How to Enhance Your WooCommerce Store?

If you have a WooCommerce store and want to kick it up a notch to boost sales and keep up with the competition, this is the right article for you.

Online shopping has become the new normal, and retailers are racing to meet customer expectations. While WooCommerce is great for startups, is it enough for thriving businesses to put their merchandise on full display and increase conversion rates?

In this guide, we'll show you how to cleverly tweak your WooCommerce store to propel your business to new heights. We'll also go over the essential WooCommerce plugins that you must consider if you want to fully optimize your online shop.

What Is WordPress?

WordPress is the largest open source CMS platform in the world, owned by Automattic Inc. WP is widely popular as it allows anyone to create any type of website (e.g. blog, ecommerce store, podcast, portfolio, etc.) without any prior technical knowledge.

As an open-source system, WordPress is a haven for developers to create plugins and themes to enhance its functionality.

What Is WooCommerce?

WooCommerce, formerly known as WooThemes, initially began as a WordPress theme. It rebranded in 2017 as WooCommerce and shifted its focus completely to ecommerce.

WooCommerce has quickly gained traction as a free, open-source ecommerce plugin for WordPress. It allows you to turn your WP website into a fully functional storefront without complex coding requirements. Users can easily sell a variety of products and services over the Internet.

Benefits and Popularity of WooCommerce

Boasting more than 5 million active installations, WooCommerce is a crowd favorite mainly because of its compatibility with WordPress. But there are other factors contributing to Woo’s remarkable success among online retailers.

Let’s go over the top four advantages of adopting WooCommerce for your online store.

• Cost-efficiency

Value for money is an important aspect for any business owner looking to launch new online stores on WordPress. WooCommerce is a completely free WP plugin, making it an ideal option for any budget. You’ll only need to pay for a reliable web hosting service and consider any premium customizations ( if required).

• Convenience

WooCommerce is fairly user-friendly, and you don't need to be an expert developer to create a store. The installation and management operations are simplified, whether you’re a professional website builder or have little WordPress experience.

The user interface is intuitive as well. Plus, there are plenty of WooCommerce tutorials that you can use to guide you through. 

• Features and Flexibility

WooCommerce's extensive personalization options, plugins, and built-in features will help you market physical and digital goods while providing a smooth selling experience to your customers.

For example, Woo lets you add attributes, tags, and categories to your products. It also helps your visitors filter products based on their type, popularity, or rating.

As if that’s not enough, you can easily control your order taxation, offer coupons and discounts, integrate various payment methods, provide different shipping options, and generate automatic follow-up emails.

• SEO-friendly

WooCommerce is search engine friendly out-the-box, mainly because it runs on the inherently SEO-optimized WordPress environment. Users can also utilize the service to install free Let's Encrypt SSL certificates.

An SSL certificate indicates that your website is secure and that the connection with your customer is private. On top of that, Google and other search engines have made it very clear that SSL-encrypted websites rank higher in search results. 

How to Enhance Your WooCommerce Store?

Increasing the efficiency of your WooCommerce store will result in higher conversion rates. Customers who are happy with their purchases give a great boost to your business traffic and brand reputation. 

Here are six essential WooCommerce tips that will take your online shop to a new level.

• Maintain a Simple but Creative Website

Your website should appeal to all demographics of your intended audience. This can be accomplished through a harmonious theme and easy navigation.

Applying a coherent navigation system assists your customers in locating what they're looking for quickly and easily. You can further add dropdowns and expandable menus, different filters, and product categorization to showcase your items in the best way possible.

If you want to reach users in different countries, make your store available in their native language besides English. Help your visitors make prompt purchases by including detailed descriptions and clear photos of your merchandise.

• Produce SEO-focused Content

Cramming random content on your website will confuse shoppers and cause them to lose interest, resulting in a loss of sales. 

On the other hand, optimizing your site text and images will help you rank higher on popular search engines like Google. 

Make sure to use keywords that are relevant to the goods you sell in your store and the content you display.

• Ratings and Customer Reviews

It’s paramount to be open and honest with your clientele. Displaying reviews and product ratings fosters trust and encourages visitors to become repeat customers.

Highlight successful purchase stories and positive selling experiences on your website to attract potential buyers.

• Showcase Upsells and Cross-sells

This is a wonderful strategy for increasing sales in your WooCommerce store. 

Offering upsells through enhanced versions of the same product or premium services opens the way for your customers to find better-suited options.

Applying a cross-selling technique involves making personalized recommendations to go along with the chosen product. For instance, if a shopper wants to buy a laptop, you can suggest gadgets such as an anti-theft backpack, a portable USB-C hub, or a cleaning kit.

• Offer Discounts

Employing vouchers, giftcards, or coupon codes is another effective method to attract new customers and maintain the loyalty of your existing ones. Nevertheless, when it comes to discount advertising, don't go overboard to avoid the risk of revenue loss.

• Reclaim Abandoned Carts

Shopping cart abandonment is a counterproductive issue that you should definitely consider. This happens primarily due to the availability of lower-cost alternatives elsewhere, slow website speed, hidden costs, or an inconvenient checkout process.

Sending cart recovery emails is one way to re-engage your customers. It's also a good idea to keep track of your competitors' prices on a regular basis. Optimizing the speed of your woocommerce store makes the purchasing process faster and easier for your consumers. Last but not least, supporting a wide variety of payment and shipping options will ensure your potential buyers won’t look elsewhere for the most suitable option.

Which Plugins Are Important?

WooCommerce offers a multitude of free and premium plugins to enrich your store. You can find a plethora of add-ons that help you power up Woo and incorporate the tips from the previous section.

Here’s our roundup of the top must-have plugins for WooCommerce.

• YITH WooCommerce Wishlist

The YITH WooCommerce Wishlist plugin makes it possible for your customers to save items they want to buy later in a separate list in their account. It's useful for planning for purchases in advance and generating potential sales.

Your shoppers are later reminded of their previous interests, and they can share their lists with friends and family via a variety of channels, including email and social media platforms.

• OptinMonster

OptinMonster is responsible for creating customizable popups used to capture your customers' attention and increase sales. The plugin includes integrated templates and the option to build themes from scratch.

The popup can be a special offer, a seasonal voucher, or even a form for potential clients to fill out to create an account. OptinMonster allows you to keep track of visitors' activity in real time as well.

• Beeketing for WooCommerce

Beeketing is a multi-purpose marketing plugin for WooCommerce that does it all. It comes with more than 20 built-in functions that employ artificial intelligence to turn occasional visitors into paying clients. 

Beeketing has several features to help you reduce cart abandonment and maximize business email marketing. The plugin is easy to integrate and has a user-friendly interface to help you get started. 

• LiveChat - WooCommerce Chat Plugin

LiveChat is the ideal plugin for turning online shopping into a more interactive experience. It allows you to hold real-time conversations with your consumers and respond to any of their questions.

LiveChat helps you decrease your cart abandonment rate by helping potential buyers get immediate answers to their queries. It is also compatible with Google Analytics, all major email marketing tools (e.g. Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign, Campaign Monitor, and GetResponse), CRM software (e.g. HubSpot and Salesforce), and more.

• WooCommerce Menu Cart

The WooCommerce Menu Cart plugin is responsible for displaying the shopping cart icon at the top of your online store website. It helps customers keep track of the items they selected to purchase and allows them to modify the list throughout their buyer’s journey.

Menu Cart also lets you customize how the cart icon looks and add shortcuts to the cart throughout your website. 

• Booster for WooCommerce

Booster for WooCommerce is a plugin that combines several functions into a single package. It handles a variety of tasks without requiring any coding or advanced technical knowledge.

With Booster, you can generate PDF invoices, add prices in various currencies, design a custom cart and checkout page, and integrate various payment methods.

Conclusion

With its powerful collection of tools and functionalities, WooCommerce is an excellent choice for launching a new online store. But it may not be sufficient for growing and large businesses on its own.

By following the suggested tactics and installing the necessary plugins on your WooCommerce store, you'll move a step closer to owning a profitable online business. Customer satisfaction and conversion rates will rise faster than you expect.

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