In today’s highly competitive world of online shopping, merchants are often pushed to do everything in their power to attract the customer to buy from their store. Since many shops offer similar products, what is it that will inspire the customer to choose you over so many others? Sooner or later, as a businessman, you come to realize that attractive pricing is only one element that influences the customer’s decision to buy from you. Another factor that is just as important is user experience. There are many different things you can do to level up your online store user experience and maximize your conversion rates, like create WooCommerce product bundles, display popular products in WooCommerce, but you also need to do something to provide your customers the best possible perception of your products. Although you can’t offer the convenience of touching or trying on the goods, you can offer a pretty convincing alternative and that’s where WooCommerce product variation plugins kick in.

These types of plugins come with plenty of useful features that enable you to display products with many different variations like size, color, price so that the customer can have a precise image of how each variation looks.Тhe biggest advantage of product variation plugins is that they simplify the process of adding variable products to your online store – if you have a t-shirt that comes in ten colors and five sizes, instead of adding a separate product for each color/size combination, you can add one product and a menu with different attributes. Your visitors will be able to select and buy the goods based on sizes, prices, and other attributes that match their specifications. Plus, they will appreciate the wide selection of products you have to offer. Bear in mind that all the images you use in your WooCommerce store have to be of high quality if you want to achieve the desired effect.

A good choice of product variation plugin for WooCommerce will help you enrich the user experience and boost your sales at the same time. The list we compiled includes versatile product variation plugins for WooCommerce that will surely help you offer the best shopping experience to your customers:

QODE Variation Swatches for WooCommerce by Qode Interactive

QODE Variation Swatches for WooCommerce is a simple yet option-rich plugin developed to help you enhance the user experience for all your shoppers. The plugin provides you with a clear-cut way to display detailed product variations alongside your products in lists and on single product pages.

In addition to this, QODE Variation Swatches is fully optimized for mobile devices too.

This flexible tool presents you with a number of easily adjustable product attributes, optional variation tooltips & descriptions, product availability info, and lots more.

You have the option to feature color, image, label, radio button and tab switch attribute swatches, and show them in dropdowns or using labels. Each product variation gets displayed on the fly once it is clicked on.

On top of that, you have an entire assortment of customization options. Color and Image attributes come in five carefully designed, predefined layouts each, while Label attributes come in two variants. You can also easily configure the width, height, and idle/active border colors for each of the attributes.

Each of the attributes can be shown in a classic layout, laid out next to and below each other, or you can feature them in practical sliders.

Moreover, the plugin lets you feature additional information tabs alongside swatch titles and short descriptions. Here you can provide your customers with even more detailed product info.

Another remarkable feature that the plugin boasts is the optional AJAX- powered instant product variation data loading which can easily be enabled.

One more standout feature is the option to display out-of-stock item variants as either crossed out or blurred, or you can opt to omit them altogether.

Last but not least, with the QODE Variation Swatches for WooCommerce, you can activate automatic back-in-stock notifications for your shoppers, keeping them informed when their desired products are available again.

The QODE Variation Swatches for WooCommerce plugin is available in both free and premium versions, with the premium version which offers lots more in terms of options & customizability currently priced at $69.

WooCommerce Additional Variation Images

If you want to provide your visitors with a more complete insight of your products and their variations, check out the official extension called WooCommerce Additional Variation Images. Its main job is to allow merchants to display additional product images for their variations, so instead of just showing, for example, different color swatches, it actually displays the products in different colors. You can add multiple variation images, from different angles, zoomed-in, and so on. This is a proven way of boosting customer interest and can be a great way to increase sales. Additionally, when you provide as much information and imagery to the customers, you’re also reducing the chance of returns and complaints.

The plugin is very simple to use – once installed, an option to add different variation images will appear in the Variable Product section of the dashboard. Simply upload the images to appropriate product variations, and that’s it.

This plugin is quite cheap, too – it currently costs $4.92 for a single site license.

WooSwatches – WooCommerce Color or Image Variation Swatches by WooMatrix

The WooSwatches plugin is particularly useful in cases when you have an unusually large number of product variations to offer. What distinguishes it is that it comes with an inbuilt product filter on an image and color basis. This practically means that in case there are more swatches than those displayed on the page the plugin will offer a “more’ link. Also, if the number of swatches is higher than the set value, WooSwatches features a slider to display more shop swatches.

This responsive plugin supports dropdown select fields, color, image, and text variation swatches. It allows you to display the selected color or image swatches on the shop, category, or archive pages. It also supports a wide variety of sizes for both square and round swatches.

This plugin is not free and comes at a unique price of $19.

WooCommerce Better Variations

WooCommerce Better Variations plugin is a simple-to-use tool that includes many useful and unique options. Apart from allowing you to add different color variations, display price information, and similar handy options, this is one of the rare plugins that enables you to handle out-of-stock variations too. It lets you grey out and make out-of-stock products unselectable and also alter the style of the variations in a way to make the out-of-stock products show at the bottom of the list. This way all variations are visible to the user, but he is clearly informed about the variation availability at the moment.

By choosing the Grid display mode you can display all the product variations in a grid or in a single table and your customers can easily enter the desired quantities for selected products without having to select each variation individually.

The plugin comes in a two-tiered pricing plan – basic and pro with prices ranging from $49 to $89.

WooCommerce Variation Master

WooCommerce Variation Master is a powerful tool that is easy to configure. One of the most distinguished features is probably the cart page popup window. It shows up after the customer clicks the ‘Update’ button that is displayed each time a new item is added to the cart. It is also possible to select different product variations inside the cart. Practically, it means that in case the customer wishes to change the order at the last minute, he does not have to remove the product from the cart and add a new one – he can simply select a different product variation on the cart page.

Many more useful features are included – you can add a border on swatches and show attribute text above them, display swatches on Shop, Archive, and Category pages, add a custom image gallery for each variation, create gallery images slider, etc. The plugin is responsive so whatever features you choose to use, they will be accessible regardless of the device.

As for the price, you can opt between a regular license for $35 and an extended license for $1999.

Color and Image Swatches for Variable Product Attributes by Phoeniixx

If you want to add image swatches, rounded and squared swatch style to your online store, the Color and Image Swatches for Variable Product Attributes plugin may be a good solution. This free, user-friendly, and comprehensive tool allows you to create unlimited color swatches.

For more advanced options like creating swatches using bicolors, images, radio buttons, and icons or if you want the option to zoom the swatch image on hover, you’ll have to invest in the premium version.

The premium version unlocks a grid library with 300 icons, offers more options for styling the swatch styles, and has many more useful features. You also have the option to create color and image swatches on a per-product basis.

Depending on the number of sites you are going to use the plugin on, you can choose between three pricing plans ranging from $39 for a single site to $129 for up to 25 websites.

In Conclusion

Running a WooCommerce shop requires an agile approach and constant attunement to your customers’ needs. Variation plugins are made to help you describe and display your products in a more detailed and attractive manner. All the plugins in this list can help you level up user experience and boost your conversion rates. If you are running an online store where there is an exceptionally large amount of product variations, then WooSwatches is probably the most recommendable choice. WooCommerce Better Variations plugin is great if sharing the stock status information about products is important to you. WooCommerce Variation Master is often the choice for larger businesses, and the first plugin on our list is ideal boosting engagement by providing quality images of the variations. Investing in a superb user experience always pays off in more than one way and we are sure each of the plugins in this list can prove that to you.

You have a passion for creating awesome digital products like eBooks, software, courses, or even artwork? The good news is that now you can sell them and start earning passive income. And how? Well, by selling them online.

And what if you don’t have your own product to sell but you still want to tap into that market? No worries! A digital products marketplace is your answer. It’s like a virtual mall where you connect creators with consumers. You provide the platform, they provide the products, and everyone wins!

In this tutorial, we will show you how to create a digital products marketplace in nine easy steps. So, keep reading!

Why You Should Create a Digital Products Marketplace

The digital products industry is booming. The latest data shared by ResearchAndMarkets.com shows that the global market is estimated to grow from $23,328.73 billion in 2021 to $33,313.50 billion in 2026 at a rate of 7.4%. The market is then expected to grow at a CAGR of 6.3% from 2026 and reach $45,149.00 billion in 2031.

If you want to get a slice of this huge pie, you need to jump in directly, with an online presence. The industry is not showing any signs of slowing down, so you really shouldn’t wait.

Why? Well, digital products are just plain convenient. They’re:

So, if you have a skill for design, love writing, or are a coding wizard, you can create a valuable digital product and share it with the world. And if you don’t have products of your own, you can easily connect with creators and sell through your platform.

Most Profitable Digital Products to Sell in 2024

These are some of the most profitable digital products to sell in 2024:

You can learn more about these digital products from our article 9 Types of Digital Products to Sell on Your WordPress Website.

How to Create a Digital Products Marketplace Using WordPress – 9 Simple Steps

As we said earlier, we will show you how to create a digital marketplace using WordPress in nine simple steps. You will learn how to:

Now let’s get into the details!

Step 01: Register a Domain Name

The first thing you need to do is register your domain name. Follow these steps to register your domain name:

Your domain name is the foundation of your digital presence, so take your time to choose the name that reflects your brand and resonates with your audience.

Step 02: Buy a Hosting Plan

Buying a hosting plan is almost the same as buying a domain name. Follow these steps to buy your domain name:

After registering, you’ll receive login credentials to access your hosting account’s control panel. Then change the password for you.

Step 03: Install WordPress on Your Control Panel

If you don’t want to install WordPress manually, simply ask your hosting provider to install WordPress on your behalf and provide the credentials. They will happily do that for you.

However, if you want to install WordPress on your own, follow this procedure:

Log in to your control panel and look for an option or section related to website management or software installations.

Once you’ve located the installer, select WordPress from the list of available applications. Follow the prompts to begin the installation process. You need to provide some basic information, such as your desired website name, username, and password for the WordPress admin area.

After providing the necessary information, initiate the installation process. The installer will automatically set up WordPress on your hosting account, including creating the necessary databases and configuring the required files.

Once the installation is complete, you’ll receive confirmation along with login details for your WordPress dashboard. This dashboard is where you’ll manage your website’s content, design, and functionality.

Step 04: Install a Multivendor Marketplace Plugin

WordPress has a dedicated eCommerce solution called WooCommerce. However, using WooCommerce, you can only create single online stores. To create a multivendor marketplace, you’ll require a multivendor plugin along with WooCommerce.

There are several multivendor plugins available. Among them, Dokan, WCFM, and MultivendorX are popular.

In this blog, we are going to use the Dokan plugin to create a digital products marketplace since Dokan is the most popular multivendor solution with more than 50,000 active installations. Also, Dokan comes with dedicated support for creating digital product marketplaces.

Let’s check how you can install the Dokan plugin!

Navigate to your WordPress dashboard -> Plugins -> Add New Plugin, then type Dokan into the search box and install the plugin from the search result.

After activating the plugin, click on the Activate button to activate the plugin.

Step 05: Install a Suitable Theme

Now you should install a suitable theme for your digital product marketplace. When you are choosing a theme, make sure it’s WooCommerce compatible. And all the WooCommerce-compatible themes are by default Dokan plugin compatible.

One such theme is Gioia – Modern Fashion Shop theme. It is a feature-rich, superbly designed theme, completely WooCommerce and Dokan compatible. You can use this theme to give your multivendor marketplace a professional look.

Let’s see how you can install and activate this theme on your website.

Since Gioia is a premium theme, you have to purchase it first. After purchasing the theme, go to the WordPress dashboard -> Appearance -> Themes -> Add New Theme -> Upload Theme, then upload the theme as a .zip file.

Finally, install and activate the theme to use it on your website.

Step 06: Configure the Basic Settings of Your Marketplace

To configure the basic settings of your marketplace, go to Settings under the Dokan option. There, you’ll find all the basic settings to configure:

To set the commission type and rate, click the Selling Options button. There you’ll find the options to set up commission type and rate.

You can choose either Flat or Percentage as a commission type, then set the rate.

Finally, click on the Save Changes button to save all the changes.

Now you need to set the minimum withdrawal amount. Click on the Withdraw Options button and configure the withdrawal settings.

Don’t forget to click the “Save Changes” button to save these changes.

Dokan supports all WooCommerce-compatible payment gateways. With Dokan Lite you can use non-adaptive payment gateways like PayPal, bank account transfer, cash on delivery, etc.

Go to your WordPress dashboard -> WooCommerce -> Settings, then click on the Payment tab to get the available payment methods.

Note: If the PayPal option isn’t there by default, you should install the “WooCommerce PayPal Payments” plugin and you will find the PayPal option here.

Step 07: Prepare Your Admin Store

It’s an optional step for you. If you don’t want to be a seller on your own marketplace, you can skip this step. However, you’ll still get commissions from your registered vendors if you don’t have an admin store.

But if you want to earn more, you can create your store and start selling as a vendor from your own marketplace. Let’s check how you can do that!

First, you need to enable yourself as a seller. To do that go to Dokan –> Vendors and enable selling by turning on the Status button.

As an admin, you’ll get two ways to upload products. You can upload products from frontend or backend.

Let’s check how to upload products from the backend:

Go to your WordPress Backend -> Products -> Add New. There you’ll find options to add the product’s name, description, image, category, tags, price, and so on.

Note: Since it’s a digital product, don’t forget to click on the Downloadable box.

When you’re done, click the “Publish” button to publish the newly added product.

That’s how you can add products from the backend.

Now let us show you how to add products from the frontend. Your registered vendors will also add products following this same process.

Go to your WordPress Dashboard -> Visit Vendor Dashboard -> Products. Then click on the Add new product.

Now add the product title, image, price, etc to complete the process.

Don’t forget to tick the Downloadable box.

Once you’re done with the configuration, hit the Publish button to publish the product.

Here is the preview of the product that we have just added:

Step 08: Allow Vendors to Register on Your Marketplace

After adding all the functionalities and configuring your marketplace, you can invite vendors to sign up for your marketplace. To make sure vendors can sign up for your marketplace, enable the “Anyone can register” option from WP Admin –> General –> Settings.

It will open the default registration form for vendors to sign up.

That’s all! This is how you can allow your vendors to register on your digital products marketplace.

Step 09: Promote, Promote, and Promote

You’ve built a beautiful marketplace, and stocked it with amazing digital products – now it’s time to promote it.

Here are some ways to promote your marketplace:

Bear in mind that promotion is an ongoing process. Track your results, experiment with different strategies, and adapt as needed. The key is to consistently put your marketplace out there and build relationships with your target audience.

By implementing these promotional tactics, you’ll attract vendors, and customers, and watch your digital marketplace flourish!

Digital Products vs Physical Products to Sell

Starting a digital products business over physical products has many advantages. Let’s go through some of them.

Easy to Create and Distribute

Digital Products: Creating digital products like eBooks, software, or online courses is a breeze. Once you’ve made them, you can distribute them instantly over the internet to anyone, anywhere. No shipping is required!

Physical Products: Making physical products often involves more steps. You’ve got to source materials, manufacture them, package them up, and then ship them out. It can be time-consuming and costly.

Low Management Costs

Digital Products: Since everything’s online, you don’t need to worry about renting a physical space or stocking inventory. Your main costs are usually related to creating the product itself and marketing it.

Physical Products: Running a business selling physical goods can be expensive. You’ve got rent, utilities, staff wages, and inventory costs. It can eat into your profits pretty quickly.

Scalability

Digital Products: Once you’ve created a digital product, you can sell an unlimited number of copies without any extra effort. Whether you’re selling to one person or a million, it doesn’t matter – it’s all digital!

Physical Products: Selling physical products has limits. You can only produce so many items at once, and you might need to invest in more resources if demand suddenly spikes.

Environmental Impact

Digital Products: They’re eco-friendly! No need for paper, plastic, or transportation – it’s all online.

Physical Products: Producing physical goods can have a big environmental footprint, from manufacturing processes to shipping emissions.

Creating a Digital Marketplace- Key Takeaways

The digital product market is booming, and creating a marketplace with WordPress offers a fantastic opportunity to tap into this potential.

Here are the key takeaways to keep in mind:

Now you know how to create a digital products marketplace using WordPress. So, create your own multivendor marketplace now! If you have any questions related to this tutorial, feel free to ask us using the comment box. Take care!

WooCommerce has a special place among WordPress eCommerce plugins for a couple of reasons. It lets you sell any kind of goods, including affiliate products. It helps you manage your inventory, handle payments, and calculate shipping. But to get to what makes WooCommerce so great, you only need to visit the Extensions Store on WooCommerce’s website. There, you’ll be greeted with close to seven hundred different extensions.

WooCommerce is endlessly extensible. The extensions you can find on the WooCommerce website aren’t the only ones you could use. Go over to WordPress.org and search for “WooCommerce” among the plugins and see how many you can count with a 4-star and above rating. You’ll soon realize there’s no point to it, and that this variety can easily turn away some users who don’t want that many choices and just want to get on with things.

We’ve compiled a list of some of the best WooCommerce extensions for your WordPress shop you can find on either WooCommerce’s or WordPress’ website. It’s not a definitive list and it won’t contain every good WooCommerce extension that exists, but it should at the very least save you from some trouble when looking for good WooCommerce extensions – or plugins – for your store.

The extensions and plugins we’ll include are:

QODE Wishlist for WooCommerce

We’re kicking off the list with a remarkably well-rounded and conversion-driving plugin from the Qode Interactive workshop – QODE Wishlist for WooCommerce. In its free version, the plugin helps shop owners elevate the UX and drive engagement by placing a convenient Add to Wishlist button to product lists. The button is fully customizable in terms of position, behavior and appearance. Admins can enable automatic removal from wishlist for an item that’s added to the cart, as well as automatic redirection of users to the cart page once the product is added to cart.

The premium version supports the creation of multiple wishlists per user, with visibility options that include public (and searchable), private and accessible via link, providing shoppers with great flexibility. In addition, admins can choose to allow only registered users to create wishlists, which is convenient for lead generation, or opt to make the feature accessible to all as guests.

The wishlist layout can be adjusted and the same goes for the page where multiple lists are displayed. There’s the option to add an “Ask for Estimate” module and the robust admin options include marketing features like tracking user behavior and sending promotional emails (on sale, back in stock, promo, etc). On top of all that, admins can provide quick wishlist access on their pages using two widgets – dropdown and sidebar.

Stripe for WooCommerce

Choosing a good payment extension is probably one of the first things you’ll want to do if you want to make your WordPress shop accessible to more people. Stripe for WooCommerce is a good choice, and not only because it has stellar ratings – that’s just the icing on the cake.

With this plugin, you can add a whole lot of different payment options to your store. Stripe for WooCommerce supports credit cards, sure, but also Apple Pay, Google Pay, as well as local payment methods, and it can display them on product and cart pages besides the checkout page.

WooCommerce Google Analytics

When insight into your customers’ behavior is what you need, what is that one company you should turn to? With the free WooCommerce Google Analytics extension, you can track basic data such as sessions, users, and events. You can also get basic eCommerce data like product views.

If you want to turn it up a notch, you can opt for a Google Analytics Pro extension from another developer. At an annual price of $79, this plugin adds checkout behavior analysis, advanced settings, and tracking dimensions.

Google Listings and Ads

Staying in the realm of Google and its services, having an easy way to connect with Google Merchant Center can save you lots of trouble if you plan to run Google Ads. Thanks to the Google Listings and Ads extension, however, you can cross that off your list of things to worry about.

This free extension allows your WooCommerce store to automatically sync your product information to Google Merchant Center. From there, you can use that data for free listings in the Shopping tab in Google search, as well as ad campaigns you create with Google Ads.

Mailchimp for WooCommerce

Email is one of the most consistently effective tools marketers and advertisers have in their arsenal. Email marketing can do wonders for your WordPress store, too – if you have the right extension for it. So why not Mailchimp? Mailchimp for WooCommerce is a free plugin, as is the basic Mailchimp service – and the paid plans make it ideal for small and medium businesses, too.

With the plugin, you’ll be able to connect your WooCommerce store to Mailchimp’s system and easily share information between the two. From there, you can use any of Mailchimp’s services for email and marketing automation you have access to based on your Mailchimp plan.

Name Your Price

Do you want to let your customers set their own prices for the products you’re selling? The name-your-price model could be risky but rewarding. Thanks to the Name Your Price extension, you’ll be able to try it out in a couple of novel ways.

Name Your Price works with many different product types you can sell through WooCommerce. You can use this extension along with subscriptions, gift cards, bundles, but you could also use it to collect donations. Name Your Price is a premium extension, and it costs $49 per year.

QuickBooks Sync for WooCommerce

Is there a better investment for a store than accounting software? Good booking is essential for any store’s success, and WooCommerce accounting can be easy – if you have the right tool. QuickBooks is one of the best ones, and QuickBooks Sync for WooCommerce is the extension you need to be able to use this tool with your WordPress store.

With the extension, you can sync your store with QuickBooks for two-way sharing of data on orders, customers, inventory, products, and anything else you can throw at QuickBooks. The services you’ll get from the platform, however, depend on the type of package that you have. While the extension might be free, QuickBooks offers a free trial, and the basic plan starts at $25.

Smart Coupons

Need a way to attract more customers? Coupons, gift cards, and giveaways are a time-honored sales method to give the bottom line a boost. When talking about coupons and WooCommerce, one of the first extensions that have to cross the mind is Smart Coupons.

This extension has everything you need to be able to create coupons and other types of special offers for existing and prospective customers. Whether you want to create a fixed amount or percentage coupon, offer free shipping, offer a discount via a shareable link, or set up store credits of vouchers – you’ll be able to do it. The extension is premium, and it costs $99 per year.

Customer Reviews for WooCommerce

Sometimes, a little bit of social proof is all your store needs to fly to stellar heights. Customer reviews are great social proof, and thanks to the Customer Reviews for WooCommerce extension, you can incentivize your customers to leave reviews, too.

The extension’s major draw is its streamlined process. When someone makes a purchase and some time passes, they receive an email asking for a review. The extension provides a form for the review, and once the form is filled and submitted, the review gets published on your website. You can even send a thank-you coupon. The extension is freemium, with the paid version offering lots of customization and branding options, and starting at $7.99 per month plus VAT.

Discount Rules for WooCommerce

Who doesn’t love a good discount? If you want to make the most out of this natural proclivity towards good deals, you’ll tie it with something like – volume. Offering bulk discounts and other types of dynamic pricing is very common, and thanks to the Discount Rules for WooCommerce extension, it’s easy, too.

This extension will let you apply any type of discount you can imagine. You can set rules based on date, products, count of items, order total, cart size, quantity range, and many other variables. The premium version of the plugin – $49 per year – even offers discount rules that turn this extension into a genuine product-bundling plugin.

Variation Swatches for WooCommerce

Some extensions are so good that, even though they’re freemium, their free version is useful enough to easily be one of the best free WooCommerce plugins you can use. Variation Swatches is one of those extensions.

What this plugin does is necessary if you’re offering variations of the same type of product. The plugin allows you to create variation swatches based on color, size, brand, image, and label. The swatches will be displayed automatically instead of the usual dropdown menu. The Pro version, which starts at $49 per year, adds a whole lot of functionalities such as blurring and multi-color swatches.

Advanced Shipping Tracking for WooCommerce

Shipment tracking is one of the modern conveniences that take the edge off usually frustrating things and having to wait for a package without knowing where it can be frustrating. If your shipping provider offers to track, use one of the best shipping extensions out there, the Advanced Shipping Tracking extension, to keep the customers in the loop.

This extension lets you add tracking numbers to orders, fulfill the orders when the number is added, and provide your customers with a link where they can check the status of their shipment. With the pro version, which starts at $129 per year, you get access to additional features that include a fulfillment dashboard, built-in integration with third-party plugins, and more.

Product Recommendations

Upselling is a fine skill that takes plenty of practice and knowledge to master. At least in-person upselling is. If you have a WordPress WooCommerce store, all you need is an extension like Product Recommendations.

This extension allows you to show your customers products that are frequently bought together with the product they are browsing. You can add recommendations manually, as well as let an algorithm take care of it for you. The extension even lets you create your recommendation engine. A premium extension, Product Recommendations costs $79 a year to use.

FiboSearch – Ajax Search for WooCommerce

It’s a generally good idea to make a customer’s journey from landing on your website to getting what they’re there for as quick and frictionless as possible. Search bars play an important role in removing that friction, and FiboSearch is one of the best search bars for WooCommerce you’ll find.

The free version of the plugin supports search by product title, description, terms, and SKU. It shows product image, price, and description in the results, and allows you to limit the number of suggestions that are displayed. The paid version, which starts at $49 per year, adds synonyms and fuzzy search to the list of features, as well as search for posts, pages, tags, categories, and attributes.

Checkout Field Editor

Just like any other part of your store, the checkout page needs occasional optimization. Since this is another one of the fields where core WooCommerce doesn’t excel, you’ll be better served by an extension. Checkout Field Editor is just the one.

With this freemium plugin, you’ll be able to add seven new types of fields, as well as customize the existing ones that are already on the checkout page. There are options for arranging, renaming and validating checkout fields. With the premium version of the extension, which starts at $49 per year, you’ll get additional custom fields, conditional display of fields, custom validations, and many more options.

Request a Quote for WooCommerce

In some business models, it makes sense to give shoppers the option to send you a request for a quote. If you’re selling in bulk, or if you run a B2B store, this might make perfect sense for you. In that case, you’ll need an extension like Request a Quote for WooCommerce to help you out.

Request a Quote for WooCommerce is a premium extension that adds a “request a quote” button to specific products. You can display it instead of the “buy” button or create rules for when it appears. You can customize the form they then use to ask for the quote. The annual price for the plugin is $69.

Custom Product Tabs for WooCommerce

If it ever bothered you that WooCommerce doesn’t allow you to add custom product tabs to your website, don’t worry – you’re not alone. With over a hundred thousand active downloads, Custom Product Tabs for WooCommerce is proof that this is a much-needed feature.

Luckily for you, the extension lets you add it effortlessly. Once you create the tabs, you can move them around and delete them – it’s as simple as that. The plugin has a premium version, too, which starts at around $30 and includes additional features, such as the inclusion of tabs content into search results.

WooCommerce Zapier

When you have to integrate a number of disparate tools and services, you usually turn to an in-between, a platform, or a service that lets you set it all up easily. Zapier is one of the most popular integration platforms that also offer automation tools. With WooCommerce Zapier, a premium plugin with an annual price of $59, you can use the platform for WooCommerce, too.

Zapier works with a combination of triggers and actions, allowing you to automate certain processes. For example, you can use a sale in WooCommerce as a trigger, and “add to Google Sheets” as an action. It’s a simple yet powerful way to bring different services together without having to do too much work.

WooCommerce EU VAT Assistant

Who can keep account of all the rules and regulations of doing business with the EU? Thanks to the WooCommerce EU VAT Assistant, you don’t have to when it comes to charging for value-added tax. The extension will do most of the work for you.

You can use WooCommerce EU VAT Assistant for a variety of tasks. The extension will gather necessary information, including customer location. It will validate VAT numbers and perform currency conversions for you. Most importantly, it will automatically apply the VAT rates for you. It will do all of this free of charge, although you’re welcome to sign up for premium support from the developer.

WooCommerce PDF Invoices & Packing Slips

How tedious would it be if you had to create an invoice or packing slips manually after every sale? Not that you have to, though – all you need to do is download and install the WooCommerce PDF Invoices & Packing Slips extension, and you’ll be done with most of the work.

This free extension lets you create and customize invoices and package slips you can automatically attach to WooCommerce emails of your choosing. You’ll be able to download them, too, generate them in bulk, and include sequential invoice numbers.

Let’s Wrap It Up!

With a wide user base and a strong development community around it, it sometimes seems like WooCommerce very much resembles WordPress itself. Both are extensible endlessly with third-party tools, and both seem to suffer for it – even though they still dominate their markets. Still, if you know where to look, you can easily sort through the rubble and find some great WooCommerce extensions. The ones we’ve listed here are among the best ones.

With a steady increase in online shopping over the past years, the competition in e-commerce has become fiercer than ever. And while every online store has a goal to outrace its competitors, it’s needless to say that this is easier said than done. Even if you do manage to drive traffic towards your e-commerce site, it still doesn’t mean your visitors will become actual buyers.

In this article, we will help you learn how to optimize your WooCommerce conversion rate and boost your sales. But first, let’s see what a conversion rate actually is and what is considered a good one when it comes to your WooCommerce site.

What Is a Conversion Rate

In e-commerce, a conversion typically occurs when a website visitor adds a product to the cart or completes a purchase. As for the conversion rate itself, it represents a percentage of the number of people who take the desired action (i.e. people who convert), divided by the total number of unique site visits. This metric helps you learn how many of your visitors ended up becoming actual customers.

What Counts as a Good Conversion Rate and How to Find Out Your Own

Now, the average e-commerce site conversion rate for 2020 was 2.63% in the US alone, while the global one stands at 4.31%. That being said, this conversion rate can differ slightly depending on the location, the device it was measured on (desktop, mobile, etc.), and even conversion type (product conversion, add to cart, etc.). Also, your conversion rate will depend on your specific industry and the niche you are selling products in.

For a complete picture, we also suggest looking into things such as cart abandonment rate, checkout abandonment rate (when a customer leaves the site at checkout, without completing the purchase), as well as bounce and exit rates (the former is when a visitor leaves after checking out just one page, while the latter is when they leave after viewing more pages on your site). All these categories can affect your overall conversion rate, and you should inspect them all to find if any one of these areas is causing trouble (is more problematic than others).

In order to check out the conversion rate of your own store and compare it to the global conversion rate, you can always use the help of Google Analytics. And, in case you’re using WooCommerce to power your online store, there’s even a WooCommerce integration called WooCommerce Google Analytics. By combining this extension with Google Analytics, you will be able to analyze your data in detail to find what sections of your store you should improve for the best possible results.

As for some of the e-commerce-related conversion metrics you should check out when using Google Analytics, we suggest that you look into Shopping Behavior Analysis (to analyze the number of sessions that were either continued and abandoned in detail), Checkout Behavior Analysis (to analyze the number of users who have completed the checkout process), and Product Performance.

Just make sure to turn on Enhanced Ecommerce to be able to view the above-mentioned reports.

How to Boost Your WooCommerce Rate – Best Tips

Aside from using Google Analytics to see what areas you can improve on, there are many different things you can do to maximize your conversion rate. Here are some of the strategies you should use to increase your WooCommerce conversions:

Take Care of Your Product Pages

Product pages are practically the most important part of your online store. After all, they serve as a sort of informational hub related to your products, and as such, they have the power to directly influence visitors to buy your products, which is why you should take extra care when optimizing them. Plus, they can significantly increase your rankings on Google, and by boosting your overall position in SERPs, you are that much closer to boosting your sales as well.

There are a few things you can do to create a well-optimized product page. One of them is writing a unique, concise, and keyword-rich product description that is also consistent with your brand and relates to your target audience.

The same rules apply when generating meta descriptions of your products as well. Meta description basically represents a brief summary of your product and is also the first thing both people and search engines will see related to your product page. Therefore, you should create a product meta description that is as concise, relevant, and informative as possible while also making sure that it contains your keyword as well.

Adding a captivating and SEO-friendly title can make your sales go a long way, too. The more precise your product titles are, the more chances you have of driving organic traffic your way. So, keep this in mind when giving a title to your product pages.

Of course, don’t forget to include other strategies that will help improve your Woocommerce SEO in general, such as adding breadcrumbs, adding product categories and tags, creating an SEO-friendly URL structure, and so on. By optimizing your product pages in this way, you simultaneously make them more user-friendly for your visitors as well, which can only improve your rankings and enhance your conversions as a whole.

Make Sure That the Quality of Your Product Images Is Top-Notch

It is no secret that people rely on visuals when deciding whether to purchase a product online. Your potential online buyers often have no other way of knowing whether the product has the quality they seek than to look at its pictures. Therefore, you should do your absolute best to ensure that the pictures of your products are nothing short of impeccable in terms of quality. So, on top of creating high-quality pictures of your products (from multiple angles, if possible), make sure to also add an image zoom-in effect to give visitors the possibility of inspecting your products in full detail. If possible, you can also try adding 360-degree images using one of the available plugins (such as SR Product 360° View, for example) as it will let you showcase your product from multiple perspectives by rotating it or changing its angle. All these can only bring you closer to improving your overall conversion rate as they can help you give off the impression of professionalism and reliability when showcasing your products.

Finally, while having high-quality images is practically a must, we suggest that you optimize your images in a way that preserves their quality while reducing their size. By doing so, you prevent your product images from impacting your page loading speed – and having a site that loads fast is always a plus for the overall customer experience.

Offer Multiple Payment Options

These days there’s an abundance of payment methods and new ones are emerging each year. Credit and debit cards remain the most popular methods, PayPal and Stripe are up there too, and there are various digital wallets, Apple Pay, Google Pay, and many more.

The logic is clear: the more payment methods you accept, the more paying customers you’ll have. Fortunately, setting up various payment methods for your WooCommerce shop is quite easy and usually done with the help of dedicated plugins. There are tons of excellent PayPal plugins, for Stripe users you can choose among several easy-to-use Stripe plugins for WooCommerce, etc. Note that payment methods are not the same as payment gateways – the latter usually include support for multiple methods. Explore various payment gateway options for WooCommerce, set up as many as you can for your shop, and watch your conversion rate grow.

Streamline the Checkout Process

Poorly designed, overly complicated checkout process is one of the major reasons for cart abandonment. Obviously, your conversion rate is going to stay low as long as you have a high cart abandonment rate, so you need to take steps to reduce it.

A lot of WooCommerce shop admins find that streamlining the checkout process significantly heps their conversions, as people move through the process faster and encounter less obstacles that make them want to quit.

One-page checkout is one of the best things you can do in this area. It means a checkout process that doesn’t require the user to navigate from one page to another and then another when completing a purchase. Instead, everything from registration, billing and shipping info, payment and purchase confirmation takes place on one dynamic page. Higher conversion rates are among the top benefits of one-page checkout, and there are one-page checkout plugins that can help you set one up easily.

You can also minimize the number of required fields, use autocomplete, allow users to complete a purchase as guests (without registering), while the registered users can have their information saved for future visits, etc.

Make Sure Your Products Are Easy to Find

Oftentimes, one of the determining factors for a successful conversion is having products that are easy to find. What we mean by that is that you should ensure that a visitor spends as little time as possible when finding a product they like. When you think about it, this is quite logical – if too much time passes between a potential customer accessing your online store and finding a product of interest, they are more likely to give up and search for a similar product elsewhere instead. On the other hand, you will only increase your chances of getting much-desired conversions if you ensure that their path to the actual product purchase is as short and smooth as possible.

One of the things you can do to make this possible is to simplify your website navigation so that all your products and product categories are never more than two clicks away. Creating a wide menu with multiple product categories is fine too, as long as it contains your most important categories and products.

And if you want to simplify the product search process even further, you can always implement a layered type of navigation using the Ajax Layered Navigation extension for WooCommerce. This extension will not only offer a better user experience to your customers but will also give them a chance of having a more interactive experience while searching for products. Namely, this type of navigation will allow them to use color swatches, size selectors, and more – which makes this extension great for stores with plenty of product variables and other attributes.

We also recommend adding a search bar to your menu or anywhere else you find to be suitable as this can only ease the process of searching for products on your e-commerce site. Finally, consider adding a filtering system that will allow users to filter your pages so they can easily find the products they are interested in based on specific product categories and tags.

Create a Sense of Urgency

It may seem like a cliché at first, but creating a sense of urgency by adding some limited-time offers can do wonders for your conversion rate. People are known to act fast when faced with demanding circumstances, so if they were struggling to decide whether to buy a product or not, creating an “urgent” type of offer can actually drive them to go for that purchase they may otherwise end up missing. You can easily create this sense of urgency by adding a limited-time offer to your site. You can even build a sense of excitement and get your customers to act fast by adding a countdown timer. Countdown timers create hype around your products, so you should definitely consider using them when presenting some of your one-time offers. You can also add limited-time free gifts, offer various discounts to a specific number of buyers that are able to make their purchase until a specified time, add time-sensitive and other types of coupons (using one of the many available coupon code plugins), and so on. Last but not least, in case your products are limited in terms of supplies, you can always let your customers know how many items are left in stock, or make a certain number of items available at a specific price.

No matter what type of urgency-based strategy you plan to make, just make sure to never deceive your customer. Building trust is of essential importance if you want to make long-lasting results, so try to be as genuine as possible. Your customers will be able to tell if you’re faking it, so keep that in mind when creating your special offers.

Leverage Social Proof

By including social proof in your website content, you’re increasing the chances of turning leads into paying customers. How? By showing them how much their peers love your products. And what does social proof mean exactly? It’s a phenomenon in which people copy the actions of others, basically. In eCommerce, it means buying from businesses that obviously have a lot of customers, a lot of reviews, good rating, and generally a lot of buzz around it.

There are several ways you can incorporate this into your WooCommerce website. The most obvious method are customer reviews. You can include fields for leaving reviews and comments, or you can incorporate Google reviews, as well as Yelp reviews, right there on your pages. You can also consider adding testimonials, as these are usually positive and can be very beneficial for your reputation.

Don’t forget social media. A lot of social proof comes from your audiences and fans on social media. If a person sees 20 of their friends and acquaintances liking your Facebook page or following your Instagram or TikTok account, their trust in your business is likely to grow, and so will your conversion rate.

Optimize for Mobile

At this point, it should go without saying, but the importance of proper mobile optimization of your WooCommerce store cannot be emphasized enough. The number of mobile e-commerce sales keeps increasing each year (in fact, there has been a whopping 39.1 percent increase from 2016 to 2021), which is all the more reason why you should ensure that your WooCommerce store is mobile-ready as well.

Some of the ways in which you can optimize your store for mobile include adding a lazy loading feature to your site (you can use a plugin such as a3 Lazy Load for this task), creating a mobile-friendly navigation (such as adding a so-called hamburger menu icon), and using accelerated mobile pages (AMP) as well. The latter represent sort of lite versions of your pages, which means they will help provide a fast browsing experience to mobile visitors.

Final Words

The goal of every store owner is to make a profit and turn as many visitors into converting customers as possible. By actively trying to improve the conversion rate of your WooCommerce store, you will be that much closer to achieving that goal. Just make sure to optimize your product pages properly, maintain the quality of your images, add some limited-time offers (but remember to be genuine and keep things realistic), and don’t forget to optimize your WooCommerce site for mobile. By applying these tactics, you will improve the overall user experience of your visitors, and eventually, you will be able to see a boost in your conversions. Finally, monitor your metrics continuously, as it’s the only way to know whether you’re on the right track.

This handy 101 of working with WordPress covers all the essential steps in building a website using the world’s most popular CMS – from installation to monetization, and teaches you how to create a WordPress website all by yourself. For easier navigation, use the Table of Contents below.

Part 4 – Adding eCommerce Features

Part 7 – Frequently Asked Questions

Part 8 – Additional Resources

Part 1 – Getting a Website Up

If you’ve decided to use WordPress to power your website – you’ve made a great call. WordPress is affordable, reliable and scalable, and there’s a lot of other “-able” adjectives that can be added to it. It can power any sort of website, and it’s beginner-friendly, so if making websites is not something you do for a living, it makes the perfect choice. It’s an equally great tool for professionals who build websites for clients – the flexibility and scalability is what makes WordPress so special.

Before You Begin

First things first – when we say “WordPress,” what do we actually mean? There are two versions of the platform, and a lot of people confuse the two. WordPress.org is the “proper” WordPress, the platform that allows you to create any sort of website – from the smallest blog to the biggest eCommerce shop or an enterprise website.

Check the article linked below regarding WordPress.com. For the purposes of this guide, from this point on by “WordPress” we will mean the .org version.

Hosting

Since we’ve opted for WordPress.org, our next step is to take care of the hosting, i.e. pick a hosting provider or service. Unless you have your own hosting resources (a server), you will need to sign up for a plan with a service that will host your website for you.

In addition to traditional hosting providers (BlueHost, Hostinger, GoDaddy, HostGator and so on), more and more users opt for cloud hosting, which is especially suitable for smaller websites that don’t expect tremendous traffic.

Domain Name

Now, if your hosting plan doesn’t include domain name, you will need to take care of that, too. There are services that only work with domain names – these are called domain registrars. Oftentimes, a user will purchase and register a domain name (especially if it’s a good name) and “park” it until he’s ready to use it. The domain name can then be transferred to your hosting plan.

A domain name is a unique and human-readable address that identifies a website on the internet. It serves as a key component of a website’s online presence, facilitating navigation and establishing a distinct online identity for businesses, organizations, and individuals.

Right now, you’re reading this on a website with a domain name “qodeinteractive.com.” The /magazine part of the URL indicates the subdirectory of that domain.

Installing WordPress

WordPress is known for great ease of use. Basically anyone can download and install it, and there are plenty of tutorials from the developers that can guide you through it.

We’ve covered the process in this handy video so make sure to check it out before you start, and perhaps leave it open in one tab so you can consult it along the way.

Before you begin, you will need a couple of things:

First, you’ll need to create a database on the server, using cPanel from your hosting provider. Next, you’ll need to download the latest version of WordPress from the official website. When you unzip the folder you’ve downloaded, you will need to connect the files inside it to your database on the server, using cPanel or FTP. This is an intuitive step-by-step process, especially if you’re using an FTP client like FileZilla, but you will need the credentials from your hosting provider (username, password, host) so make sure you have them on hand. After the files have uploaded, go to your website’s URL, where you will find the WordPress installation screen.

This is a very straightforward process as WordPress guides you through the installation step by step.

If everything went well, it’s time to take care of your website’s looks and functionality.

Choosing a WordPress Theme

A WordPress theme is a collection of files that work together to determine the overall design and functionality of a WordPress website. It provides a template for how the website should look and function, including the layout, color scheme, typography, and other visual elements.

Themes allow WordPress users to change the appearance of their websites without altering the underlying content. They provide a quick and efficient way to customize the design and style of a website, making it easy to create a professional and visually appealing site without extensive coding knowledge.

WordPress themes consist of various template files written in PHP, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Don’t worry! That’s just what’s “under the hood” of your theme. You don’t need to be skilled in any of these in order to work with your theme. Most WordPress themes are based on the principle of “WYSIWYG” – What You See Is What You Get. However, it’s good to know that these files define the structure and presentation of different parts of the website, such as the header, footer, sidebar, and individual page layouts. Themes also include options for customization, allowing users to modify settings such as logo placement, color schemes, widget areas, and more.

In a nutshell, a WordPress theme helps you get a professional-looking website up and running without having to hire a web designer.

When choosing a theme, you first need to ask yourself a couple of questions:

It’s often said that WordPress allows people to create websites for free. The platform software is free, and there are free themes, both from WordPress itself, and from theme developers, that can be used to create highly functional websites. Many of those free themes, like Qi Theme, are simply remarkable. However, you need to be very lucky to find a free WordPress theme that both looks and works great. Oftentimes, free themes are rather basic in its features, come with limited design and customization options, and generally lack that special something that will make your website stand out. Also, free themes often come with very limited support options.

Premium themes, on the other hand, being more expensive, obviously have more effort, care and extras invested and instilled into them. For instance, many premium themes come with built-in premium plugins, like Slider Revolution and others. Sometimes they even come with premium images included, which means you can keep them and use them on your pages without paying extra.

So it all boils down to your personal choice and your budget. If you come across a premium theme that fits your needs like a glove and offers a range of useful functionalities, you should consider investing in it. On the other hand, it may just happen that you’ll find a free theme that suits your needs just fine.

WordPress currently comes with the Gutenberg site editor out of the box. It is a block editor that allows you to quickly and easily create website pages by combining integral elements called blocks. Being extremely user-friendly, versatile and customizable, Gutenberg is one of the most popular solutions for WordPress site creation. In addition to the basic blocks you get by default, you can also purchase block collections, like Qi Blocks for Gutenberg, that give you advanced functionalities, from showcase and creative ones (interactive elements, advanced typography, complex sliders and galleries) to business (various infographics, tables, client carousels, etc) and eCommerce ones (advanced cart functionalities, product galleries, etc).

Another popular page builder is Elementor. Similarly to blocks, it uses elements that can be mixed and matched to create any sort of page you like. Again, addons are available for this editor, like Qi Addons, that further extend its functionality.

There are other popular page builders out there, like Divi, SeedProd, BeaverBuilder, Oxygen, etc.

WPBakery (formerly known as Visual Composer) used to be the single most widely used builder, but it has recently seen a huge decline in popularity.

You may wonder why it matters which page builder you will be using. Well, this decision also influences the choice of your WordPress theme. Some themes are built on/for Elementor, some on/for Divi, etc.

In short, when you decide which builder to use, you will search for appropriate themes.

Note that the best premium themes come in several versions. For instance, Qode Interactive themes are available both for Gutenberg and for Elementor, and there are WPBakery themes too.

This depends on what you want to do with your website. If you’re going to start a food blog, you should probably get a food blog theme. The same with travel blogging, or fashion, and it’s particularly true for listings, directories and real estate websites. This is because these themes come with a specific set of functionalities that you’re probably going to need. For instance, the best food blogging themes will have recipe modules allowing you to create lovely and convenient recipe cards, with nutritional info, prep time, etc. Travel and tourism themes usually come with premade destination pages, beautiful galleries for travel photography, and booking modules. Restaurant websites should always be equipped with booking forms, menu pages, maps, etc, which are features that all good restaurant themes have.

On the other hand, multipurpose themes can also be quite feature-rich, as they usually contain a number of niche-specific demos. These themes are great if your future website doesn’t fall strictly into any specific niche and you want to have the ability to experiment and combine different elements.

Installing Your Theme

If you opted for a free theme, or if you still haven’t made up your mind and want to shop around directly from your WordPress admin, you can use the theme search by navigating to Appearance>Themes.

Click on Add New and browse by categories. If you know the name of the theme, you can type it in the search bar.

When you find the theme you want, simply click on Install under its thumbnail. After the theme is installed, you will be prompted to Activate it.

For premium (paid) themes, the process is somewhat different. After completing the purchase, you will get your theme files in a zipped folder, and you will probably get the activation key. You need to upload the zipped theme to your website. To do that, go to Appearance>Themes and click on Add New. A new page will load, with the Upload Theme button at the top. Click on it and upload the zipped theme. After the theme has uploaded, click on Activate to complete the process.

A theme can also be installed using FTP. To learn more about this method, check out our guide on how to install a WordPress theme, linked below.

Installing the Plugins

Plugins play a very important role in the WordPress ecosystem. They are pieces of software that are added (“plugged in”) to your WordPress installation. Their purpose is to extend or expand the functionality of your website, making it richer, more functional and useful both for you and for your visitors.

As you grow your website, you will probably add more and more plugins as needed. For instance, if at some point you decide you want a Nutrition Facts card for your recipes, you will find a plugin that will help you do that easily and quickly. Or you’ll want to add a chatbot, a booking form, a cool scrolling effect, a caching or security plugin, and so on.

A lot of plugins you can add for free. There are currently over 60k free plugins at the official WordPress plugin repository. There are also premium plugins of all sorts, and there are plugins that represent entire collections, like Qi Addons for Elementor or Qi Blocks for Gutenberg.

As we said, you will probably add a lot of plugins as you go. However, some plugins you’ll want to install right after you install WordPress and your theme, because they are essential plugins that every website should probably have.

These include:

Plugins are extremely easy to install from your Dashboard, by navigating to Plugins>Add New and then browsing or searching for the plugin you need. When you find it, simply click on Install and then on Activate. If the plugin you need is not in the plugin directory, you can download it from its developer and upload the zipfile you get after purchase.

Note that having too many plugins can cause conflicts or slow down your website. Only install plugins that you really need and perform occasional cleanups to remove the ones you no longer use, or the ones that are not adequately supported or updated by their developer.

Part 2 – Customizing Your WordPress Website

The great thing about the WordPress themes is that you can set them up just the way you like. You don’t have to leave the adjustments as they are. Of course, you will change the placeholder content with your own. Even if you import all the demo content, you will want to make the website your own.

Customization is performed on two levels – global options affect the entire website, while page options only affect that particular page.

After you’ve installed a theme, you will probably first want to take care of the site identity – change the logo, the website name and tagline, the favicon, and so on.

Adding Your Own Logo, Site Title and Headline

To take care of these, head over to Appearance>Customize. This will get you to the Theme Customizer, where the first option will be Site Identity. Here you can update your logo, set your site name and tagline (or choose not to display them at all) and add the site icon, a.k.a the favicon. Some themes go the extra mile and offer additional settings for the logo, which are usually found in global options.

Creating, Customizing, Adding and Removing Menus

Menus play an important role in any website. They are the most important navigational element, and, as such, they are also crucial for UX.

When you install a theme, it will probably have several pre-created menus that you can simply adjust to your needs.

To check the available menus, in your Dashboard menu, go to Appearance>Menus. Here you can select the menu you want to edit or create a new one. When you select a menu, in the left section of the screen you will see the available pages you can add as your menu items. In addition to pages, you can also set posts, categories, tags or custom menu items. To the right, under Menu Structure, you can easily rearrange the menu items and change their order.

Note that you can do all this in the Theme Customizer, too, under the Menus option.

If you want to use different menus for desktop and mobile navigation, you can set that up, too.

Note that there are many different types of menus. Some themes have hidden menus, mega menus, some have vertical or sidebar menus, sticky or floating menus, and so on. Feel free to play around with different types that your theme allows until you find the one that fits your website style and purpose the best.

Setting the Homepage

Another thing you will want to take care of before you launch your website is what sort of homepage you want to have. The homepage is the page where your visitors land when navigating to your domain, whether through a link or by typing in the URL. It’s the entry point of your website and its main navigational hub.

There are two types of homepages in WordPress: static and dynamic. A static page is always the same, while the dynamic one displays your latest posts. Because WordPress was originally conceived as a blogging platform, this is still the default type of homepage, so you will probably want to change that to static by navigating to Settings>Reading in your Dashboard menu and making the change there. If you opt for a static homepage, here you will also have to pick the page you want to set as your homepage.

Changing the Colors and the Fonts

When you pick a theme, you probably pick it based not just on the functionalities, but on the visual aspects, too – the color scheme, the typography, the style (minimalist, cluttered, brutalist, retro, romantic, etc). However, along the way you may want to tweak a thing or two regarding the appearance.

The location of the options depends on the theme you’re using. Older WordPress themes still have this feature in the Theme Customizer. With full site editing themes, like the latest WordPress default theme, you get to pick among a series of preset styles and color variations, and you can also customize them additionally in the Editor menu and then the Styles option for each page, template or template part.

The same goes for typography. Depending on the theme you’re using, you can change the fonts globally (for the entire site) or for specific pages. The default full site editing theme has template parts that you can customize, including header and footer.

Note that many theme authors offer their own styling options and these may be located in other sections of the backend.

In general, WordPress themes are always extremely customizable, and you can basically change anything you like, especially if you know your way around CSS. Custom CSS can be inserted to provide additional styling options that are perhaps not available by default.

Adding or Removing the Widgets

In WordPress, widgets are little blocks or elements or pieces of layout, essentially tools that add extra functionality. Some come with WordPress by default, some come with the theme, and others can be added through plugins, like the Qi Addons for Elementor.

Widgets can’t be just added anywhere – they can only be added to designated widget areas. These, again, depend on the theme you’re using. The most common widget area is the sidebar, and also the footer. Commonly added widgets are social links, blog categories, product categories, shopping cart, Instagram feed, etc.

If your theme doesn’t come with a widget or a widget area you’d like to use, you can easily add them. Go to Appearance>Widgets and you’ll see the list of available widget areas. In the default WordPress theme, you can add widgets as blocks. In other themes, you will probably see a display of available widgets on one side, and widget areas on the other. Simply drag and drop them where you want.

If there are widgets you’d like to remove from a widget area, you can just as easily do so. Depending on the theme, click on the X above the widget, or on three dots and then select Remove.

It’s also possible to have certain widgets on certain pages, and not have them on others.

Part 3 – Creating Pages and Posts

Now that your website is up and you’ve made the essential customizations, it’s time to fill it with content.

Every website contains a number of pages. Sure, there are one-page websites, in which all content is located on a single page. In most cases, these are actually landing pages created for specific purposes and designed to convert. A website such as a portfolio, online shop, online community, business website etc, will in most cases have many different pages.

Some pages come with a WordPress installation by default. Some pages come with the theme you’re using. You can remove all the pages you don’t plan on using, and also add new ones very easily. Bear in mind, though, that there are certain pages every website should have, such as the Error 404 page, Contact page, and so on.

Adding or Removing a WordPress Page

In your WordPress admin, find Pages in the Dashboard menu. Here you’ll have the option of viewing all the existing pages, or adding a new one. The process will slightly depend on the page builder you’re using (Elementor, Gutenberg, etc). For instance, in Gutenberg, you will add page elements by adding blocks to it and then rearranging them and customizing them. In Elementor, you will add elements. Either way, you will have the option of setting the page visibility (public, private password-protected), editing the publishing date, the author, etc. You will also be able to preview the page at any time before publishing it.

If you add new pages, don’t forget to put them in your navigation menu so the visitors can find it.

Removing a page is just as simple: click on Pages in your dashboard menu, and then check the box next to the page you want to delete. In the Bulk Actions menu, click on Move to trash and that’s it. You can also delete the page while editing it, by clicking the Move to trash button in the right-hand side menu. FInally, a page can be deleted using the quick actions which appear under each page’s title when you hover over it.

Essential Pages

As we said above, the decision on the pages is all up to you but best practices dictate that every WordPress website, regardless of the kind, should have certain essential pages. Ideally, these should be linked to in your main navigation menu. These pages include:

Customizing the Header and Footer

The settings for these parts of the page are defined by the theme you’re using. Customization of these parts will depend on the theme, as well as on the page builder. For example, if you want to change the content and the appearance of your header and footer in Gutenberg site editor using the Twenty Twenty-Three theme, you will need to head over to Appearance>Editor, where you will select the part you want to edit from Template Parts.

In many themes, including our own Qi Theme, you can set different styling and customization on the level of individual pages – you can set the header, footer and sidebar you want and style it the way you like. You can even turn off the header and/or footer for certain pages.

Themes usually come with preset header and footer styles to pick from, but if none of them work for you, you can tweak them to your liking.

Some of the best practices tell us that the header shouldn’t be too big and imposing and it should contain the logo, page title or subtitle, and the main menu.

As for the footer, that’s where we usually find contact information, copyright info, social links and, oftentimes, another menu.

Adding Multimedia (Images, Galleries, Videos)

Whatever page builder or editor you’re using, you’ll find that adding multimedia content to your pages and posts is extremely simple. All you have to do is add an appropriate block (in Gutenberg) or element (in Elementor). For single images, you will need the Image block/element, and for a gallery you will search for the Gallery block/element.

Video, VideoPress and YouTube are blocks that come by default and that you can use to add videos to your posts or pages just as easily as you do with images.

If you have enriched your editing capabilities with a block/widget collection plugin, you will also have advanced elements to combine – carousels, animated galleries, sliders, various gallery layouts, video players, etc. Of course, you can also use single plugins for this, but it’s more convenient to use a good collection, like Qi Addons or Qi Blocks.

The multimedia content that you want to display is added through the Media Library.

Making Sure Your Website is Responsive/Mobile Friendly

As more and more people use primarily their hand-held devices (mobile phones, tablets…) to access the internet, it has become vital to have a website that’s optimized to look good on various screen sizes.

Mobile-friendly design means that a website is adapted to smaller screens, but not completely. This sort of design is today almost obsolete. Mobile-optimized or mobile-first means that design allows the users on mobile to access information, content and design with no effort and in a complete manner. Responsive design makes sure this happens by default – it is design that adapts automatically to various screen sizes and viewports.

Most WordPress themes these days are responsive. They scale to the screen they’re viewed on automatically, both design and content. In most cases, users don’t have to worry about this part at all. Still, additional responsiveness settings can be found in page editors/builders, and they can be adjusted, if needed, for individual sections, elements, pages, etc.

Part 4 – Adding eCommerce Features

You don’t need to run a well-established business or to be a big company in order to sell things online through your website. That’s one of the beauties of WordPress: it allows users to create all sorts of websites with ease, including websites meant for profit.

Whether your main focus is to run an online store, or you simply want to add a basic shop page to sell a few of your products or services, you’ll be glad to hear they’re both quite easy to accomplish, thanks to a little thing called WooCommerce.

WooCommerce is the best and the most popular eCommerce plugin for WordPress. It is a free plugin that comes with a wonderful set of functionalities out of the box, from product-related options, to cart and checkout functionalities, shipping, inventory, taxes and everything in between.

Once your shop is up and running, you can make use of the range of free and premium addons and plugins to add advanced functionality to your eCommerce website.

Now, we won’t get into step-by-step instructions for setting up an online shop, as it requires a separate tutorial and we’ve already written about it extensively – check out the links in the “Further reading” section.

We will tell you though that, if your primary intention is to run an online shop, your best bet is to use one of the premium eCommerce themes. These themes come with premade shop pages, attractive product lists, sliders, carousels and galleries, cart and checkout pages, so you don’t have to create any specific pages yourself.

After picking one such theme, you will need to install WooCommerce and set it up. There’s a setup wizard to guide you through the process and it’s really very simple and quick.

So, theme plus WooCommerce plus plugins or addons of your choice, and you’ve got yourself an online shop. The physical part of the business – the products, the logistics, etc – is up to you to take care of.

Part 5 – Taking Care of Security and Performance

In order for your beautifully set-up website to grow and prosper, you have to assure that all the essential security and performance features are in place. Online threats, attacks, downtime… there’s a lot that can compromise your website and cost your valuable traffic.

How to Keep Your WordPress Website Safe and Secure?

The protection you introduce to your website should have two goals – one is to keep it safe for your visitors, and the other is to keep the website itself safe from outside threats.

WordPress generally has a stable and safe structure, but there are still things you can and should do to build up on that. Your hosting provider will play an important part, too – a lot of protection comes from the server side, so you have to make sure your plan comes with some form of DDoS protection, firewall, regular backups, potentially IP ban feature, encryption, etc.

Next, your login procedure should be secure, possibly with two-factor authentication that protects both you and your visitors. Adding CAPTCHA and introducing login attempt limits is also useful.

Good security practices also include keeping your website backed up at all times, and regularly updating to the latest version of WordPress. The same goes for the theme you’re using, and all the plugins you have installed.

Occasional plugin cleanup is also recommended – over time, we tend to install quite a lot of them, so it’s a good idea to delete the ones no longer in use.

For securing the connection between the site and the browser, it is essential to have a valid SSL certificate, as well as SFTP.

Finally, if you have multiple people logging into the website (authors, editors, etc), you may want to manage and control user roles. Not everyone needs access to just anything in your backend.

Of course, on top of all that, and perhaps even before all that, you need security plugins. These plugins monitor your core files integrity, watch for suspicious activity, provide additional firewalls, scan your website and filter for spam. And the great thing is that a lot of these plugins are free! To learn more, check out the “Further reading” section.

How to Optimize Your Website Performance?

A great part of your website performance will depend on your hosting plan. The bandwidth is one of the major factors, as it allows your website to work well during traffic peaks. Together with the type of hard drive and the RAM you get with the package, it defines the speed (page load speed, that is) of your website and obviously has a great impact on the UX of your site.

Another thing that affects performance on the hosting side of the issue is uptime. As we mentioned earlier, always choose a provider that guarantees 99.9% uptime.

On your part, there are certainly things you can do to make sure your website performs well. Again, regular backups are crucial as they protect you from loss in case something goes wrong.

Database management is also important. An occasional cleanup can help you delete unused or superfluous files that could be clogging your database. Of course, whatever you do with your database, don’t forget to back it up first.

Uninstalling the plugins you no longer use will also help lighten up your website and keep it fast.

Lazy-loading images, image optimization, code optimization, caching and using a CDN are also important practices for optimizing website performance.

Part 6 – Growing Your Audience – Marketing and SEO

So, you’re finally here – you’ve installed WordPress, the theme and the plugins. You’ve added all the pages you need and started posting content. Everything works and looks great, and now it’s time to get your website out there, get more visitors, more clicks, more traffic. In short – it’s time to promote it and grow your audience and your reach. Whatever the purpose of your website, if it’s online and it’s public, your goal is most likely to get as many visitors as possible.

For this, you need to create two crucial strategies: a marketing strategy and an SEO (Search Engine Optimization) strategy. Both these subjects merit a full guide on their own, but let’s just quickly touch on some of the most vital aspects.

Creating an SEO Strategy

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and it represents a set of practices aimed at helping your website rank better in SERP (Search Engine Results Pages), gain more visibility and more traffic.

SEO can roughly be divided into two segments:

On-Page SEO:

This set of practices includes your content keywords, meta titles and descriptions, headers and title tags, URLs, internal and external links, Schema Markup, images, and everything else that is actually done on a website’s page.

Off-Page SEO:

This part of your SEO strategy involves content marketing, link building, social media, reviews, etc.

There are also technical aspects of SEO, and these include optimizing the page speed, using structural data, XML sitemaps, canonicalization, Hreflang, and more.

A good SEO strategy needs to include all these vital aspects. If you focus just on a few and neglect the rest, your efforts will be in vain. It is advisable to hire or periodically outsource an SEO expert to take care of all these things for you. However, since brand new websites rarely have the budget for it, you can also do all of this by yourself, by following guidelines and tutorials, many of which you will find in the “Further reading” section.

Remember that SEO is an ongoing effort and something that needs to be revisited and revised on a regular basis. The internet is a very fast-changing environment, and there’s also the fact that Google itself frequently changes its SERP rules and algorithms.

Creating a Content Marketing Strategy

Content marketing represents a particularly important part of both your SEO strategy and your overall marketing strategy. It is a set of procedures, techniques and approaches that involves producing and distributing highly relevant website content to your targeted audience. Its main goal is to help you grow your audience, increase your reach and build authority.

In WordPress, content marketing mainly involves writing blog posts, as well as whitepapers, case studies, video tutorials, podcasts and so on. The strategy should involve setting an area of interest relevant to your industry and niche, and creating content that addresses issues pertaining to that area. In short, if you’re a B2B company or an app developer, your content marketing strategy will not include travel, food or health topics. Conversely, if you’re selling beauty products, your content will not include topics like politics or tech.

Keyword research and related strategies play a particularly important part in content marketing. Keywords allow you to target the audience most likely to convert – those that are interested in what you have to say, and their search intent (what they search for to get to your content).

Your content needs to meet several criteria: it needs to be relevant, informative and helpful. In addition to search intent and keyword research, it should also be based on competitor analysis. Needless to say, the writing has to be impeccable in terms of grammar and spelling, it needs to be engaging and captivating, and – 100% unique. Anything less than that won’t get you far in SERPs and might even get you penalized by Google.

Creating a Social Media Marketing Strategy

In this day and age, no brand, business or website can survive without a strong social media presence. It seems that, depending on the demographics, almost everyone is on one social media platform or the other. The younger demographic is on TikTok and Instagram, the middle aged and senior audience is on Facebook, professionals are on LinkedIn, and so on. Depending on your industry and niche, you definitely want to pick one or more of the most popular platforms to promote your website.

This is particularly important for eCommerce and service-based businesses. If your conversions take place on your checkout pages, your website contact forms and download pages, you need to get the crowd from social media to your website.

Conversely, in order to grow and expand your overall digital presence, the visitors of your website need to be directed to your social media profiles, as well. Coupled with physical locations (if you have any), this is the basis for a powerful omnichannel marketing strategy.

Fortunately, WordPress offers plenty of tools by default (plus a great many in the form of plugins and extensions) to help you connect your website and your socials, and to develop a social strategy that grows your audience and reach. Social media buttons, dynamic Instagram, Facebook and Twitter feeds, Facebook likes on blog posts – these are just some of the solutions you can leverage.

Leveraging Paid Ads and Affiliate Marketing

Once your website has grown and developed, you’ll probably start thinking about monetizing it, especially if your traffic keeps showing an upward trend. In addition to selling products and services using WooCommerce or another solution, you can also make (some, or a lot of) money through paid ads and affiliate marketing.

Displaying Ads in WordPress

One of the easiest ways to make money through your WordPress website is through paid ads. This essentially means displaying other people’s ads on your pages. Google Ads are your best bet and to monetize from the ad views it’s best to use Google AdSense, the search engine’s huge advertising platform. You display ads on your pages and earn a percentage from each ad view.

Not all websites are approved for AdSense, so before you apply, make sure your website has solid traffic, good structure and follows the best SEO practices.

There’s a number of AdSense plugins for WordPress that you can use to add and manage ads on your website.

Of course, you don’t have to limit yourself to AdSense. There are several other major ad platforms you can work with, and there are Amazon ads, too.

Using WordPress for Affiliate Marketing

Another way you can earn money passively through WordPress is through affiliate marketing.

Affiliate marketing is a setup between a merchant and an affiliate. The affiliate usually displays a link or an ad on their website and every time a desired action is performed (click, signup, sale…) the affiliate receives a commission. Directing your visitors to your partner’s website or landing page is called a referral.

Not all websites make good candidates for an affiliate program. Some types of websites make a better choice – specifically, blog and content websites, review websites, online communities, coupon websites and so on. In addition, you need to have a solid audience and traffic, and it’s best if you’re working within a specific niche.

Tracking Performance Through Analytics

When growing, developing and tweaking your website, you can’t just do it in the dark, without any insights into how it’s actually doing. To steer it in the right direction, you have to gain insight into a number of metrics that tell you about the people who come to your website: who they are, where they come from, what they look for, how they behave on your website, how long they stay, at which point they decide to leave, and so on.

For this, you need to perform website analytics. The most widely used, most trusted and most reliable tool for that is Google Analytics. It’s a free tool and you don’t need to be an expert to use it, but it does come with a somewhat steep learning curve, so before you dive into it, make sure to check out our tutorial linked below.

Analytics is something that needs to be performed regularly. Trends change, and so do algorithms, and the only way to stay afloat is to make analytics a regular task. Whenever you notice a change, especially if it’s a drop in traffic, analytics will help you identify the problem so you can work on fixing it.

Part 7 – Frequently Asked Questions

Absolutely, yes. WordPress was first developed with the idea of providing everyone with a user-friendly blogging platform. The fact that it later developed into a CMS that allows you to create any sort of website you like, from small to enterprise, doesn’t change the fact it’s very beginner-friendly.

Even if you don’t know much about it, you can easily solve almost any WordPress problem using a myriad of tutorials you can find online, like the ones in your own Magazine. Plus, it’s worth mentioning that WordPress has an incredibly active community of users, developers and designers. It’s an open-source platform and solidarity, knowledge sharing and helping are part of its ethos.

Yes, to an extent. WordPress itself is free, you can use the default theme or one of the free themes you can find online, as well as free plugins. However, good hosting is rarely free, and you will have to pay for the domain, too. The website itself can be created with little to no investment, but you will have some expenses if you choose premium solutions, plus for the annual hosting plan.

We’re probably partial but we have to say – WordPress. Wix is definitely a more all-inclusive option, and it does come with great design solutions. However, WordPress provides much more flexibility. It’s an open-source platform and the ecosystem of themes and plugins is incredibly rich. WordPress also provides you with more control, it’s easier to scale up and overall gives you more ownership of your website.

No. It certainly helps if you know how to code, so that you can have more liberty in customizing your website just the way you want, without having to rely on plugins and other solutions. However, you can build and maintain your WordPress website perfectly well with absolutely zero coding knowledge.

It depends on the definition of “web developer.” WordPress is written in PHP and uses the MySQL database. Working with it also includes JavaScript, CSS and HTML. Therefore, a person who knows how to alter the WordPress source code and to create new functionalities using these tools is basically a WordPress developer, and therefore a type of web developer. A WordPress developer writes code for the platform, and can become a developer in the broader sense of the term by expanding the skillset to other scripts and languages, too.

Again, it’s a plus, not a requirement. CSS helps you customize the appearance of your website according to your needs in situations when the available options are not enough. WordPress has a designated location for entering custom CSS so if you know how, you can use it to very easily adjust whatever you like.

Yes, and not just if you’re a developer or a designer. The knowledge of WordPress is considered a plus in many industries, from marketing to publishing. A lot of businesses use WordPress as a CMS for their online presence so if you’re applying for a job related to the website, the knowledge of WordPress, at least the basic one, will be a major plus, perhaps even a necessity.

WordPress developers promise that the platform, at least its core, will remain free forever for all its users. Now, as we said, WordPress is not 100% free (we’re talking about the .org version here) so if you’re paying zero dollars now for your website it doesn’t mean you won’t be having to spend some money on it in the future – for a premium theme, if you decide to change it, for upgrades to premium plugins, add-ons, etc. But the core will stay free and you will never be charged for a WordPress installation.

WordPress itself doesn’t come with limitations of this kind. Like we reiterated throughout this guide, WordPress can be used for basically any sort of website. The real question is, should it be used just for any kind of website? Here, the answer is probably: no.

You probably don’t want to use WordPress for eCommerce on a really big scale. You can sell products, and many of them, too. But WordPress can’t help you make the next Amazon or eBay.

The same goes for social media websites. There are plugins you can use to add social functionalities to a site, but it won’t even come close to Facebook and the likes.

Finally, if during your WordPress experience you often find yourself in need to work with PHP and change things there, or to have someone do it for you, then WordPress probably isn’t fit for your needs.

Yes. Because so many businesses, especially startups, choose WordPress as the platform for their website, there is a high demand for professionals who are able to use it in one capacity or another – as an author, editor, designer or developer.

First of all, define the option you want to go for, according to your skills and interests. You can become a designer, a plugin or theme developer, an admin, you can do content marketing or blogging. Next, make sure your skills are relevant and up to date. For this, you can use one of the many available online courses and tutorials, and you can – and should – frequently turn to the WordPress community itself, both on the official website and on other relevant forums, such as Stack Exchange. Finally, you need to take a deep dive into the job market, using “WordPress” as a keyword followed by the career option you’re pursuing. You’ll find that there are many companies looking for WordPress professionals these days.

There are many ways to monetize your WordPress knowledge. You can set up websites for clients, for instance. A lot of people simply purchase a theme, and then, after taking care of hosting and everything else, they customize the theme (either using page builders or, more frequently, custom code) to make the website unique and true to the client’s brand. You can also create template designs or animations for WordPress websites and themes. You can work as a WordPress website admin, or a WordPress content marketer, and you can, of course, use WordPress to power your own business through an extensive online presence.

Part 8 – Additional Resources

We’ve created a series of video tutorials on how to make the most common types of websites using WordPress, along with other useful tips and how-tos. The tutorials are beginner-friendly, rich in information but very easy to follow, so make sure to check them out:

As of 2023, WooCommerce has been powering 6.6 million online stores on the Internet. That’s a 23.43% market share, which makes it the second largest eCommerce platform after Shopify (which has a very tight lead). That’s all fine and great, but the fact that WooCommerce is doing well doesn’t guarantee the success of your own WooCommerce shop in any way, does it? If you want to boost your WooCommerce sales, you have to roll up your sleeves and do some work.

In this article, we’re sharing with you some of the proven strategies to increase conversions and grow the revenue of your online shop. Here’s what you need to do:

Build Brand Awareness

If you want your sales to grow, you need to offer something that sets you apart from the other shops. Of course, it’s going to be primarily your products that set you apart, but never underestimate the power of proper branding. Sometimes, good branding means more than the product quality, which is a sad fact but a fact nonetheless.

Invest time in creating a distinctive brand identity, including a memorable logo (check out these logos for inspiration), consistent color schemes, and a compelling brand story. Utilize social media platforms, content marketing, and influencer collaborations to reach a broader audience. Consistency across all touchpoints helps customers recognize and trust your brand, increasing the likelihood of conversion.

Personalize the Shopping Experience

Personalization goes beyond addressing customers by their names. Leverage data to understand customer preferences and behavior. Implement personalized product recommendations, tailored marketing emails, and a dynamic website experience.

Use WooCommerce’s features or third-party plugins to create personalized landing pages based on customer segments. Segmentation doesn’t need to be limited to gender, age and location. It can also be done based on purchase behavior and history. For instance, if a customer recently bought a crock pot from you, you can target them with a cast iron skillet, because this person is obviously interested in solid and durable cookware – but more on this in our segment about upselling and cross-selling.

Personalization should apply to the checkout service too – you can allow your customers to save their shipping and billing info, and after checkout, you can send them personalized thank-you notes and ask them how they like what they purchased. Another way you can improve personalization is by allowing the users to create, save and share their wishlists, which is also good for conversions. The wishlist feature can easily be added with the right plugin, such as QODE Wishlist for WooCommerce.

Master Email Marketing

Craft compelling emails that drive action. Use segmentation to send targeted messages, experiment with different subject lines, and optimize the timing of your campaigns. Build a solid email drip campaign and monitor key metrics like open rates and click-through rates, and continuously refine your email strategy based on performance.

Not all emails end up read or even in the right inbox – but there are ways to prevent emails from ending up in spam, so explore them and use them.

Don’t think for a second that email marketing is a thing of the past. People do read emails, especially when you entice them with engaging subject lines. You can use emojis, if that fits your brand, offer benefits (coupon codes, access to limited offers, etc) and provide email content that educates and entertains.

Reach Out to Customers on Social Media

From Facebook and Instagram to TikTok, social commerce is on a constant rise. You can now easily set up Instagram shopping for WooCommerce, and you can add your WooCommerce store to Facebook. But even if you don’t want to connect the shops, there’s a lot you can do to leverage the power of social media to drive sales.

Engage with your audience on social media platforms. Respond to comments and messages, run targeted ads, and share user-generated content. Utilize the interactive features of each platform to foster a sense of community and drive traffic to your WooCommerce site.

Never Stop Testing

The importance of testing is something that applies to all efforts directed towards success, whether it’s branding, web design, performance, marketing campaigns or eCommerce strategies. Without regular and properly implemented testing, there’s no way of knowing if you’re on the right track. Testing helps you tweak your strategy, amplify what works and eliminate what doesn’t. In the long run, it also helps save money.

Regularly test and optimize various elements of your WooCommerce shop. You can use a variety of A/B testing tools on product pages, checkout processes, and marketing campaigns. Use analytics to identify high-performing strategies and adapt quickly to changes in customer behavior and market trends.

Develop Buyer Personas

No business can or should target just about anyone. Depending on your brand, the type of products you sell and the price range, you will want to target specific audiences that are most likely to need what you’re selling.

In order to do that, you need to create detailed buyer personas to guide your marketing efforts. Conduct market research, analyze customer data, and tailor your product offerings and promotions to match the needs and preferences of your identified personas. This targeted approach enhances the relevance of your marketing messages and, in turn, increases your WooCommerce sales.

Provide Top-Notch Customer Service

A returning customer is your best customer. Someone who’s satisfied with your products and service is not only likely to shop again with you, but also to become your brand ambassador. And to achieve high customer retention levels, you need to provide perfect customer service and support. For a customer, help should never be more than a click away, so make sure you have your links to support center clearly displayed on all your pages.

Invest in customer service that goes above and beyond. Offer live chat support (you can use live chat plugins for WordPress, as well as support and ticketing plugins), respond promptly to inquiries, and address issues with empathy. Utilize customer feedback to identify areas for improvement and continuously enhance the overall customer experience.

Implement a Cart Abandonment Strategy

From hidden fees to the lack of payment options, there are many different reasons for cart abandonment in eCommerce. To reduce this occurrence, first try to identify which reasons these are in your specific shop, and then approach them accordingly. In many cases, you will be able to solve this issue by implementing one of the tools for abandoned cart recovery; in others, you will have to dig deeper to fix the issue.

Combat cart abandonment by implementing an effective strategy. Utilize automated emails with personalized incentives, such as discounts or free shipping. Optimize the checkout process by minimizing steps and streamlining the checkout process. Make sure your cart and checkout pages are clean and intuitive, but engaging enough to keep customers within the process. Consider enabling guest shopping (completing the purchase without having to create an account) and make sure you have the latest customer safety measures in place.

One-click login is another thing that can significantly improve the checkout experience and reduce cart abandonment – you can offer Google one-click login, but you can also provide a one-page shopping experience using plugins.

Finally, if your website has performance and UX issues, no one will want to complete a purchase with you. You can’t just fix the cart page – you need to make sure all your pages are optimized and performing well.

Create a Sense of Urgency

One of the surest ways to increase your WooCommerce sales is to create a sense of urgency through limited-time discounts and special deals. People tend to make decisions based on FOMO (Fear of Missing Out), so if they feel like they only have one chance to score a deal in your shop, they will certainly press the “Add to Cart” button more readily.

With the right tools, you can easily create countdown timers showing how little time they have left until the end of a deal. Also, make sure to properly highlight exclusive deals on your website. Promote these offers through email and social media to drive immediate action, fostering a sense of excitement and urgency among your customer base.

Consider sending out coupon codes to your subscriber base. WooCommerce allows for easy creation of coupon codes so it’d be a shame not to use this functionality.

You may also want to add live sale notifications, which let people know how many purchases have been made in real time. This is an excellent tool for creating urgency among your shoppers.

Use Upselling and Cross-Selling

Increase average order value by strategically implementing upselling and cross-selling techniques. Upselling refers to offering the same or related product that’s more expensive, based on its superior value. It may seem counterintuitive that someone would buy the more expensive version of a product, but with its qualities properly highlighted, the upsold product actually has more value for money. Cross-selling means offering an additional, complementary product that the customer may also need or like. Both these techniques are usually applied on the cart page, or alternatively at checkout.

Recommend related, upgraded or discounted products during the checkout process and highlight bundled deals. Make sure you properly set up related products and product bundles in your WooCommerce backend. Of course, ensure that these suggestions align with customer preferences, providing added value to their shopping experience. If you just randomly suggest things that don’t fit with their purchase intent at all, you will appear spammy and pushy and will likely lose customers.

Wrapping It Up

There you go – none of these strategies are too complicated or time consuming, are they? In fact, they’re so common sense someone might even accuse us of reinventing the wheel, but you’d be surprised how many eCommerce shops don’t bother using any of them and then they wonder how come their sales are stagnating.

Your online shop is like a garden – it needs care, love and attention in order to grow, flourish and bear fruit. Apply these strategies like you would apple water and fertilizer to your garden, and then sit back and watch the money pour in.

If you have your own strategy for growing WooCommerce sales, we’d love to hear about it!

Nowadays, you don’t have to own a physical store – or even have physical products, for that matter – to make sales. Our world is getting more and more digitized by the minute, so it’s only natural that there’s a rapid emergence of all sorts of digital products to sell online.

Of course, you can use the help of various online platforms to create and promote your digital goods and make a substantial profit along the way. And the best thing about it is the fact that you won’t have to worry about having to distribute your products or any shipping costs or taxes. Your products are virtual, after all, so you really get to make the most out of your sales.

Now, while WordPress is an excellent platform for selling both virtual and physical products alike, you do have to decide on what products you want to offer to your potential customers first before you go on your way to set up a platform for the cause. Without further ado, we present you with some of the different types of digital products to sell and promote on your WordPress site. Check them out:

Online Courses

If you specialize in a specific subject or you simply wish to share some of your knowledge with the world, there is no reason not to try and make a profit out of it. And creating an online course is, without a doubt, a great way to do this. Luckily, due to the highly flexible and scalable nature of the WordPress platform, building an online course with WordPress is quite possible, if not highly recommended. Of course, your first step should be choosing your topic of choice according to the skills you already have, and then continue from there. This means deciding on your audience, planning out your content, choosing the appropriate online learning WordPress theme, and finally, making sure to market and promote your courses in a deserving way.

Finally, to learn some tips for promoting your online courses we suggest that you also check out our article on the same subject.

Subscriptions

Online subscriptions have become one of the best ways to get money online. Essentially, with subscriptions, you allow users access to a certain product or service by having them pay for a weekly or monthly subscription. These can be anything from different types of training and/or educational materials to webinars and various types of digital services. You can even use subscriptions to give access to some exclusive content (be it written, video, or audio content) to users who would be willing to pay for it.

To learn more on the subject at hand, we suggest that you read our article on how to add subscriptions to your WooCommerce shop.

E-books

Selling e-books is one of the most profitable ways to earn money on the web. Be it a health and fitness manual, a self-help guide, a cookbook, or any type of literature or fiction in a digital format, you can rest assured that e-books will help you make those much-needed online sales with ease. You can choose whether you want to put your e-book up for download on your official site, advertise it on a social platform, or have it available on another digital marketplace (like Amazon, for example). Or, you can even use all of these options to expand your online reach as much as possible.

Research and Data

In order to publish quality content and establish themselves as an authority in your field, bloggers and publishers need to always back their claims with data. But finding proper and applicable data and research is often harder than we think. Plus, if they really want to go the extra mile, they’re not gonna repost the same data that every other blog does. And they most likely can’t conduct their own research.

This is a need that can easily be filled by putting data behind a paywall, ie. selling data and research as a digital product. A lot of people will rather pay a sensible sum of money for quality data than spend hours or days looking for it in the nooks and crevices of the internet. Leverage this fact by organizing and selling information from your own industry or the results of your own studies.

NFTs

NFTs are another thing you can look into if you want to make money using digital products. An abbreviation of the phrase non-fungible token, NFTs usually stand for digital objects, or rather, assets, that are being sold online – most often using some kind of cryptocurrency. You can use these non-fungible tokens to sell anything from videos and art all the way to tickets and even in-game items (i.e. game avatars, character items, etc.).

Even though many digital items that can be bought as NFTs can often be simply downloaded for free, the real appeal behind NFTs comes from the fact that it actually provides the buyers with blockchain-certified ownership over the digital items, or the so-called “bragging rights”. What also makes NFTs so valuable is the fact that they also allow you to get royalties on future sales of the same item. So, a person who now owns an NFT (that you sold to them) can sell it to another person, but since the transactions will all be there on the NFTs blockchain, it will always be easy to verify the original seller.

To learn more about the topic of NFTs and how you can use WordPress to make money from these growingly popular virtual assets, we recommend that you check out our article that covers the subject in more detail.

Audio Content

Audio products are particularly popular as they allow people to multitask. For example, they can go for a walk or a jog while listening to their favorite podcast, or they can enjoy some tunes while performing house chores or commuting to and from work. And of course, there are many different kinds of audio products you can sell online, including anything from audiobooks and lectures all the way to music and podcasts.

Needless to say, if you decide to sell audio files online, your choices are truly limitless. Of course, depending on the type of audio product you have, you can also use different platforms to sell, market, and share your files, like different audio streaming services (Apple Music, Spotify, etc.). You can also easily add these audio files to your WordPress site and even embed a playlist if you’d like. Just make sure that these audio files are available only to those who pay for the products first to make a profit.

Swipe Files

This is a relatively uncommon digital product to sell but one that actually makes a lot of sense for many industries and creatives. Swipe files are documents or bundles that contain a set of valuable assets required for a particular task, goal or industry. For example, graphic designers can offer swipe files with icons, graphics, wallpapers, etc. These can be marketing assets, data bundles, nutrient lists, sets of readymade gym sequences, exercise sets for schools and universities and so on. This can go all the way to parenting swipe files with indoor activities, school lunch ideas, crafts and so on.

Apps and Software

If you are a developer and know how to work with code, then using these skills to make sales should be a no-brainer. Depending on the type of programs you specialize in and other specific skills and/or interests you may have, you can create all sorts of apps or software-based products, like mobile apps, web extensions, or even plugins and widgets.

For example, if you are familiar with WordPress, you can create a WordPress plugin that will contain some options that will add to the platform’s functionality or even enhance some of its existing features. Keep in mind, however, that the third-party WordPress plugin community is vast and quite competitive. So, to make your products stand out, your best bet would be to offer a so-called freemium product. This means you should upload a free version of the plugin to the platform like the official WordPress plugin repository (WordPress.org) and then also have a website where you will be able to promote the premium version of the plugin. The free plugin should have some of the essential or basic features so that your potential customers can get a glimpse of the product and see if it works for them. Then, if they like it, they can go ahead and purchase the premium version of the plugin to get access to more advanced features and functionalities.

Our own Qi Addons for Elementor plugin is a perfect example of what we’re talking about here. It’s a freemium tool with over 100 premade widgets created to help users build just about any element or section on their WordPress site. There’s the ability to download some of the widgets for free or get all 100+ widgets in a bundle (both free and premium ones) by purchasing the pro version.

You can even lure the customers in by offering some extra services (i.e. unlimited support) and make sure there are different types of pricing plans available to be able to accommodate various standards and budgets. By giving multiple options to your customers, you give off an air of professionalism and also increase the potential to stand out among your competition.

Art and Graphics

If you’re a web designer, illustrator, or similar kind of creative that is passionate about their art-making, you can easily turn your talent into profit and sell some digital art online. You will be able to sell anything from online graphics like logos, backgrounds, and icons to photos, online fonts, and different kinds of illustrations.

Regardless of the type of digital art you’d like to sell, creating an online portfolio will help you easily present your skills to the world and get you one step closer to earning income from your creativity and talent. You can use an online portfolio to provide people with a few notable examples of your work while also giving potential customers all the info they need to get in touch with you. Of course, you can also easily sell your art online using WordPress. If you’re determined to create a full-fledged eCommerce site to sell your digital products, you can also look into some of the great eCommerce site examples available on the web for some inspiration.

Aside from a digital portfolio or eCommerce site, there are also many popular digital marketplaces you can use to upload your digital art for sale, like TemplateMonster, or Etsy. Ultimately, you can even connect some of these marketplaces to your WordPress site. If you’re interested in learning how to integrate Etsy with WordPress to get the most out of both platforms, we’ve also got an article that covers this subject, so make sure to check it out.

Wrapping Things Up

From digital art and e-books to audiobooks and subscriptions, there are virtually no limits to the types of digital products you can market and sell online. You just have to choose the specific field you are interested in, and then you can use all your skills and talent to thrive in the said field and make some well-deserved profit in the process. Also, thanks to the sheer practicality and flexibility the WordPress platform possesses, you will be able to use it to start an online store in no time and showcase all the assets of your digital products in the best way possible. And if you have trouble deciding on the type of digital product you want to present on your WordPress site, then the list of products we’ve mentioned above might be a good starting point for you.

There are many strategies you can use to boost sales on your WooCommerce site, like setting up free shipping or adding coupons, to name only a few. But among all those strategies, using social proof might be easily one of the best ways to attract the attention of potential customers. To be more specific, by adding live WooCommerce notifications to your site, you can easily inform your visitors about any important happenings on your online store and effectively enhance the overall credibility of your business, which can only lead to more sales and conversions in the long run.

So that’s why this time around, we’ve decided to talk more about the effectiveness of using live WooCommerce notifications on your online store. Then, we will also explain how to easily add live sale notifications to your own WooCommerce site, so make sure to keep reading.

What Are Live Sale Notifications and Why You Should Add Them to Your WooCommerce Store?

As we’ve already said in the beginning, using social proof is a great way to increase the online credibility of your business. This can include different types of product reviews, business testimonials, or, in our case, live notifications related to your products.

Now, when it comes to live notifications, these usually represent a popup that lets your visitors know about any new product sales you might have on your site at that very moment. The thing is, these notifications can indicate to users that people are actually buying your products and can also help create a sense of urgency. As a result, many users won’t want to miss an opportunity to make their purchase. So ultimately, they may become motivated to go ahead and buy your products as well.

Aside from letting visitors know about any real-time product purchases, you can also use these WooCommerce notifications to alert them each time a customer leaves a positive rating, subscribes to any of your services, and so on. All these notifications can only contribute to your brand’s reputation and can help you boost your sales and conversions, so we highly recommend that you apply this strategy to your WooCommerce store.

With all that said, let’s see how you can easily set up live WooCommerce notifications on your own eCommerce store with a plugin.

Creating Live Sale WooCommerce Notifications With a Plugin

The plugin we’ll be using to display live sale notifications is Live sales/Fake sales notification (full name “Live sales notification for WooCommerce, Fake sales notification for WooCommerce, Recent sales notification for WooCommerce”). As we can see from its name, it’s a plugin designed to boost sales using notifications even when the store doesn’t really have that many sales to highlight. It gives you two options – to send popup notifications about live original sales and virtual sales, which is a nicer way to say “fake sales.” If you opt for fake sales, your visitors will get notifications that an item has just been sold even though it hasn’t, and it will hopefully prompt them to purchase something themselves, for reasons we discussed above (social proof, FOMO, etc).

Now, if you don’t feel comfortable lying to your visitors and potential customers, you obviously don’t have to. The plugin can be set to display notifications about real sales only. However, bear in mind that if your shop doesn’t have a high frequency of sales on the average, the real sale notifications may not be that useful.

To get started, you first need to download, install and activate the plugin. You can search for it by name in the plugin section of your WordPress dashboard, or download it from wordpress.org and then upload it.

After installing the plugin, it will appear in the left-hand dashboard menu. Before you start using it, you should configure its settings.

The first thing to set is the Product selection. Here you can specify where you want to select products from. For notifications about real orders and sales, select Orders placed. In the Order related options you can specify the status of the order you want to display notifications for. It can be just the completed orders, but it can also include orders pending payment, processing, on hold, completed, even canceled, refunded and failed. Here you’ll also set how many notifications to show per page. The number you set is only for virtual orders. With real ones, the number will represent the number of your actual orders made, and if that number is lower than the number specified in this field, the plugin will not add virtual orders to add up to the number.

Next, if you want to set up virtual (fake orders), select Recently viewed products.

Here you can set the virtual names you want displayed in the notification. These names will represent the customer who “bought” the item. You can also specify the location, so the popup displays, for example, “John from Colorado.”

You can also set the product to show in the popup. In the Select product field, pick one of your items from the dropdown menu or type its name. Again, you can set the virtual name and location, as well as the number of notifications per page.

The last option, Show product from selected category, does a similar job – it lets you pick a category of products to display in the notification.

After you’ve set the product selection, it’s time to configure the popup. Click on Popup setting. The first thing to do is to check if the notifications are enabled (which they are by default, but it doesn’t hurt to double-check. Here you can set whether you want notifications to display on mobile devices too. Many shops keep mobile notifications off as they tend to hinder the user experience on smaller screens.

This section also allows you to set the timing and duration of the popup. We recommend keeping the default settings. The Loop through option, when enabled, makes your first popup appear again once all the other popup notifications have been displayed.

Next up, we have the Design options. Use them to set the position of the popup (left bottom, right bottom, left top, right top), the position of the image, background color for the popup, popup layout (width, image width, borders, spacing, link to product). You can also set the close button or upload your own icon for that purpose. It’s here that you’ll also set the audio alert. Bear in mind, though, that the sound will depend on user permissions and browser settings (many users turn the notification sounds in their browser).

In the Message text field, you can customize the default message of the notification. Note that text in brackets (product link, name, location) shouldn’t be changed since these are pulled automatically. You can customize the text in between or add more text if you like.

Here you can also customize font size, font weight, colors, etc.

And that’s basically it. After leaving most of the default options on and using a dummy product, our live sale notification looks something like this:

Your popup will, of course, be different after you customize everything to your liking and set the product selection the way it suits you best.

In Conclusion

Adding live sale notifications to your WooCommerce site can only help improve the credibility of your online store and boost your sales. We suggest that you try using the Live sales/Fake sales notification plugin to create, customize, and popups to your pages quickly and effortlessly. Not only is the plugin extremely lightweight and easy to use, but it also comes with every option you may need to completely customize the look of your notifications according to your specific needs. We encourage you to go ahead and start the process of making your online business look trustworthy enough to convert your new site visitors into actual buyers.

Without a website, it’s hard for any business to succeed. Building a solid online presence is a must. The customers are going to want to reach you, so it’s essential to keep yourself attainable. Sure, social media might do the trick, but why depend solely on a platform that you don’t have full control over? If you want to be on top of your game, having a website is indispensable.

When it comes to building websites, WordPress is almost everybody’s first choice. To be precise, 42.7% of all websites run on this platform as of 2023. Variety, BBC America, The Walt Disney Company, and many other Fortune 500 companies are all using it. WordPress is powerful, flexible and easy to maintain. And with a little help from the right premium WordPress theme, anyone can create any type of website imaginable.

Now, if your goal is to launch an online shop, this powerful CMS is just what you need. In fact, we’ll give you 7 reasons to use WordPress for your eCommerce website:

1. It’s Free

The platform was developed back in 2003 as a completely free, open-source kind of software. So, even if your budget is tight, you can still launch a great eCommerce store on the cheap.

Once you install your version of WordPress, you have two options. You can use a free WordPress theme to build your website, or, you can purchase a premium one. Our advice would be to go with the premium kind since for a little bit of money, you get tons of beautifully designed features, regular updates that keep your website protected, as well as professional support. Free themes don’t come with that many elements, and you’d probably have to buy multiple plugins to make up for where the theme lacks in functionality. So, choose a premium WordPress theme to your liking and save yourself time, nerves, and ultimately, money.

2. It’s SEO Friendly

Rankings matter, so it’s good to know that WordPress is particularly interesting to search engines. You can customize every single page of your website for SEO, create title tags, meta descriptions, as well as optimized URLs. WordPress themes are also usually fully responsive, and we know just how important mobile-first indexing is. And if the default SEO functionalities aren’t enough, there are some truly amazing SEO plugins for WordPress that you can use to further optimize your pages and ensure even better rankings.

3. It’s Easy to Use

What’s possibly one of the best things about WordPress is the fact that you don’t have to be computer-savvy to use it. Everything is quite intuitive, so even if you don’t have much technical expertise, you should still be able to find your way around the platform without much hassle. Don’t be afraid to explore the admin dashboard and make sure to check out all the options available. Under each option there’s a short text explaining its functionality, which is quite helpful whenever you’re in doubt.

If, at some point, you’re uncertain on how to proceed with something, you can either use WordPress’ extensive documentation or even contact the forum community, which is always willing to help anyone in need. Plus, the WordPress developers are on it, too, so you’ll surely be able to find a solution to any problem. There are also countless WordPress tutorials online, which means you can find answers to probably every question there is in the WordPress universe.

4. It Has a Myriad of Plugins and Themes

If you’d like to augment the functionality of your WordPress website and power the whole thing up, simply pick and install some handy plugins. Depending on what kind of website you’re running, you’ll choose the plugins that match your requirements. The WordPress plugin repository counts over 55k plugins, so there’s definitely something for everyone.

Also, with a plethora of online store WordPress themes to choose from, you can easily craft a website for your needs without being an expert. Finding the one that matches your taste as well as your needs may seem like a hard job, but those are all sweet troubles.

5. It’s Safe and Secure

WordPress is a secure platform. Just as long as you keep it up to date. The team behind WordPress is relentlessly working on improving its security, which is why it’s of utmost importance not to run your website on an outdated version of WordPress. Why become the next cyber-crime victim just because you forgot to click the Update button? Albeit, with so many hackers around, using some extra web-protection certainly can’t hurt. And that’s what you got security plugins for. A good security plugin can significantly mitigate vulnerabilities, if not eliminate them completely. So make sure you add them to your website to ensure no hacker will trespass and your WordPress yard remains safe.

6. eCommerce+WordPress = A Perfect Match

WordPress is a particularly handy solution for eCommerce websites. Taking everything we previously listed into consideration, it’s surely no surprise this platform is everyone’s first pick, especially if they’re running an online store. And thanks to the free WooCommerce plugin, and all the WordPress themes compatible with WooCommerce, you can have an up-and-running online store in a matter of days, if not hours.

So let’s take a closer look at this amazing WordPress plugin and see just how it can help you create the perfect eCommerce website for your business.

The WooCommerce Kingdom

You can download this undisputed leader among eCommerce plugins for free, which, considering how much functionality you get, is pretty neat. The base plugin is very flexible and powerful, and you can beef it up even further with some extensions, but we’ll delve into that a bit later. WooCommerce is so widely used that it takes a whopping 25% of market share for the top 1 million eCommerce websites.

Security

When it comes to digital shopping, one of the biggest concerns is certainly the safety of the information (and the money) users give to eCommerce sites. With so many cyber-attacks happening on a regular, every online shop owner has to think about what they can do make their users feel safe while making purchases. Well, WooCommerce comes with already built-in security measures, and they’ve also partnered with Sucuri (which deals with website security), in order to ensure their code is as secure as possible.

The WooCommerce team is also constantly removing any potential security threats. So as far as you keep the plugin updated, you should be safe. When you first install it, it’d be for the best to immediately set up force SSL (Secure Socket Layer), which ensures an encrypted connection for users whenever they check out. To do this, you first need to obtain an SSL certificate. There are both free and paid versions, but in most cases hosting solutions come with the SSL certificate already included.

To enhance the overall security of your online store, there are several things you can do, as suggested by the WooCommerce developers alone. Some you should take care of as soon as you install the plugin, but there are also a few tips and tricks for the post-launch period. Be sure to check them all out, in order to provide a safe online shopping experience for your customers.

Simplicity

Using WooCommerce is quite simple and intuitive. You don’t need to be an expert nor do you need to know how to code to set it all up. If you’re totally new to eCommerce though, some of the settings may seem a bit intimidating at first. In that case, this guide to WooCommerce will be of great use to you. And before you know it, you’ll come to realize that getting around WooCommerce is not that hard at all. 

It’d be a shame not to use Woo to its full potential. This plugin is fully decked out with functionalities that can help you set up a successful online store, and as you learn the ropes, you’ll understand just how powerful it is. From , to product filtering, adding user reviews, and much more, WooCommerce is pretty much all you need to kick-start a successful online store.

Sell All Types of Products

WooCommerce enables you to sell all kinds of products in your store:

Impressive Features

The list of WooCommerce features is truly extensive and all are super handy for anyone braving the ecommerce waters.

You have the option to add an unlimited number of products to your website, as well as to assign various attributes, tags and categories to each product. This is of great use to your customers as it makes finding the desired product all the easier. Next, filtering and sorting products options allow users to sort products by different criteria, such as popularity, price, newness, rating, and attribute.

Users can also rate products and leave reviews on product pages. We all love to read a few reviews before deciding to proceed with a purchase, don’t we?

Furthermore, you get to add various user account creation options, choose in which instances users will get an email from you, etc. It’s also possible to customize store location with different currency, language, as well as measurement units.

In order to facilitate the shipping process and determine the country-specific tax calculations and currencies, WooCommerce uses a geolocation feature, which is active by default. As for shipping, there are multiple options you can configure. For instance, you can set the shipping zone, choose the shipping method (which include flat rate, free shipping, and local pickup), etc.

When it comes to payments, you can choose between PayPal, credit cards, a direct bank transfer, check payments, or cash on delivery. In addition, there’s the option to issue one-click refunds, and you can also manage customer accounts and guest checkouts.

WooCommerce is compatible with a myriad of stellar ecommerce themes, so you can choose the one whose style and additional functionalities suit you the most. Some of our personal favorites include Tonda, Bazaar, Depot, but there’s a whole lot of other ecommerce themes for you to choose from, so go ahead and take your pick.

WooCommerce Extensions

In order to upgrade the functionality of your online store and add some extra features to it, there are numerous plugins you could use along with WooCommerce. We’ve selected a few that could help you take your shop to a whole new level of awesomeness.

1. WooCommerce Stripe Payment Gateway

This plugin was developed by the WooCommerce team themselves. Basically, as soon as you install WooCommerce, while the setup wizard is still running, you have the option to enable Stripe payments. If you decide to proceed, the WooCommerce Stripe Payment Gateway plugin will be added to the Woo’s base plugin.

With Stripe payments enabled, you can accept debit and credit card payments, even Bitcoins, and other payment methods. The best thing about it is that the customers stay on your page all the time, even during the checkout. This can significantly increase your conversion rates, which is why we think this plugin can do you nothing but good. It’s totally free, and the only time you’re charged is when a transaction has been successfully made. The fee Stripe charges is 2.9% + ¢30.

2. WooCommerce Blocks

This is another feature plugin that you can activate either upon installing or updating WooCommerce (you’ll be able to see it in the plugin list). It’s a great little plugin that helps you put your products on display in an attractive and practical fashion.

It comes with a set of 9 WooCommerce blocks: Products by Attribute Block, Featured Product Block, Products by Tag Block, Hand-Picked Products Block, Best Selling Products Block, Top Rated Products Block, Newest Products Block, On Sale Products Block, and Products by Category Block. Each of these blocks allows you to display your items in different ways, and many customization options are included, too. You can choose the color overlay, insert product description, set text alignment, and much more.

3. WooCommerce Services

WooCommerce Services by Automattic is plugin that can significantly facilitate your job of running an ecommerce business. It covers some truly important services, such as USPS label purchase or printing, automated tax calculation, Stripe account provisioning, and PayPal Checkout payment authorization. Of course, you don’t have to activate all of them, but only the ones that are of use to your business.

The best thing about it is that Automattic hosts all of these services, so there’s no slowing down your store. Furthermore, you can get a discount on the shipping rates for your customers, which is also a great plus. If you don’t have a Stripe account, this plugin will create one for you during the setup. Also, in case you don’t have a PayPal account, you’ll still be able to accept PayPal Checkout payments.

4. WooCommerce PayPal Checkout Payment Gateway

If you want to integrate PayPal into your online store, then WooCommerce PayPal Checkout Payment Gateway should definitely be your number one choice. Customers can complete the process of ordering from the cart, and the checkout itself is finished much faster than usual. As for payment methods, both credit cards and PayPal work just fine.

What’s also great about this plugin is the fact that it enables your users to connect to PayPal with just one mouse click. Also, it comes with some pretty great customization options, so you can set everything from the checkout title, description, brand name, logo and header image, button shape, and much more.

7. Works with other eCommerce Solutions, Too

While WooCommerce and WordPress are definitely besties and a match made in heaven, you are still free to use other eCommerce solutions with your WordPress website. We’re not sure why you’d want to, tho, since WooCommerce is so amazingly comprehensive and feature-rich, but leaving that aside, you can definitely combine WordPress with some other platform for online shops.

Shopify is a tremendously popular eCommerce platform, and probably the biggest contender to the online shopping throne. It is a complex, feature-rich and – what’s very important – managed platform. It’s more expensive than WooCommerce (which is free, as we know) but it does have its virtues.

Now, starting for scratch and opting for a Shopify+WordPress e-commerce integration is probably not the smartest thing to do, as these are two separate platforms. What you can do, however, is connect your already established Shopify store to your WordPress website. You can add a Buy Now button to your pages, or sell your Shopify catalog through your WordPress website.

It’s not just Shopify, though. There are a bunch of very good WooCommerce alternatives you can use, in the form of plugins, to add eCommerce functionality to your site.

Still, we have to be completely honest – none of these alternatives will work as well, as easily and as reliably as WooCommerce.

What’s the Verdict? Is WordPress the Right Choice for an Ecommerce Website?

The answer is – a thousand times yes. You can tweak every element whenever need be, until you’re entirely content with the outcome. Help is at your fingertips at all times, and most importantly, you can give your customers exactly what they expect and want. The number of available eCommerce-specific themes is mind-numbing, and even if you opt for a premium solution, you’ll get a great value for your money, so don’t be scared of spending extra few bucks. Most importantly, WordPress lets you add WooCommerce to your website, and that alone is a reason that should win you over. This combo is surely just what you need for the amounts to start rolling in.

When it comes to WordPress, WooCommerce is a plugin that reigns supreme over any other eCommerce solution. It powers almost 94% of all online shops on WordPress and 26% of top one million eCommerce websites. Shopify, on the other hand, is an immensely popular platform for non-WordPress websites, with a 20% share in the top one million online stores. Both solutions are considered by experts and users alike to be the absolute leaders of the eCommerce platform market, which makes the WooCommerce vs Shopify dilemma quite difficult to resolve.

Difficult or not, that’s what we’re setting out to do in this article, so of you’re wondering which platform to pick for your brand new online shop, stay tuned as we go through some of the basic criteria for choosing between the two:

Ease of Use

Whether a tool is easy to use or not is an inherently subjective matter, as we all possess different levels of competence, inclinations and knowledge. Still, when it comes to picking between WooCommerce and Shopify considering their ease of use, there are a few things to be said.

First of all, it needs to be understood that WooCommerce is an eCommerce plugin for WordPress, while Shopify is a standalone platform. If you’re already proficient in WordPress, adopting WooCommerce will come naturally and seamlessly, so that’s one point in favor of the plugin.

On the other hand, if you’re completely new to running a website, any sort of website, on any platform, then both WooCommerce and Shopify will most likely have a quite similar learning curve, which is definitely not too steep. In short, both platforms are relatively easy to master, especially with some quality guidance.

Now, when it comes to how easy it is to start a shop, Shopify has a significant advantage, since it’s self-hosted. What this means is that if you don’t have a website already, Shopify will take care of everything – the hosting, the domain name, design and functionalities, the whole thing.

With WooCommerce, on the other hand, you won’t have it as easy – you will have to find a hosting provider and install WordPress, set up a website, install the plugin and set up the shop.

So, Shopify wins a point here, especially for users who do not have a website yet and want to set up a shop quickly.

Convenience

The situation is similar when it comes to which platform is more convenient – WooCommerce or Shopify. For most beginners, simply signing up for a plan that includes hosting, eCommerce functionalities and design is much more convenient, and that’s what you get with Shopify. On the other hand, already existing WordPress websites can easily be extended with the WooCommerce plugin to acquire all the necessary eCommerce functionalities – and for free.

In any case, there’s a good reason why both these platforms represent the most popular and widely used eCommerce solutions – in both cases setting up an online shop requires basically zero effort and can be done relatively quickly, allowing users to start selling and generating revenue right away. Of course, simply setting up a shop doesn’t mean the money will automatically come pouring in – there’s still work to do in terms of optimisation, marketing and whatnot. The eCommerce pre-launch checklist is not long, though, and doesn’t take up much time either.

Costs

This is a tricky one. On paper, WordPress is free, and so is WooCommerce. But if you don’t have hosting and domain name, there will be some costs to incur.

Shopify, on the other hand, offers a range of plans that include different feature tiers but all come with hosting taken care of.

In short, if you’re already hosting your website somewhere, WooCommerce is the cheaper solution, since it’s free (at least in its basic form), but if you’re literally starting from scratch, Shopify may be cheaper.

Finally, let’s not forget that it’s quite possible to find a hosting plan that is cheaper than Shopify’s cheapest plan, in which case a WooCommerce store will be your cheapest option.

Features and Functionalities

The eCommerce market is a highly competitive one, so naturally all players strive to offer the highest possible level of features and functionalities in order to survive. Consequently, you can count on both WooCommerce and Shopify to offer the same or similar set of options for adding and customizing product presentations, creating variations, zoom-in options and more. That’s just out of the box. When it comes to extending the features, for instance creating engaging product carousels, lightboxes, additional payment gateways, product reviews, AR features and similar – you will, in both cases, have to use extensions, addons and plugins.

The great thing about WooCommerce, being a WordPress tool, is that there’s a wonderful community around it creating wonderful plugins to help you extend your shop’s functionality. And many of them are free. There are product bundle plugins, plugins for converting your shop to catalog mode, product filter and product badge plugins, and many, many more.

In addition, WooCommerce offers a broad range of official extensions, for everything from merchandising through conversion to shipping, delivery and order fulfillment. But then again, so does Shopify, through its App Store featuring over 200 apps or addons.