website template (aka website theme), product pages, shopping cart, payment processing feature and hosting for the site.
Instead of building your store piece by piece, you can install the whole store at once.
GoDaddy Online Store or HostGator Online Store both of these sites includes all of these essentials plus award-winning customer support, tools for integrating with online marketplaces, Facebook and Google Analytics, and more.
Consider these questions: What makes your brand stand out from others in your niche? What particular pain points do you solve?
3. Promote your online store
The third and final element of our how to start an online store guide comes in the form of promotion or marketing.
Once you’ve fine-tuned your idea and actually created your online store, it’s time to shout about it to your target audience.
Here we’re going to explain how to promote an online store, expand your reach, and enjoy the profit-boosting success you no doubt deserve.
There are a host of avenues you can take when marketing your online store to prospective buyers, from connecting your website to popular third-party vendors to social media, email marketing and more.
But, before we delve into these all-important areas, it’s important to reiterate the importance of spreading the word about your online store.
Why you need to promote your online store
Many small business owners think that once they have created an online store their job is done.
In fact, that’s where the fun begins. Not everyone who creates an online store is successful in making it their primary source of income. But those who are successful have a few common characteristics:
They love their customers
Ask any successful online seller what they like about their business and they will have a ton of heart-warming customer stories on the tips of their tongues. They live for making their customers’ lives better.
They are scrappy and savvy marketers
The most successful online sellers have figured out a way to spread the word in their customer community. Some do it through social media marketing. Others identify influencers in their community and have them promote their product. Some business owners come up with clever viral marketing campaigns by promoting their products with special discounts.
Conclusion and next steps
eCommerce is not an industry; eCommerce is a tactic. – Tobias Lutke
An eCommerce website can open a large, new frontier for your business. You will be able to sell to millions around the world instead of the thousands in your neighborhood. You will be able to tap into a billion dollar market. And, you will be able to give your business an opportunity to expand and grow with minimal risk and low investment costs.
Once you’ve fine-tuned your idea with a great name and thorough market testing, an easy eCommerce website is just a few steps away.
Begin with a few products that you showcase on your eCommerce site with stellar photos and product descriptions. Prompt store visitors to take action with compelling CTAS and authentic customer testimonials and reviews. Make it easy for customers to pay via various methods. Offer multiple shipping options — including free shipping.
These are the basics that will get your online store up and running.
Then you can focus on expanding your product line and growing your business through digital marketing techniques such as email marketing, social media and online business listings.
Now that you know how to create an online store, get going and make those dreams a reality.
- Published in blog, Development, E-Commerce, New Web Site, Web Application Development