Get the most from your WooCommerce site

Six fixes to instantly elevate your WooCommerce site

If your reach or conversion rate need attention, your first reaction might be to increase spending on paid advertising, but bear in mind that 80% of users ignore paid ads. Ads certainly have a place in your strategy, but it’s a smart move to get your WooCommerce platform pulling its weight first – improving your overall return on investment.

From engaging your customer base to streamlining your store management and shipping processes, here’s our advice on how to get your site to work harder for your team and your customers: curing headaches, not causing them.

For WooCommerce conversions, content counts (and pays)

97% of people who land on your site aren’t ready to buy: yet!

Once you’ve generated a lead, you might need to do more to secure the sale. Simply showing a shopper products isn’t always enough. This is where lead nurturing comes in: encouraging users to make a sale, or, even better, return again and again to make more.

So, how do you capture consumers and keep them captivated by your brand? Create content! Relevant and engaging content is king. It will maximise your reach and bring inbound leads, as well as encouraging repeat business from your existing client base. You should aim to:

What kind of content helps get the most out of your WooCommerce site?

Most marketers identify and cultivate potential customers using social media (47%) and email marketing (46%). To persuade current users into repeating the sale, email marketing is the tool of choice.

The reason is clear: According to the 2018 DMA report, for every £1 you spend on email marketing, you can expect an average return of £32. Email marketing is one achievable way to convert the curious into customers.

We can support a new or additional direction in your marketing strategy with our work on your site. A pop-up on your landing page encouraging newsletter subscription – possibly backed with a discount for doing so – is an easy yes to press.

Wow your subscribers

Pack your newsletters with content proven to persuade them to return to your platform. According to DMA:

• 38% of customers respond to discounts in emails
• 36% of customers say they engage with brands as a result of informative content in newsletters like articles or video (DMA)

While you’re at it, get personal. Emails with personalised subject lines are 50% more likely to be opened.

The newly-unified tech retail giant, Curry’s, recently achieved a 56% open rate increase by using AI copywriting software to optimise email subject lines in real time. A huge impact for what is effectively one sentence altered, demonstrating the importance of forging a personal connection with customers.

When aligned with some sharp SEO and a holistic social media campaign, newsletters are seen to equate to sales. It’s relatively easy to get your content out there: WooCommerce has lots of extensions that seamlessly connects with providers like Mailchimp, MailPoet or Dotmailer.

Harness email to counter abandoned carts

The power of email continues. A handy WooCommerce plugin like Retainful reaches your almost-but-not-quite customers, allowing you to send personalised emails to shoppers who’ve abandoned carts and get them across the line.

According to Salecycle, 28.3% of eCommerce revenue comes from abandoned cart emails. A whopping 48% of shopping cart abandonment emails are opened and 50% of those people go on to make a purchase.

Collect those submissions and get your killer email content out to almost-converted customers.

Streamline and sync with your business processes

The range and flex in WooCommerce extensions to optimise and automate your store management is a crucial for growing shops with increasing order numbers. Reputations can be made or lost on fulfilment.

From order management to syncing your site with accounting software like Xero, when set up correctly, your website can work smarter, streamlining the small things so you can stay focused on the bigger picture.

We worked with B Corp Pikt to improve their existing WooCommerce platform by building in watertight communication between WooCommerce and third party order fulfilment software.

With a live stock system, customers have the freedom to build their own bespoke produce box, so it was key for the system to cope with multiple variables whilst also processing orders to be delivered fresh and on time.

Automation of adjustments to orders in the CMS meant customer changes of heart didn’t create headaches for the order management team: and the Trust Pilot reviews say all you need to know about the user experience and customer satisfaction.

Get product pages working harder

It might seem that your imagery and caption describing your products and pricing are as clear as day, but being unable to physically touch the goods means that, to the online shopper, details are everything.

Talk to your development team about how to make improvements or explore how extensions could get your product pages working harder:

• WooCommerce Quick View is an extension that saves shoppers time by enabling an on-click Lightbox window to display the product image, price and description. The official All Blacks store utilises this along with a hover-over pulse effect; a nice touch adding to the overall quality of UX.
• Enable a zoom feature like Image Zoom Pro for WooCommerce to allow customers to hone in on product images and for you to manage product gallery thumbnails in an advanced way.
• WooCommerce 360 Degree Image gives the feel of a video rotation with minimal effort; add a group of images to your product gallery and use this plugin to produce a beautiful image rotation to replace the product’s featured image.

Whole-food retailer Zoya’s Pantry, powered by WooCommerce, adds a layer of consumer confidence that the product matches the description and lives up to the stated eco-credentials of the store with five star customer ratings on product listings.

Don’t forget that the trajectory of our shopping habits are towards on-the-go purchasing. Even back in 2018, 37.25% of website visits came via desktop but a higher proportion – 53.59% – via smartphone.

By 2021, 53.9% of all US retail eCommerce income was generated through mobile commerce, as reported by Statista. So, remember the M-commerce market and prioritise UX on small screens when tweaking your existing product pages.

Capture customers with captions

Finally, it’s not just about perfect product imagery: it’s also about the right text, in the right amount, in the right place. When present, image captions are read up to 300% more than a page’s main text. Use your captions to explain what the image cannot; to educate or enthuse your audience and convert that sale.

Skincare brand Root Science evidently understands the quick-caption strategy and uses the hover effect like pros to quickly caption the efficacy of each of their products.

While visually appealing for their target audience with their simple, light-touch, elegant branding, the nature of their business means that there is very little to immediately distinguish between products. These captions pack a punch when it comes to communicating the power of their lotions and potions.

Get UX and fulfilment in ship shape

Even if the user experience has been plain-sailing up to checkout, an unclear, unexpected or even seemingly untrustworthy shipping experience can sink your sale. Consumers are becoming increasingly accustomed to next-day and no-cost fulfilment capabilities.

The WooCommerce site for luxury footwear label, Doucal’s, uses minimalism and product-centric design effectively but the shoe brand also uses its homepage to promote its free shipping offer.

Quick, reliable and competitively priced shipping is key. Here’s why:

• 38% of online shoppers will abandon their order if the delivery takes longer than a week
• 74% of online shoppers say that free shipping is one of the most important factors at checkout and 94% have taken some type of action to qualify for free shipping
• 25% of online shoppers will abandon their order due to unexpected shipping costs being added just to the order just prior to checkout

Reworking your WooCommerce platform

WooCommerce platforms allow you to adapt and develop your existing site with ease, helping you stay responsive to changes in client demand, new products or react quickly to reduced sales. Using relevant extensions to improve user engagement will get your shop in great shape.

Here’s a run down of our six fixes to get your WooCommerce site working harder for your business:

1. Create personalised email marketing content which includes discounts and engaging detail about your brand or products, with video if possible
2. Utilise WooCommerce extensions to contact shoppers who abandon carts
3. Harness the power of WooCommerce to consolidate your order management processes, and more
4. Explore extensions to elevate product imagery and showcase product details
5. Use captions to speak clearly and succinctly about product features
6. Ship out with reliable carriers, synced to your site with a WooCommerce integration