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.

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.

When it comes to eCommerce, the demand for effective solutions to unlock sales and engagement potential remains constant. Among such solutions are customer wishlists. Wishlists are by no means a new thing, but a surprising number of online stores still don’t offer this handy little feature that’s designed to boost sales and engagement and can be added in WordPress with absolute ease using one of the WooCommerce wishlist plugins.

Before we check them out, let’s first see why every online store should have the wishlist feature.

Why Are eCommerce Wishlists Important?

Adding the wishlist feature to an online shop benefits both the customers and for the shop owners.

For customers, they offer, above all, a way to make online shopping even more convenient. Wishlists act as a personal shopping cart, saving desired items for later purchase or comparison. They are a great reminder of the products that piqued our interest but that we can’t purchase at the moment.

Wishlists are also great for gift inspiration. They can become curated lists for friends and family seeking perfect presents. On top of that, they can be used for price tracking, as they allow users to monitor price changes and snag deals when the time is right.

And because they’re good for customers, wishlists are consequently good for shop owners, too, as they improve UX and boost engagement. Wishlists nurture leads, reminding users of their desires at the right moment. Also, sharing wishlists on social media expands reach and attracts new customers. Finally, wishlist data reveals popular products and potential promotions.

If your shop runs on WordPress, you’re likely using WooCommerce for the shop functionality. WooCommerce doesn’t include wishlist as the core feature of the plugin, so it’s something you’ll have to add separately, using one of the many WooCommerce wishlist plugins. We checked a great number of these plugins for you and came up with this list of the best contenders:

QODE Wishlist for WooCommerce

We’re kicking off our list with a remarkably well-rounded WooCommerce wishlist plugin from the Qode Interactive workshop: the QODE Wishlist for WooCommerce. The plugin was created after extensive research into what both users and shop admins can benefit from the most when it comes to wishlist functionality and its options. As a result, the plugin offers extensive customization options such as the behavior type for the button, the layout style and position, labels, icons, colors, etc. Admins can also choose to enable the automatic removal of wishlist items that are added to the cart. The wishlist feature is available to all shop visitors, whether they’re logged in or not. Adding the product to a wishlist is as simple as a button click, and the feature is extremely easy to implement.

And this is all just in the free version of the QODE Wishlist. The premium version is among the most advanced plugins of this type that you’ll find on the market. Most notably, it allows users to create multiple wishlists, with adjustable visibility – they can be public, private or accessible only via a link.

Another impressive feature is the wishlist product count, showing how many times an item has been added to a wishlist, which is useful for building hype.

Rich customization options cover two distinct layouts for single wishlists – table and gallery. These can feature a sorting switcher, related products, total product amounts, etc. Two layouts – gallery and modern – are also available for pages with multiple lists. The plugin includes two widgets for quick access to the wishlist – as a sidebar or as a dropdown, both with advanced customization options. Another premium feature is the choice between requiring the login for creating wishlists or not.

Finally, QODE Wishlist for WooCommerce includes marketing features like promotional email campaigns (on sale, back in stock, etc) and the “Ask for Estimate” forms (useful if you want to put the shop in catalog mode and decide to hide the prices) , as well as dashboard analytic data on conversions.

The single site price of this remarkable plugin is currently $89.

WPC Smart Wishlist for WooCommerce

Those looking for a more straightforward and stripped-down wishlist plugin can check out WPC Smart Wishlist for WooCommerce. It’s easy to configure and manage and comes with some neat options for customizing the wishlist and the button. You can opt for an additional action button and link classes, enable or disable auto removal from the wishlist once the item is added to cart and set categories that allow the wishlist button.

As for visual customization, users can set colors for the wishlist popup, define the position of the wishlist icon on archive and single pages, edit the button or link text, and so on. And when the user navigates away from the page, you can set it to trigger the wishlist popup.

All these come with the free version, and if you want to upgrade, the premium one includes multiple wishlists per user, the option to add notes to each product, advanced customization to match the style of the wishlist with the rest of your website, and lifetime dedicated support. The premium plugin currently costs $34 for the single site license.

TI WooCommerce Wishlist

If popularity is your main criterion when choosing a plugin, you will want to check out TI WooCommerce Wishlist, which currently has more than 100,000 active installations for the free version. It’s a solid plugin that adds the wishlist functionality and features a handy setup wizard to guide you through the process. It comes with predefined icons for the “Add to wishlist” button but it also allows you to upload your own. Plus, you can define the position of the button on product pages or use a shortcode to add it anywhere on your pages. The free version also has the storewide stats for each product added to a wishlist, as well as a wishlist products counter.

The appearance of the wishlist is completely customizable. The plugin is translation-ready and supports custom CSS styles.

The premium version supports multiple wishlists per user, product sorting within the wishlist using drag and drop, as well as different wishlist privacy settings, automatically calculated total price, promotional emails, predefined skins and product analytics. The premium version currently costs $79/year for a single site, which makes it one of the costlier plugins of this kind.

WishSuite

WishSuite is a completely free WooCommerce wishlist plugin that provides an easy and intuitive way to create wishlist pages and add wishlist buttons to products. It generates a shortcode so you can place the wishlist button anywhere you want on your website. After a product on the wishlist is added to the cart, the product is automatically removed. The button on product pages or catalog can be added to various positions, for example before or after the cart button, or before or after the price.

Customization options are numerous and include customizable text, customizable fields (you can remove the fields you don’t want, like price, quantity, etc) and options to set fields heading text, empty field text and so on. As for styling, you can set the button style, icon type, table style, added button type and so on.

Premmerce Wishlist for WooCommerce

Another free and relatively new solution for shop owners on a budget is Premmerce Wishlist for WooCommerce. It’s not the most feature-rich option out there, but it’s easy to use and, being completely free, represents a great solution for small shops that are just starting out. One of the features that sets it apart from many other plugins of this kind is the ability to view which items the customers have added to their wishlists. This information can be used for targeting with promotional emails or deals, for upselling, cross-selling, etc.

The wishlists can be shared via URL and the wishlist can be displayed as a widget. The plugin is compatible with most WordPress themes and also with Elementor, AIOSEO, RankMath, Polylang and WPML.

My Wish List for WooCommerce

If you prefer official WooCommerce extensions, My Wish List for WooCommerce is a popular choice. It allows users, registered or not, to add products to their wishlist. Registered users can view their wishlist on their My Accounts page. The extension comes with shortcode support for adding the wishlist anywhere on the pages for non-registered users. The extension uses Ajax for seamless adding and removal of the items from the wishlist. As for admin controls, you can see lists of most frequently added products and sort them from least to most added ones, thus gaining valuable insights. The extension currently costs $29/year.

WooCommerce Wishlists

WooCommerce Wishlists is a similar solution to the previous one – a premium Woo extension for adding wishlists to your shop. However, unlike My Wish List for WooCommerce, this one allows both registered and unregistered users to create unlimited wishlists in your online store. Guest wishlists are kept for 30 days, which is essentially the cookie lifetime. Of course, if the user deletes their cookies before that, the wishlist will be deleted too.

Wishlists can be personal or shared and their number is unlimited. Customers have full privacy control and the lists are easily shared on social media or through email, with a personalized message. The extension supports grouped and variable products.

The button is customizable in terms of icons and text. You can upload your own icon and set the text you like. The extension inherits the theme style for button and other elements. It adds its own settings tab in WooCommerce admin, from which colors, button appearance and everything else can easily be adjusted.

This premium extension is a bit pricier and costs $89/year.

Wrapping It Up

WooCommerce wishlist plugins and extensions are the safest, quickest, and most beginner-friendly way to provide your customers with the ability to create lists of their desired products. As we saw, the benefits of having the wishlist feature in your shop are multiple, ranging from better engagement and customer retention to data insights, improved targeting and, ultimately, more sales. If there’s a WooCommerce wishlist plugin that you like but we didn’t mention in this list, do let us know in the comments below – we’re always updating our lists and we’d love your feedback!

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!

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.

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.

You could say that the WooCommerce vs Shopify game is tied when it comes to features and functionalities. However, note that if you’re using a premium WordPress eCommerce theme for your WooCommerce shop, you will probably be able to enjoy some premium, advanced eCommerce features that come with the theme, and that you won’t even have to use that many plugins and extensions as the functionalities will already be included.

Design Aspects

Good shop design is incredibly important for reaching your sales benchmarks. It’s not just about the aesthetics – when done well, eCommerce design can gently and unobtrusively push your visitors towards the cart and checkout pages, by creating an enjoyable, streamlined shopping experience that keeps your customers coming back.

Of course, you don’t have to design your shop by yourself. You can, if you want, but if you don’t have the time or the resources, you can simply use one of the many themes that both platforms offer. We’ve already mentioned premium WordPress themes for online stores earlier. These themes can be generalized or specialized in niches, such as fashion store themes or tech shops.

As for Shopify, the platform also sports a nice range of well-designed themes, albeit in a much smaller number. If you really want to invest in your shop’s design, you can also opt for a premium Shopify theme, but bear in mind that these can be quite expensive, much more than what we’re used to with WordPress themes.

Note that, with WooCommerce, the shop basically inherits the design from the main WordPress theme installed on the website. However, the themes can usually be customized down to the tiniest detail, which gives you a lot of control over the visual aspects of the shop.

Finally, we have to admit to being partial on this one and to believing that WordPress themes are unsurpassable when it comes to design and aesthetics, so WooCommerce wins a point here.

SEO Aspects

We have to say right away that when it comes to SEO, WordPress is definitely superior to any other site builder or platform. And by extension, so is WooCommerce, when it comes to shop builders. First of all, it’s optimized out of the box. You can add meta descriptions to your products to increase their performance in search engines, and you can optimize the titles, subtitles and whatnot. In addition, there are tons of excellent plugins for different SEO functions, many of which are free. We recommend either Yoast or RankMath, as these plugins have the best track record so far and are very intuitive and beginner-friendly. Optimizing your online store is an absolute must and fortunately, with proper guidance, it doesn’t require much effort or any special expertise.

Shopify, on the other hand, also includes some elements of SEO in its core, but not much – meta descriptions and titles, and that’s about it. There are, of course, tools in the Shopify App Store that can help with SEO, but we have to say their number is much lower compared to WooCommerce.

The verdict here would have to be that if you want to make sure your SEO game is on point, WooCommerce is your best bet.

Marketing Tools

Out of the box, Shopify offers integrated marketing tools to help you promote your business. Blogging tools are there for content marketing, but that’s pretty basic considering almost any website on any platform is equipped with blogging features. However, Shopify comes with certain social media marketing tools to help you automate your Meta advertising, complete with targeting and segmentation features. It also features analytics and marketing dashboard tools. Another built-in feature is integration with major marketplaces and channels, like Amazon and eBay.

WooCommerce doesn’t have all these features built in. Once again, should you need any particular marketing tools, you will need to add them through extensions, some of which are free, but most are paid.

Therefore, this is a field where Shopify seems to take home extra points, although it should be said that the best marketing tools around are generally third-party ones you’d have to integrate anyway.

Help and Support

Both WooCommerce and Shopify have decent to very good customer support systems. The official WooCommerce documentation page is an excellent, well-organized resource, and there’s also a handy WooCommerce New Store Guide for those just starting out. WooCommerce being an incredibly popular eCommerce platform, there’s a lot of support forums and communities you can consult for guidance.

Shopify offers perhaps even more channels for reaching out. There’s the official help center, a YouTube channel with useful video tutorials, the Shopify Learn portal with free courses, as well as the official Shopify Community forum.

Security Features

When you’re handling payments, personal customer data and other sensitive information, you obviously want to make your website as secure as possible.

Being a ready-made solution that involves hosting, Shopify also made sure to offer some security features out of the box, primarily the SSL certificate. You don’t get that with WooCommerce, but you can add one very easily, and for free. In addition, there are several excellent SSL plugins you can use.

But eCommerce security doesn’t end with an SSL certificate. In fact, there’s a whole host of steps you can and should take to make sure your transactions are secure and your website doesn’t pose an easy target for hackers. And although WooCommerce does have some known vulnerabilities, there are plenty of easy ways to fix them.

Payment and Shipping Features

Both Shopify and WooCommerce support a wide range of payment gateways. WooCommerce supports Stripe, PayPal, Authorize.Net, as well as PayPence and several other regional payment gateways. However, “supports” doesn’t mean “includes out of the box,” which means that for certain payment gateways, you will need to purchase an extension.

Shopify, on the other hand, has its own bespoke gateway that comes out of the box and doesn’t require any setup. It also supports a range of other gateways but there’s a catch – only the Shopify Payments (the native gateway) comes with zero fees. You will have to pay additional fees if you want to use other gateways, which we must say is a significant downside.

As for the shipping, the two platforms don’t lack in functionalities. They both support international shipping, however for the best possible experience and smooth running of your business, you may be required to install some addons or plugins. Shopify integrates with most major carriers, such as FedEx, USPS, UPS and DHL, and you get that out of the box. This is not the case with WooCommerce, where you have to resort to plugins, some of which are paid.

Finally, if you want to adopt the dropshipping model, WooCommerce is a great platform to do so, as it has some excellent extensions for dropshipping, Amazon affiliation, stock and inventory management and so on, as well as plugins for a seamless integration with AliExpress.

Shopify offers similar possibilities for dropshipping, with a designated plugin for AliExpress and other platforms.

Inventory Management

Both WooCommerce and Shopify offer a stack of features for managing your inventory. If you’re already familiar with WordPress, you’ll be happy to find the usual editor interface in the WooCommerce backend, where you can add new products and assign their attributes and other details (SKU, category, images, etc) like you would create a new post. Shopify also allows for all the essential inventory management tasks, such as generating reports, setting up alerts, sorting the products and so on – out of the box. However, WooCommerce wins a point here as it does not have a hard cap on the number of variations you can set for each product (color, size, etc). Shopify only allows for 100 variations, and three total options per product. If you need more, you’ll have to get a special extension for that.

Final Verdict

Now that we have reviewed some of the most important aspects of starting and running an online shop, let’s see how the two platforms compare and who wins the WooCommerce vs Shopify dilemma.

The answer is, unfortunately, somewhat anticlimactic – there is no clear winner here. Which of the two platforms will be better for your particular shop depends on the type of shop you intend on running, and on several other factors.

In short, if you’re already using WordPress or are familiar with it, WooCommerce should be your platform of choice. You will have an easy time setting everything up and a terrific selection of plugins (many of which are free) to extend the functionality of your shop and run your business smoother. Plus, the amazing eCommerce themes for WordPress will help you awe and woo your visitors. The fact that both WordPress and WooCommerce (as well as some of the specialized or multipurpose themes, like our own Qi Theme) are free doesn’t hurt either.

Shopify, on the other hand, may be simpler for those with no hosting or domain name. It is a more complete turnkey solution, although we feel that it lacks some of the smoothness and convenience that come with WooCommerce.

In short – you won’t be wrong to choose either of the two. Just go through the list and pick the one that fits your current resources and your future needs better.

While it’s true that pricing represents one of the key components of most online stores, there are some specific occasions when it might be better to hide the prices from your customers. If this is something you feel would be a good call for your WooCommerce shop, you’re in the right place. We’re showing you a couple of ways to hide prices, but before we get into that, let’s go through a couple of situations where hiding prices would make sense.

Why Hide Prices in WooCommerce?

Say that you own a wholesale store that wants to show prices only to wholesale customers who are verified and hide them from other, regular buyers. For this, you would need a shop layout that doesn’t display prices by default.

Another scenario is that you may want to use your website to boost the online visibility of your brick-and-mortar business by displaying a list of products that can’t be purchased online – only at your physical location. While this may not be a great idea for retailers of any kind (after all, you want people to buy as much as possible, and adding eCommerce to your website would do just that), it can be a good call for brands that are built upon specific aesthetics, traditional values or special sort of hype.

Also, just like certain high-end stores prefer not to have a price tag on the products displayed in the shop window (so people really have to enter the store to learn the price), many luxury brands may prefer to use the same strategy on their site and instead put up a message such as “price upon request”.

Another situation where hiding prices would make sense is if you’re running a members-only website and want to turn your entire WooCommerce store into an online catalog using a catalog mode plugin. If you want, you can even make your product information available to the registered customers only. These are just some of the cases in which you might want to consider hiding the prices on your WooCommerce store.

Now, WooCommerce does not come with a built-in option of removing prices. Prices are shown by default. Fortunately, there are a couple of rather easy workarounds that can be applied to individual product pages, shop page and even the specific product categories.

Without further ado, here are a few different ways in which you can hide prices on your WooCommerce-powered site. First, we will show you how to hide regular prices on your individual (and all) products, as well as how to hide wholesale prices using two different plugins. Then, if you’re looking for an even more customized approach, we will also share a few different code snippets you can use to hide prices manually.

Note that if you use QODE Wishlist for WooCommerce you can not only add the ever-useful wishlist functionality to your shop but you can also add the “Ask for Estimate” button if you decide to hide your prices. Now, back to our subject, here’s what we will cover:

Hiding Prices in WooCommerce Using the Change Price Title for WooCommerce Plugin

To hide prices on individual and/or all products on your WooCommerce store, we recommend using the plugin called Change Price Title for WooCommerce. As its name suggests, this plugin will also allow you to change the price title for all and individual products (for example, you can change it to be called something like “From $50”). There is also the option that will allow you to hide price titles on individual or all product pages, as well as other WooCommerce pages (like Shop).

You should install the plugin and activate it first. Then, to hide the prices for all products, go to WooCommerce >> WooCommerce Price Title. Mark the option called Hide Price Title and click on Save Changes.

You can also mark the option named “Apply Above Options On All WooCommerce Pages” to apply all the settings above on other WooCommerce pages, such as your Shop page.

To hide prices on individual products, access Products >> All Products and then go to the edit of the product you wish to hide the price for.

Scroll down to the Product data meta box and hit the Advanced tab. Once there, you will see the option called “Hide Price?”

Once you mark this option and hit the Update button, the price of your product will be hidden.

Also, by marking the option called “Applicable on All WooCommerce Pages”, your prices will be hidden on other product pages as well, including your Shop page.

Hiding Prices in WooCommerce Using the WooCommerce Wholesale Prices Plugin

If you own a wholesale store or B2B business, then we recommend using the plugin called WooCommerce Wholesale Prices. This particular plugin will allow you to easily show or hide your wholesale prices and also change user accounts to the new wholesale user role so that they can view the wholesale price once they log in.

If you want to have access to more advanced features (such as the ability to create unlimited wholesale user roles and restrict product visibility to specific user roles, among others), you can upgrade to the premium version of the plugin (starting at $49.50 a year for a single site).

After installing and activating the plugin, you should head to WooCommerce >> Settings and click on the Wholesale Prices tab.

Then, select the Price tab and mark the option called “Hide Price and Add to Cart button”. This will essentially hide the wholesale prices from the Add to Cart page for all users that aren’t logged in on your site.

Hit the Save Changes button located at the bottom of the page when you’re done.

Hiding Prices in WooCommerce Manually Using Code

If you’re familiar with coding and wish to have even more options at your disposal, you can always hide prices in WooCommerce manually. This can be done by going to Appearance >> Theme Editor and then inserting your code into the functions.php file.

Alternatively, if you don’t want to edit your theme file directly, you can always add your custom code using a plugin like Code Snippets instead.

To hide the prices on all your products, simply add this code into your theme’s function.php file:

add_filter( 'woocommerce_get_price_html', 'remove_price');
function remove_price($price){ 
return ;
}

In case you wish to hide all the prices for other users except for the admin, then you need to insert the following:

add_filter( 'woocommerce_get_price_html', 'remove_price');
function remove_price($price){ 
if ( is_admin() ) return $price; 
return ;
}

If you wish to hide the prices on your Shop page, insert the following code snippet:

add_filter( 'woocommerce_after_shop_loop_item_title', 'remove_woocommerce_loop_price', 2 ); 
function remove_woocommerce_loop_price() { 
if( ! is_shop() ) return; // Hide prices only on shop page 
remove_action( 'woocommerce_after_shop_loop_item_title', 'woocommerce_template_loop_price', 10 ); 
}

Now, if you want to hide prices from specific products, you can easily do so using the following code:

add_filter( 'woocommerce_get_price_html', 'hide_price_product_ids', 10, 2 ); 
function hide_price_product_ids( $price, $product ) {
$hide_for_products = array( 2490 );
if ( in_array( $product->get_id(), $hide_for_products ) ) {
return;
}
else{ 
return $price; // Return price for the all the other products
}
}

Say that you want to hide the prices for the products that belong to a specific category. In that case, here’s the code that should do the trick for you:

add_filter( 'woocommerce_get_price_html','hide_price_on_taxonomy');
function hide_price_on_taxonomy( $price) {
global $product;
$hide_for_categories = array( 'shirts' ); // Hide for these category slugs / IDs
if ( has_term( $hide_for_categories, 'product_cat', $product->get_id() ) ) { // Don't show price when it's in one of the categories
$price= '';
} 
return $price; // Return original price 
}

You should change the ‘shirts’ part to your particular category name (i.e. the category of the products whose pricing you wish to hide). Of course, if you want, you can insert more than one category here – just make sure to separate different categories by commas (eg. ‘shirts’, ‘pants’).

Wrapping Things Up

Whether you own a wholesale business, a membership-only site, or a traditional brick-and-mortar store and want to showcase your products without selling them online, hiding your prices in WooCommerce might be the perfect solution for you. The two plugins we’ve mentioned above will do a great job of hiding the prices of your products, though if you’re running a wholesale business, we recommend installing and using the second (WooCommerce Wholesale Prices) plugin. And if you know how to code, you’ll be happy to hear that you can use different code snippets to hide prices for almost any area of your site, including your shop page, specific products, and even specific categories. No matter which method you opt for, just make sure to follow our instructions carefully and you’ll be able to effectively hide prices on your WooCommerce products in no time.

The open-source e-commerce arena has always been an exciting one, with WooCommerce and Shopify as the main players. Right now, WooCommerce is leading the game with a 23% share in the top one million e-commerce websites. With a rich, albeit a bit scattered ecosystem of extensions, plugins and themes, WooCommerce has been steadily providing the users with basically any e-commerce functionality they could need – except for managed hosting. But now, that’s changed too, with the launch of Automattic’s new hosted e-commerce platform, Woo Express. Read on about:

What is Woo Express?

With the launch of the new platform, Automattic sets out to create the one-stop-shop for WooCommerce-based online stores. Woo Express essentially has everything that’s required for quickly and easily building a fully functional online shop. Users get everything they need – from managed hosting to frontend solutions, and everything in between.

Until now, if you wanted to use WooCommerce for your store, you had to take care of the hosting yourself, via a third-party provider. WooCommerce is a WordPress e-commerce plugin, and it needs a hosted website to build upon.

Woo Express uses the WordPress.com infrastructure (remember that WordPress.com and WordPress.org are two very different things) and since it is a platform that comes with hosting, the new e-commerce solution comes with hosting, too.

In addition to hosting and the e-commerce functionalities, WooExpress users also get a block-based site editor and default theme. WooCommerce has been making efforts to switch to block editing for a while and making the block-based theme a default, they’re taking ultimate steps in that direction.

Block Editing Out of the Box

Tsubaki default Woo Express theme

Block editing, generally perceived as a better, more progressive way of building websites, allows users to set up an online shop faster and with more ease, as all the elements they need can be stacked, mixed and matched to fit the branding and the purpose of the site.

Woo Express aims to deliver all the functionalities and features in form of blocks – for instance cart and checkout blocks – building upon the already extensive range of WooCommerce blocks for various purposes. Many of them will come out of the box, which will reduce the need for adding extensions and plugins.

As for the themes, in addition to the default one, Automattic has already released several other block-based themes for Woo Express specifically. However, the users will not be limited to these themes alone, since users will also be able to install any WooCommerce theme around, not just the ones designed for the hosting plan.

Managed Hosting Options and Pricing

The main idea behind Woo Express is to provide merchants with a turnkey solution that comes with hosting already taken care of, much like the websites built on WordPress.com.

However, while WordPress.com is the first partner to the newly launched product, it appears it won’t remain the only one. The WordPress and WooCommerce hosting ecosystem is a rich one and there are plenty of providers that will surely like to get on board. For now, however, WordPress.com hosting is the only available option.

The issue that probably interests potential users the most is the pricing, affordability and how Woo Express compares to other hosting solutions.

Currently, Woo Express comes in two plans:

The Essential plan should be enough to get a small online shop up and running. It includes, of course, the WooCommerce platform, unlimited staff accounts, live chat and email support, built-in payment processing, themes, Google and social media advertising tools, automatic backups, advanced security scans, order tracking, live shipping rates, automated tax calculation, custom domain, SSL certificate and 50GB storage for product media.

The Performance plan includes all that plus automated cart recovery, discounted shipping rates, upselling and cross-selling functionalities, event-based email marketing, personalized product bundles, automated back-in-stock notifications, min/max quantities per order, customizable product kits, and 200GB storage for product media.

Compared to GoDaddy’s cheapest plans, Woo Express is a bit more expensive, but on the other hand it’s cheaper than mid and premium plans. Bluehost definitely has cheaper plans, but they are just hosting plans, while Woo Express comes with everything we mentioned above, making it a better choice for those looking for an all-around e-commerce solution.

Wrapping It Up

The new WooCommerce managed hosting product, Woo Express, is still in its early days (it was launched in March 2023) so it’s hard to say how it’ll do and how it’ll fare against other e-commerce solutions, hosted or not.

If you’re yet to start your very first online shop, you might as well give it a go. You will have hosting taken care of, and you will obviously have the powerful WooCommerce solutions for setting up and managing an online shop. Early adopters, make sure to let us know how you feel about Woo Express!

Whether you’re running a WordPress online shop and you want to add Venmo as a payment method, or you’re looking for an easy way to allow your visitors to send you money through your website, today you’re about to learn how to accept Venmo in WordPress.

Here’s what we’ll discuss:

How Does Venmo Work?

Venmo is a mobile payment service that aims to simplify money transfers between users. With this service, anyone (with a Venmo account) can send and receive money and because of this, it has become a service of choice for younger demographics. People mostly use Venmo to send and receive smaller sums of money (the average transaction is $60), for loans between friends and family, for splitting bills and making other “unofficial” transactions.

The only downside is that Venmo is currently limited only to the US-based users.

The way it works is very simple. You download the Venmo app and sign up for an account. Then, you link your Venmo account to your bank account or credit card. Next, you find friends who also use Venmo by syncing your contacts or via your Facebook account. You can only send and receive money to and from people who also have Venmo.

To send money, simply enter the amount you want to send, select the recipient, and add a description of the payment. You can also request money from other users.

When someone sends you money on Venmo, the funds will be added to your Venmo balance. You can then transfer the funds to your bank account or keep them in your Venmo balance to use for future payments.

Venmo doesn’t charge any fees for standard transactions, but does have fees for transactions made with credit cards and for electronic withdrawal via instant transfer.

Why Add Venmo to Your WordPress Site?

There are a couple of situations in which you may want to have your WordPress accept Venmo. The most obvious one is if you want to add it as a payment method in your WooCommerce shop. In addition to credit and debit cards, you should always consider offering other payment methods to accommodate the maximum possible number of users. Most commonly, WordPress merchants add a PayPal button since this is a widely popular payment method. Adding Stripe is another great way to increase your shop conversions. For freelancers, there are a number of PayPal alternatives to use in case you don’t want to use this particular method. By adding Venmo to this roster you’re allowing even more users to complete purchases through your shop and this can only be beneficial for your business bottom line.

Another situation in which you may want to add Venmo to WordPress is if you want to set up some form of donation system for your website. This can work for websites selling NFTs, for blogs with partially or completely gatewayed content, and so on. If you have a following and you want to give them a chance to support your work via occasional donations or payments, Venmo can be a great solution.

Generally speaking, adding Venmo is a smart call. However, it’s not for everyone, unfortunately. If you don’t have a considerable US-based visitor demographic, Venmo is probably not for you. Still, it being basically free, you don’t have anything to lose by having your WordPress accept Venmo.

Now, let’s see how you can set it all up. We’ll cover two plugin methods and you will decide which one works better for you.

Note: If your intention is to use Venmo as a way to collect donations, remember that Venmo is now a PayPal company and that if you’re already using PayPal for your donations, for instance using the GiveWP plugin, you can now simply enable Venmo payments as well.

Adding Venmo with a Plugin: Method 1

For WooCommerce shops, we recommend using a plugin called Checkout with Venmo on WooCommerce. This is a plugin designed specifically for adding Venmo to WordPress (to the WooCommerce checkout page). It has a five-star rating and 2,000+ active installations.

There are two ways you can set up Venmo with this plugin. The Venmo Link option will place a link to your Venmo username. The user follows the link to Venmo and makes a payment there, after which they can proceed to place an order through your website.

The other option is the official PayPal integration for which you will need a PayPal business developer account.

Since Venmo Link is a simpler and more convenient option, it’s the one we will use.

After installing and activating the plugin the usual way, you will notice a couple of new items in your Dashboard menu, and in the WooCommerce submenu.

Go to WooCommerce>Venmo Link, which will take you to the Payments section. Here, the first thing to do is enable Venbo by toggling the appropriate switch.

If you don’t already have a Venmo account, you can click on the Test link next to the toggle which will take you to the account creation page.

Now, go through the fields and fill them with your info: checkout title, phone number, name and email, and so on.

There’s also a number of pro features underneath this section, but since we’re covering the most convenient way to have WordPress accept Venmo, we’ll skip them. If you opt for the paid version of the plugin, you should make sure to go through all the options and set them to your liking.

These include stock updating only upon receiving the payment confirmation, thank you note, checkout notice, enabling or disabling automatic order processing, and so on.

After you’re done here, all you need to do is click on Save Changes and that’s it – you have now successfully connected your website to your Venmo account and you can start sending and receiving payments.

Adding Venmo with a Plugin: Method 2

Another plugin you can use for this purpose is the Payment Plugins Braintree for WooCommerce. It is particularly recommended to users looking for an easy way to integrate several payment methods into their Woo-powered shop. With a single plugin, you can add PayPal, ApplePay, Google Pay, credit cards, local payment options and, of course, Venmo.

We’ll assume you already have your Venmo account in place, so we’ll proceed to setting up the plugin. After installing and activating the plugin, you will see a new Dashboard menu item called Braintree Gateway. Open that item and click on Settings.

Here you’ll find a selection of available payment gateways. Find the Venmo tab and click on it.

First, toggle the switch to enable Venmo payments.

Here you will also enter the title text for your Venmo payment gateway, add a description and set how you want your payment method to display – for instance, you can have it say Venmo – Your User Name.

Following this, you can pick your Venmo icon, and set the order prefix and suffix. These are added to the WooCommerce order ID, which can be useful in case you want to track which purchases were made through Venmo, and which through other gateways you’re using.

The Order Status menu refers to the status the orders will have once a visitor completes a Venmo payment. If you leave it at Default, which is the recommended setting for most users, the order will be marked as Processing for orders that need to be shipped, and Completed for virtual products that only require downloading. The default setting mirrors the WooCommerce order status settings and is therefore the recommended one.

The Add Line Items option allows you to include all order line items in the transaction.

As for the Transaction Type, you can pick between Capture and Authorize. The first option means that your client’s funds are captured immediately upon checkout. With the Authorize option, you will need to capture the charge on the Admin Order page, and the funds will be on hold until you do.

After you’ve set everything the way you want, simply click on Save changes.

And with that, you’ve added Venmo as a payment method in your shop.

Wrapping It Up

Basically, enabling Venmo payment for your WordPress website means either adding it as a payment method at WooCommerce checkout, or adding a Venmo option for your PayPal-based donations.

Either way, Venmo can be added to WordPress quite easily, as we saw. If this payment method works for you – if you’re based in the US and expect transactions from US-based visitors – there’s no reason why you shouldn’t add Venmo to your roster of available payment methods. After all, we’re all spoilt for choice and your visitors will be glad they have another option at their disposal.

Every now and then we hear of an eCommerce giant falling victim to some form of fraud. Most commonly, it’s payment fraud, which means someone making an unauthorized transaction or a purchase.

While today we have many tools and mechanisms that protect online shops from fraud, no one should think they’re immune to this sort of trouble. Fraudsters keep coming up with new methods, and the only way to prevent them from stealing what isn’t theirs is to keep your shop well protected, secure and updated.

In this article, we’re going to look into different types of fraud, specifically WooCommerce payment fraud, and go through some tips that will help you make your shop safer and more secure for you and your customers.

The Most Common Types of Fraud

As a decent person, you can’t possibly know how frauds are effectuated and what sorts of frauds there are, even. However, understanding various types of fraud is the first step in making sure it doesn’t happen to you or your WooCommerce-powered store.

Classic Credit Card Fraud

The oldest trick in the book is not even a trick – it’s simply that someone somehow gained access to a credit card number and the credentials. These may have been purchased through the dark web or the card may be stolen. Either way, the fraudster completes unauthorized purchases until the fraud is discovered and the card is blocked.

The tricky part for the fraudster can be the delivery, but these obstacles are usually solved by directing the goods to a reshipper or using residential proxies.

These days, many banks and credit card providers use two-factor authentication to prevent classic fraud. With this sort of mechanism, the payment needs to be confirmed, for instance via a token or a PIN code that is sent via sms.

Credit Card Testing

Card testing or card cracking is when a fraudster completes a few smaller purchases to make sure the card is valid and to learn what the limit is. For this, they often use websites with donation forms or websites where you can set the payable amount yourself. Oftentimes, however, they make purchases via eCommerce websites that sell cheap products. After these transactions are completed successfully, the fraudster can move on to making more considerable purchases or withdrawals.

Friendly Fraud

Despite its name, there’s nothing friendly about the friendly fraud. It’s not having your card abused by a friend, either. Also known as chargeback fraud, friendly fraud is a situation in which a fraudster makes a seemingly legitimate (but essentially false) claim in order to receive a chargeback or a refund. He may say, for instance, that the goods never arrived (although they did) or that he sent the goods back (which he didn’t). This constitutes a basis for a chargeback, in which case the bank or the credit card network refund the sum to the fraudster, and the eCommerce business through which the purchase was completed still has to pay the same amount to the bank.

Note that with this method the fraudster uses his or her own credit card – there’s no need to use stolen card details to complete the fraud.

Account Takeover

When someone gains control over a legitimate eCommerce customer account, we call that account takeover (ATO) fraud. The fraudster can gain access through various methods, including phishing emails, buying credit card details on dark web, credential stuffing or brute force attacks.

These sorts of fraud can be particularly harmful to your WooCommerce shop as the customers may lose trust in your ability to protect their sensitive information.

Triangulation Fraud

This is a more complex method of fraud that involves three parties – a fraudster, an actual shopper and a legitimate eCommerce shop.

The basis for this fraud is a fake storefront on an eCommerce platform or a marketplace like Amazon. The fraudster sets the fake shop up and offers high-demand products usually at prices lower than normal. A customer purchases a product and the fraudster intercepts their credit card details which he can then use to make unauthorized purchases.

But that’s not all. The fraudster uses the stolen card to buy the same product with another merchant (a real one) and sends it to the customer who originally bought it. At first, the customer doesn’t suspect anything since they got the product they purchased. But the stolen card is charged twice, and for a higher price too, so the customer reports the issue and raises a dispute against the legitimate merchant. The merchant then has to issue a chargeback, plus the penalty fee. If this fraud isn’t discovered soon, it can lead to significant losses for the merchant.

There are other types of fraud as well, for instance the fake refund, goods interception, and so on, but they are all based around the same or similar principles.

Let’s now check out some things you can put in place in order to prevent WooCommerce fraud in your own store.

Tips for Preventing WooCommerce Fraud

When it comes to eCommerce fraud, prevention is worth a thousand times more than any measure you can implement to minimize the damage after the fact. Now, you can’t possibly make your shop 100% safe and secure. No one can. But there sure are some very efficient ways to make sure the risk is reduced to minimum. Let’s check them out:

Perform Regular Shop Audits

A WooCommerce audit means looking for defects and holes in your system before the fraudsters find them and use them. We’ll be covering the subject of WooCommerce audits in more detail soon, until then, here are some basics (some of which we’ve talked about in our guide to keeping your WooCommerce shop secure):

Require CVV/CVC Number for All Payments

CVV/CVC stands for Card Verification Value/Code (depending on the card issuer) and it’s the three- or four-digit number you’ll find on the back of any credit card. It serves as part of the two-factor authentication. These days, it’s common practice to make this piece of data a requirement for all online transactions, since only the person holding the actual card can know the CVV/CVC number.

Implement a Strong Login Process

A weak password is also the weakest link in the eCommerce security chain. It may be tricky to get the password requirements right, since a weak password will be easy to break and a too complex one may cause the users to forget it and to have it written down somewhere where it’s not safe.

Instead of requiring a password with nine characters minimum, special characters and a combination of upper and lowercase (which, don’t get us wrong, is an excellent and important practice), you can make your login stronger and more resilient by adding a second factor. Two-factor authentication for WordPress can be introduced in several ways and it’s a great way to add an extra layer of security to your site.

Use HTTPS

If you’re only just starting your WooCommerce business, this abbreviation may not mean much to you. But it stands for a very important element of website security and you should make sure to have it in your shop instead of just HTTP.

HTTPS is a combination of Hypertext Transfer Protocol and SSL/TLS (Secure Socket Layer/Transport Layer Security). It’s a way for you to make sure all sensitive info, like passwords, credit card details and account details) that are transferred through your website are encrypted and therefore secured. As such, HTTPS is essential for any eCommerce website.

To learn how to add HTTPS to your shop, check out our detailed guide.

Make Sure Shipping Addresses Are Valid

Since a lot of eCommerce frauds are committed using invalid or non-existent shipping addresses, one of the ways to keep your shop secure is to always check the addresses to make sure they’re legitimate.

In addition, you may want to disable shipping to anonymous locations, virtual addresses and PO boxes, as these are commonly used by fraudsters looking to remain anonymous in their nefarious work.

Set Purchase Limits

A skilled fraudster will always avoid drawing attention to himself by making too many purchases. However, not all fraudsters are very good at what they do, and many of them will make an unreasonable or suspicious number of purchases through a single site once they get their hands on a stolen credit card.

Therefore, it may be a good idea to set a limit on the number of purchases (or the dollar value of purchases) that an account can make over a single day. This will make your shop less attractive to fraudsters and also, if you don’t succeed in keeping them out, you will at least limit the material damage they can make.

Only Collect Essential Customer Data

When you collect customer data, it’s your responsibility to protect it. If something happens, for instance if an account gets hacked or credit card info gets stolen, you may be considered accountable, and even sued. This causes both material damage and harms your reputation, so it’s best to minimize exposure by collecting only the data that is absolutely essential and necessary for completing a transaction.

Limit Login Attempts and Install CAPTCHA

Too many unsuccessful login attempts may be a sign that someone is trying to break into an account with an especially designed script, and make an unauthorized purchase. If they have an unlimited number of attempts at cracking a username and password combination, they obviously won’t stop until they succeed. If, however, you put a limit on the number of those attempts, they will be forced to take breaks, which is impractical and possibly costly, so they’ll most likely move on. Follow the link in the previous sentence to find out how to set it up.

And while we’re on the subject of malicious scripts and bots trying to break into your website, you should also consider adding CAPTCHA, a simple tool that weeds out bots from humans. CAPTCHA adds an extra layer of security to your website and it’s quite easy to set up.

But this is not all you can do to protect yourself from fraudsters. As it’s always the case with WordPress, there are plenty of plugins and tools you can use to make your shop more resistant to fraud.

WooCommerce Fraud Prevention Plugins

While there are plugins, addons and tools designed specifically for WooCommerce, you should also check out a selection of the best identity theft protection tools which are not limited to eCommerce uses and can help you achieve a better overall security and reliability of your WordPress website. Also, check out our guide on the best WordPress security plugins and learn what to do in case your website gets hacked.

Synctrack – Auto Add PayPal Tracking Info

Synctrack is a free and incredibly useful addon for WooCommerce. The concept is simple yet genial: the addon integrates with PayPal and Stripe and then passes the tracking info, so that the merchant can’t be subject to disputes and chargebacks in case there’s fraud. The tracking information is passed from your carrier to PayPal or Stripe regardless of the volume and frequency. In case someone makes a false claim, you will have easy access to the data to support your side.

YITH WooCommerce Anti-Fraud

YITH WooCommerce Anti-Fraud is a YITH extension that allows you to create safety rules and minimize exposure to fraud. It is based on variables such as geolocation, IP address, email address and more, and creates cross-checks that prevent unauthorized transactions. The extension, which costs around $87, promises to block any orders placed by potential scammers and thus protect your shop’s reputation. Users get to set their own risk values and rule importance, check for excessive order amounts and be notified of orders made by a proxy.

Eye4Fraud Online Fraud Protection Software

Eye4Fraud is a customizable fraud protection software that promises to protect merchants from deceitful transactions and chargebacks at just $2.42 per month. The merchant creates an Eye4Fraud account and downloads the app. If a chargeback claim is made on a registered account, the company reimburses the total amount within 24h.

WooCommerce Anti-Fraud

The WooCommerce Anti-Fraud extension scans all transactions in your shop and provides a score based on a set of rules. It automatically blocks or pauses the fraudulent transactions until review, allowing you to authorize those you deem legitimate. It checks customers behind VPN or proxy, applies reCAPTCHA to protect from velocity attacks, makes pre-purchase assessments, checks emails from risky domains, sets limits on the number of orders within an hour range or within a day, and much more. This popular extension costs $8.25 per month.

Wrapping It Up

There’s no universal, fail-safe way to keep your WooCommerce shop 100% safe against fraud. Fraudsters are cunning and persistent and they keep coming up with new ways to make illegal profit. But if you keep informed on new methods of fraud and keep your shop updated, backed up and equipped with all the available security tools, you will at least minimize your chances of falling victim. It will protect your earnings, your business and, ultimately, your reputation as an online merchant.