Assuming that you’ve already given WordPress the go-ahead and are launching your store on the world’s most popular CMS, you need the right tools to help you on your journey. 

We have done the needful for you, though. After testing tons of WordPress Ecommerce tools used by different inspirational ecommerce websites , here’s our list of the 8 best Ecommerce WordPress plugins that are a must-have for your ecommerce store. 

Let’s take a look.

1. WooCommerce

WooCommerce is a no-brainer, but many people still don’t know that WooCommerce plugin is what turns a WordPress site into a full-fledged online store.

The plugin makes it incredibly easy to launch and manage an online store, which is why WordPress is a go-to choice for most people launching their online store. 

Furthermore, Woocommerce is free. It’s available for download at the WordPress repository, and while that doesn’t mean that setting up your online store on WordPress is totally free, it does bring down the cost considerably. 

Related Post: Learn How to Speed Up WooCommerce Store 

WooCommerce has extensions of its own that can make your online store more efficient, and plenty of them are free as well. For example, you can embed Amazon Pay on your online store by installing this free extension. 

With plenty of WooCommerce themes available to design a store to your liking and plenty of other useful features, WooCommerce is a powerhouse that doesn’t break the bank and it’s a must-have ecommerce tool for your WordPress store.

Also Read: How to Setup PayPal Payment Gateway on WooCommerce 

2. Hummingbird Plugin (Speed Optimize, Cache, Minify)

According to Google, your site’s bounce rate will be significantly higher if your site loads in more than three seconds. A slow-loading website further results in poor rankings in search engines and consequently the entire business suffers.

This is where Hummingbird Plugin comes in. 

This handy ecommerce WordPress tool first scans and analyzes your entire website and gives you a report of each of the site elements. see the status of the overall loading speed of your website and Hummingbird will suggest ways to improve any elements that your site may be lacking in.

Hummingbird will do your site caching, optimization and images compression for your website. The tool is just like a little assistant that informs you whenever there is a speed issue on your website that needs to be fixed. Try this ecommerce solution for WordPress for free for 14 days, or buy the paid version if it suits your website’s needs.

Also Read: Learn How to Speed Up Your WordPress Site in 2020

3. Salesmate

When we’re talking about ecommerce, we can’t ignore something as important as the sales funnel. So, does WordPress have anything to improve the sales funnel? You bet. 

Salesmate is one of the smartest sales CRM Plugin for small businesses and you can integrate the tool right into your WordPress. Not only does Salesmate streamline the sales pipeline management but it gives you a customized RM for your website and works well with other widgets and plugins on your site.

Integration is smooth, takes a few minutes to sign up, and you can take leads straight to the Salesmate interface and the tool sorts them out according to priority. 

The simplicity of this plugin makes it easy for users to work on two platforms at the same time.

In short, once you let Salesmate take the wheel and respond to leads on your behalf using personalization and segmentation, your ecommerce game will be much stronger! 

4. Defender (WordPress Security, Malware Detection, and Firewall)

Since WordPress is immensely popular, it makes it a prominent target for cyber miscreants.

On that note, you should know that Web security is not a far-fetched myth; you need to stay active and work on your website’s security to keep your website safe. And Defender is the best WordPress tool to protect your website against potential attacks. 

It checks your website for any security issues and creates patches to resolve problematic matters. It can even help you fix the site in case of a hacking incident. In short, your website’s overall security is improved thanks to this plugin.

You can sit back and relax because you can even schedule scans on Defender to run on your website. If there’s a high-level threat, you’ll be alerted immediately while other minor threats will be taken care of automatically. 

You can even try the security plugin on a 14-day free trial and sign up for the paid version if you feel the tool suits your business needs.

5. Jetpack

Jetpack is a tool packed with powerful features for your WordPress website. It offers improved security, increased site performance efficiency, and a variety of content tools and features to increase user engagement of your ecommerce store. 

Apart from the above-mentioned features, Jetpack also offers services to find and highlight spam comments, share posts by integrating social accounts and sort posts by email. 

An added advantage is that you can manage the tool via mobile. The mobile version is easy to install, lightweight, and highly responsive, so it’s a great way to manage plenty of your WordPress store activities right from your mobile device! 

6. Google Analytics

Google Analytics is one of the best analytics tools in the market right now and should be a part of your WordPress dashboard. You can easily integrate google analytics with your WordPress site and it even works well with all the widgets on your site. 

What Google Analytics basically does is that it keeps you up-to-date with all the important, meaningful stats on your site. 

You can view your online store’s traffic, where people are coming from, the devices that people are using to visit your website, the bounce rate, peak hours people are visiting, session duration, and many other important analytics stats.

Keeping a track of every user activity provides you with valuable insights into the metrics that are not performing and those that bring the highest conversion. Hence, Google Analytics is a crucial tool, and because it’s easy to install as well, there’s no reason why you don’t have the handy Analytics tools already on your site. 

7. Yoast SEO 

Search Engine Optimization or SEO is essential for any online store. Good SEO helps generate traffic that is later converted to leads and sales. For this purpose, Yoast SEO WordPress Plugin is arguably one of the best SEO plugins in the market and brings a number of SEO functionalities to your WordPress ecommerce site. 

Yoast SEO lets you easily set your meta title (MT) and meta description (MD) that help in ranking your online store higher in the search results. 

Apart from that, you can set alt text to your images so that your product images can rank in search engines as well. Alt text gives the search engine signals so that it can read the image and rank it on Google images. 

All in all, Yoast SEO is also a must have WordPress plugin for your online store if you care about SEO. 

8. UpDraftPlus

The last thing you, as an online store owner, want is to lose your data. Even worse is when you have to create your store from scratch. To prevent any of this from happening, you should create backups of your online store so that your data is safe and you can always recover it in case of a mishap. 

But a plugin can do this for you far more easily. UpDraftPlus is one of the best WordPress backup plugins that can create backups of your online store on Dropbox, Google Drive, Amazon S3 (or compatible), UpdraftVault, Rackspace Cloud, FTP, DreamObjects, Openstack Swift, and even your email. 

The plugin is available for free on WordPress repository but there is a paid version as well which lets you backup your data on even more services like Microsoft OneDrive, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Storage, Backblaze B2, SFTP, SCP, and WebDAV. 

9. CTX Feed Woocommerce Product Feed Generator

There’s no eCommerce owner who doesn’t want to maximize their revenue. And, the best way of selling more products is by promoting those products on multiple merchant channels like Google shopping, Facebook catalog, Rakuten, Bing ads, Instagram, etc.

In order to submit your products on those merchant channels, the eCommerce owners have to submit a product feed on those channels. And, CTX Feed is arguably one of the best product feed generator plugins for WooCommerce websites. 

You can generate an unlimited product feed with unlimited products by using the CTX Feed plugin. It automatically includes variable products which are also multilingual and multi-currency supported.

Once you have generated the feed, you don’t need to update it again. CTX Feed will automatically update the feed after a certain time interval. So, the feed will be automatically updated whenever you update any products on your WooCommerce store. 

Conclusion

We understand that your online store is a source of income for you and we respect that. This is exactly why we make it a point not only to choose the plugins that are recommended time and again by industry experts, but to also test them before we recommend them to you. 

Choosing the right tool, though, mostly depends on your business’s nature, so make sure that you give these tools a trial before you implement them fully on your online store, See real-debrid com/device. Do you have any questions regarding the ecommerce WordPress tools that I’ve selected for this list? Just email us at admin@app61.cloudwayssites.com!

The post 9 Best WordPress Ecommerce Plugins For Your Website appeared first on WPblog.

With Facebook becoming a social media giant, it’s proven to be a tough competitor to Google Ads over time. For marketers who want to advertise their products, though, the competition means choice. 

And that raises an important question: Facebook ads vs. Google Ads, which is better?

It’s a little complicated to answer the question because both Facebook and Google offer plenty of features to make online advertising more effective. 

But this article will compare Facebook Ads vs Google Ads to help you make an informed decision about which platform to use for your advertising needs. Let’s dive in.

Facebook Ads vs Google Ads:

Before going in-depth with each platform’s features, advantages, and disadvantages, let’s take an overview of both Facebook and Google and how they serve ads!

Facebook Ads: (Paid Social)

Facebook Ads changed the world of advertising when it was launched back in 2007. With 2.45 billion users currently, Facebook is the carte blanche of social networks and holds data about people’s behaviors, interests, and activities. This interest-based behavior opened doors to newer possibilities for advertisers. Users could now be targeted based on their interests, location, gender, and other important metrics. In simpler words, Facebook ads help customers find the products they’d be interested in rather than seeing unrelated ads. 

The cost of your Facebook ads is highly dependent on the audience you are targeting. The broader the audience, the cheaper the ads cost. But if you target a narrower target with a focus on a specific niche, you’ll have to spend a higher budget

Google Adwords: (Paid Ads)

Google Ads, still more properly known Ads, is one of the oldest ways of marketing your product online. It uses a bidding method where advertisers bid for a particular keyword or keyword phrase in hopes that their product or content is placed alongside the search results for those keywords. 

Each time a user clicks on the product or the content, Google charges a certain amount of money from the advertiser making it a PPC or Pay Per Click advertising method. The more popular the keyword research for your website, the higher the PPC and hence a more costly PPC campaign.

Now Facebook and Google both have a long list of great features unique to each platform. To get a better understanding, let’s find out which does what better, and what stands out when comparing Facebooks Ads vs Google Ads.  

Facebook Ads Advantages:

There are plenty of advantages that Facebook holds over Google Ads. Let’s find out how in more detail.

1. Advanced Audience Targeting on Facebook

Facebook boasts a staggering 1.55 billion monthly active users. This means that if you’re looking to sell, Facebook holds information on almost 1/3rd of the world’s population. Facebook lets you target audiences based on behavior, interests, demographics, and even their actions on the platform. On top of all this, Facebook also owns Instagram and WhatsApp, which broadens the horizon of how many and how well Facebook can help you target your customers.

2. Better Visuals on Facebook

On Facebook, visuals take precedence. Whether it’s videos, images, or gifs, your ads are more visually captivating on Facebook. There’s also the added benefit of your ads seamlessly blending in with the organic visual content strategy, that users will scroll past by on their News Feeds. Basically, it leads to more user engagement and possible customers can relate more to the ads. 

3. More Affordable Than Google Ads

Facebook’s ad pricing is affordable with highly competitive pricing, making it easy to start no matter the size of your business. The average CPC (cost per click) is far lower on Facebook compared to Google, and you have complete control over the maximum CPC you’re willing to spend. The minimum ad spend is $1 per day on the social media giant, but you can still get results in this little investment.

Google Ads (AdWords) Advantages:

Google is the pioneer of online advertising and holds plenty of advantages over Facebook as well. Let’s take a look. 

1. Unparalleled Audience Size

While Facebook is the largest social media platform, Google powers the internet, and that’s saying something. With over 40,000 search queries per second, Google has an active audience size that no other platform has come close to reaching. This means that Google can serve your ads to a far greater number than Facebook. Then there’s YouTube, a Google property that transcends how people watch videos, and how marketers serve ads on that platform as well.

2. Wide Variety of Ad Types

Google Ads boasts a wide range of ad formats alongside the typical text-based type. There are now options such as the display network, search network, Google Shopping, and remarketing. Google also offers formats that are specifically made for certain industries, such as hotels.

3. Detailed Measuring Tools

The analysis tools that Google Ads offers are some of the best in the analytics industry. They make it easy to monitor progress and general statistics of your campaigns, showing you where and when your ads are being more or less effective. With these advanced analytics, you’ll be able to make well-informed decisions about the direction of your ad campaigns.

4. Budget Control

Google Ads won’t reward just anyone who pays the most for ads; they focus more on the quality and relevance of the ads that you’re making and submitting to them. This means that you have a good chance against bigger corporations if your ads have greater relevance. Google also allows you to specify a daily budget for ad spending and delivers faster drive of traffic than SEO strategies.

Now let’s talk a little about the disadvantages of using both the platforms. 

Facebook Ads Disadvantages:

As with all things, there are some disadvantages to using Facebook as an ad serving platform. Let’s discuss them in detail. 

1. Mistakes are Costly

If you set up the wrong options or target the wrong audience with your Facebook ads, you’ll end up wasting your marketing budget relatively quickly. While Facebook tries to make it easy for you to set up with the proper settings, you can still end up making costly mistakes.

2. Reduced Organic Reach

Facebook is updating its algorithm all the time. In most updates, they focus on reducing the organic reach of content, which means your ads may get lower visibility. This is especially true now because Facebook has renewed its focus on better privacy and the type of content that appears on the user’s news feed, pushing paid ads even further to the sidelines.

Google Ads (AdWords) Disadvantages:

1. Steep & Expensive Learning Curve

In comparison to Facebook Ads, Google Ads is a more complicated platform to learn. This means you’re more likely to make mistakes when you first start out, and they’re going to cost you more than they would on Facebook. Since you pay per click, if a user clicks on your ad but doesn’t convert, you still have to pay even though you didn’t profit.

2. Ads are Restricted

Google Ads has strict limitations on how much space your ad can take up. They only allow a maximum of 3 lines of text for search ads, and the only ways you can use pictures or videos for your ads is through Google Shopping or YouTube advertising.

3. CPC Can Get Expensive

Depending on the industry you’re advertising in, the average CPC can skyrocket in price. This is because bidding prices for ads depends on how competitive your industry and keywords are. If you bid too low for a highly competitive keyword, you’re effectively wasting your money because you may be relegated to the second or third page of Google search.

Now that we have understood the differences between Facebook Ads vs Google Ads, we will now look into some of the best features of both the platforms. 

Facebook Ads Best Features:

So what are the features that stand out for using Facebook as an ad platform? Let’s find out. 

1. Carousel Ads

Facebook’s carousel ads are a great opportunity to make use of visual marketing. Carousel ads can show up to 10 images and videos, giving you the opportunity of telling stories in a creative way. What’s even better is that you can create headlines for each image, add links, and a call to action. You can use them to visualize the features of your product, showcase the uniqueness of your brand, feature a current sale you’re having, and a lot more.

2. Facebook Pixel

Facebook Pixel is a great way to measure conversions, optimize ads and targeting, and gain insights about the users who visit your site via Facebook. All you have to do is add Facebook Pixel to your site and it will track all the actions that people take when they visit your online business. This includes viewing content, adding items to their cart, and making purchases, etc.

3. Advanced Targeting

Facebook’s most famous feature is definitely its highly advanced and specific levels of targeting. You can target your potential customers based on these three metrics: behavior, interest, and demographics.

• Behavior Targeting:  This type is able to reach individuals based on a variety of online behaviors, including past purchases, intent to purchase, device usage, travel preferences, and more.
• Interest Targeting:  With this targeting, you can reach people based on what they’re interested in, such as activities, hobbies, Facebook pages they’ve liked, and more. This is based on information that they’ve shared on Facebook via profile updates, the content they share, keywords from their likes pages, apps they’ve used, and as they’ve clicked.
• Demographic Targeting:  This targeting type is able to reach people based on location, age, gender, relationship status, work and education, life events, political affiliation, and more.

4. Engagement Ads

Facebook has created what they call “Engagement Ads,” which are meant to reach users who react, on facebook comments, or share your posts. These ads are perfect for boosting engagement on your Facebook page, making your business seem more legitimate to newcomers.

5. Video Ads

One of the key aspects of Facebook as a visual-heavy platform is its emphasis on video content. For this reason, video ads and Facebook cover video specs are a great way to create memorable and inspirational content that people will remember your brand for. Video ads are also pretty affordable; they can cost as little as one cent per view.

Google Adwords Ads Best Features:

Now it’s time to look at the best features that Google has to offer. 

1. Search Network

Ads that are made for Google’s search network are great for exposure to search queries. The search network allows campaigns to appear for searches based on the specific keywords entered in the query, showing up at the top of the Google search results page.

2. Display Network

Display Network feature of Google Ads is one of the best ways to massively boost ad exposure. By using the display network, your ads will be shown on websites and apps with content that your keywords are related to. These ads are much less restrictive, coming in the form of videos, images, and more.

3. Retargeting

Google Ads boasts a sophisticated and advanced marketing tool for retargeting customers. This allows you to specifically remarket to lost customers and win back a sale, boosting your conversion rate.

4. Google Shopping

This aspect of Google’s ad network is specially built for eCommerce. You’re able to create ads based on any of your store’s products that will show up for relevant high-intent search queries. Google Shopping results show up right at the top of the results page, giving you maximum exposure to highly likely conversions.

5. Video Ads

Google’s video ad feature is unique because of how expansive it is. Since Google owns YouTube, your video ads will be able to be shown before, during, and after YouTube videos, along with being shown across the Google Display Network.

The third part of this article focuses on discussing which platform is best suited for which business. This section will especially help you decide what to choose between Facebook Ads vs Google Ads. 

Businesses Best Suited for Facebook Ads:

1. Small Businesses 

Because Facebook Ads are easily accessible to those with lower budgets marketing, it’s a perfect platform for small businesses that may not have a huge internet marketing budget that they can put towards online ads.

2. Niched, Unique, Innovative Businesses

Facebook’s highly advanced and specific targeting system makes it a great choice for businesses with unique niches or unconventional products. Instead of your ad only showing up on the unlikely chance that someone has searched a related keyword to your unique product, Facebook will show your ad to those who may be interested in the general niche that your product is in.

3. Businesses Focused on Brand Building

One of the better advantages of Facebook Ads is that your ads can be entirely consistent with your brand’s image while also linking to your Facebook page. Users can see your brand’s logo, site URL, and ad image for maximum brand consistency. If you want to build brand awareness, Facebook ads are perfect for that.

4. B2C Businesses

Since Facebook Ads are integrated into a social media platform, they’re great for impulse buys of less expensive items after repeated exposure. For this reason, Facebook Ads are better suited for B2C businesses, because businesses that would be marketed towards by B2B businesses don’t typically feel comfortable making large purchases over social media.

Businesses That Should Use Google Adwords Ads:

1. Larger Businesses 

Because Google Ads generally cost more to be successful, it’s a platform that’s better suited for larger businesses with more money to spend in their marketing budgets. This budget will be especially useful in a highly competitive industry, where it costs more to bid on relevant keywords.

2. Businesses Focused on Fast Sales 

While Facebook is better for brand awareness and consistency, Google ads are much better suited for businesses that want results fast. With Google Ads, you’re able to target a much larger amount of people in a shorter amount of time that are more likely to convert. You’ll be reaching a much higher ROI (return on investment) and conversion rater with AdWords in the same time frame as Facebook Ads.

3. B2C & B2B Businesses

Both businesses to consumer and business to business types of eCommerce companies are able to be successful on Google AdWords. This is because Google has such a wide reach of audiences and a large variety of ad formats, that it’s able to fit most industry types.

you need to have a good cloud hosting for your business because slow website load time can really affect your conversion rate check out DigitalOcean Vs Linode Vs Vultr Testing The Top Cloud Infrastructures.

Conclusion

When it comes to deciding between Facebooks Ads vs Google Ads, there are a variety of factors that you must consider. Regardless of which one you choose, you should have a good website built on an integration-friendly template. What we recommend is a perfect mixture of both because of each of their unique benefits. You can build your brand with Facebook but turn to Google to make sales. 

You can use Google’s ad data to target your Facebook audience. The solution here isn’t to just pick one platform and entirely ignore the other; closing yourself off to the unique opportunities of both would be detrimental. So, look into which platform to focus more of your time and money into, but also don’t neglect the other because there are a variety of uses you can get out of both.

The post Facebook Ads vs. Google Ads: An In-Depth Comparison appeared first on WPblog.

Let us take another example of ecommerce website design, you have added some items in your shopping cart and are almost on the verge of checking out the items. You suddenly remember that you do not require five packets of chips but you cannot edit or delete the items in the cart. Would you buy from the site again? No, you won’t because you do not have the flexibility to edit cart items even when it is not checked out.

An e-commerce site is the online version of your brick and mortar shops with an extra brownie point of shopping from wherever you are on earth.

Hence, it is important to provide the best experience to your customers so that they visit your site regularly.

Customer experience can be built with the help of a good UX design.

What is User Experience “UX” design?

According to Wikipedia, UX designing is the process of enhancing user satisfaction by enhancing the usability, accessibility, and pleasure provided in interaction with an online store’s product.

So, if we try to use UX design in an e-commerce website, we can say that the design of the website should be such that it enables customers to shop without any hassles.

In this blog, I am going to tell you six ways on how UX can be used to improve the shopping experience.

Also Read: Best Ecommerce Tools to Grow Your Online Business

1. Simple Navigation = More Time On The Website

Let’s face it; no one has the patience to explore the website for a long time. So, if your website’s navigation is confusing, your potential customer may lose interest and move on to the next one.

Now, you do not want that to happen, do you? As a UX designer, you must ensure that there is no complexity or clutter while searching for a product. It should enable customers to browse, compare and checkout items in a streamlined manner.

There should be simplicity and clarity while providing the necessary information to customers so they can make an informed purchase. For example, if you are looking for a mobile phone on the website, it should help you to navigate between smartphones and basic phones with ease. There should not be multiple steps involved to switch between them.

2. High-Resolution Photos With Option To Zoom

One of the most important and effective ways of describing a product is by showing its picture. This includes specific in depth details about the products along with the image of the product, which can simplify the purchase of that product. UX designer should add high resolution images and ensure that it can be viewed from every angle in order to help the customer make an informed decision.

3. Ability To Filter And Sort Products Depending Upon Preferences

In brick and mortar shops, customers have the option to explain their budget and preferences to the shopkeepers. They expect the same option in online shopping. Hence, it is the responsibility of the UX designer to offer a filter and sort option to the customers so they can shortlist products based on various parameters such as price, colour, brand, and customer reviews etc. For example, we tried to filter the mobile phones based on brand, display size, storage memory, and colour. The number of mobile phones came down to 19 from 10,331!

4. Build trust

A popular proverb goes this way; trust takes years to build, seconds to break, and forever to repair. If you want customers to return to your website, you need to ensure that they trust you. There are two ways to gain trust of your customer.

• HTTPS and Secure Payment Gateway:

This is a crucial stage for customers buying products from any e-commerce sites. The privacy settings along with login information and payment details of customers should never be compromised, which is why it’s important to secure your ecommerce website. HTTPS for ecommerce is a more secured link than HTTP and builds trust in customers. The third-party payment gateway should also be secure with multiple security checks in order to secure the payment details of the customer.

• Availability and non-availability of items:

Apart from the merchandising team that takes stock of products that are available or unavailable, it is also the responsibility of the UX designer to ensure that the sites show the number of stocks available or unavailable to gain trust of the customer.

5. Responsive Design With Less Page Loading Time

Ecommerce websites should be accessible on every type of portable devices and should not take much time to load. This is especially a requirement for customers who access the website on the go. In order to speed up your ecommerce store, there should be a proper plan of action that includes selecting the right web hosting for your ecommerce store, reducing external scripts, using best cache plugins and image compression plugins for your online store. This leads to improve more online store conversions rate.

Also Read: Common Design Mistakes & How to Avoid Them

6. Make Checking Out Simple

Make it simple for the users to access their shopping carts and review the final selected products before paying. Give them an option to edit or delete the items before the payment is done. Ensure that the process is no more than 2 to 3 clicks as customers get frustrated and give up on their buying decision if they find the process to be complicated. Remember, the simpler the checkout process, the higher the rate of customer satisfaction will be.

Conclusion

Providing a consistent shopping experience should be the goal of your ecommerce website design inspiration. From providing a simple navigation process to simplifying the checking out process, every step in UX designing is crucial to converting potential buyers into loyal customers. Hence, the onus lies on the shoulders of a UX designer to increase goodwill and build long-term engagement with the customer. checkout

The post 6 Ways to Improve Your Ecommerce User Experience (UX) in 2020 appeared first on WPblog.

Starting a WooCommerce store is quite simple – just purchase a domain, get the hosting, and add the WooCommerce plugin to the WordPress website and your store is ready for business. This is one of the reasons why WooCommerce is often preferred over Shopify and other ecommerce platforms.

However, in order to be successful and drive more sales, a store has to be fast and offer a great experience to the visitors. Store performance is the single most important factor that determines the success or failure of the business.

In this article, I will discuss several ways to speed up your WooCommerce site. In order to turn a profit, WooCommerce stores should make sure that the store remains optimized at all times.

1. Increase WordPress Memory Limit

Once the store is live, the first thing you need to do is to go to wp-config.php, located in the WordPress root folder. At the very end of the file, right after the line that says, “Happy Blogging”, add the following line:

define(‘WP_MEMORY_LIMIT’, ‘256M’);

Edit the PHP.ini file

If you have access to the php.ini file, edit the maximum allowed memory limit. For instance, if the line shows 64M, change it to 256M.

memory_limit = 256M ; Maximum amount of memory a script may consume (64MB)

Edit .htaccess file

If you couldn’t access php.ini, access the .htaccess file and paste the following code in it:

php_value memory_limit 256M

This is one of the most effective WooCommerce speed optimization techniques.

Also Read: How to Increase WordPress Maximum Upload File Size Limit

2. Optimize Images To Speed Up WooCommerce

In this age of visual marketing, images from the core of the design of ecommerce stores. However, many store owners make the mistake of using unoptimized images that severely impact the performance of the store and is one of the most effective ways to speed up WooCommerce sites.

Large image files slow down the UX of an online store. In addition, the slow page load speed (a direct result of using huge image files) means that search engines downrank the store in SERP.

To deal with this situation, a good practice is to reduce the size of the images through best Image compression plugins such as WP-Smush.it, EWWW Image Optimizer or Hammy. These plugins reduce the size of the images & optimize images on WordPress without compromising the quality of the images and play a big role in WooCommerce speed optimization.

3. Use a Cache Plugin

Caching basically allows you to speed up WooCommerce site by storing a copy of the resources of the store. This way, the visitors experience fast page load speed because the WooCommerce doesn’t waste time by getting the resources (CSS, JS and other files). Instead, it serves the caches version directly to the visitor. As a result, static pages are rendered almost instantaneously while dynamic pages take less time to display the content to the visitors.

WordPress offers a great selection of best wordpress cache plugin such as Breeze, W3 Total Cache WordPress plugin, WP Rocket, WP Super Cache, Swift cache plugin etc. Of these, I prefer Breeze WordPress Cache plugin because of its simple and easy operation.

4. Use Varnish Cache

Varnish cache allows WooCommerce stores to speed up user experience by storing a copy of all the resources of the store. In response to the visitor’s request, the cache serves the stores data. The good news is that Varnish compatible WooCommerce hosting such as Cloudways allows you to launch Varnish compatible WooCommerce stores on top of reliable cloud infrastructure providers.

5. Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN)

A CDN service speeds up your store load speed by serving cached static content from servers located near the users’ geographic location. Popular CDN options include MaxCDN, Sucuri, Cloudflare, StackPath, KeyCDN,Cloudways CDN, etc.

Speeding up your ecommerce store should be on the top of your priority list. The tactics I have mentioned in this article will have you improve load times on your online store that will enhance user experience and improve WooCommerce speed optimization. If I have missed out on anything, let me know in the comments.

6. Get a Faster WordPress Hosting Provider

It’s common knowledge that a fast and reliable WordPress hosting improves your site speed dramatically. A WooCommerce store needs a hosting provider that offers maximum uptime without any interruptions. What makes a fast hosting even more important for an ecommerce store is the fact that there are multiple traffic spikes based on deals, offers and different seasons. You would want your hosting provider to handle the sudden spike and not impact the load time of your WooCommerce store.

Check out our cloud hosting comparison between DigitalOcean Vs Linode Vs Vultr before choosing a new one.

also, Cloudways is one such managed WordPress hosting provider that helps you load your WooCommerce store in blazing fast speed. Check out how Cloudways loads a website in just 79ms!

The post Pro Tips to Speed Up WooCommerce Store in 2020 appeared first on WPblog.

WooCommerce comes with built in PayPal functionality which you can be enabled and disabled with a click of a button. However, this is not enough if you want to accept payments via PayPal or credit card payment. You must integrate your PayPal account with WooCommerce.

This article will cover all the steps you’ll need to follow in order to help your WooCommerce store accept payment through WooCommerce.

Create a “Sandbox” PayPal Account

The first step for integrating PayPal with WooCommerce is to create a Sandbox PayPal account that you can use to test transactions on your online store. The account can be created in PayPal’s Developer Section.

On the Developer Section, you will see the login button on the top right corner. This is where you will sign up to create a sandbox paypal account.

Next, you will see the PayPal login page. Click on the Sign-Up button to create a new account.

Once you Sign Up, PayPal will ask you if you want to create a Personal Account or a Business Account.

A Personal Account is one which can be used to make purchases online. A Business Account is used to accept payments through PayPal on your WooCommerce store.

For this tutorial, we will be creating a Business Account because we want to integrate it into our online store. However, to test your transactions, make sure you have a Personal Account as well.

After choosing the Business Account, you will have to select if you want to create your account with your business ID or your personal ID. For the purpose of this tutorial, we have used a personal ID but you can use your business ID.

Just enter the email address and click next.

Integrate PayPal account with WooCommerce

Now that you have created your PayPal account, it is time to integrate it with your WooCommerce store.

From the sidebar of your WordPress admin panel, navigate to WooCommerce and click Settings

From the Settings page, go to the Checkout tab 

Scroll down to Payment Gateways and find PayPal.

Enable/Disable PayPal

Select PayPal and place a check on Enable/Disable PayPal Standard.

If the option is disabled, the checkout store will not display the PayPal payment on your checkout page.

You can see that only the “Check Payments” option is displayed as it was the only one enabled from within the WooCommerce checkout settings. The PayPal option is disabled which is why it is not displayed here.

Once you enable Standard PayPal, it will be displayed on the checkout page as the image shows below

Title

The next field is Title. You can set the Title with any text you want to be displayed next to the PayPal Payment Option on your checkout page as the image shows below

PayPal Emails

You will notice there are two email fields on the PayPal settings page. The first is the PayPal Email.

The email that we used to create the PayPal sandbox account in the beginning of this tutorial, must be entered in this field. You must be very careful when entering your PayPal email as it is the account where you will be receiving your payments.

The next email field is the Receiver Email.

If your PayPal email differs with your primary email address, then you may want to enter additional information in this field. You can choose to receive payment information on your PayPal email address or on your primary email address by entering it in the Receiver Email address field.

This field is optional.

PayPal Sandbox

As we spoke earlier, a sandbox account allows you to test your PayPal transactions. This can be done only if you place a check on this option.

PayPal Identity Token

PayPal Identity Tokens are used to verify payments without the use of PayPal’s IPN (Instant Payment Notification). The token allows you to view your transaction and its details even when they are under process. You can provide this token to your customer and they can use it to get the details of their payment process. This provides a secure way of sharing information with your customers.

The identity token is easy to generate. Just log in to your PayPal account > Navigate to Profile > Select Manage Website Preference > Enable Payment Data Transfer

Invoice Prefix

The invoice prefix is the initial code that helps the store owner identify the transaction. Once the purchase is made from the store, an invoice is generated with a unique number and a prefix. You can set your invoice prefix to be anything that you want which will help you identify that the invoice is generated after a purchase from a particular store. This is specifically useful in cases where a store owner owns more than one online store. The dedicated Invoice Prefix helps to understand that a purchase is made from a particular store.

By default, the prefix is set WC. You can change it to, for example, MyShop and your invoice would contain MyShop for you to identify that the purchase is made from that particular store.

Shipping Details

Placing a check on this option sends your shipping details to your PayPal address instead of the billing address. If you have different addresses for both these purposes, then you may face a problem because PayPal deals with a single email only.

Payment Action

The drop down on Payment Action shows two options:

• Capture
• Authorise

If you select the Capture option, the payments from your customers will be processed immediately, without any sort of verification. The payment would be completed in a couple of minutes which saves a lot of time on both ends, customers, and merchants.

The Authorise option lets you first authorize the payments manually before finalizing and completion. This is, of course, time-consuming and customers often get annoyed as they want their payments to be processed right away.

I hope that this article has enabled you to integrate PayPal payment gateway into your WooCommerce store. If you still have any more questions, let me know in the comments below.

The post How to Setup PayPal Payment Gateway on WooCommerce appeared first on WPblog.

With dozens of ecommerce websites popping up everywhere around the web, one wonders, how many of them have the best design?

Most website administrators simply let go of the design aspect without researching about the latest ecommerce trends to follow which are directly related to drive more sales. There are several reasons for this, one of which is they don’t know about how to give attention to detail, the other most common reason is their lack of interest in giving customers the best experience in terms of what ecommerce has to offer.

This ‘customer experience’ that we speak about is often overlooked every now and then. Customers tend to pay attention to design that’s why it’s so crucial to adopt the latest website design trends and it can affect their purchase decision as well. All the best web design companies around the globe pay special attention to website design, keeping ease of use in mind when it comes to navigation, reaching to a specific page, and even things as small as clicking a menu option. That’s why the greatest ecommerce websites have one thing in common, they have great & improved UX design for E-commerce stores.

Let’s have a look then:

Top 10 Best E commerce Website Design Examples of 2022

1. New York Times Store

A candidate for one of the top ecommerce websites examples is New York Times’ ecommerce website. When it comes to design, it should credit the brand, especially when it is New York Times, one of America’s leading newspapers. The design of the website is contemporary, non-cluttered and simple as it should be. It carries fewer images and more irrelevant information that makes the whole customer-journey seamless. Easy navigation, less clutter, and more relevance is its recipe for success.

2. Rebecca Atwood Store

While searching for more top online store designsx, we stumbled onto Rebecca Atwood’s site. Creativity, in terms of making content engaging, is the recipe behind Rebecca Atwood’s success. The website is unlike any conventional ecommerce website since it does not present an endless amount of products with sparkling graphics and discounts. In fact, the clear and persuasive layout of this website feels like a journey towards buying something rather than a site that constantly prompts you for your credit card number.

3. Owl

“A surprising website in our quest for finding the top ecommerce website was Owl”.

Buying a pair of spectacles is less of an adventure when you think about it. The process is sometimes boring and dull. But with Owl, it becomes memorable. The site presents itself in a profound manner where buying glasses become an experience worth coming back. The design consists of high-quality images with people wearing glasses that you’d be interested in, helping understand what looks good on you. This, along with a blend of simplicity and clean design makes Owl a great ecommerce website when it comes to simplicity in design.

4. Baron Fig

Often, graphics alone do not do justice to brands. But that is certainly not the case with Baron Fig’s website. The website is full of creative elements along with lots of quotations that attribute towards the brand’s ethos, making it a strong contender for being one of the top ecommerce websites on the webosphere. Fun and catchy phrases with colorful elements everywhere on the website itself help Baron Fig standout with its product presentation. So if you are looking for ecommerce web design inspiration, Fig is the online store you should check out.

5. Beacon

Imagine how colorful a poster designing website would be, now believe that it can be turned into an ecommerce website. Beacon, one of the best designed ecommerce sites,  has done just that with its beautifully designed ecommerce website. Beacon itself being a collaborative design project selling posters for good, presents its website in an intuitive, colorful and engaging manner where visitors are welcomed with colorful graphics that are products themselves, making it one of the most attractive ecommerce websites on our list.

Also Read: How to Secure Your Ecommerce Website in 2020

6. Storm Watches London

Smart watches from London, have taken a design to a whole new level while presenting their products. Storm Watches is an ecommerce design that exudes superb design graphics and is known for never =compromising  on design. Every watch class is defined with a particular color scheme that depicts its targeted audience. Storm Watches have made great strides in bringing modern design philosophies to their ecommerce store and entices customers to visit the site again. Storm watches London is a great contender for being one of the best ecommerce website design we’ve come across.

7. Two Chimps Coffee

“This one is very interesting and could very well be the top ecommerce website we have seen”.

Once you press Enter after entering the website address, you’ll want to refresh the page again. Not because it is a badly designed website, because it is extremely cool to watch it load. The brand’s unique identity shines through with pride when you open the website. Unlike any ecommerce website, it is fresh and designed with intelligence. Creativity is extremely high on the rating as the entire site is full of intuitive and engaging graphics with the hamburger menu standing out, waiting to entice you into exploring the website more.

8. Roc

A good example of an ecommerce site is Roc, a company that sells headphones, which has a relatively busy website design that might seem overwhelming at first. Subtle explorers of the web might end up finding it a bit ‘too much in the face’ but the ethos behind it is superb. The imagery used is simple and engaging which is set to motivate the active lifestyle visitors using products like wireless headphones and earbuds for working out and sporting activities. One click on a product and you’re taken to the product’s own dedicated page. Neat!

Also Read: Best Instagram Marketing Tools for Rapid Ecommerce Growth

9. Simply Chocolate

“Another worthy contender for being one of the top ecommerce websites is Simply Chocolate”.

This Danish website pays tribute to those who love and live for chocolate. This is reflected in its ecommerce abilities as well with rich and nicely presented visuals that any chocolate lover would love to see. With a simple yet chocolate-based theme, the website itself presents itself to celebrate the love for chocolates. Uniquely designed, nicely presented and engaging graphics makes this website a must visit.

10. Really Well Made

The website’s name would be exactly what we’d thought it was when we checked it out; really well made in terms of design, presentation and brand personality. Incorporating social media feeds into an ecommerce website is not only difficult, it can compromise a website loading speed, bringing customer experience into question. Not with this website. Social media feeds are alive with brand testimonials and comments that attribute towards the brand’s offerings. The design is built around simplicity and convenience which is great for promoting brand loyalty, too.

Conclusion

Inspired yet? Giving the first prize to any of these top ecommerce website isn’t easy since the competition is tough. But we leave that decision to you. We hope you were inspired by these best ecommerce website designs of 2020.There are chances that we may have missed out some of the best designs from our list, so tell us about them in the comments section below and we’ll add them.

The post 10 Best Inspirational Ecommerce Website Designs Examples in 2022 appeared first on WPblog.

3.8 represents WooCommerce’s move towards more frequent, stable and smaller releases. In contrast, WooCommerce 3.7 had 1290 commits by 22 contributors, which also means that version 3.8 is a minor release and if you’re worried about backward compatibility, you can sigh a breath of relief.

Also, this is most probably the last minor WooCommerce release of 2019.

What’s New in WooCommerce 3.8?

There are now new product blocks in the eCommerce-focused collection in Gutenberg, the Block Editor that shipped with WordPress 5.0.

WooCommerce Blocks 2.4

First of all, there are 3 new blocks for Reviews:

• Reviews by Product
• Reviews by Category
• All Reviews

These new blocks will allow you to customize your user reviews and place them on different places on your website. Hence, if your customers are leaving feedback about their buying experience, you can share it with your audience by placing them on your product page, on your landing page or even display Reviews by Category.

Product Search

Another block added to WooCommerce 3.8 is the Product Search Block which gives your customers the ability to find a product they want from any part of your website.

Note: To access these new Product Blocks, you should be running WordPress 5.1 or higher or you should have the latest Gutenberg version installed on your site. 

Apart from this, there are new hooks and some tweaks and fixes in the release that you might notice when you play around with WooCommerce 3.8. You can read the details in the ReadMe.

Also Read: Gutenberg 6.7: Bug fixes, Storybook & Gradient Backgrounds

Performance Enhancements PHP Version

While there’s no change in the PHP requirements for WooCommerce 3.8, WooCommerce is planning a minimum of PHP 7.0 & WordPress 5.0 support for its next release, so in case you’re on an older version of WordPress or PHP, you’ll start seeing a prompt to upgrade later on. 

You still have a month or two to do that because of the next release of WooCommerce is set for a January 2020 release.

Enhancements & Improvements

There are a few improvements in this release that will be a welcome change for all users:

•  Full support for PHP 7.4
• Opt-out of usage tracking in the Setup Wizard is now default
• Backorder products message: “Available on backorder”
• Subtotal and downloads have better wording

While the above are the general enhancements, there are some improvements made for developers as well:

• Several new hooks (as mentioned above) and filters
• Japan, Zambia, Namibia, and Minor Outlying Islands of the US get localization tweaks
•  content-widget-price-filter.php template added to display price filter widget.

You can view all the dev tweaks and fixes in the Changelog if you wish to.

Before You Upgrade

This goes without saying, but before you upgrade to the latest and greatest WooCommerce 3.8, make sure you have a backup in place. Also, you can test the new version on a staging site before taking it live to avoid possible mishaps.

Shout-Out to the Contributors

Lastly, of course, a huge shout-out to the contributors in the WooCommerce community who make any release possible via reporting bugs, contributing in the commits, and spreading the word in the wild! 

Thanks to these awesome people, we all get to enjoy these awesome features that ship with every release! Stay awesome guys.

The post WooCommerce 3.8 Now Available appeared first on WPblog.

The world is becoming digital and the popularity of online businesses is rising at a rapid pace. With all respects, this is a great time to start your e-commerce business. With the resources available, you can easily expand your horizon to more customers and increase conversions.

The first two things to consider to build your e-commerce business is to pick a good web host and make a good looking store. The first can be done by doing a little research and the latter can be accomplished with the help of a good ecommerce website builder.

So now that you have set up your online store, it’s time to reel in customers and make sales. There are a lot of techniques for doing so, but the best one is through email marketing.

In this post, we will focus on genuine Email Marketing Tactics that could take your ecommerce business to the next level

Let’s get things rolling…

1. Send Personalized Emails

By making your emails personal, you establish a connection between your business and the customer. Instead of addressing them as simply “Dear Recipient” or “Dear Customer,” try using their first name.

You can also do the same for the subject line. Try to incorporate their name in the subject along with some good keywords like “winner,” “bonus,” or the ultimate weapon – “free.” All these changes will undoubtedly improve email opening rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates.

2. Use Email Series

By series, we mean sending a customer a series of emails dedicated to a particular line of action. For example, a new customer signup on your website. Start a welcome series of emails starting with a thank you message and make them feel like a part of a huge community. Then you can start sending emails about all different types of products you have, and other details about your e-store.

You can also start a series of emails after a purchase is made. Start this off with an email of order confirmation. Then inform them about shipping details, request for reviews, discount offers, similar products, and so on. Just make sure you get a double opt-in and optimize your email for deliverability. That way your emails will make it to your inbox!

3. Use Audience Segmentation

It is always better to be specific, rather than generalizing. By segmenting the audience, you have a chance to target groups of customers based on their pain points.
Make segments depending on Age, Location, Past Purchases, and other details you have managed to gather.

4. Send Cart Abandonment Emails

Sometimes users forget about all the products in their carts. Don’t let this happen. There is a chance of a potential sale. Send emails about all the items they have left in their cart, and this just might result in some sales. You can even propose a discount, or a coupon on purchase to get more sales.

5. Emails with Wishlists

This is the same as with Abandoned Carts. People leave products in their wishlists and forget about them. Remind them about a product that they actually want and you will have better chances of increasing the odds of getting a sale.

6. Upsell through Recommended Products Emails

Someone buys a mobile phone from your website. You can be sure that this is a valid customer to target for more mobile phone accessories. Target him/her with products that are “frequently bought together” with their already made purchases. You can also showcase some similar products, or recommend some upgrades to products they earlier purchased.

7. Send Gift Guides

We have all faced situations when we don’t know what to give to our close friends and relatives. So if the holiday season is coming up, be sure to fire up your email marketing campaign with some ideas on products that will make for excellent gifts.

8. Promotion Offers

We have seen time and time again, that sales increase when there is a promotion or discount. Take good use of this mentality in your customers and start sending out promotional emails.

These types of emails will generally contain discount offers, coupon codes, offers on referring a friend, as well as alerting customers when new products hit your store.

9. Send Loyalties via Emails

People who buy from your e-store most often are a contributor to your success. Make them feel valuable by rewarding them. Not only will this increase their chances of keeping close ties with your service, but this will also attract other people to make more purchases on your site to become a member of the club.

These rewards can be in the form of gifts or more conventionally redeemable points for future purchases. However, if you really want to please your customer as well as increase more sales then just offer them some exclusive cashback offer. Works like a charm!

10. Send Transactional Emails

Transactional emails mean the emails you send your customers after they have made an order or canceled one. This section is not to tell you that these type of emails are important, because they are, and you should always offer confirmation emails to all their transactional activities in your store.

However, we are here to highlight that these transactional need not be mere information-based emails. In fact, you can include some products and other details further engage the person. For example, in case of order cancellation, send a transactional email with a list of similar products.

In Conclusion:

Hope you liked the top emailing tactics to improve your online business. Let us know how your campaigns turned out, and leave some extra tips and tactics you know about in the comments section. Your fellow readers will love your contribution.

Additionally See: How to Use Social Media to Boost Email Subscribers in WordPress

The post Best Email Marketing Practices to Boost E-Commerce Business in 2019 appeared first on WPblog.

But before we dive into the nitty-gritty, let’s take a look at what dropshipping really is, and why you should even start a business based on this model.

What Is Dropshipping?

The internet has bestowed us with too many ways to earn a quick buck online to keep count.

Dropshipping, as you may have guessed, is one of those highly sought after business models you can start a profitable business on without substantial investment.

The concept can be traced as far back as the 1950s when Mail Orders and JIT (Just-In-Time) were the pioneers of this business model. With the rise of the internet, though, the concept evolved into what we now know as dropshipping!

So what exactly is dropshipping?

Simply put, it’s a business model in which the seller does not own or keep the inventory of the product they are selling.

So if you owned a dropshipping WordPress site (and that’s all you need to operate) and your customer placed an order, the manufacturer of the ordered item will be notified and they’ll ship the product to the customer.

The biggest advantage is that you don’t need a warehouse like you would in a brick and mortar store. You simply list a product on your online store, find a buyer, and the product will be shipped to them without any more intervention on your part.

Wait… except for the intervention of profits in your bank account.

Sounds great. How easy is it to start a dropshipping business?

Pretty easy, if I’m being half honest.

Far too many articles on dropshipping will have you believe that starting a dropshipping business is the easiest thing on the planet. They’re not lying, but it’s partially true.

There are a lot of facets to launching your dropshipping store and getting each right is key to succeeding in this space.

Also, it’s a saturated market. You’ll have to be really, really competitive to start earning good. We wish we were in 2009, but it’s been a decade since. It’s 2019, and dropshipping businesses have seen their rise and decline through the years.

But it’s not to say that you can’t turn it into a profitable business. You can, but it’ll take a lot of efforts. Not a lot of financial investment maybe, but a lot of mental and physical investment.

So without further ado, let’s understand how dropshipping works on WordPress.

How Dropshipping Works on WordPress – An Overview

The title probably gave it away, but Dropshipping and WordPress go hand in hand.

WordPress gives you the freedom you need to make your business stand out, thanks to its flexibility and a plethora of options for customization.

And dropshipping turns that ease and flexibility into a full-fledged online store!
How Dropshipping Works
Turning a dropshipping business into your bread and butter sounds great, but it is crucial to understand how the process really works.

We’ve already discussed what dropshipping is, but here’s a rundown of the entire process:

• For starters, you need to create a WordPress website and install WooCommerce on it. Or, you can directly launch a WooCommerce optimized store on Cloudways.
• While you’re creating your store, you also need to create a marketing strategy to let your target audience know about your online store or the products you’re selling.
• When a potential customer sees an ad, visits your store, and places an order, your supplier will be notified via email (since the system is automated), while your customer will receive the details of the shipment.
• The supplier will then ship the product to your customer’s given address.
• Once the product is delivered, your order is completed.

Simple isn’t it? And all that sales without worry about product storage or warehouse. You only create a virtual store and list it with products, while stocking and delivering the products is the supplier’s responsibility.

Why You Should Use Dropshipping on WordPress

We’ve established that dropshipping and WordPress is a great combination. However, here are some more compelling reasons why dropshipping on WordPress is the way to go:

WordPress is Free & Open Sourced

Not only is WordPress free, but it’s also one of the most well known, open-source content management system. Launch a WordPress site on a reliable host like Cloudways, and you’re set for a successful online business.

WordPress is Easy to Use

There was a time when you had to be an expert in coding or software to create websites. With WordPress, you can create a website without any knowledge of coding or without knowing your way through Dreamweaver.

Even if you run into a problem, there’s a great deal of help material present online to make your life easy. The WordPress community will guide you through your problems, and tons of tutorials are also there to help you on your solo journey.

Then there’s a plethora of plugins and extensions that not only add functionality to your store, but also make it easy to perform certain tasks.

One of those plugins is WooCommerce that turns a simple WordPress site into a fully functional online store.

WordPress is All About Customization

WordPress is not just user friendly, but it’s also known for its serious customization capabilities.

There are themes, plugins, and extensions by the thousands to make sure your WordPress dropshipping site looks just the way you want. With imagination and creativity, you can create a unique space for online shoppers.

There’s a Huge Community around WordPress

Since WordPress is an open-source CMS, it’s backed by a huge community that’s everready to help you out.

Dedicated people from the community contribute regularly to overhaul the CMS and its features. But most importantly, professionals from around the world are available to help you in your problems.

All in all, WordPress is the ultimate choice of millions for the many reasons listed above, and plenty more

How to Start Your Dropshipping Business on WordPress

Now that we’ve covered all the basics, let’s get into the actual process of starting your dropshipping journey on WordPress.

1. Pick a Niche

While the world’s at your feet when it comes to selling products online, it’s important to go through plenty of research before picking your niche.

Of course, you don’t want to start a dropshipping business which has zero demand. Hence, your due research will help you determine which products out of the millions are more profitable and in demand.

Here’s a tip: Select a niche that you’re interested in, and your job will seem easy and fun. If, for example, you like tech and gadgets like me, go for a dropshipping store for gadgets.

However, whatever niche you choose, remember that you’re not limited to it and you can either expand or change your direction later on.

2. Pick a Domain Name and Hosting Provider

Usually, businesses choose their business’s name as their domain name, and so should you. If your dropshipping business name is “MyDropStore”, for example, try to get the www.mydropstore.com domain name.

After you’ve picked a name, it’s time to pick your hosting provider. This is one of the crucial steps that will determine how your store performs and how successful it will be.

You have plenty of options to choose from when it comes to hosting, but not all options are the best. Some have subpar performance issues, some lack in security, and some will result in constant downtime for your site.

Hence, you should always go for a hosting solution that is robust in security, performance and gives you complete peace of mind so you can focus on your business.

If you opt for managed hosting services like Cloudways, you get an easy, intuitive platform to launch your site coupled with 24×7 support to help you through tasks too complex for you.

In fact, Cloudways ranked top in ReviewSignal’s benchmarking test for 2019 in three pricing tiers. ReviewSignal is a trusted name in the hosting industry, and they ran exhaustive tests for several months to determine the top hosting services, and Cloudways came out top in all the important tests.

Also Read: How To Choose The Perfect Domain Name and Hosting for Your Blog

3. Launch WordPress and Your Store

Unless you have a very slow internet connection, installing WordPress should not take more than 5 minutes. Cloudways makes the process easier, though. You just select WordPress with WooCommerce, select the server details, and click on launch.

Within a few minutes and your WooCommerce optimized store will be ready to work on!

4. Brand Your Store

Once your WooCommerce store is launched, it’s time to brand it, or so to say, time to customize it to your liking!

You can use a free or a paid theme to turn your WordPress WooCommerce site into an attractive looking online shop. However, apart from what the themes have to offer, you can add unique touches to your site as well to make it stand out from the competition.

Once you’re satisfied with how your dropshipping store looks, you can move to the next important step; adding products to your store.

Also Read: The 17 best dropshipping companies, suppliers, databases, and tools

5. Add Products to Your Site

This is the most important step because, of course, you can’t run a dropshipping store without adding products to it.

Since you’ve already done your research and selected your niche, it’s time to look for products to add to your store and basically connect the sellers and buyers.

You can use services like AliExpress, Alibaba, and Amazon where their hundreds to thousands of sellers are ready to ship products as long as you can keep bringing them, customers.

Also Read: How to Add Variable Products on Your WooCommerce Store

Adding products to your WooCommerce site is easy but time consuming. While you can manually add each and every item yourself, it’s better to use WooCommerce plugin to import products.

I’ll show you how in 4 easy-to-follow steps:

A – Create an account on WooDropship
B – Select AliExpress or where you want to get products from
C – Click on Import List (under Products option)
D – Click Push to Store

6. Promote Your Store

No matter how great your online store, if people don’t know about it, you’re probably not going to make a lot of sales. And this is where your marketing strategy comes in place.

Whether it is Facebook or Instagram, make sure your marketing efforts are in full swing so that a maximum number of people are aware of your online store’s existence.

You can even use the power of Search Engine Optimization to bring more organic traffic to your store. If you have the budget, run Google Adwords campaigns or run ads on Facebook. There are plenty of mediums you can reach your audience with, so make sure you test and experiment to see which works the best for you!

Also Read How to set up a retargeting campaign on Facebook with the best pixel plugins.

7. Provide Good Customer Support

Providing good customer support is one of the most important aspects of running a successful dropshipping business.

It’s often said that people buy the experience, not the product. And providing excellent customer services is one of the best parts of the experience. It helps people look past small issues and quality woes, making your brand seem superior overall.

If it’s possible, make sure you include Free Shipping into the mix as well. Give regular discounts, offers, and price cuts that entice visitors to shop more than they plan to. Answer queries as soon as possible and provide timely solutions to the most common problems your customers face.

Dropshipping & WordPress – A Win Win

Dropshipping is one of the most lucrative business options in the ecommerce landscape. The best things about Dropshipping is that it requires far less effort and investment than it does to sell your own products. Also, most people start dropshipping to add to their source of income – a second source of income, if you must.

And now that you know the basics of how to start a dropshipping store, what’s stopping you from starting one right now?

If you have any questions regarding the process or you have opinions you want to share, fire away in the comments section below and I’ll get back to you!

The post WordPress Dropshipping: A Beginners Guide to Creating a Passive Income appeared first on WPblog.

People do more than just dress up for Halloween and decorate their homes for Christmas. They shop. Just like physical stores, online stores should prepare to make sure they get the maximum out of the holiday season.

So what do the online store owners do this holiday season? We have talked to the best in the business to find out.

Here are the top ecommerce experts sharing their valuable tips and advice on maximizing sales and conversion.

Katie Melissa Ryan

Katie is an ecommerce coach, model, musician and an enterprenuer. 

“Your website must be mobile-friendly, clean, and look trustworthy so customers feel safe placing an order with you. Trust is what holds a lot of site viewers back from making a purchase on a new e-com store.
Track and review your store’s data with the following: Facebook Pixel, Google Analytics, and Shopify Reports.
Scale ads that have a 5% CTR or higher. Stop running ads which haven’t performed well.
Video ads are very effective with the right product. The cost per view is generally cheaper than a nickel. Video ads have potential for more clicks, since the ad will be displayed to more people at less of a cost.
People don’t realize how powerful the Facebook Pixel is. You can build up custom audiences like retargeting and look-alike audiences.
You can even retarget your customers by which specific pages of your website they have viewed! This is very smart when trying to re-market a product to a specific audience.”

 

Andrew Jacobs

Andrew is the CEO at Pro4ormance, a successful online store that sells fitness products 

“Run a competition on your website and then use Facebook retargeting to offer all the people who viewed the competition page a special offer.
Offer free shipping for a limited time. One of the major reasons customers abandon their cart is due to shipping costs. So remove this excuse and watch your sales explode. “

Noah Kagan

Noah is the founder of AppSumo where they help entrepreneurs start and establish successful businesses.  

“The biggest mistake I see many e-commerce sites made is this: NOT having an email opt-in form.
Most visitors who leave your website will never come back again. Imagine wasting >90% of your effort in bringing those visitors to your e-commerce site in the first place. It only becomes worse during the holiday season when the traffic is at peak.
Setting up an email opt-in form is not difficult. It takes less than 37 seconds using Sumo, a toolkit to maximize your website growth.
However, it means a lot for your business when you get to reach your prospect customers directly via email. Here’s a short video I made on how to use an email list to grow your business and sales.”

 

Saud Razzak

Saud is a WooCommerce expert at Cloudways, a managed cloud hosting provider. 

“Actually, doing online business, running and executing ecommerce campaigns successfully requires time, a lot hard of work and sweat obviously.
The best thing we can consider is: START EARLY!
Online costumers are always ready for DEALS n’ DISCOUNTS. And to avoid the last minute rush on your ecommerce stores, get your audience excited with personalization.
Indeed, this is an opportunity to finish the Holiday Season with a tremendous success and set the stage for another successful year.”

 

Mike Halligan

Mike is the general manager at the5th, a popular online store that sells watches and other accessories. 

“Christmas is the season for gift giving, and the key to winning the wallets of your customers this season is easing fear.
Whats the two things that we worry about the most when shopping online for a gift?
1. Will they like it? – Do anything you can to offer social proof. Find the best reviews, show how many people have bought it, add product ratings to your site and incentivize happy past customers to leave one.
2. Will it get there on time? – There’s nothing worse than a present arriving after Christmas day. Even if we’re ordering in early December, the fear still goes through our mind. Make it clear when orders need to be place, and if you can, estimate the date of arrival so they can breathe easy.”

Read more: 30 Tips to Improve Conversion Rate Optimization in 2019

Rohan Thakare

Rohan Thakare is an eCommerce expert and the co-founder of WisdmLabs, providers of innovative open source solutions and WooCommerce Gold Experts.

“Statistics prove that nearly 30% of the customers wait until the holiday deals go live to commence shopping. It is important to leverage this influx properly, to avoid losing out on potential sales. Here are some strategies you could try out.
Selling Product Bundles
People tend to prefer product bundles over purchasing individual products as they perceive a better deal for bulk purchases. In addition, product bundles make great gift boxes when holidays are just around the corner!
Using Variable Pricing for Products
Variable pricing gives you two advantages; one, it lets you set up different prices per customer (thereby encouraging more people to sign up) and two, you can increase the discount offered as the quantity of products purchased increasing, thus inducing people to buy more stuff.”

Graham Charlton

Editor in Chief at SaleCycle. Covering ecommerce and related topics

“In the build up to Christmas, perhaps around Black Friday, you can offer promotions which will tempt people back to your website later in the shopping season, helping you to drive additional sales.
One idea would be to give gift cards or vouchers for purchases made in November, which can be redeemed in December. This helps incentivising sales earlier in the season, and gives people a reason to come back and buy again.”

Also Read: A Step-By-Step Guide To Building A Content Marketing Strategy

Shilpa Shah

Shilpa handles a bunch of WordPress theme and plugin stores – CyberChimps, SlideDeck and WPeka Club, to name a few. She loves dancing in the rain, trekking, and camping in the wild.

“Just sticking a coupon code or giving a flat discount on your ecommerce store, during the holiday season, is simply not enough any more. Customers are flooded with offers and deals during the holiday season,and have grown to ‘expect’ discounts – however, if you share goodies as free bonus add-ons, that the customer would really appreciate and use, it is a very nice touch and serves as a pleasant surprise. Done right, it can earn you a lot of goodwill and lead to repeat business.”

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