WooCommerce Archives

Setting Up a Rental Products Business on WooCommerce

March 12, 2019 by Shreya Reddy Leave a Comment

Be it renting a bicycle for the day or a car, the online rental business scene has now expanded beyond the transportation industry into clothing, lifestyle, accessories, and even art! Did you know that you can now rent a tie, a purse, a necklace or even a painting for a short or long period of time for a monthly subscription or one-time payment? Even considering the ordering time, dry-cleaning costs or logistics, you still spend only a fraction of the original price. Considering all of these factors, it’s no surprise that people are extensively preferring rental services over buying premium or expensive items for special occasions.

Running a Rental Business – An Entrepreneurial Perspective

Online rental businesses are becoming a viable business opportunity owing to their popularity today. They are a sound way of maximizing profit margins with a venture that can scale quickly, requires reduced capital investment, facilitates long term customer relations, and provides an immense opportunity for growth. There are generally two platforms you can run your online rental business on – a virtual marketplace and your own website.

Option #1: Deploying Your Products on a Marketplace

Marketplaces are a good way to start your business when you are in the process of building your brand and creating a niche for yourself in the market. They provide a quick and simple start as well as an additional channel for your business. You should ideally sell on a marketplace when you have a reasonably lower number of products. Marketplaces are pretty reasonable to advertise on or to get your products ‘feature listed’ on. Naturally, they provide a great kickstart for your business.

Option #2: Building Your Own Store

In the meantime, it’s always advisable to start building your brand and selling on your own website as well. Building a website is feasible when you have, say, over 30 different items to sell. As opposed to a marketplace, your website has only your products. This makes your store an extremely powerful tool in your branding and marketing arsenal. Starting to sell on your website is a great way to increase your profit margins and maintain them. It’s also the best way to build a strong brand presence when you’re in a position to scale. All things said and done, there are some important aspects to consider before starting an online rental business. Although it’s a sound business idea with good prospective growth, basic concerns cannot be overlooked.

The 4 Important Questions to Answer before Starting an Online Rental Business

How much capital will I need?

That answer depends on how your venture pans out. If business picks up quickly, you will need to purchase a larger number of products in a fairly short amount of time to cater to consumer demands. Depending on the type of products that you are renting, you should be able to arrive at an estimated value based on your business trajectory.

How do I Stock to Scale?

Now the trick to stock is ‘smart’, not stock ‘more’. Don’t overspend on stocking up inventory right at the start. Buy a minimum required amount and then observe the business trends. Is your business picking up immediately or is it taking time? Assess the demand for a certain period of time before investing further in inventory. You don’t want to be stuck with products that are not as popular among your customer base. On the other hand, you can’t be struggling to keep up with the demand of the best-sellers on your store.

What will the replacement costs look like?

The risk of running an online rental business is that of product damages. If a product comes back in damaged condition, you’ll be incurring additional costs to replace it. You need to consider the type of goods you’re renting out in terms of fragility. Can they be easily damaged? What percentage of your products are likely to come back damaged? How much is it going to cost you to replace the product? Depending on all of these factors, you need to fix your ‘security deposit’ amount. Now, coming up with this pricing can be quite tricky. That’s because your security deposit can by no means be high enough to push away your prospects or low enough to cause huge losses.

What about logistics?

Logistics is an important aspect to bear in mind, especially when you’re renting out products. This involves the warehousing, shipping, storage, and also the cleaning, maintenance, and refurbishing of your rental products. What kind of processes does a product go through when it is returned and before it is shipped out again? Where are you going to store these products? What delivery channels are you going to use? Take all these factors into consideration beforehand, because logistics is a critical part of online businesses. Once you have these fundamental aspects taken care of, the next step is setting up your website. WooCoommerce along with its extended arms – WooCommerce Bookings and WooCommerce Subscriptions – makes for a solid foundation of a Rental Products business. Let’s check out some features that are critical to any Rental Website.

Setting Up your Rental Business Website on WooCommerce

#1 Create Organized Listings

Listings are a critical part of any product-based eCommerce website. They ease the search process for your customers and improve the discoverability of the products on your store. Your rental products need to be sorted and listed based on various metrics, like popularity, availability, price, type, category, color, size, etc. You’ve got three options to get this implemented. One of them is to use WooCommerce’s built-in shortcodes. Now, these shortcodes will work just fine, provided you have only a limited number of products on your store. That’s because you have to manually create the listings. However, when your business starts to scale, you’ll need a more dynamic listings feature. This brings us to option numbers two and three – customization and an off-the-shelf plugin, respectively. Custom solutions are always the way to go when you look at it from a long-term perspective. Having said that, the WooCommerce Product Table and WooCommerce Quick View are two great plugins that play well with each other and allow you to significantly extend and enhance your listings feature.

#2 Add Advanced Search

A plugin like WooCommerce Product Finder can easily take care of all the basic search requirements of your website. However, when it’s a rental products website we’re talking about, you can’t overlook the ‘availability’ of your products. In this case, a tool like the WooCommerce Bookings: Availability Search Widget would be a great fit. You can also go one step further and implement advanced search features like the ‘Questionnaire Based WooCommere Product Filter’ or the infamous ‘Voice Search’.

#3 Enable Bookings and Subscriptions

WooCommerce Bookings is an extremely versatile plugin that you can use in order to allow your customers to book or reserve products for particular dates. Subscriptions, on the other hand, are a great way to retain your customers. The WooCommerce Subscriptions plugin can help you to acquire and manage subscriptions on your website. You can enable your customers to subscribe to your website and create their accounts, which you can then manage from a single Interface.

#4 Add Wishlists

Wishlists allow customers to save products that they have liked and want to revisit later. While it may seem like a very basic feature to have on your website, there’s a lot more it could do for you. If implemented well, a wishlist functionality on your website serves as an excellent conversion tool!

#5 Integrate Calendars

A calendar would enable your users to select the dates for which they want to rent your products. More importantly, it’s supposed to help you to plan, schedule and seamlessly manage the availability of your products and your backend inventory processes. While WooCommerce comes with a range of calendar plugins that can help you out here, seamlessly integrating it across all systems can be quite tricky unless you know exactly what you’re doing.

#6 Allow Social Login and Sharing

Some users prefer to sign up using existing credentials instead of creating new ones. Needless to say, the ‘barrier to entry’ of your store needs to be as low as possible. The WooCommerce Social Login plugin allows your customers to sign in using social media login credentials. This also enables more social media sharing, thereby fostering publicity and a wider reach of your business.

#7 Payment Gateways and Checkout

Payment gateways are a fundamental part of any eCommerce website. WooCommerce has the capability to integrate with popular payment gateways like PayPal. All you need to ensure would be a swift and easy checkout process.

#8 Product Tracking

All good eCommerce websites have product tracking functionality that enables their customers to track the shipment. If that sounds like something you want to enable, you can make use of plugins like WooCommerce Shipment Tracking or YITH WooCommerce Order Tracking.

#9 Inventory Management

WooCommerce allows you to manage products in terms of checking quantities, setting up alerts or sorting products based on various characteristics. When we’re talking about a rental products store however, these default capabilities of WooCommerce won’t really suffice. You can use plugins and extensions like the Smart Manager for WooCommerce and Bulk Stock Management by WooCommerce, that’ll help extend WooComerce’s default functionalities.

#10 Add Customer Messaging Tools

Check out platforms like Crisp and Zendesk in order to set up a seamless messaging and customer service portal for your website. These helpdesk tools allow your customers to leave their comments and queries for you to get back to them. All major eCommerce stores use such tools as they are crucial to maintaining a good relationship with your customers.

#11 Support Reviews, Ratings, and Feedback

Collecting Ratings, Reviews and Feedback from your customers is extremely essential. Customer reviews and recommendations are often considered as the most important assets for building credibility and trust among your existing as well as your potential clientele. Customer feedback can prove to be a major advantage when given due importance. While the positive responses become your confidence-booster pills, the suggestions and negative feedbacks give you an overview of a much-needed customer’s perspective and help you improve and better your offering.

Parting Thoughts

Starting an online rental business is not difficult provided you answer the important questions related to capital, stocking, and logistics. Your website needs to have all the essential functionalities ready and working to ensure maximum customer convenience. Having said that, you need to make sure you keep the dependency on third-party plugins as minimal as possible. If a piece of custom code can handle your requirements, avoiding the use of too many plugins is always advisable. At the very least, you need to ensure all of the plugins and extensions you’re using ‘play well’ with each other. Also, never underestimate the importance of good UI and UX. The interface and experience design of your website goes a long way in building a strong, and credible brand at an extremely fast pace.

6+ Strategies to Influence Purchase Decisions with Advanced Wishlists for WooCommerce

February 22, 2019 by Shreya Reddy Leave a Comment

We all have looked up items on online shopping websites and left them on the cart because we can’t decide whether to buy them or not. It’s common consumer psychology; keeping something on hold until a decision can be made. To make this process simpler, all good eCommerce stores have wishlists, where customers can add items to revisit another time. Shoppers usually add products to their wishlist before an upcoming sale; if they’re looking for a different color/design that’s currently unavailable; when they’re waiting for a more convenient time; or because they want to save time by avoiding going through thousands of products, etc. The reasons can be plenty, but the highlight here is the purchase intention. Customers create wishlists because they’re considering buying a particular product in the future. In other words, they’re already halfway into making a purchase. This makes the wishlist of your WooCommerce store an extremely important asset. So, how do you make the most of it? By,

Taking Your WooCommerce Wishlist to the Next Level

Let’s look at it from your buyer’s perspective, shall we?

#1 A seamless redirect functionality

You’re most likely to be using a redirect functionality already, which takes your customers from their cart to the checkout page. Every time a new item is added to cart, the options ‘proceed to checkout’ and ‘continue shopping’ are displayed on the screen. A similar redirect from a wishlist to the checkout page, not only serves as a great ‘Call To Action’ that urges your customers to make the purchase, but also reduces the number of clicks required to complete the checkout process.

#2 Time-bound wishlists

There are quite a few ways to play around with time-bound wishlists. For example, your wishlist could have a fixed time limit of say, 30 days for your guest users. That is to say, post this time period, the items added to your guest user’s cart will not be saved. Your logged-in users will, of course, have unlimited access to their wishlist – with no limit on the number of items they can add or on the time. And what good is this going to do? It’s going to give your guest users another reason to sign up to your website. Now that part sounds great, doesn’t it?

#3 Multiple wishlists option

Online users want convenience and simplicity. Providing an option to create customized wishlists it a great way to allow your shoppers to pick out and organize their items-of-interest. You could also some have off-the-rack ‘Holiday Wishlists’ or ‘Christmas Gift Registries’ where your shoppers can easily add and preserve their products.

#4 Shareable wishlists with an Option to Edit

Enabling the ‘share’ option for wishlists is a great way to encourage your users to share their shopping lists with their social media connections. These friends of your customers should ideally be able to edit it (add or remove items) or like/unlike a product. Once the wishlist has been edited, it can be directly added to the cart. The advantage of adding such functionality is that your customers act as ‘influencers’ for your brand and introduce your store to a new audience that you probably wouldn’t be able to reach otherwise.

#5 Price drop alerts and Purchase Reminders

Many large eCommerce stores like Amazon send alerts to users when the price of an item in their wishlist has dropped, urging their customers to make most of the discount and purchase the item. This is another great way of boosting sales. On the same lines, you can use automated emails to remind your shoppers that they have items in the wishlist and encourage them to make the purchase, especially when you’re low on stock. A notification that says ‘Last 10 items left in Stock, Purchase Today’ can serve as the necessary push required to convert your customer’s interest into a sale.

Amazon’s Wishlist for Guest Users

You on the other hand – as the admin – you’ll need a different set of equipment to back you up.

#1 Wishlist Analytics

Numbers are a great way of arriving at estimations of where a particular product stands in terms of popularity and profits. Tracking product popularity and cart abandonment to understand which products are working for your business and which aren’t is extremely important to your inventory management process as well. You can use the WooCommerce Cart Reports plugin to identify the cart abandonment rate as well as the products that are being abandoned. Some other key metrics to track are number of product/product page views, number of times the product is added to the cart, purchases and the duration for which the product is in the cart.

#2 Personalized email marketing

All the aforementioned techniques like low stock notification, wishlist reminders or price drop alerts can be done through a customized email marketing campaign. You can even go so far as to create special discounts for certain customers using the Customer Specific Pricing plugin and send them personalized emails notifying of a discount.

#3 Time-bound offers

One method is to set up fixed time discounts, encouraging users to add wishlist items to cart and purchase them within a certain period of time to avail the low price. You can implement this timer using a Countdown Plugin. You need to create a sense of urgency among your customers to add their wishlist to the cart within a limited span of time to avail a ‘special’ discount.

Parting Thoughts

Although wishlists and shopping carts are part of a customer’s shopping journey, they come with a catch – memory. Customers tend to forget that they have saved items they had liked and were considering purchasing in the future. Adding the above features and functionalities to your WooCommerce wishlist will help you remind your customers that there are products that they wanted to buy, and give them slight nudges in that direction. This way, you will not only be making your users feel important but also leveraging more sales from the ‘potentials’. While there are a bunch of free and premium WooCommerce plugins that you can make use of, there’s no one-size-fits-all tool that’ll help you implement all of these features. If you’re really looking to create an advanced wishlist for your WooCommerce store, it only makes sense to get a customized solution developed which fits all of your needs, to the T. Do you know of any other feature that should make it to this list? The Comments Section’s all yours!

The Complete Guide to Retention Marketing on WooCommerce

February 15, 2019 by Shreya Reddy Leave a Comment

We all shop online on a regular basis, ordering anything from a coffee mug to furniture from various online stores. Do you ever wonder why people keep going back to the same eCommerce stores to buy things again and again? It’s because shoppers are looking for factors such as trustworthiness, value for money, convenience, or just because of a positive experience when shopping online. And when they come across a store that checks all of these boxes, they go right back to it. This is called customer retention.

Impact of Customer Retention on Revenue Generation

Customer retention is a major part of eCommerce marketing (or any other type of marketing for that matter) solely because it is so important. A study by Adobe shows that while repeat customers are only 8% of the total customer base of any business, they make up 40% of the total sales. Other surveys like those conducted by SAS and Loyalty360 estimate that existing customers and clients account for 68% of a company’s business. Clearly, although organic growth is essential, a major part of your revenue could be generated from retained customers. And who wouldn’t want a piece of that pie?!

Who is a Retained Customer?

A retained customer would be someone who repeatedly avails a service or purchases a product from your website. Although this definition varies depending on the product or service, the underlying principle is basically the same. For instance, a customer who renews their Netflix or Amazon Prime subscription regularly is a retained customer. This shopper is a loyal customer who keeps coming back irrespective of the options available to him/her. This article hands out some effective tips on customer retention for your WooCommerce Store.

Getting Your Website On Board

First things first, decide what you want your customers to do. Do you want them to make repeated purchases from your website, renew their subscriptions, or maybe avail your post-sales services for fixtures and maintenance? Once you have that down, you can use a variety of WooCommerce tools to increase customer retention. Here are some tips, or the ‘what’ and ‘how’ of it.

#1. The What – Data Collection.

The first thing to do is get some stats and metrics to work with; primarily, customer retention metrics. The following are some of the important ones –

Customer Churn Rate

This is the percentage of customers that don’t return to your website again, don’t renew their subscriptions or cancel their memberships. This is an important metric if you have a WooCommerce website that runs on a recurring payment model, like subscriptions.

Revenue Churn Rate

This is a measure of the revenue lost because of customer churn. You can calculate the actual figure or assign a normalized value to it.

Repeat Purchase Rate

Simply put, this is the percentage of repeated purchases on your website or renewed their subscriptions/memberships.

Return Website Visitors

Tying into the repeat purchase rate, this metric calculates how many people returned to your website to purchase a product or renew a service.

Customer Lifetime Value

This value is the predicted net profit value assigned to the entirety of a future relationship with a customer. This means that you can estimate how much net profit you can make from a customer in the entire course of your future collaboration with each other.

The How

There are numerous free and premium plugins that help you collect this data. The most basic ones being Google Analytics and your CRM software. Tools like Hotjar, MonsterInsights, and conversion optimization services like Kissmetrics help you to measure the necessary customer retention metrics. The relevant statistics and figures will guide your way towards the next step – Marketing.

#2. The What – Identifying High-Value Customers

Increase Repeat Purchase from WooCommerce store

High-value customers offer more value to your brand than simply coming back and making repeat purchases. They are influencers for your brand and talk about it on the internet. They regularly post reviews, share social media posts, participate in giveaways, and basically generate more awareness about your brand. It is important to cater to these high-value consumers. Why? Because they influence other people. People trust people; if someone has used your product or service and posted a positive review, then the credibility of your brand automatically increases. Here are some ways to engage high-value customers for the long term –

Referral Programs

Referral programs are ones where you give your customers some perk or benefit if they can get more people to sign up, subscribe, make a purchase, or avail a service. Such programs encourage customers to refer people and you get more customers.

Feedbacks

People perceive brands as entities and expect that they engage with them on a personal level. If customers feel that a brand cares about them, they will engage with it further. Asking customers for regular feedback on their experience so far makes them feel heard and cared for.

Reviews

Your WooCommerce site must have a review option for every product that you sell. This is the best way to understand how products are performing and whether customers are getting value for their money. It also helps you understand the problem areas and work on them.

Special Discounts

You can consider giving special offers or discounts to your high-value customers. For example, the WISDM Customer Specific Pricing plugin for WooCommerce can help you set different prices of the same product for different customer groups. Similarly, the WooCommerce Points and Rewards plugin allows you to identify your high-value customers and accordingly set up some special discounts and rewards for them.

The How

WooCommerce offers a variety of plugins for the aforementioned techniques. You can set these plugins to run on your website to engage your high-value customers. Here’s a list of some that you might want to take look at:

WooCommerce Product Reviews Pro – Allows you to accept reviews from your customers along with photos and videos of the products they’ve purchased.
WISDM Product Enquiry Pro for WooCommerce – Enables you to cater to all the product inquiries that come your way and also serves as a great quote request plugin as well.
Recommendation Engine – Automatically recommends more products based on the user’s purchase history, product views, what others have viewed, and products that are often bundled and purchased together.

#3. The What – Reactive Campaigns

Improve-Engagement-on-Your -WooCommerce-Website-feature

The next step is to switch focus to customers who are currently not engaging with your brand at all. The customer churn value will help you understand how many customers have not re-engaged with your brand. A reactive campaign involves getting in touch with these customers and encouraging them to engage with your product or service through a series of messages. Track abandoned carts and re-engage these customers through social media posts or sending an email reminding them to complete their transaction.

The How

The best way to run reactive campaigns is to create a communication plan and set up a calendar for the same. You could make use of solutions like Hubspot Marketing, or tools like MailChimp and Automate Woo to help you with this process. Plan out the frequency of your messaging activities and set up emails or messages to go out at those particular times using the automation software. These plugins become all the more useful if you have customers across various time zones.

#4. The What – Offering Premium Memberships

You can offer premium memberships to customers at a price. Offer extra perks like free shipping or 24-hour deliveries. Amazon Prime is a good example of premium membership. Members get access to prime video facilities, free shipping, instant home deliveries, extra discounts, etc.

The How

Membership plugins. WordPress offers numerous options for creating memberships on your website. MemberPress is a free plugin that is compatible with WooCommerce, can process payments, run WooCommerce affiliate marketing programs, and so much more. There are plenty of free, paid and premium membership plugins like Restrict Content Pro, aMember Pro and Paid Members Pro that offer an array of features and functionalities. Some solid research will help you find the one that best suits your needs.

#5. The What – Providing Exceptional Service

Customers have a certain set of expectations from a brand or company in terms of quality of service. To effectively retain your customers, you need to provide exceptional service and exceed their expectations. Some of these strategies include providing quick service, instant or timely responses, addressing issues, offering perks or extras to aggrieved customers, etc. Your customers need to feel heard and acknowledged. When you show them that you genuinely care for their requirements and not just for your profits, you’ll end up forming a bond that keeps them coming back.

The How

Make use of FAQs, live chatbots and helpdesk tools like LiveChat or Crisp, and automated emailers like Sendy or MailChimp, etc. to ensure quick responses and timely resolution of queries or grievances.

Parting Thoughts

WooCommerce offers plenty of marketing tools for retargeting, promotions and for affiliate marketing, enabling you to automate tasks and target both types of customers – those who are and those who aren’t coming back to your website. However, it’s extremely important to keep track of whether your strategies are working out for you and accordingly perk up your strategies from time to time. This formula, given by Inc. is a great way to measure the outcome of your efforts. It says, Customer Retention Rate = ((CE-CN)/CS) * 100, where: CE= number of customers at the end period CN= number of new customers during the period CS= number of customers at the start of the period While using these tools smartly will help you to retain your customers and enhance your revenue, in certain cases, these ready-made tools may not suffice. WooCommerce has a vast community of developers and technology partners that could definitely help you out. What are you waiting for? Go on, and get marketing! Happy Retention!

All About Magento to WooCommerce Migration

January 30, 2019 by Shreya Reddy Leave a Comment

Magento happens to be one of the leading cloud commerce platforms with an open-source ecosystem. It has been so in sync with the industry’s requirements that ‘Magento’ has become synonymous with ‘enterprise-level solutions’. This high-performance solution with powerful out-of-the-box functionality powers websites that belong to some of the world’s biggest brands like Samsung, Nike, Nestle, and Lenovo. According to Magento’s site, more than 250,000 merchants around the globe have chosen to work with this platform.

How It All Started

Roy Rubin and Yoav Kutner founded Varien, the company that went on to launch Magento. The first full release of Magento e-commerce took place on August 31, 2008 – a year after its first public beta release. In 2011, eBay bought Magento for an estimated $180 million. As eBay owned PayPal at the time, Magento naturally provided integration with the world’s largest third-party payments processor – PayPal. This immediately took Magento a step ahead of its competitors. Staying true to its open-source roots, the company has successfully built a robust solution that caters to small or medium sized businesses called the ‘Community Edition (CE)’. This base has allowed Magento to offer an even more flexible and scalable professional solution – The Magento ‘Enterprise Edition (EE)’, which appeals to larger companies that need more power, backed by an expert consultancy.

What Changed

In July 2015, soon after eBay split with PayPal, it also cut ties with Magento. In 2018 however, Adobe acquired Magento for $1.68 billion with a vision to create a better opportunity for their customers, partners, and the developer community by bringing together Adobe’s strength in content and data with Magento’s open commerce innovation. Another BIG change that happened in 2015 was the introduction of Magento 2.0. The entire Magento ecosystem – made up of technology partners, solution partners, merchants, and an estimated 280,000 “community members” who work with Magento on a regular basis – has been forced to adapt to the new version of this software with limited resources in terms of know-how, extensions, plugins, developers and/or budget! Don’t get me wrong. Thousands of e-commerce businesses are happy customers of Magento 1.x and hence upgrading may not seem like a pressing matter. The platform has worked out really well for a lot of merchants out there and you’re probably one of them. But the truth is, whether or not you’re facing any issues with your current Magento site, you’ve got no option but to migrate. That’s because,

Support for Magento 1.x will be Stopped

When Magento 2 was released in November 2015, Magento executives circulated the idea that Magento 1 would reach its “end-of-life” three years after the release of Magento 2, that is, on November 18, 2018. But, Magento 1 is still extremely popular and, consequently, several sources cite that the support for 1.x has been extended up to June 2020. Now, what does this withdrawal of support really mean for store owners? Well, you most certainly cannot expect any new features or improvements for Magento 1, as all of Magento’s workforce is now concentrated on the development and growth of Magento 2. The support we’re talking about here is mostly related to security patches and important fixes. Security is paramount for any e-commerce business. Every time a security patch or update is available, it needs to be installed immediately. That’s the main reason your store cannot function without continual support. Other implications of not migrating include: lack of support for extensions, increase in monthly maintenance costs, difficulty in maintaining PCI compliance etc. Basically, this is it. This really is ‘the beginning of the end’! If you own a store that currently runs on Magento 1, it’s time to map out your migration.

The Magento 2 Step-Up

Clearly, Magento aims to consolidate Magento 2 and expand its functionality, making it a more lucrative offering for bigger enterprises. The official development team adds new features to Magento 2 every three months. This applies to both – the Magento Community and the Magento Enterprise Edition. Here’s how Magento 2 supersedes Magento 1:

It’s Faster

Magento 2 loads faster than the standard 2-3 seconds. The homepage, category pages, and product pages load in less than 1.5 seconds, even without using frontend caching.

More Native Features

Magento 2 is designed with a wide array of in-built native features that can offer a lot of functionality to the webshop without having to add plugins.

Improved Admin Panel

The admin panel of Magento 2 can be customized so that the business owner can access the needed information quickly according to preference. It also has a comprehensive dashboard that shows lifetime sales, last orders, average orders, top search terms, revenue tax, check bestsellers & customers, shipping, and quantity, which helps to monitor the current state of your business.

Mobile Friendly and Responsive

If an eCommerce website is not mobile friendly, it’s bound to lose a lot of customers. Magento 2 was released keeping this in mind and hence it has a layout that is highly responsive. Magento 1, on the other hand, had to be modified by a great deal to achieve this level of responsiveness. This is a big advantage because Google’s algorithms have been officially favoring mobile-friendly websites in ranking.

Ajax Add-to-Cart

Every time a product is added to the cart in Magento 1, the system reloads the page, which has a negative impact on its performance. Due to Ajax add-to-cart, the new system doesn’t have to reload the entire page when a new item is added to cart.

Supports the Latest PHP versions

As Magento 1 was launched in 2007, it was compatible only with the older versions of PHP. That proved to be quite a nuisance for most of the web developers. Magento 2 supports the latest PHP versions. These versions include security improvements that affect the store’s speed and flexibility.

JavaScript

Removing ‘Prototype’ as the core JavaScript library and replacing it with the ‘RequireJS’ library has reduced the number of JavaScript files which need to be called and hence leads to enhanced performance. It also reduces unnecessary browser’s operations on the client’s side due to bundled and minimized JavaScript. While quite a few merchants have opted to Migrate to the new version of Magento, a lot of others are still contemplating other options. That’s because, even though Magento 2 is far superior to Magento 1, it may not be suitable for everyone. Also, the migration process is anything but a straightforward affair.

The Harsh Reality of Migrating to Magento 2

The shift to Magento 2 can be better described as “Setting up a new Store on a different Platform” and not migrating to one. If you think you can take everything you have on your Magento 1 website and replicate it on Magento 2, you’re mistaken. Fact is, porting your store’s data is achievable. But, taking your customization along? Well, not so much.

Extensions, Themes, and Customization

Magento 1 themes cannot be transferred to Magento 2 and have to be built from scratch. Magento 2 does launch a Blank Theme by default, making it highly customizable from the beginning. But, since Magento 2 is relatively new, there hasn’t been enough time for the community to rally and provide a lot of out-of-the-box themes. Same goes for the extensions. You may have to repurchase your extensions and allocate resources to integrate them onto the new platform. That is IF you come across extensions that are compatible with the new release and are verified by the Magento Community. You’ll most probably have to custom build a few extensions to achieve the exact kind of functionality you’re looking for. And finding developers with this level of expertise is another challenge. In some cases, the custom code in your Magento 1 store could be compatible with Magento 2. Magento has developed a Code Migration Toolkit that helps with this process. But it’s not going to be a Plug and Play situation. You’re more likely to find yourself making some visual or functional changes here and there.

It’s gonna get heavy on your pockets!

Magento Community Edition will continue to be free. But should you choose to purchase the Enterprise Edition, you’ll face quite a steep price tag. Committing to an enterprise edition has its benefits, but is the cost worth it? Or more importantly, can you afford it? In 2015, the cost of the Magento Enterprise Edition license was somewhere around $18,000 per year, whereas by 2018 it has escalated to $22,000. If you decide to continue with Magento, you’re up for a sizable financial investment. In addition to having to dedicate your budget towards rebuilding your Magento 1 site from scratch on Magento 2, you’ll also be spending more money on the license alone. Majority of the stores on Magento 1 have put in a lot of efforts that translate into several developer years and huge amounts of monetary investments. A switch to Magento 2 would mean a re-development of the entire infrastructure that is currently in place. And a rebuild like that is not something that every business can afford to carry out from a technical or a financial perspective.

Time to Look at Other Options

Now that you’re going to have to rebuild your store from the ground up anyway, it’s a great time to look at other options that would be more lucrative for your business. Shopify, BigCommerce, and WooCommerce are definitely worth considering. Shopify and BigCommerce are direct competitors of each other as they’re both ‘Software as a Service’ (SaaS) tools. This means, you can’t really own them, but you pay a recurring fee for access to the software. These platforms try to provide end-to-end e-commerce solutions. And because they’re hosted solutions, you don’t need to worry about buying web hosting or installing the software; as long as you have access to a web browser and the internet, you can manage your store from anywhere. The downside with these tools is that the ability to customize your website is limited. If you’re coming from a platform like Magento which allowed you to create a bespoke online store, you’ll naturally want to invest in a solution that provides a great deal of flexibility.

WooCommerce

WooCommerce is a Plugin for WordPress and not a stand-alone product like Magento. What’s common among the two platforms is their open-source code-base. Although WooCommerce is a plugin, when combined with WordPress’ long list of features and capabilities, it creates an e-commerce platform worthy of being considered alongside Magento. Its ease of use, features, and flexibility make it a leading e-commerce platform, capable of rivaling the best-known e-commerce solutions. Let’s take a look at how WooCommerce fits the bill for budding online merchants and enterprises:

Scalability

Because there’s a lot of buzz about how WooCommerce is preferable for start-ups and SMEs, the first question that pops is, “Is WooCommerce really scalable?” This is a topic with some debate around it because scaling the platform can be a little tricky unless you know how to. But the answer is, yes. WooCommerce can scale. By regularly testing the infrastructure, getting a good managed WordPress Host and hiring the right resources for the job, you can make your WooCommerce website ‘Enterprise-friendly’.

Customizability

Since you’re working with an open-source platform, there’s a lot of room for customization. WooCommerce can help you engineer nearly anything you can think of. You have control over the style, page layout, and responsiveness. Your products can be categorized, given sale prices, independent attributes, and more. In fact, tax settings, inventory management, shipping options, coupon codes, and pretty much everything else you need for a professional e-commerce setup, is part of WooCommerce, right out of the box! You can enable detailed order tracking and customer engagement tools, which allow you to view past and open orders, update delivery statuses etc. Additionally, WooCommerce stores are capable of selling physical, virtual, downloadable and even affiliate or external products.

Community

WooCommerce is part of the WordPress community that extends worldwide. This means that there are possibly thousands of other users sharing your experiences, asking the same questions, and working to improve the platform. If you’re looking for certain custom functionality, chances are it’s already available in the form of a plugin or extension. And if you don’t find a ready-to-use solution, you’ll most definitely find a developer that can easily create one for you.

Extensions and Integrations

Thanks to the community again, there are tens of thousands of plugins available for WordPress, and hundreds, if not thousands, of plugins for WooCommerce – without exaggeration – aimed at extending its functionality. You’ll find a myriad of tools that’ll help you optimize the front end and the back end. WooCommerce also allows integrations with several third-party services such as Google analytics, zapier, kissmetrics, and mixpanel.

Security

As more and more businesses are working towards creating a strong digital footprint, hackers and spammers are also working hard to gain access to websites. Outsmarting such trespassers is not very difficult, but requires continuous vigilance and incorporation of security features. Your WooCommerce Store is naturally entitled to the security features provided by WordPress. However, you can secure your eStore by using security plugins, choosing a secure Web Host, updating your software regularly, limiting login attempts and link-backs to the website, using secure Payment Gateways, making frequent and multiple backups etc.

Payments Processing

With WooCommerce, there are multiple ways to accept payments from your customers without spending a fortune on setup or monthly fees. From built-in processors to optional extensions, there’s a fitting solution for every store owner. Stripe and PayPal now come bundled into WooCommerce core. Your WooStore can be integrated with a majority of the popular payment gateways, and if that’s not enough, you can easily have your developers custom-build your Payment Gateway.

Cost

First things first – it’s going to be a LOT cheaper than Magento. WooCommerce is a free Plugin, but then again you’re going to have to invest in: Web Hosting, Paid Extensions and Themes and of course, your Developer. Depending on your requirements, a store on WooCommerce can cost anywhere between $100 to a couple of thousand dollars. Now, you’ll come across a lot of content pieces that may conclude that Magento is suitable for enterprises and WooCommerce works better for smaller businesses. But it’s pointless to categorize your store into these two extreme segments – enterprises and small businesses. The wise thing to do would be to sift out your requirements and then figure out which software is the best fit for your needs, employee skill levels, and finances. Although WooCommerce is a free, user-friendly e-commerce platform, it’s a great professional online store solution that works well for both SMEs and Enterprises alike.

The Game Plan

The transition to a new platform is a pretty daunting task, but there’s another way to look at it. This migration gives you the perfect opportunity to come up with new ideas and rethink your business as a whole. You can get rid of all the unnecessary extensions, bulky code and use this juncture to your advantage by improving the overall usability of your site. Here’s how you could go about planning a smooth and worthwhile migration:

Identify all the functionalities on the current site that you want to carry over to the new one
List down all your custom themes, extensions, workflows and integrations
Also, create a list of extensions that you’re not actively using
Start thinking about what you’d like to improve on or add to your existing store
Create a Budget
Come up with a tentative timeline for the completion of your migration project

Once you’re clear about these aspects, it’s probably best to consult with an e-commerce development agency, even if you have an internal team – so that you can get a better understanding of what you’re really walking into.

The Final Word

Magento is a powerful platform, but it’s important to consider what makes the most sense for your business. If you have a dedicated team of 1-3 employees and can sustain tens of thousands of dollars, and the need for scalability of your website really warrants Magento, then sure, Magento 2 is the perfect solution. But otherwise, WooCommerce is a great alternative. Educate yourself before jumping onto any platform. With retailers and brands rapidly working towards a successful online presence, deploying your online store on the right platform becomes extremely vital. If you’re having trouble identifying what suits your business, you could always get in touch with us!

Help customers easily make repeat purchases from your WooCommerce Store

January 25, 2019 by Aditya Deswal Leave a Comment

There are a lot of parts to the shopping process. Exploring the options, comparing and shortlisting them are the interesting parts because customers are driven to get the best for them. Finalizing the cart, applying promo codes and making the purchase are relatively boring parts. As a WooCommerce store owner, you must be always pondering as to how to increase traffic and sales. But a more important and specific question can be,

‘How can I retain more customers?’

One of the better ways to do this is to make the boring part of the shopping process less boring. Simplifying the UI/UX and upgrading it with the latest design trends, or your best bet yet…

Making it easy for your customers to make repeat purchases

We can all relate to using food ordering mobile apps, right? After ordering food for 3-4 times, we quickly tend to find our comfort zone, and then we keep repeating the stuff we like, with some space for experimentation (reminding ourselves that free will exists, right?). The makers of these apps are clever enough to bank on this. They quickly introduced the ‘previously ordered’ section at the top of each restaurant’s page. Now, all we have to do is alter the quantity of these orders if we want to and boom! — in a single click, the order is in the cart. If you have payment details saved, it doesn’t take more than a minute to order food.

‘Previously Ordered Items’ section in the Zomato Food App, helping users to quickly order their favourite meals.

This idea is becoming synonymous with e-commerce in general, with similar examples available on online marketplaces like Amazon, OYO Rooms, eBay, etc.

‘Buy it again’ option in Amazon Mobile App, available in ‘Your Orders’ section of the app.

Applying the idea to your WooCommerce Store

The same concept can be applied to your WooCommerce store. Let’s say a customer (who is a business person himself) arrives at your Woo Store. To know more about the product you offer, the customer asks some questions and requests for a price quotation. This can, of course, be possible through an ‘enquiry’ plugin. After you respond to the customer with an appropriate quotation (keeping in mind the B2B nature of the deal), the customer checks out and completes the purchase. Now, let’s say that he or she is looking to buy again the same product(s) (which can be frequent for a business person) from your store again. Now, here is an opportunity to convert your repeat purchaser into a loyalist. Wouldn’t it be extremely convenient if you could allow this customer to simply repeat the previous order (at the same price, for the same quantity)?

Simplifying the buying process

Using the option to repeat previous orders, your customer will be able to quickly complete the purchase with just a few clicks – just like we all like to repeat our food orders while ordering online. The customer won’t have to take the long route of proceeding with a quotation request and so forth… Here’s a simple idea that can help you:

shorten the buying process,
improve customer experience,
increase the number of purchases, and
build customer loyalty

One of the better plugins for the job is WISDM Product Enquiry Pro that not only allows you to add an ‘Enquiry’ or ‘Request a Quote’ button to your WooCommerce store and can be easily customized to allow your customers to make repeat purchases for the previous order buying data (price, quantity, and the product).

Grow your WooCommerce Store by retaining more customers

The various stages of Customer Lifecycle.

Once a customer has made a purchase, the shopping experience and post-sales experience (support, future communication) determines if the customer will come back to purchase again, thereby increasing chances of getting the customer converted into a loyalist or an advocate. You should be focussing on putting more customers in the ‘Loyalty’ and ‘Advocacy’ phases of the customer lifecycle (easier done than said!). The real value thus starts with customer retention. It’s better to retain customers and push them up in the cycle instead of losing a customer and focusing on creating more leads. Using techniques like easy repeat purchases for customers, you can create a smoother buying process on your WooCommerce store. The more comfortable your customers are with your brand and the website experience, greater are the chances of making them loyalists. Making customers loyalists is not overnight work. However, you can start with easing the buying process for your customers by introducing simplified repeat purchases using a suitable enquiry plugin.

How to Create a Subscriptions Website like Netflix on WordPress

September 14, 2018 by Shreya Reddy 5 Comments

Whoaa! Starting a business like NETFLIX!

Before we get too excited about it, let’s slow down and get one thing straight. Building a WordPress website like Netflix is definitely possible. But, the word ‘like’ is key here. Netflix has one of the most successful business models in the world. What started out as an online DVD rental company back in 1998, has gone down to become one of the most popular OTT media services out there. They’ve managed to build an empire on the foundation of a basic subscription model and are worth more than $100 billion today! Now, subscription business models aren’t a new trend in the market. In fact, they’ve been around for decades. You yourself are most-likely hooked to a business that’s based on subscriptions. Could be a magazine or newspaper subscription or even cable-net. Yep. The idea is as simple as that. Customers pay a recurring fee (either monthly or yearly) in exchange for a particular product or service. You can sell to existing customers, create more value at a lower price and predict your revenue. Simply brilliant, isn’t it?! I mean, of course, you’ll have to focus on reeling in new customers and retaining the existing ones, but with your sales set on autopilot, you’re exempted from the hassle of having to find new customers every single time.

What worked out for Netflix…..

You guessed it! Their Subscription-based Business Model. Here’s a quick overview of their offering: Netflix lets you choose from 3 types of accounts: Basic, Standard, and Premium.

The Basic account allows you to watch non-HD movies on 1 screen at a time.
The Standard account lets you watch HD movies on a maximum of 2 screens.
The Premium account provides Ultra HD quality content and allows you to watch it on 4 screens simultaneously.

All three accounts provide a free trial month. Once you pick what suits you best, you can pay on a monthly basis. You can also choose to cancel your subscription at any point. You’re basically entitled to all the content on their website for as long as you keep paying. This means Netflix is based on The All-You-Can-Eat Library Model or The Buffet Model.

However, there’s a couple of other things Netflix can attribute its success to:

Accessibility– All of their content is accessible any time (quite literally), at any place (with an Internet connection) and on any device. Whether you’re using a mobile, tablet, PC, laptop, television or just about every other media device that has the technical capability to run it, you’ll instantly realize, there’s no compromise on the quality of your experience.
Choices– You get to choose what you want to watch from a plethora of options they have to offer. You get to try out their services before you go ahead and choose to convert into a customer. You can choose to walk out whenever you deem fit. No customer likes being cuffed to a product or service. The moment they are restricted in any way, their resistance towards making a purchase increases.
The Recommendation Algorithm- Through the user rating system and tracking the history of what you watch, Netflix suggests movies and shows that it thinks will appeal to you. As a Netflix subscriber, you are constantly participating in a range of behavioral experiments to produce data that allows the company to recommend movies and TV shows it thinks you’ll like. With their amazing data-driven technology, they’re almost always spot-on!
Instant Queue– The instant queue is basically a lineup of movies or shows you’ve chosen to watch on a later date. When you’re browsing through the site and you come across movies that you want to watch next, you can just add them to a queue as opposed to having to sift through the horde of options on Netflix.

In case you didn’t already know, they have an extensive range of Original Content to offer and you won’t come across an advertisement. Ever. Not hard to imagine why they’re the big dogs of Video-on-Demand, is it?! Considering the fact that we don’t have the resources or the big bucks to invest in all of these features just yet, let’s focus on what can be done instead.

What could work out for you….

Membership Website Model– This is where you charge for knowledge-based content in a particular domain. Picking a niche is probably the most sensible thing to do when starting out with any business. You know your target audience, you know exactly what appeals to them and you build an expert status. Of course, you can consider scaling your business at a later stage, but for now, the focus is what’s going to take your business forward.
The Freemium Model– The one that Netflix uses. You can basically get people to try out your content before they make a purchase. If you’re just starting out, it’s the perfect way to put yourself out there.
The Multiple Edition Model– This is when you cater to different factions of your audience. You may be able to categorize your customer base and identify what appeals to each of the segments. So, you offer plans that are specifically applicable to a particular set of prospects. That’s precisely what Netflix tries to do with their Basic, Standard and Premium plans.
Content Dripping– Content Dripping is the delivery of content over time, in a pre-scheduled manner. To put this in perspective, let’s say you’re watching a TV series on Netflix. Suppose Netflix does not give you access to the 3rd episode without watching the first two, we can call it content dripping. Or, if they choose to release only 1 new episode per week, that’d again be a form of content dripping. Why would you want to do this? Now, that depends. It could be to keep customers hooked so that they continue to subscribe to your services.

Now, these above features are great to get your business off the bat. But getting to those features is the next step. You need to first start by setting up your website. If you’ve got that covered, you could skip right to video hosting. If not, read on…

Website Hosting

You start by picking the Domain Name and a suitable Hosting Plan for your Website. A domain name is your unique website name. For example, if you choose a name like ‘example.com’, you’ll have to go to a ‘Domain Name Registrar’, pay a registration fee that will give you the right to the name for a year, and you will have to renew it annually. A Web Host is an online storage center that houses the information, images, video, and other content that comprises your website. The more “items” or “content” you have on your site (i.e., photos, videos, maps, PDF files, etc.), the more disk space and bandwidth you’ll need for website hosting. If you’re planning to host the videos yourself, a shared hosting plan will not be adequate for your disk space and bandwidth requirements. A dedicated hosting solution is ideal, but the difference in monthly cost for this plan may be significant. However, there’s an alternative. You can host your content on a third-party hosting service and embed it on your site. We’ll discuss this in detail in the next section of this article. PRO TIP: Here’s a list of few Hosting Providers we recommend:

Managed WordPress hosting is something definitely worth considering if you have a good budget. Take a look at this article to know more about it.

Video Hosting

You basically have two options- Self-Host your videos or Embed them on your site. Let Me explain…. Self-hosting means that you upload the video file to your site, using the built-in file uploader in WordPress, the same way you might upload a photo or image to your site. To Embed, you upload your video file to a third-party video hosting service like YouTube or Vimeo. Then, you paste a code given to you by them on your website. The video will appear on your site, in the location of the embed code, but the video itself is being streamed from the video host’s servers, as opposed to your own web server, where your WordPress site is hosted. Before we start debating about which one’s a better option, let’s understand some things about videos:

Video files can be quite large in size. Most web hosting providers limit the maximum size of uploaded files to 50 MB or less.
Too many requests for a single large file may quickly exceed the limits of your web server, bringing your site to its knees.
Majority of your audience is more likely to watch your videos from their desktop or laptop, with the benefit of a high-speed Internet connection. For those folks, you’ll want to deliver a large, HD-quality file so they can watch it full-screen if they so choose. But you’ll also want to encode a smaller, lower-resolution version for delivery to mobile devices like phones and tablets, as well as delivery to viewers with slower Internet connections.

Simply put, since you’re just starting out, you can easily upload your video to a video hosting service, then embed the code into your WordPress post or page. With a certain amount of investment, you’re given an option to keep your videos private on their site. The embedded video player will automatically detect the user’s device, browser, and Internet connection speed, and then serve the appropriate version of the video file to them. Nothing to install on your site. No plugins to update. No tricky code. And your video will be enjoyed the way you intended, no matter which device or browser your viewer chooses. But, if you still want to go ahead and host your own video content, here’s what you need to know:

WordPress includes a built-in video player that will eliminate the need for a third-party video plugin. Whether you use a third-party plugin or WordPress’ built-in video capabilities, you’ll need to create a bit of code to tell the video player which formats you’ve created, as well as their location on the server.
Chrome supports all the major video formats. But, if you want to ensure your video will play back on all the major web browsers, you’ll have to convert your video into multiple formats like mp4, .ogv, and .webm. You’ll need a software app to handle file conversion for you. There are hundreds of video conversion applications out there, and you may find that you need more than one to handle conversion into all the various formats.

A third-party hosting service takes care of the file conversions. Just Saying…..

Front-end and Design

The front-end and design of your website is going to be the face of your brand. In addition to creating a great first impression, you’ll be relying on it to provide great a User Experience to your prospects. You can either choose to build your front-end from the ground up with the help of a professional or use one of the numerous themes that are specifically designed for Video-based WordPress websites. There are website templates and tutorials available at sites such as ThemeForest and Free Website Templates. PRO TIP: Here’s a list of some boxes that your VOD Website must check:

Video Friendly– It needs to be focused on displaying and categorizing your videos optimally.
Personalized Landing Pages– A typical landing page is static. The text, graphics, videos, and other elements stay the same for every visitor. This is the old way of constructing landing pages, and while it can work for some situations, it’s also limiting. Personalized Landing Pages change based on who’s looking at them, allowing them to appeal to more site visitors. You can use the data collected from the contact forms on your landing page and fine-tune to your viewer’s name, location, gender, and any other required credential. With the right knowledge and a little elbow grease, your Over-the-top media services website can target and convert better!
Mobile-Friendly– You’ll need a mobile-friendly (also called responsive) theme that adapts to tablets and mobile phones. Perfect responsive web design not only resizes the pictures and content, but it also works for the media like videos, moving text, etc. and fixes them according to the size of the screen you’re using.
Performance– The load time of a website or an app has a direct relation to the bounce rate and abandonment. Simply put, speed matters. Front-end technology can optimize the overall performance, reduce page-load times and deliver SEO-friendly websites.

Set Up

The basis for a paid subscriptions website is an e-commerce plugin. WooCommerce along with the extension plugins available will provide you with a solid base. WooCommerce allows you to add feature images for your videos (products), add a description, reviews, related videos, and so on. It also allows you to categorize and tag your videos. If required, a custom search filter can be built over WooCommerce.

Membership Management and Payments Processing

One way of looking at this is that you’re offering a Rental Service. I’ll explain how… When you’re renting out a product, the customer can use it for a set period of time after which they’re expected to return it. That’s exactly what we’re going to be doing here. We accept payments on a monthly or yearly basis, allow the customers to consume the video content and if/when the payments are stopped, we restrict their access to the videos. So, in order to get your VOD Website up and running, here’s what you’ll need in terms of functionality:

Restricted Video Access
Providing a Sign-up form (To Enable Subscriptions)
Payments Processing (To Integrate your website with a preferred Payment Gateway and provide the customers with an option to make Recurring Payments)

But, depending on your subscriptions business model or strategy, you might need a few more layers of restricted access to manage videos during the ‘Free Trial Period’ or in the case of ‘Membership Cancellation’. There are quite a few membership plugins out there which allow you to manage your members, integrate with payment gateways and allow restricted access to your content depending on the users’ membership or subscription plan. Some of these plugins also allow integration with MailChimp and other email platforms that you can use to send renewal updates to your customers. PRO TIP: Here’s a list of some good Membership Management Plugins:

Pair it with the right Payment Gateway, and you’re ready to go!

Security

If you’re running a membership site with protected video content, you’ll want to ensure your video files can’t be downloaded by some nefarious individual and then redistributed illegally on file sharing sites. Because the video paths are easily exposed in the source code, anyone can simply copy the URLs, then download the videos to their own computer and redistribute at will. Using Vimeo Plus or Vimeo Pro is the easiest way to secure your content. That is if you don’t mind the costs which accompany. You can protect your video content from piracy using Password Protection, Domain-level Privacy, and Private Link Sharing.

Digital Rights Management

First, you need a licensing agreement with content providers. If you do not have this, the license holders can demand your Hosting Company to stop your services and they will. You’ll have to secure any required licenses and usage rights for the video content. For instance, if you are going to stream movies or television shows, you must ensure you have permission to offer this content. If you are collecting content from independent providers, then ensure ownership and usage rights are covered by a contract. If you’re going to sell or promote any products on your website, you’ll need to add legal disclaimers and privacy documents to your website. You can either contact a lawyer to help you draw these up, or you can use an editable plugin like WP Legal Pages which will add those pages for you for free.

Summing Up…..

A site like Netflix on WordPress has to be a well-architected solution. You may not be able to build a Netflix clone, but something similar is quite plausible. If you have the right mix of plugins, a suitable business model and a well-thought-out marketing strategy you’re all set. Comment below, and let me know what you think!

How to Create a Questionnaire based WooCommerce Product Filter

August 7, 2018 by Shreya Reddy 16 Comments

Filter WooCommerce Products

As an eCommerce store owner, you can never underestimate the value of a product search filter. Studies have shown that a good search filter can increase sales by up to 76%. That’s a pretty huge figure. But wait, what do you think I really mean by a ‘good’ product search filter? Search filters act like a discovery channel between your prospects and your website. The right kind of filtering and sorting is supposed to improve your prospects’ User Experience by allowing them to find the product they’re looking for in less time. If your users can’t find the exact product they require in minimal time, there’s a good chance they’ll bounce right off, taking your revenue with them. Having said that, it’s extremely important to get your filtering on point. Even though you’re trying to accurately point your users to the products they’re looking for, you want them to look around your store and explore other options that could interest them. As an entrepreneur, you’re ultimately aiming at driving sales.

The Conventional Filters

If you’ve noticed, product filters range from simple category based filter options to price based sliders and color swatches. Let’s quickly get acquainted with a few common types of product search filters.

The Search Bar- We all know what this is. We’ve one on our website too. A user enters the name, category or a certain ‘attribute’ such as color, weight or size of the product, based on which the search results are obtained. As simple as it sounds, if you’re really looking to optimize your search bar, you’re going to have to dive deep into the little details. Everything from the position of the bar to autocompleting search queries, contributes to driving sales!

The Search Bar on Amazon

Drop-down Menu- A user selects one field from a given set of options. This drop-down menu generally is used to create ‘Sort By’ filtering wherein, products could be filtered or arranged based on the users’ preference. Although technically, this does not qualify as a filter, it increases the possibility of a potential customer finding what they’re looking for and optimizes their product browsing experience.

Dropdown Filter option on GAP

CheckBoxes- Traditionally classified as faceted search options- checkboxes provide users a pretty easy what to filter what they’re looking for. Users can check/tick single or multiple parameters associated with products they’re looking for. It’s good practice to have a more visual representation of your checkboxes. Rather than writing out a list of colors for example, which can be ambiguous for users, you can just use the color itself.

Checkbox Filter Option on JCPenny

Sliders- They’re generally represented in the form of a bar with adjustable start and end points. This kind of filtering is often used to allow the users to select a particular price range.

But, are these filters good enough?

Since every online products store seems to be using some or all of these filters, we’ve all come across them before. They’re easy to use and serve the purpose of generating optimal search results, which is great! But, the eCommerce industry is advancing continuously and rapidly. What’s going to make your website or your offerings stand out from all the alternatives out there? What’s to stop your prospects from purchasing from another vendor? What’s going to make them come back around to your store? The answer to this is pretty simple. Make your customers feel ‘Understood’. It’s all about building a relationship with your prospects and creating a personalized experience for them. Since we’re not talking about a tangible store here, accomplishing this could sound a little daunting. So, our best bet would be to use what we’ve got and to make the most of it. Here’s introducing personalized and interactive search filters!

Questionnaire-based Product Filters: Search Experience Personalized

A questionnaire-based product filter is one that talks to a potential customer. The interaction happens as follows:

The shopper selects a ‘Recommend a Product’ or a ‘Find a Product for me’ option.
The shopper is asked a series of questions.
Based on the answers provided, products are recommended to the shopper.

A lot of top websites are already using a questionnaire based filter. Let’s take a look at a few of them to understand better. Example 1: Clinique, a popular skincare range, offers a “Find Your Perfect Skin Care Routine”. It takes you through a set of elaborate questions based on which the appropriate skin care product is suggested. They’ve considered everything from the customers ‘Skin Tone’ to the ‘Climate’ that their skin is exposed to.

questionnaire-based-product-filter-clinique

Questionnaire-based Product Filter on Clinique

Definitely, something that makes them stand out among other stores selling the same kind of products! Example 2: Revel Woods, a hardwood flooring store, goes way beyond the regular search by allowing you to “Find Your Perfect Wood Floor”. This option on their website analyzes everything from your color preferences to the amount of activity on the flooring! It’s easy to see they’re going an extra mile to offer the best-suited products to each of their customers. Now, both these websites have an extremely detailed set of questions with an excellent User Interface! However, your business may or may not have such comprehensive requirements. When you’re curating your questions, you want to make sure you’re focusing on pointing your prospects in the right direction and not stunting their options. Here’s a snippet of a basic Restaurant Finder that I created using Gravity Forms.

Now that we know what we want to accomplish, let’s get down to the ‘How’ part of it.

Building an Interactive Product Filter: the Right Tools for the Job

We are at point A– we have a WooCommerce store with several products. We need to get to point B– a WooCommerce store with several products, and an interactive question-based product filter option. We’re going to need the following to get us from point A to B:

A form Builder plugin
A great UI designer

Since the filter option is essentially a questionnaire, which can be shown to a shopper using a simple form. You could choose to construct this form in HTML. But honestly, I’d go with a form builder plugin. It’s a time and cost-effective option. The Gravity Forms plugin, is a great fit for this job. However, I’m not overly thrilled about the User Interface it provides. You see, the user interface is quite subjective. So based on your requirements, you’ll need to contact a great UI designer (*cough* could be us *cough*, ahem ahem).

Prerequisite: Add Attributes to WooCommerce Products

To filter products, we need to identify particular categories or attributes of the product. So, while you can directly categorize the products on your WooCommerce store, we need attributes to further filter products. Attributes are basically are product descriptors. For example, the attributes for a T-shirt would be the color, the size, the brand, and the like. Once we identify the attributes for our products, we need to add them to the product. In WooCommerce, you can spot an ‘Attributes‘ tab in the ‘Product Data‘ section. We will be using this setting to add attributes to products. We’ll have to set these custom attributes for all products.

Create Product Attributes for WooCommerce Products

Go to Products -> Attributes. Here, you have the option to create custom attributes.
Once you add a new attribute, you need to add associated values (known as terms). These can be added by editing Settings for each Attribute created.
Now, these attributes are not associated with any products; you’ll have to add related attributes and terms for each product in your WooCommerce store.

Create the Questionnaire using Gravity Forms

Once we’ve added the product attributes, we can proceed to create the questionnaire using the Gravity Forms plugin. If you aren’t familiar with the Gravity Forms plugin, you do not need to worry. The process is quite straightforward:

We have to create a ‘New Form’ for the questionnaire.
Then, create the multiple choice questions using the ‘Radio Buttons’ field.
We have to ensure that the value for each option matches a product attribute we’ve set for our products.

A Questionnaire using Gravity Forms

We have to then add the created Gravity Form on a separate page.

Filtering WooCommerce Products

The final step is to use the answers selected by the shopper to filter products. For this, we’ll obviously have to use some code. What we’re going to achieve is the following:

Each time a shopper submits the questionnaire, we’ll have to loop through the answers provided by a shopper and save them in an array. We have to use the gform_after_submission hook here.
We have to then query WooCommerce products which include the attributes selected and list them.

And that’s about it! Pssst…! Since Rémi Corson has covered the filtering part really well, you can check out his article to give you a great idea of the code you need to add to filter products based on multiple selected attributes.

Pretty simple isn’t it?!

With the above-mentioned process and a great UI designer, you can create an unmatched User Experience for your WooCommerce store. I’d love to hear your thoughts on enabling an Interactive Search Filter on your WooCommerce website. Comment below and let me know!

Exploring Must-Have Features of an Online Shopping Mall for WordPress

July 28, 2018 by Shreya Reddy 5 Comments

While, an online shopping mall for WordPress can potentially go on to become an extremely extensive and strong system that has an immense opportunity for mall owners, store owners and end users alike, it’s important that it should be built right.

We’ve previously spoken about creating an online shopping mall for WordPress. Here, in addition to understanding what an Online Shopping Mall really is, we discussed and reviewed aspects such as the difference between an online shopping mall and an online marketplace, the various users in an online shopping mall for WordPress, their interaction with the system and with each other and the benefits for all the entities involved. But, as the Mall Owner or the Network Administrator, there’s a lot more you need to discern. So, let’s jump right in and discuss in detail, the various features that can be incorporated in an online shopping mall for WordPress and some aspects concerning the Management of multiple sites that you need to get acquainted with.

Features to include in an online shopping mall for WordPress

1. Application Form for Store Registration

The most primary feature that will be needed in an online shopping mall for WordPress would be an application form for store registration. Users who want to be converted into store owners will use this application form. The application form will incorporate the store creation process which would include providing the required information, choosing the required subscription plan and making an initial payment. Once the application form has been completed and submitted a store will then be created in the online mall.
In case you’re looking for a customized setup process, the application form can then be created using Gravity Forms for WordPress. Considering that store owners would function as paid members of your mall service, you could alternatively use the MemberPress membership plugin to handle registrations.

2. eCommerce Store Pages

online-shopping-mall-for-wordpress-pages

Once the store owner has successfully registered a store on the online shopping mall an e-Commerce website will then be created. This website will be built on WooCommerce, one of the most used eCommerce platforms in the world.
Additionally, the store owner will also get access to other accessory functionalities that might be provided by the store owner on the multisite. Access to these functionalities can be based on the subscription plan that has been selected by the store owner.

3. Display Stores in Website

online-shopping-mall-for-wordpress-store

The one thing that is common among all online users is that they have become extremely impatient and so as the mall owner it must be your constant effort to make the system simple for users. Users will always keep coming back to a website which they deem easy to use.
One aspect where an opportunity can be created to make the system elementary is the search process. An option to search for stores in an online shopping mall for WordPress based on the store names would be beneficial especially for customers and mall owners as they would now be able to search for stores easily instead of scanning the entire list manually.
Another option that can be provided is to search for stores based on products on the main site. This feature could store owners as well, who could search for their competitors to make important marketing and sales decisions.

4. Supplementary Pages

The shop page is the most essential page for an eCommerce store. However, having said that it is also important that an eCommerce store should have other pages such as About Us, Contact, Support etc the usefulness of which cannot be denied from an end users perspective.
Hence, a store owner should be provided with these pages at the time of store creation. The store owner should also be provided to customize the content on these pages from the back end as per his requirement.
Furthermore, store owners can be allowed to create pages from the backend without having to contact the mall owner.

5. Custom URLs for Individual Stores

A possibility should be provided to the store owner to specify a custom URL at the time of e-Commerce store creation. A custom URL would provide the store owner with an opportunity to create an individual identity while remaining a part of the online shopping mall for WordPress
This feature can be provided to the store owner as an optional feature and can be provided as part of an advanced subscription plan.

6. Store Activation Option

There could be a scenario wherein the store owner might want to activate the website only after the entire website has been set up. Hence, the store owner should be provided with an option to activate the store as per his requirement.

7. Store Closed Option

online-shopping-mall-for-wordpress-closed

You might have surely seen ‘Store Closed’ signs in malls. There could be a number of reasons for the store owner to make use of this sign. It could either be the store is under maintenance or it could be closed for a few days due to the holiday season. Similarly, it might sometime be required for an online store to remain closed too. In such a situation the store owner should be provided with an option to do so.
The store owner can be provided with a store-hours plugin to provide this feature. The plugin should provide the store owner with a simple on/off option to keep the store closed as per requirement. However, while the store will be closed for users to make purchases it will be fully functional in the backend.
The customer can additionally be provided with an inquiry form along with the store closed message for any inquiries that he might want to make. Remember, do not shut out customers completely ever!

8. Localization Ready

Unlike a traditional shopping mall which might be located in a place which speaks one language, it might be easier for customers to find their way around the mall. However, when the same concept goes online you are essentially dealing with store owners who might belong to any of the 196 countries in the world catering to customers speaking in various possible.
In such a case the store owner should be given an option to localize the website to a language of his choice. Using this localization feature the store owner can capture a customer base from a particular region thereby improving sales and cater to a vast group of customers.

9. Global Shop Page

online-shopping-mall-for-wordpress-global

So, up until now, we have mostly spoken about features which will turn out to be favorable to store owners. And it makes sense after all your clients will be the store owners. However, the entire point of an online shopping mall for WordPress is to improve the online shopping experience for customers and provide diverse products under one roof.
In that direction one absolutely incredible to have in an online shopping mall for WordPress would be a global shop page. This feature would fetch products from all the stores in the online shopping mall for WordPress and display them on a single shop page.
Now, when an end user selects a product from the shop page he will be taken to the product page of that particular store.
So, in spite of the fact that the development process for this feature would involve tremendous effort, it would definitely be worth every bit the effort and it would provide an extraordinary customer experience.

10. Single Sign-On

To increase customer experience, a feature that’s a must is an option for them to sign in across all sites at once. This can simplify the registration process too, wherein, they could register only once and be registered across all stores. This offers an advantage to store owners too, since they can market to customers of other stores. Now that we’re clear about which features could help you take your online shopping mall one step closer to eCommerce success, let’s look at the other aspects and responsibilities that come with being the mall owner.

Managing a virtual shopping mall on WordPress

Since we’re using WordPress Multisite wherein, the parent website functions as a mall and the various subsites function as individual stores, all the sites can be managed conveniently from a single dashboard by you, the Mall Owner or The Network Administrator. You’ll be charging your store owners on a monthly or yearly basis in exchange for the services and resources that you will be providing in terms of the hosting, themes or plugins. It makes perfect sense for a number of sites that have a similar functionality to share these resources. All of your network’s themes and plugins are stored just once, no matter how many sites use them. This makes for more efficient use of server space and facilitates easy management of the multiple stores. Let’s try and focus on one aspect at a time.

1. Managing Plugins

Easier management on a multisite network comes at the cost of reduced flexibility and independence for the individual sites. That’s because, site admins can’t install themes or plugins specific to each store, but can only activate those that have been installed by the Mall Owner. It makes sense to have the WooCommerce plugin or another essential plugin like Yoast SEO to be network activated, so that it’s available once the store is created. Site Specific plugins can be made avialable based on the subscription plan an owner signs up for. Network Security Plugins and Auto Backup Plugins (which allow you to make regular backups, so you can quickly replace any broken or hacked sites with a previous copy that’s unaffected) without which you absolutely cannot do, should be set up as must-use plugins. Plugins are great to add functionality to your clients’ website. But not all plugins are compatible with WordPress Multisite. So that’s another thing you need to keep in mind as the mall owner. Considering this, it’s a good thing the individual store owners won’t be able to add unknown or malicious code in your WordPress installation. This factor offers one extra layer of security.

2. The Themes

WordPress allows you to activate themes in two ways. You can either activate a particular theme across the entire network or you can install themes on the main website and let the individual site owners choose to activate the themes that they prefer. Considering the fact that each store owner would prefer a unique layout of their subsite to create brand awareness, sharing themes might not always be possible. Your best bet would be to provide options for store owners to choose a particular theme.

3. The Security and Updates

It’s important to keep your network secure. By secure I mean keeping it backed up, making regular security checks, and updating the themes and plugins you’ve installed. Updating themes, plugins, and WordPress itself is straightforward. You’ll see a notification if any of your code needs updating and you simply install it and update. Another important thing to note is that you’ll be updating live sites which are critical to your clients. So we suggest you regularly backup all data using a plugin or keep a copy of your network on your local machine (or even better, on a staging server) which you use to test updates before you activate them on your live site.

The Last Word

Apart from the points we’ve covered above, you need to make sure your settings are right. For example, you can make the appropriate ‘Upload settings’ that determine the appropriate file sizes that are to be permitted. All of this sounds pretty daunting, but if you’ve signed up to manage sites for other people, especially if you’re charging them, it’s essential that you do everything you can to create value for your customers and avoid downtime. If you need help, be sure to add your question in the comment section below.

How to Create an Online Shopping Mall in WordPress

July 20, 2018 by Shreya Reddy 6 Comments

In recent decades, the concept of a shopping mall has become a full-blown modern retail trend that has proliferated across the globe. I mean, of course, it has! Shopping malls save you the trouble of having to visit multiple places to tick off all the items on your shop list. You find everything you’re looking for under one roof. And who doesn’t love convenience?!

Imagine having this provision online! You visit a website and find a variety of products all in one place. Products ranging from clothing to electronics and gadgetry can all be added to the same shopping cart, purchased and delivered to your doorstep.

Let’s explore the online shopping mall in detail and fish out the features to be included in an online mall setup.

What is an Online Shopping Mall?

A regular, tangible shopping mall is a collection of different stores under a single roof, or on a common ground. This concept taken online means a virtual mall is a group of eCommerce websites (individual stores) being handled on a single WordPress installation (common ground). In the WordPress world, the parent site website, a multi-site, functions as a mall whereas the sub-sites function as individual stores.

How does an Online Shopping Mall Work?

To understand the functioning of an online shopping mall it is important to understand the users involved in the system and how they interact with each other

Users in an Online Shopping Mall

1. Mall Owner

The mall owner is the one who creates the setup, owns the property, and provides basic amenities to store owners. In an e-shopping mall, the mall owner is the multi-site admin. He/She provides store owners with a feature to create stores in the mall. The mall owner also charges the vendors or store owners a recurring fee for renting out space (a sub-site) to set up their store.

Mall owner is the multi-site admin
Mall owner installs various plugins needed (e-commerce, payment gateways, contact forms, SEO, marketing) and themes (e-commerce platform compatible themes)
He/She provides a one-click store setup option for a store owner, which can be purchased for a recurring fee

2. Store Owner

The store owner or vendor is the one who wants to create a store online. The mall makes it easy for the store owner to create a store since the framework (essential pages, payment options, e-commerce platform) are already in place. But to avail the facilities of a mall, the store owner will have to pay the mall owner a subscription fee. In actuality, the stores created in the multisite are individual eCommerce websites. The store owner can personalize the store (name, logo, colors) to make it their own.

Store owner can register on the main-site to create an online store
Store owner can choose a theme (from the options available) and personalize the online store
He/She can set up products, and manage orders and payments.
Store owner is the admin for the sub-site

3. Customer

The customer is the end user who will visit the online mall to shop for products. A customer can use the main site as a directory to visit individual stores. A customer gets registered across all stores once he registers on the main site.

A customer can search for stores and products on the main site
A customer can purchase a product from an individual site

Benefits of an Online Shopping Mall

For those who view an online shopping mall as just another eCommerce store then it’s time to rethink that statement. An online shopping mall has many benefits. And what’s more, the benefits are spread across all the users who interact with the system.

Maintaining an online shopping mall is a significant business opportunity for mall owners. This opportunity comes with small investments and does not have much maintenance work involved once the multi-site has been set up. Also, the mall owner does not have to manage any large inventory. All the mall owner has to do is provide potential store owners with an option to create stores in the mall from the front end and define various subscription plans for stores.
With regards to the store owner, he/she is saved from the hassle of developing a website from the ground up. He has to simply register to the online shopping mall and procure for himself a store in the mall. Once that has been done one can easily sail through the shop set-up process.
As for the customers, the online shopping mall is definitely a great proposition! After all, who wouldn’t want to get all required products under one roof right? The customers can be saved from the hassle of purchasing and tracking orders from numerous websites.

How is an Online Shopping Mall different from a Marketplace?

An e-shopping mall is more often than not, confused with an e-commerce marketplace. This is because the underlying objective of providing the consumer with a one-stop shopping experience, across both these platforms is the same. Both these business models provide the audience the access to a collection of various products belonging to different vendors, brands or categories. However, it’s imperative to understand the primary distinguishing factors between these two models.

The Website
- An Online Shopping Mall in most cases is a network of multiple sites or shops that can be accessed via the main website.
- A marketplace is a single e-commerce website which sells products or services that belong to various third-party vendors.
Classification and Branding
- In an online shopping mall, a particular brand or shop has a dedicated subsite or web page which is tailored to the brands’ custom requirements and hence facilitates branding.
- Marketplaces also support search filtering and classification based on product categories or brands, but the vendors are not given an exclusive page or control over how their products are showcased or displayed.
Payments
- The owner of a shopping mall provides the online stores with the required payment gateways but does not have anything to do with the monetary transactions between the vendor and the customer.
- All the transactions on the marketplace website are processed through the website owner. The payment happens at a single point and is then distributed among the different vendors.
Pricing Models
- The shopping mall owner charges the store owner on a monthly or yearly basis in exchange for the facilities such as store hosting or availability and maintenance of plugins.
- Marketplaces, however, charge commissions or transaction fees for each product sold on the website. They may also make money out of Ads, featured listings or Membership fees.

If you want to have a closer look at each of these platforms, Amazon and eBay are giants in the marketplace industry, whereas, PointShop is a great example of an Online Shopping Mall. You can clearly observe how you are navigated to a different website when you click on a particular ‘Featured Store’ on PointShop. Now that we know exactly what we’re dealing with here, let’s go ahead and dive deep into technical details.

Creating An Online Shopping Mall on WordPress

Online shopping malls on WordPress are created using the WordPress multisite feature. The multisite is a hub for multiple subsites based on a single WordPress installation.

Step #1

The process begins with setting up a WordPress multisite. As a mall owner, not only do you have to make it easy for store owners to create a website, but provide them essential plugins. For a store owner to register, the mall owner will have to set up an online registration form.

PLUGINS WE RECOMMEND

WooCommerce – as the online platform
Contact Form 7 – as a contact form plugin
Yoast SEO – adds SEO fields
BackupUp WordPress – a content backup plugin
MemberPress – to manage store owner subscriptions

Apart from the plugins listed above, the mall owner would have to add suitable or rather compatible themes and other extensions that could benefit the store owner. For example, additional payment gateways, email marketing plugins, social media sharing plugins. The essential plugins could be auto-activated on the sub-site once it’s set up. The store owner could have the options to activate optional plugins as and when needed.

Step #2

A vendor looking to set up a store on the multisite site mall can use the registration form to set up the store.

PRO TIP The registration form could be customized to accept the Store Name, a custom logo, and preferred theme to offer a one-click installation process.

Step #3

Once the setup and installations are done with, the vendor can log in with his credentials and add the final touches to the online store that he can call his own. The store owner could then upload the products and ‘open shop’ in the online mall 🙂

Summing Up

An online shopping mall is a great concept and can be implemented in WordPress as a multi-site using WooCommerce to handle the malls eCommerce needs. If implemented efficiently it makes for a strong and extremely useful system. And the key to implement an effective system would be to include a right mix of features into your online shopping mall for WordPress.

So that was about the working of an online shopping mall. This next post discusses the development process of an online shopping cart and essential features to incorporate into it.

4 Much-Needed Features in WooCommerce Bookings

July 18, 2018 by Shreya Reddy 1 Comment

WooCommerce Bookings– the official bookings plugin by WooCommerce- happens to be one of the most popular plugins in its category, and rightly so! It allows you to set up appointments, enable scheduling and basically manage all kinds of bookable products or services. You can use this extension to:

Create a new type of product and offer a time or date-based reservation feature, right from your website.
Create fixed time slots for bookings or let customers decide how they want it.
Approve the booking request instantly or require an admin approval.
Enable and configure email notifications for confirmations and send reminder emails as necessary.
Allow the users to cancel their reservation if they wanted to.

But wait, is it perfect for you?

Come on! Who are we kidding? Almost every bookings plugin in the WordPress repository is designed to suit just one or two business cases. Your business is unique. You need features that specifically cater to your needs, and there are no two ways about it! Now, WooCommerce Bookings might be a versatile plugin, but here’s a list of features that we think can take the plugin to a whole new level. Let’s find out!

#1 Availability Search Option

Let’s say you own a hotel. Step into your customers’ shoes for a moment. You’re looking to book a room via the hotel website. Consider the following cases:

Website 1- You’re browsing through the website, and you click on an option you’re interested in; only to find out that the room isn’t available. Now, imagine you have to go through each and every room to find out its availability. Aaarrgghh!
Website 2- There’s a search bar which allows you to enter your ‘Check-in’ and ‘Check out’ dates, and only the available rooms are filtered out for you.

Which website would you prefer? A complete no-brainer, isn’t it? Why would you want your customers to see the unavailable options in the first place!? A simple search option in your bookings website could play a vital role in increasing the chances of conversion. The fact that this feature isn’t already a part of the plugin, is quite surprising.

#2 Rescheduling Feature

What if your customer has to postpone his stay by a couple of days? Would you allow him to cancel his booking and potentially lose out on business? Of course not! You want to retain your audience. An option to update the booking dates focuses on improving the user experience of your website by making it easier for your customers to reschedule; as opposed to canceling a reservation and booking again on a later date. A ‘Reschedule’ option could take the users to a list of alternative times or dates to move their booking. Once they click reschedule, the underlying event on your booking calendar is moved to the new time. The other details about their booking will remain unchanged. You could keep the rescheduling activities on your website in check by, setting up a rescheduling window – the number of days/hours prior to which your customer can make use of this facility. Or you could charge a rescheduling fee (works when booking travel tickets or the sorts). Although the WooCommerce Bookings plugin does provide a workaround (the option to cancel and re-book), it’s a lot of effort on the part of the customer. A rescheduling feature could truly make it a whole lot easier for the customer and reduce the resistance to booking in the first place.

#3 Recurring Bookings

Now, let’s assume you’re still the owner of the hotel, and this hotel of yours has a conference hall. You’ve got a local business that regularly rents it every Wednesday. Instead of having them book it each time they want to rent it, that is every Wednesday, why not give them an option of recurring bookings. With recurring bookings, a customer would have to enter booking details once and have the product booked on a timely basis, throughout a month or even a year. This also allows you to make the payment procedure extremely convenient for your customers. You can create a user-friendly ‘Recurring Bookings’ option for a bookable product on your website, which takes into consideration the availability of a product and sets a limit on the number of recurring bookings. Recurring bookings could help you increase the number of confirmed appointments in a year, retain customer loyalty and grow your business with ease. A must-needed feature, we think.

#4 Conditional Discounts

WooCommerce Bookings lets you offer discounts by setting specific pricing for certain date ranges. But, that’s about all this plugin can do for you, as far as discounts are concerned. Some of the more dynamic discount features to consider would be:

Conditional Discounts- This is when you, the seller, agrees to lower his price if the buyer agrees to certain conditions. For example, “Book 1 month prior to your stay and get 10% Off!” It could also be an increase or decrease in the price of your product based on dates, demands, and trends on your website.
Bundled Discounts- Rather than lowering the selling price of one product or service, you lower the price of a group of items bought together.
Freebies and Extras- That’s the classic ‘Buy 1 Get 1’ offer. Sometimes, a discount isn’t enough to get more customers. But if you offer something for free, you’re sure to attract more interest.

Offering discounts for your business can be a powerful weapon in your conversion arsenal to drive customer loyalty. But, if used haphazardly, you can do significant damage to your brand or, worse, become unprofitable. Coming back to your hotel, how can we forget the holiday season? It is the best time to spice up your marketing strategy with special offers and discounts. You’re going to need all the tools and tackles you can lay hands on, to make the most of it!

The Bottom Line

As mentioned earlier, WooCommerce Bookings is a great plugin to address your basic bookings needs. But ‘basic’ is simply not going to make the cut when you’re up against the metamorphic e-commerce trends! Because this plugin does not offer some of the fundamental features you need, you’ve got no option but to look for other alternatives and plugins to customize your website. The above list of is based on several requests and WooCommerce Bookings customization projects that we’ve handled. There could be a lot more which we haven’t thought of. Do you agree with the features we’ve listed above? Which other features, in your opinion, should be a part of WooCommerce Bookings? Comment below, and let us know!

PEP + Salesforce: Simplifying Lead Capture and Management on WooCommerce

June 28, 2018 by Shardul Leave a Comment

Customers checking out online stores, often, feel a lack of human connection. It all becomes mechanical and boring to them when interfaces are bland or tedious. What they want, however, is an experience like offline shopping stores provide- an easy way to communicate with you and help them find products they’re looking for. This seemingly simple communication gap can end potential leads for you. Leads falling off the radar because of poor communication systems or lack of them is a direct loss. Similarly, a lack of information about a lead can limit the possibility of a conversion. Lead management is the heart and soul of any business. That’s where actual opportunities are created. Proper lead management will not only help you get more leads but also convert the ones you have. You should invest in tracking leads from all channels in your store, and analyze lead behavior to have an impact on conversions.

Connect with your customers- like in an offline store

You have to make it easy for customers to reach you through every channel possible. For example, a comprehensive inquiry system like Product Enquiry Pro on your WooCommerce store can allow leads to get to know more about your product or solution. It solves the human-connection problem for your e-store. An unintrusive inquiry plugin encourages the laziest of visitors to send their queries, making it easy for you to capture lead information.

Manage leads captured, with ease

Once you have made the process of inquiry comfortable, that’s where lead management comes in. Most businesses prefer using a software platform so that no lead goes unnoticed or unaddressed. Manually tracking and managing leads may give way to half-hearted attempts at sales and missing out on details. A structured and well-maintained lead management system ensures a lead doesn’t fall through the cracks. A CRM or Customer Relationship Management software does the job of gathering, tracking and managing leads. It lets you gather more leads, close more deals and grow your business faster. Sophisticated CRM software is available to help your business with operations of contact management, lead management, sales forecasting and workflow planning. However, it wouldn’t be unwise to call Salesforce the most sought-after CRM software available. Salesforce is a top-choice for businesses around the world as it has been able to evolve with changing times and come up with exciting features like an intelligent AI built into the CRM system that gives you accurate opportunity insights and account insights. With Salesforce, you can actively track and manage customer information. You also get quick insights and recommendations that are based on updated customer information like their recent web visits, social media posts, etc.

Integrating lead capture and lead management

To make lead capture and management as seamless as possible on your WooCommerce store, an ideal scenario would be to integrate lead generation tools with your CRM. In this case, it would be to integrate Product Enquiry Pro with Salesforce. The leads that show up through Product Enquiry Pro can now be ingested into your Salesforce CRM. This ensures you never lose track of your lead. This setup, of a responsive inquiry system and a CRM software, brings you closer to understanding the behavior of your lead so that you can quickly identify and predict the buyer’s journey.

Manage leads for your WooCommerce store with Dual Power

With the integration of Product Enquiry Pro and Salesforce CRM, there is strengthened lead management. You can give due importance to every visitor and can minutely track and manage the lead. When a visitor fills up a form on your WooCommerce site, the data is sent to your Salesforce account and a lead is registered at Salesforce. The lead can be monitored and tracked, helping you convert it into a sale. You can immediately start getting stats about the customer too, like social media activities or more. The integration can be set up as a seamless extension. All you will then need to do is use your Salesforce ID and map the enquiry form with Salesforce. SIDE-NOTE: Going Beyond Enquiries Having the potential to manage leads in Salesforce can be of great advantage to you and your marketing efforts. But a powerful platform like Salesforce can be used for a lot more. The scope of this very extension can be widened to integrate other information like your product and order data with Salesforce. Since we’ll have the integration setup, we can use the same path to integrate WooCommerce data with custom Salesforce objects. 🙂

Don’t let your leads get overlooked

An efficient inquiry system clubbed with a capable CRM software will give you the right control over your leads. You can extract the maximum value out of available resources, hit the right notes and serve your customers better. Product Enquiry Pro is the tool to immediately get back to the queries of your customers and Salesforce integration strengthens the possibility of a conversion. If you’re looking to power your WooCommerce store with this solution or have any questions, please drop in your comments. Looking forward to hearing your success stories!

How to Identify Trending Products on Your WooCommerce Store

June 11, 2018 by Pranali Nalawade Leave a Comment

The other day, I was browsing through my Woo-store statistics to check which products were working well. It was a necessary evil since I had to plan my marketing strategy for best-selling products. The problem is, I am easily frustrated with WordPress’ native analytics system. Most of the times it is a quick look at the Dashboard to see whether the overall sales are within my profit margins, check revenue, and manage the inventory. Don’t get me wrong. I love WordPress and WooCommerce and sometimes a guilty realization does creep up that I need to take a deep dive into analytics to help boost sales on my store. But the fact remains, I am easily frustrated with WordPress’ native analytics system. 😛 We’ve all been there, right? Unfortunately, this tendency also makes us miss out on opportunities to upsell our best products to the right audience. Google Analytics gives us a clear idea about how well our store is doing, but it takes painstaking effort and a whole bunch of filters to find out which products are the most popular ones. As to why they are popular, figuring that out is a whole different game altogether!

The Ideal Scenario?

Ideally, there needs to be a way of identifying which products are trending on the store so that conversion strategies can be designed accordingly, with ease. No complicated charts, please!

The advantage of having this insight is that you can get a direct look into the customer’s mindset while purchasing the product, create a buyer persona based on their purchase history, or even alter product prices as the trends on the store change.

How Would the Trending Products Identification System Work?

The system would have an algorithm for checking which products are trending on the store, based on some key factors, such as:

How many times the Product/Product Page is being viewed
The number of times a product is added to a Cart
The actual number of purchases and abandonment rate
The duration for which the product is added to the Cart

In conjunction with the analytics data tracked, these factors would clarify some of the most important buyer perspectives.

The number of times a Product/Product Page is viewed gives an idea about its requirement in the market and the SEO-friendliness of the page (assuming you have targeted the right keywords and are following SEO best practices)
The number of times a product is added to a Cart after a visitor views it on the landing page gives you an idea about whether the product matches people’s expectations, considering price range, features, reviews, and competitor analysis
The actual number of purchases give you the percentage of conversions, signifying the number of people your product appeals to and confirms the price factor. Conversely, if the product is abandoned after being added to Cart, there is a 90% chance that was because of the price (high shipping/no discounts/spiked delivery charges)
Lastly, the duration for which the product was added to the Cart gives you the other reasons for cart abandonment; maybe the person just wasn’t in the mood to shop or had to rush off for some reason

Based on this information, you could clearly identify which products are working and which are not, along with why they are working and why they are not. This, in turn, would help you modify the price of the product, making it more economically feasible for your visitors. All this information would be in the form of detailed, yet easy-to-parse sheets, pie-charts, and complete reports on the popularity of the product, the reasons, inventory, and projected trends. You could also create separate reports for the most-trending and least-trending products. At the front-end, these trending products would be highlighted in a designated area on the website, in a list format.

Some Optional Features

Auto/Manual Price Modification Options

The administrator would have the option to set up automatic modification of the price based on the analysis of the trending product, or alternatively, manage the process manually.

Pricing Thresholds

The solution would need to have pricing threshold settings for every product/category. This would include the percentage reduction/increase in price for non-trending and trending products.

Provision to Exclude Certain Products from ‘Trending’ Category

After identifying which products are trending, you might want to set only selective products from the list as ‘Trending’. In such a case, there needs to be a provision to exclude certain products from the said list.

Wishlist Integration

Integrating a user’s Wishlist would give you an opportunity to assess their purchase patterns and notify them accordingly, when any of the products from their wishlist, or relevant to it, are displayed as trending.

Setting up Trending Product Bundles

Instead of simply displaying trending products, you could think of displaying trending product bundles, where all the trending products belonging to a specific category are bundled together and have an additional discount on the bundle price.

Notifications Setup for Store Owner

Notifications can be sent to the Administrator every time the product rankings on the trending list change.

Discuss Your Requirements for a Trending Product Identification System

So far, so good. Now let’s see what can be done to ensure that the trending products are easily visible to your relevant audience.

How to Display Trending Products?

Trending product classification could be primarily in three ways – by category, time, and attribute. So, every time your visitor browses a particular category, they can see the trending products in that category. Alternatively, you could also set up a fixed timeframe during which these trending products will be visible, say for a day/week/month. Another option could be to have an attribute as your foundation stone for displaying trending products. For instance, you could set a color, size, or price range as the basis for showing trending products to your audience. The idea behind this classification is to enable visitors to find the most relevant products, as per their interests, without even having to search for them. Also, the principal advantage of being able to gauge what products are trending on the store, and which ones will be trending soon, time and resources can be dedicated to repricing these products and marketing them better. Let’s discuss this aspect further.

The Principal Advantage

As you’ve seen, one of the main advantages of identifying trending products is that they can be conditionally repriced within preset margins to increase the total revenue. For instance, if you observe that a specific variation of a t-shirt is selling a lot better than the others (most-trending), you could condition the price to increase by 2% if the product quantity falls below 10. Similarly, if another variation is not doing well (least-trending), the price of the product could be temporarily decreased by 2% to induce customers to buy it, for a fixed duration or until the product quantity reduces to a fixed amount. The advantage of such price modifications is that you can make consistent revenue out of your trending products and bring your other products to the eyes of the world as well! There’s more – you could actually modify pricing per customer, rewarding loyal customers buying trending products with additional coupons or discounts. Hello, sales. Did you just rocket through the roof? 😉

A Ready Solution

Creating each of these features independently can be a bit of a chore, so it can be better to incorporate all these features. This would be a single custom solution to identify trending products on a WooCommerce store that helps in effective price modification. A clear and precise idea about the products that are currently popular (and about to be popular) amongst your client base can help you make an informed decision about the marketing and pricing strategy for these products. These insights go a long way in boosting your revenue, as it is not a game of trial and error anymore. You know exactly which products are trending and can dedicate your resources accordingly. Above all, understanding customer interests and fulfilling their requirements quickly and easily increase customer loyalty exponentially. You know what your visitors expect and if you remove all unnecessary noise that gets in the way, there is bound to be a definite upswing in your conversions! What do you say? Any suggestions you would like to share? Let’s discuss!

Have a similar requirement? Get in Touch!

Running a Rental Business – An Entrepreneurial Perspective

Option #1: Deploying Your Products on a Marketplace

Option #2: Building Your Own Store

The 4 Important Questions to Answer before Starting an Online Rental Business

<img class=" wp-image-183194 alignnone" style="text-align: center;" src="/site/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/xmoney-1.png.pagespeed.ic.IA3z-7NGWN.png" alt="Author Commissions? learndash" width="64" height="64"/> How much capital will I need?

<img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-181547" src="/site/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/xopenbox-1.png.pagespeed.ic.rC7oKeHTYW.png" alt="Inventory is Managed Seamlessly" width="64" height="64"/>How do I Stock to Scale?

<img class="size-full wp-image-181573 alignnone" src="/site/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/xmoney.png.pagespeed.ic.UOieCG_tDM.png" alt="WooCommerce Dynamic Pricing - Assign WoCommerce Product Prices in bulk" width="64" height="64"/> What will the replacement costs look like?

<img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-268951" src="/site/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/xwholesale.png.pagespeed.ic.1Hv_b6azX0.png" alt="" width="60" height="60"/>What about logistics?

Setting Up your Rental Business Website on WooCommerce

#1 Create Organized Listings

#2 Add Advanced Search

#3 Enable Bookings and Subscriptions

#4 Add Wishlists

#5 Integrate Calendars

#6 Allow Social Login and Sharing

#7 Payment Gateways and Checkout

#8 Product Tracking

#9 Inventory Management

#10 Add Customer Messaging Tools

#11 Support Reviews, Ratings, and Feedback

Parting Thoughts

Taking Your WooCommerce Wishlist to the Next Level

#1 A seamless redirect functionality

#2 Time-bound wishlists

#3 Multiple wishlists option

#4 Shareable wishlists with an Option to Edit

#5 Price drop alerts and Purchase Reminders

#1 Wishlist Analytics

#2 Personalized email marketing

#3 Time-bound offers

Parting Thoughts

Impact of Customer Retention on Revenue Generation

Who is a Retained Customer?

Getting Your Website On Board

#1. The What – Data Collection.

Customer Churn Rate

Revenue Churn Rate

Repeat Purchase Rate

Return Website Visitors

Customer Lifetime Value

The How

#2. The What – Identifying High-Value Customers

Referral Programs

Feedbacks

Reviews

Special Discounts

The How

#3. The What – Reactive Campaigns

The How

#4. The What – Offering Premium Memberships

The How

#5. The What – Providing Exceptional Service

The How

Parting Thoughts

How It All Started

What Changed

Support for Magento 1.x will be Stopped

The Magento 2 Step-Up

It’s Faster

More Native Features

Improved Admin Panel

Mobile Friendly and Responsive

Ajax Add-to-Cart

Supports the Latest PHP versions

JavaScript

The Harsh Reality of Migrating to Magento 2

Extensions, Themes, and Customization

It’s gonna get heavy on your pockets!

Time to Look at Other Options

WooCommerce

Scalability

Customizability

Community

Extensions and Integrations

Security

Payments Processing

Cost

The Game Plan

The Final Word

Making it easy for your customers to make repeat purchases

How much capital will I need?

How do I Stock to Scale?

What will the replacement costs look like?

What about logistics?