WooCommerce Archives

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 15 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.

5 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!

#5 Time Zone Conversion

Now, let’s say you’re trying to get in touch with a Business Consultant, to discuss a new marketing strategy for your hotel. This consultant happens to live on the other side of the globe and delivers his services online. When you visit his website to schedule an appointment, you come to find that the available time slots are displayed according to his time zone. You’re basically expected to do the conversion yourself. What’s your very first impression? Not the most convenient option, is it? When this consultant is violating the basic thumb-rule of website design- Ease of Use, all the other bells and whistles he has to offer become trivial. Along with a significant number of missed appointments, imagine how many potential clients this missing feature can cost him! Point being, businesses that have a Global Customer Base simply cannot do without this feature. A simple ‘Select Time Zone’ option on the website wherein, the available time slots are listed according to the time zone that is selected by the user, could make a huge difference.

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 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 the 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 the 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 amount 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 trending products analysis, 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 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 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 throught 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 any more. 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!

How to Display ‘Add to Cart’ Button only on Products on Sale in WooCommerce

May 14, 2018 by WisdmLabs Leave a Comment

This is a guest post by Waqas Nayyer. If you’d like to contribute to our blog, feel free to get in touch with us.

WooCommerce is a robust e-commerce platform, with an extensive set of features for a variety of online business applications. One of the core built-in features of WooCommerce is the ability to set a sale price in addition to the regular price for each individual product on your store. This allows storekeepers to highlight discounts and encourage consumers to make a purchase. However, not every store owner finds this feature useful because not all stores offer regular promotions. Some clients would prefer to use the sale price field in order to highlight specific items above the rest. In this tutorial, you will learn how a WooCommerce shop can be set up so that the “Add to Cart” button is only displayed when a sale price is specified. This should work for both registered and non-registered (guest) users.

Modified “Add to Cart” functionality for products on sale

To achieve this setup, all you would have to do is to go to Appearance -> Themes and navigate to your active theme’s functions (functions.php). Then, you can add the below piece of code at the end of the file and hit ‘Save’ (Do note: Ideally, it would make sense to create a child theme so that the modifications do not get affected on the theme update).

function prefix_hack_for_on_sale_only( $purchasable, $product ) {
    if ( ! is_admin() && ! is_user_logged_in() && ! $product-> is_on_sale()) {
       return false;
    }
    return $purchasable;
}
    add_filter('woocommerce_is_purchasable', 'prefix_hack_for_on_sale_only', 1, 2);

/* Output account link for non-sale products when user is not logged in
* @return bool|string
*/
    function prefix_login_for_prices() {
        if ( ! class_exists('WooCommerce') )
            return false;
        global $product;
        $login = false;
        if ( ! is_user_logged_in() && ! $product->is_purchasable() ) 
        {
            remove_filter('woocommerce_is_purchasable', 'prefix_hack_for_on_sale_only', 1 );

           $login_url = wc_get_account_endpoint_url( 'dashboard' );
           if ( is_singular( 'product' ) ) {
              $login_url = add_query_arg( 'redirect_to', urlencode(get_permalink() ), $login_url );
           }
           if ( $product->is_purchasable() ) {
              $login = sprintf('<a href="%1$s">%2$s</a>';, esc_url( $login_url ), esc_html__( 'Sign in to view price', 'text-domain' ));
           }
 add_filter('woocommerce_is_purchasable','prefix_hack_for_on_sale_only', 1, 2 );
    }
    return $login;
}

The above code achieves two things:- #1 It helps display “Add to Cart” button on products on sale

“Add to cart” button on products on sale

#2 It hides the “Add to Cart” button on regular products

No option for a user to add regular products to cart

Behind the scenes

When you add the above code to your theme, you enable two things. First of all, the code creates two categories of products:

products with a sale price become “purchasable” with a visible “Add to Cart” button
and products without a sale price become “view-only” where only the price of the product is displayed.

Now this tactic can be useful in differentiating products that are available for purchase online and those that can only be purchased in-store (applicable for brick-and-mortar companies) or through your business’ other distribution channels. Some products may just be not feasible for online selling, such as large and bulky items; however, by listing them on your WooCommerce shop even if they are not “purchasable” online, your website can still act as a useful catalog for your potential buyers. A helpful tip here, would be to add an inquiry button to capture interested customers who aren’t able to purchase the product. Now, this code can also encourage users who are currently not registered on your WooCommerce shop to create an account before viewing products. That’s because the “Add to Cart” button is displayed only to logged in users. This can not only increase the subscriber count on the website but would also help in obtaining personal information from the customers which can be further utilized in marketing campaigns, such as e-mail newsletters or telemarketing. In the age of big data, consumer information is very valuable and the ability to collect more data from the company’s prospects would dramatically affect the firm’s ability to maximize profits through its marketing efforts.

A small change can make a big difference

A simple change like this can still have big applications and that can make a great difference on your WooCommerce store. Let us know what you thought of this tip in the comment section below, and watch out this space for more such tips soon!

About the Author

Waqas Nayyer is a blogger that often writes about WooCommerce tips and tricks, WordPress theme modification tips like the one you just read! For more from him, check out themelocation.com.

ATTENTION! If You See These 7 Signs, It’s Time to Switch Your WooCommerce Host

January 29, 2018 by WisdmLabs Leave a Comment

This is a guest post by Saud Razzak. If you’d like to contribute to our blog, feel free to get in touch with us.

When one wants to create a WooCommerce store, its hosting is often considered a logistical requirement. And unfortunately, this point rarely has the interest it deserves from store owners. However, the choice of hosting a website is quite crucial, since it has a direct impact on your business. Therefore, if things are not going well, you should switch your WooCommerce hosting when you see any of these 7 signs:

#1 Support Is Not Customer-Centric

Each web host has one or more support options. Check the Customer Support or Service section. This is important because if your hosting goes kaput and your site is idle for a period of time, the risk of losing visitors will be great (if the period is 2 weeks, for example). Technical support is one of the most important factors, if not the most important. Check the hosting’s customer service channels. Being able to talk on the phone with someone is the best method. Online email support is usually a good option too. If the only way is a discussion forum, your problem may not be resolved for several days.

#2 Negative Reviews from Clients

Read reviews about the company’s service and reputation. Read the most recent reviews to see if people have problems with this host or not. Be careful, many sites that include comments on web hosting companies are run by the companies themselves to make more money with those who refer them. Most reviews on the company’s forum can only be positive because it has probably removed all negative messages. Look for advantages and disadvantages, testimonials on the Internet, or the rate of satisfaction of users. Check their (the web hosts) Facebook page or Twitter. Do they take time to solve a problem? How long does it take approximately? How do they work?

#3 Devious Pricing and Plans

Check the storage space that the host offers for your site. This includes web pages, images, videos, databases and other content. If you do not have a lot of content that takes up a lot of space, you will not need much in terms of data storage. However, a typical website is less than 100 MB. Many companies will mention that storage is unlimited, but that can only be tested if you have a content-rich site. Note that if there is not enough space, the servers can be overused, which decreases the performance of the server and the speed of the site.

#4 No SSL Support

If you plan to sell goods or services through your website, you may need to know if the web host allows you to configure an SSL certificate (a secure server). You’ve probably seen this on other sites where their web address starts with an “https://” instead of “http://”. This set up will normally involve additional charges or a more expensive package. Today, most hosts offer you to define an SSL certificate to your domain name for free, provided they are a partner of Let’s Encrypt, an organization responsible for issuing and generating free SSL certificates.

#5 Unreliable

If the web host is reliable and fast, it should guarantee its uptime (the moment it is functional). Look for a minimum uptime of 99%. In fact, even 99% is too low, it should really be 99.5% or more. The host must provide some sort of refund if it falls below this figure. Note that the guarantees are often difficult to apply to your favor, especially if the host denies that there was downtime. However, without this guarantee, the web host will have little incentive to make sure his servers are running all the time.

#6 False Advertising

For the same reason as uptime, pay attention also to “unlimited disk space” offers. Many new sites (that do not host videos or music) need less than 20 MB of web space, know that you are unlikely to use this space, so do not let the 100 GB of Space become a factor too big in your consideration when comparing with other web hosts. The hosting company is also aware of what is the reason why they feel free to offer you this offer for you to encourage them to join one of their offers.

#7 Lacks Global Data Centers

The location of the servers directly affects the speed of loading and data protection. So choose a host in an area close to your visitors (so that your site loads faster) and in a country that provides sufficient protection of hosted data. Here my sermon is over! Now you know when to switch your WooCommerce hosting provider. Would you like to mention any other signs? Do share in the comment section below.

About the Author

Saud Razzak is the WordPress Community Manager at Cloudways – A Managed WooCommerce Hosting Platform. Saud loves creating a buzz, spreading knowledge, and educating people around the globe about WordPress. In his free time, he likes to play cricket and learn new things on the Internet. Follow him on Twitter @hmsaudrazzak

How to Add Custom Data to WooCommerce Order – Part 2

November 24, 2017 by Akshaya Rane 22 Comments

We have previously seen how we can add custom data to a WooCommerce order in 6 simple steps. That approach comprised of addition of data to a custom session, extracting it from the WooCommerce Session, and inserting it into the Cart. The data would then be displayed on the Cart and Checkout Page. However, this approach was limited to WooCommerce versions prior to v3.0. Now, we have a solution for v3.0 and above, with a brand new strategy as well! Most of the steps in the procedure remain the same. However, we are doing away with the need to add data to the WooCommerce Session. Instead, we will be adding the data directly to the WooCommerce Cart. Let’s see how. Here is the code compatible with WooCommerce 3.0+.

Step 1: Adding Custom Field for Product

We previously made use of a WooCommerce session for adding custom fields in WooCommerce session & ultimately to WooCommerce Cart object. Let’s consider the alternative method for this. The code below can be used to add a Custom Field for Product.

<?php

add_action('woocommerce_before_add_to_cart_button','wdm_add_custom_fields');
/**
 * Adds custom field for Product
 * @return [type] [description]
 */
function wdm_add_custom_fields()
{

    global $product;

    ob_start();

    ?>
        <div class="wdm-custom-fields">
            <input type="text" name="wdm_name">
        </div>
        <div class="clear"></div>

    <?php

    $content = ob_get_contents();
    ob_end_flush();

    return $content;
}

If we need to modify Price based on the parameter selection/value entered by the User in our custom fields, we can use ‘woocommerce_before_calculate_totals‘ action to set additional Price.

Step 2: Add Customer Data to WooCommerce Cart

Now, we need to add customer entered data into WooCommerce Cart. We can achieve this using the following functionality. Here, we are setting key as ‘name‘.

<?php
add_filter('woocommerce_add_cart_item_data','wdm_add_item_data',10,3);

/**
 * Add custom data to Cart
 * @param  [type] $cart_item_data [description]
 * @param  [type] $product_id     [description]
 * @param  [type] $variation_id   [description]
 * @return [type]                 [description]
 */
function wdm_add_item_data($cart_item_data, $product_id, $variation_id)
{
    if(isset($_REQUEST['wdm_name']))
    {
        $cart_item_data['wdm_name'] = sanitize_text_field($_REQUEST['wdm_name']);
    }

    return $cart_item_data;
}

Step 3: Display Details as Meta in Cart

We can display the details entered by User as meta in Cart using the below snippet.

<?php
add_filter('woocommerce_get_item_data','wdm_add_item_meta',10,2);

/**
 * Display information as Meta on Cart page
 * @param  [type] $item_data [description]
 * @param  [type] $cart_item [description]
 * @return [type]            [description]
 */
function wdm_add_item_meta($item_data, $cart_item)
{

    if(array_key_exists('wdm_name', $cart_item))
    {
        $custom_details = $cart_item['wdm_name'];

        $item_data[] = array(
            'key'   => 'Name',
            'value' => $custom_details
        );
    }

    return $item_data;
}

Step 4: Add Custom Details as Order Line Items

We need to add the below code to add custom details entered by customers as extra details for order line items, using following code.

<?php
add_action( 'woocommerce_checkout_create_order_line_item', 'wdm_add_custom_order_line_item_meta',10,4 );

function wdm_add_custom_order_line_item_meta($item, $cart_item_key, $values, $order)
{

    if(array_key_exists('wdm_name', $values))
    {
        $item->add_meta_data('_wdm_name',$values['wdm_name']);
    }
}

That’s it! You are good to go! If you have any query, feel free to add it in the comments section below. Is WooCommerce customization or development still giving you a headache? Talk to us and we can help you out!

23 Plugins to Increase Conversions in WooCommerce

September 6, 2017 by Pranoti Panchwagh Leave a Comment

The success of any website is measured by its conversion rate. The entire effort of creating a beautiful page, adding attractive calls to action, creating innovative content, and adding a host of other peripherals ultimately aims at inducing the visitor to convert. However, many of us mistake conversion rate at only the number of people who buy a product on the website. While this stands true in case of e-commerce websites, as a general rule, conversion is when the visitor does what is expected of them on that specific page. This can be anything from getting a subscription, clicking for more information, sending an inquiry, registering on the site, or of course, buying a product. To ensure that the visitor performs the expected action, i.e. increase your conversion rate, here are a few things that need to be taken care of apart from your page design. Speaking specifically for WooCommerce, we will also discuss the plugins that can be used for enhancing each of these functionalities. The WordPress core provides a lot of scope of optimization and a multitude of WooCommerce-compatible plugins are available that address the glitches that hinder conversion rates. Broadly speaking, conversions depend on four factors:

Speed of the Website

Websites that load fast, sell faster. Statistics show that visitors do not wait more than 5 seconds for a website to load. Given the number of e-commerce websites offering similar products for sale, slow loading times can have a serious impact on your conversion rates.

Page Design

At the heart of conversions is the Page Design. Here is where you are convincing the visitor as to why they should buy the product, or issue a subscription. It is therefore a given that your Page needs to be designed and optimized to perfection. A well-designed and well-optimized page has fast upload speed, convenient search options for the visitor, reassurance markers that indicate its authenticity and safety, and information about the exact location of the visitor within the website.

Marketing Strategy

Despite a beautiful page, visitors might sometimes need a nudge to convert them into customers. Marketing strategies, specifically email-marketing, come in handy here. Using email marketing, potential customers can be informed of offers, discounts, coupons, sales, abandoned carts, and more, which induces them to return and complete the purchase.

Perceived Customer Security

Given the high rates of cybercrime rampant in the virtual world, visitors are understandably apprehensive about giving up financial and personal details to an unknown website. To assuage these fears, it is necessary to ensure incorporation of secure payment gateways.

Now that we have determined the pillars of WooCommerce conversion rate enhancement, let us see plugins that assist in the same.

Plugins to Improve Conversions on Your WooCommerce Website

#1 Speed of the Website

To decrease website loading time, the core of the website needs to be light. This can be done by optimizing your database and caching site pages. The WooCommerce-compatible plugins that can be used for these functions are:

i. WP-Optimize

The WP-Optimize database optimization plugin clears up the unnecessary clutter in your database, without disturbing any of the core information, which helps you keep the website clean and minimalistic.

ii. WP-DB Manager

The other plugin in the database optimization category is WP-DB Manager. A comprehensive database cleaning, storing, managing, restoring, and back-up solution, the plugin is one of the free database management plugins.

iii. W3 Total Cache

Caching Plugins in WordPress: Pros and Cons

The other half of increasing site speed is by caching. Caching plugins like W3 Total Cache store part of the website information using CDN networks on multiple servers so as to decrease the delay in provision of information to the visitor.

iv. WP Super Cache

WP Super Cache follows the more traditional approach of storing static pages that are saved from the dynamic website and then shown to the visitor as necessary. This ensures that no visitor encounters a ‘Page Timeout’ error or has to wait for ages for the page to upload.

#2 Page Design and Optimization

The bulk of visitor interaction on an e-commerce website is with the Product Pages. Which is why, optimizing your Product Pages is a must for obtaining better conversion rates. The Product Page does 80% of the work of convincing the visitor to convert. As a result, every minute detail of the Page needs to be optimized for increasing conversions. This entails optimization of product images, addition of ratings and reviews, incorporation of quick search options, tweaking the display, and integration of easy contact forms. Here is an overview of the different plugins that can be used for these functionalities.

a. Image optimization

i. WP Smush

Developed by WPMU Dev, WP Smush Image Compression and Optimization Plugin is one of the best plugins for compressing, resizing, and reworking product images. Images are stripped of redundant data to improve page load speed and can be compressed in large quantities simultaneously.

ii. EWWW Image Optimiser

The EWWW Image Optimiser plugin offers lossless and lossy compression options for image size optimization. The plugin is an excellent option for increasing site speed without compromising on the quality of the product images.

iii. BJ Lazy Load

One of the reasons why a Page takes longer to load is because all text and visual data needs to be recovered from the server, even that which the visitor hasn’t scrolled to. To avoid these delays, the BJ Lazy Load plugin facilitates the loading of images only if they are scrolled to. This ensures a significant reduction in the time required for the page to load.

b. Ratings and Reviews

i. YITH WooCommerce Advanced Reviews

The YITH WooCommerce Advanced Reviews is a popular plugin used to add reviews and rating to the product page. A few of its characteristic features include addition of attachments by reviewers, review summary, and a comparative summary bar with a statistical analysis of the number of 1/2/3/4/5 stars.

ii. WooCommerce Product Reviews Pro

WooCommerce Product Reviews Pro is a premium plugin that lets you create a questionnaire for reviewers to make sure they have adequately used the product before reviewing it. In addition, images and videos can be incorporated in the reviews and reviews can be sorted by viewers based on categories such as ‘Most Helpful’, ‘Most Recent’, ‘Most Positive/Negative’.

c. Quick Search

i. Advanced Woo Search

The Advanced Woo Search plugin adds a Search Bar on your WooStore where visitors can search for products in real-time. The dynamic bar reiterates products as per the spelling typed, to provide the closest results in the shortest possible time.

ii. YITH WooCommerce Ajax Search

Apart from the conventional search bar features, an advanced feature of the YITH WooCommerce Ajax Plugin is that visitors can enter the keyword instead of the specific product name, to browse through relevant products. This is useful when visitors do not know exactly what they are looking for and want to look through multiple choices.

iii. WooCommerce Predictive Search

The WooCommerce Predictive Search plugin features a dropdown menu with a thumbnail display beside the product name, as it is being typed in the Search Bar. This ensures that the visitors can preview the product even before they reach the Product Page.

d. Contact Forms and Live Chat

Contact Forms are a great way of connecting with your audience, either through a Live Chat, or via emails. Adding valid contact information on the website has been known to increase conversions by nearly 16%, as it assures your visitors that they are not being taken for a ride. Some of the best contact form and chat plugins that can be added to the website are as follows:

i. WPForms

WPForms is one of the most user-friendly contact form plugins created by the WordPress solutions’ expert, Syed Balkhi, and features a drag-and-drop form builder for easy addition of fields. The premium plugin also lets you see final outlook of the form as you build it.

ii. Pirate Forms

Pirate Forms is one of the advanced form building and customization options. It provides reCaptcha and contact database options which ensure that no query goes unanswered.

iii. Product Enquiry Pro

Product Enquiry Pro for WooCommerce is a bit different from your regular contact forms. With a per product inquiry option on Shop page or on every product page, it saves the customer time from having to navigate to a different page to ask a pre-sale question.

iv. Olark

Olark for WordPress lets you add a live chat widget on your Page and have conversations with visitors in real-time. The plugin integrates the Olark and WordPress platforms and can leverage all the functionalities of the root company.

v. LiveChat

The LiveChat plugin is available in a Freemium option and is responsive as per the device being used. Automatic greetings and chat notifications are a part of this comprehensive live chat plugin for WordPress.

e. Tweaking the Display

Kicking around a few things in your website display can be useful in understanding which layout works best for highlighting your products. Apart from the default grid display of products on your Product page, you could opt to display your products in a tabular format. A plugin you can use for that is:

i. WooCommerce Product Table

Don’t assume that the built-in store and category layouts are the best way to sell your products. For many types of store, a product table layout can increase conversions by listing more products per page, providing better product data, and making products easier to find. The WooCommerce Product Table plugin even comes with a tutorial on how to increase conversions.

#3 Marketing Strategies

Despite your best efforts, a visitor might not always convert into a customer. However, it is necessary to follow up that lead and try to keep it live by using different marketing strategies such as email marketing, integration of social media sharing options, and reducing cart abandonment.

a. Email marketing

i. MailChimp

MailChimp is one of the leading, independent email marketing service providers. WordPress integrates with MailChimp with the MailChimp for WordPress plugin to let the user access all of MailChimp’s functionalities. However, you need to create an account on the MailChimp website and get a subscription before the two can be integrated.

ii. MailPoet Newsletters

The MailPoet Newsletters plugin can be used to create autoresponders, newsletters, periodic notifications, and send automated emails to increase your customer base. The plugin has a drag-and-drop newsletter builder to create beautiful emails from within the WordPress setup.

b. Cart Recovery

Studies suggest that cart recovery options help increase conversions by nearly 60%! As the administrator, you can easily recover abandoned carts and convert them into certified buyers by sending out email notifications. Here are some plugins that can assist in the same.

i. WooCommerce Recover Abandoned Cart

The WooCommerce Recover Abandoned Cart is a useful plugin to recover carts abandoned by members and guests, with timely emails sent from the dashboard. The plugin allows for creation of multiple templates that can include various discount coupons to recapture buyer interest.

ii. YITH WooCommerce Recover Abandoned Cart

YITH WooCommerce Recover Abandoned Cart plugin allows for customization of benefits received by users. Varying advantages can be offered for members according to their user roles, which not only improves cart recovery, but also encourages Guest users to register/subscribe, thus driving conversions.

iii. Abandoned Cart Lite for WooCommerce

The Abandoned Cart is a light-weight plugin for WooCommerce that identifies and recovers the products abandoned by the user and sends periodic email reminders for completing the purchase. The free plugin works efficiently and provides all basic functionalities.

#4 Perceived Customer Security

Security is an important factor for conversions. The second a visitor feels that the store is unreliable, they will bounce out of the website, no matter how lucrative the deal. To avoid such misunderstandings, it is necessary to ensure that customers know they are purchasing within a secure environment by incorporating secure payment gateways. WooCommerce has extensions for payment gateways for safe transactions, incorporating regional gateways with multiple currency support into your WooStore. These include: i. PayPal Express Checkout ii. Authorize.Net iii. Amazon Pay iv. Stripe v. PayPal powered by BrainTree

Endnote

Optimization of conversion rates is a gradual process, requiring frequent trial and error, site analytics, and reiterations, until the maximum conversion rate is achieved. The conversion rate optimization funnel starts right from the moment you choose your hosting provider and continues through all the creative and analytical phases of the website. For further reference on how to optimize you WooCommerce store, you can take a look at our WooCommerce Optimization Guide. It is necessary to understand that there is no one quick solution to increasing conversions. The strategy to increase the conversion rate varies as per the design of your website, your marketing strategies, and the overall selling methods incorporated. Nevertheless, the various plugins discussed above can be successfully used to improve conversion rates on your website! What are your thoughts? Any other plugins you would like to share? Let us know in the comments section below!

WooCommerce 3.0.0 – All You Need to Know

April 7, 2017 by Namrata Leave a Comment

WooCommerce – as an e-commerce platform – is ever evolving. The team keeps on adding new features, fixing bugs, and improving the plugin to meet our expectations. Some of these updates might go unnoticed. I know I’ve been guilty of skipping a few minor updates, because of frequent releases. :-p But this time around, WooCommerce has come up with a major update- “Bionic Butterfly“. So what classifies this update as a “major” one? How are you – the store owner – affected? And how do you go about making a smooth transition to WooCommerce 3.0? Let’s find out.

WooCommerce 3.0 – Bionic Butterfly

What started out as WooCommerce version 2.7, scheduled to be released in February, was pushed back after the discovery of a major bug in the process of handling timestamps. The outcome? Bug fixed; issue resolved; and WooCommerce 3.0 released on April 4th, 2017. This version packs some major changes in the way WooCommerce handles data storage. And while this might not affect how you interact with the plugin, WooCommerce extension plugins you use will surely need to be compatible with v3.0 before you upgrade.

WooCommerce v3.0.0 highlights include:

Updated product gallery
Speed and Performance improvements
Addition of CRUD classes
New CLI powered by the REST API
Template Changes

WooCommerce 3.0 Update: Changes to Product Gallery

Now, this is a welcome change that you should see right away when you upgrade to 3.0.0. If you have more than one image for a single WooCommerce product, you should see great improvements when interacting with this product image gallery, especially on a mobile device. This is great news for you, because shoppers now don’t have to struggle when viewing images. The gallery is more intuitive and shopper-friendly, allowing for the following:

Shoppers can now hover over the images to magnify them, or can zoom into them from a lightbox
Clicking on a thumbnail in the image gallery makes it the primary image instead of opening a popup
Mobile shoppers can zoom, pan and scroll through images using pinch or swipe gestures
Zooming a product image on mobile displays its original size, rather than fitting to the browser window (which was the case before)

As you know, images are quite critical for buyers when making a purchase decision; and this change will surely improve their experience.

Things to know Before you Update!

WooCommerce 3.0 has several changes at the code level, which might affect the update if extensions or your theme have not been made compatible. It’s best to take a backup before you update or get professional help.

Get Upgrade Assistance

WooCommerce 3.0 Update: Performance Improvements

This improvement is mainly for large stores that deal with hundreds of products and variations. Not that it isn’t important if you have fewer products, just that larger stores should be able to experience the difference. These are under the hood improvements and have been made at the code level; however here’s what you need to know:

Updating and display of products based on product visibility, featured product and ‘Out of Stock’ product options has been made smoother (due to the introduction of product_visibility taxonomy)

In testing, with ~8k products we saw speed improvements of around 94%.” – WooCommerce

Data stored for Variable products has been optimized; unused data fields have been removed
Management and display of upsells and related products has been improved

This step towards performance improvement is a positive sign for those of you looking to scale your store. WooCommerce does assure of more such updates in the future.

WooCommerce 3.0 Update: CRUD Classes

This is THE change that makes WooCommerce 3.0 a MAJOR update. It’s the introduction of CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) classes. With these classes, WooCommerce has standardized the way data can be stored and accessed by developers (or in your case extension plugins).

WooCommerce defines structured data for each resource for easy lookup
Data flow and validation is controlled by WooCommerce
Developers are abstracted from knowing the internals of the data they are working with
Data can be easily moved to say custom tables without affecting existing code
These changes are reusable making the code optimized

This change will make for optimized data storage, and for uniformity in reading and writing data. What you need to know is, due to this update in the way data is handled, WooCommerce extensions will have to adapt this new format to be WooCommerce 3.0 compatible. Also, if you update to the latest version, you might notice a few deprecated function notices. This isn’t a reason for you to be alarmed, but these functions would have to be fixed or upgraded for things to function well in the long run, before WooCommerce completely removes them from their code.

Not All Updates Are the Same!

It might be easy for a fellow store to upgrade to WooCommerce 3.0.0 without any hiccups. But what works for others might not always work for you. Consult a WooExpert right away!

Talk to a WooExpert about WooCommerce Upgrade

WooCommerce 3.0 Update: CLI Powered REST API

WooCommerce has completely overhauled its Command Line Interface (CLI). The new interface has been forked from Restful and is powered by the REST API. Effectively code duplication has been removed with more power to developers.

WooCommerce 3.0 Update: Template Changes & More

Version 3.0.0 has some template changes too. The following templates have been updated:

cart/cart.php
cart/cross-sells.php
checkout/thankyou.php
emails/email-order-items.php
emails/plain/email-order-items.php
myaccount/downloads.php
order/order-details-customer.php
order/order-details-item.php
order/order-details.php
single-product/add-to-cart/grouped.php
single-product/add-to-cart/simple.php
single-product/add-to-cart/variation-add-to-cart-button.php
single-product/meta.php
single-product/photoswipe.php
single-product/price.php
single-product/product-attributes.php
single-product/product-image.php
single-product/product-thumbnails.php
single-product/related.php
single-product/review-meta.php
single-product/review-rating.php
single-product/stock.php
single-product/tabs/additional-information.php

If your theme overrides any of these templates, you might want to update them. Apart from these changes, there are lot more minor changes in this update. These being:

Sorting of tax rates for easy management
An option to dismiss sitewide notice
On WordPress multisite, existing users will be added to a store if the user has an account on the same network
Cart percent and product percent coupon types management has been merged

Ready to Update? Here’s What You Need to Do

If you’ve liked what you’ve read so far, I’m sure you will be eager to update. But *hold on*! Since there are major changes involved, the update might result in some broken functionality – not because WooCommerce itself might be buggy (3.0.1 has fixed most bugs), but because WooCommerce extensions on your site might not be 3.0 ready. So here’s what you would need to do:

Check if all your extensions are WooCommerce 3.0 compatible: You can do this by checking a plugin’s changelog, the release notes, or by contacting the plugin owners. And what if your extension plugins are not compatible? It’s best to not upgrade to WooCommerce 3.0 till then or to test out the changes on a staging site to see if all’s well
Backup all your data: Now, this should be the norm and not just a task you undertake when updating your WordPress website. Backups help you in adverse situations if upgrades go awry
Test updates on a staging site: The most stress-free way of updating WordPress core, plugins or themes is to first test the updates on a staging site. A staging site is a replica of your live site. If all goes well on the staging site, you could make similar changes on your live site
Upgrade extensions before updating WooCommerce: The order to follow when updating plugins, is to first update extensions then to update WooCommerce. This prevents any unexpected errors

While all of this can assure you of a smooth transition to the latest version of WooCommerce, it’s best to tread on the side of caution. For example, you may have custom code that would need to be adapted to the latest changes. Or some changes would have to be made in your custom theme. In such cases, it is best to approach a WooExpert to get your needs resolved. Maintenance plans can help too! WooCommerce specialists offer maintenance plans for a reason. It’s because you’re guaranteed of seamless updates along with regular backups and data security in all-in-one plans. The choice is yours! For more details, you can of course checkout WooCommerce’s official post on the release. That’s all for now? We’d like to hear your thoughts or any upgrade related challenges you faced in the comments below! Happy selling!

What worked out for Netflix…..

What could work out for you….

Website Hosting

Video Hosting

Front-end and Design

Set Up

Membership Management and Payments Processing

Security

Digital Rights Management

Summing Up…..

The Conventional Filters

But, are these filters good enough?

Questionnaire-based Product Filters: Search Experience Personalized

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

Prerequisite: Add Attributes to WooCommerce Products

Create Product Attributes for WooCommerce Products

Create the Questionnaire using Gravity Forms

Filtering WooCommerce Products

Pretty simple isn’t it?!

Features to include in an online shopping mall for WordPress

1. Application Form for Store Registration

2. eCommerce Store Pages

3. Display Stores in Website

4. Supplementary Pages

5. Custom URLs for Individual Stores

6. Store Activation Option

7. Store Closed Option

8. Localization Ready

9. Global Shop Page

10. Single Sign-On

Managing a virtual shopping mall on WordPress

1. Managing Plugins

2. The Themes

3. The Security and Updates

The Last Word

What is an Online Shopping Mall?

How does an Online Shopping Mall Work?

Users in an Online Shopping Mall

1. Mall Owner

2. Store Owner

3. Customer

Benefits of an Online Shopping Mall

How is an Online Shopping Mall different from a Marketplace?

Creating An Online Shopping Mall on WordPress

Step #1

Step #2

Step #3

Summing Up

#1 Availability Search Option

#2 Rescheduling Feature

#3 Recurring Bookings

#4 Conditional Discounts

#5 Time Zone Conversion

The Bottom Line

Connect with your customers- like in an offline store

Manage leads captured, with ease

Integrating lead capture and lead management

Manage leads for your WooCommerce store with Dual Power

Don’t let your leads get overlooked

The Ideal Scenario?

How Would the Trending Products Identification System Work?

Some Optional Features

Auto/Manual Price Modification Options

Pricing Thresholds

Provision to Exclude Certain Products from ‘Trending’ Category

Wishlist Integration

Setting up Trending Product Bundles

Notifications Setup for Store Owner

How to Display Trending Products?

The Principal Advantage

A Ready Solution

Modified “Add to Cart” functionality for products on sale

Behind the scenes

A small change can make a big difference

About the Author

#1 Support Is Not Customer-Centric

#2 Negative Reviews from Clients

#3 Devious Pricing and Plans

#4 No SSL Support

#5 Unreliable