Creating an ecommerce store today is a lot easier than it was just a decade ago. Whether you use an ecommerce web design company or do it yourself, there’s no shortage of options on the market. WooCommerce was one of the first plugins to make ecommerce more approachable, and since its 2011 release, it has continued to be a popular choice.
The plugin was designed to allow business owners to create an online store using a WordPress website. With its easy-to-use design and its exceptional features, the plugin made it possible for just about anyone to monetise and market their project online.
As of this year, there are over 3 million live online stores using WooCommerce. In fact, the plugin is responsible for powering almost 30% of all online stores. With these dizzying statistics in mind, it’s easy to see that WooCommerce is a major playing in the eCommerce world that will only continue to grow as more and more businesses migrate to selling on the web.
If you’re the owner of a small or medium-sized business, you may be wondering how WooCommerce can transform your brand. Let’s take a look at the top five secrets that only WooCommerce experts know when it comes to getting the most out of this plugin.
1. Image Quality Matters
No one wants to view low-quality, grainy images. Your business must take the time to take high-quality photos. Not only does it make your products look better, but it makes your brand look more professional and attractive to a potential consumer.
Large images can improve your conversions by making your products seem more appealing and approachable.
Let’s use an example. Restaurant A has a beautifully-designed menu with great photos, while restaurant B’s menu looks like it was snapped with maximum flash from a cellphone in a dimly-lit room.
Which restaurant would you rather? The answer is pretty obvious. And just like in that scenario, your product photos are as much a part of your brand and its story as everything else.
Optimised images also play an important role in your SEO strategy too. Large and unoptimized images can reduce page load speeds and diminish the user experience, which can negatively impact your SEO.
2. Collect as Much Feedback as Possible
As a business, you need to take your customer’s feedback into consideration. Insights gathered from feedback allow you to ascertain which products and which marketing campaigns are working, and which are falling flat. Armed with this knowledge, you will be able to make well-informed decisions about your next steps as a business. Essentially, using customer feedback means you aren’t doing any blind decision-making.
In order to use customer feedback, you need to come up with a system for collecting it. Think about creative ways you can gather this data both directly and indirectly. While you may look at indirect feedback in the form of your WooCommerce analytics, you should also actively seek out direct feedback from your customers.
Try implementing some of the following methods to collect some great direct feedback:
- Engage actively with the community on social media
- Offer incentivised reviews, such as a prize draw or a small discount
- Offer a live chat feature on your website
- Send follow-up emails with easy links to the online review page
- Create paper feedback cards to include in shipments
3. Leverage Trust and Security Seals
When customers find their way to your website for the first time, they won’t know much about you as a business. While customers in a small boutique shop can try on clothes, interact directly with products, and feel confident with their purchase—shoppers in an online environment won’t be able to sample the products before they purchase them. This can often lead to a little more hesitation on the customer’s part.
In order to ease any worries about your shop’s credibility, try to include official badges and partner logos to demonstrate you can be trusted. Studies have shown that 48% of shoppers use trust seals to decide whether or not they shop at a particular online shop, so they should be considered a crucial component of any WooCommerce site. There are plenty of badges that will reassure your customers.
You could offer well-known payment options like PayPal, Stripe, Clearpay, or Klarna. We also recommend ensuring your website has a valid SSL certificate, which shows your website is protected against malicious information interception and safe for customers to use.
4. Mobile, Mobile, Mobile
Any web developer worth his salt will tell you that every online shop is optimised for mobile viewers, regardless of the product or the target audience demographic. The truth is, most people browse the internet on their mobile devices far more frequently than they use a desktop or a laptop. When it comes to shopping, 40% of consumers use their mobile device to research a product, so it’s easy to see why your website has to look great on any device.
Using the WooCommerce platform, you’ll be able to see exactly how your website appears on both mobile and desktop devices. Make sure the flow of content works for mobile shoppers.
Avoid using too many images or videos to ensure users can easily navigate your shop and find what they’re looking for. And if videos and images are a necessity, make sure they’re mobile-friendly.
5. Leverage Analytics
The final secret all WooCommerce experts know? Leveraging your website’s analytics will remove the guesswork from running a business.
The more data you accumulate, the more you will know about your customer’s likes, dislikes, and buying tendencies. Ecommerce will always be highly competitive, so use the WooCommerce analytics platform to determine what’s working and drive actionable marketing insights.
Use your analytics to better understand customer behaviour, how they progress through your website, and which pages need optimisation to increase their conversion rates.
Bonus Tip: There’s a Plugin for That!
All of these tips sounding a little out of reach? Remember, there’s usually a plugin created for whatever you need. Check out these three amazing plugins and how they can help you succeed with the tips and tricks we’ve discussed above.
- Google Analytics for WooCommerce. If you want to leverage your analytics like a pro, this plugin allows WooCommerce users to track and review their analytics. Discover which products and marketing campaigns are popular, so that you can use your time and money wisely.
- SEO Yoast Plugin for WooCommerce. SEO (search engine optimization) is a crucial practice in digital marketing that helps your website to climb the ranks on Google search pages. It doesn’t matter how great your site looks—without a great SEO strategy, customers will never find it. Yoast is a well-known WordPress plugin that will help you implement SEO practices in a straightforward and simple manner.
- ‘Mail Chimp’ integration with WooCommerce for direct email marketing. Looking to get some direct feedback from your customers? Mail Chimp can help. This automated platform makes it easy to create targeted email marketing campaigns. For instance, you can send out automatic, personalised emails after a customer makes a purchase, you can follow up with a user who abandons their shopping cart, or recommend products to your loyal, returning customers.
What Are Your WooCommerce Secrets?
WooCommerce is a powerful ecommerce platform that makes it easy for online stores to get over the biggest hurdle—just getting started.
But success in ecommerce requires the right understanding of SEO best practices, product page optimisation, and how your target consumers interact with products in your industry. There is no magic answer to making it all work, but you can develop insight-based strategies that can increase your conversions.
Are you an established WooCommerce seller? Let us know what tips and tricks have worked for your business.
