WooCommerce is one of the most popular eCommerce content management systems platform in the world. Most of the entrepreneur wants to build an online store with WooCommerce. You might also think to start online business with this platform.
Once you open the metaphorical doors of your online store to the world, you find yourself waiting for the first sale. Your first expectation will be to see more visitors, more customers, more sales, and your profits rise.
Who doesn’t!!!
When it comes to building and running an online store, the first challenge is getting in leads and converting them to sales. And then improve sales in WooCommerce store.
According to eMarketer, eCommerce sales are expected to reach 4 trillion dollars by 2020 in the whole world. These trillions show that online shopping is ready to pick up the traditional brick stores. There are a lot of eCommerce platforms but WooCommerce tops this race with a market share of more than 40%.
The main reason of this is that, WooCommerce is so easy to use, startups, and ideal for small to large online businesses. WooCommerce has been downloaded more than 50K times per day and has more than one million users.
In this article, we will show you how to improve sales in your WooCommerce Store.
An Introduction to WooCommerce
WooCommerce plugin first launched in 2011 and quickly became a popular method for creating an online store. In 2015, it was later acquired by Automattic, making it more or less the officially supported WordPress eCommerce plugin. Its progress since then has been continuous and staggering.
According to Barn2, WooCommerce powers more than 42 percent of all eCommerce websites. By far, as the eCommerce solution it has more than six times websites as its closest competitor. Its popularity becomes even more impressive when you compare it to other WordPress eCommerce plugins. WooCommerce is currently used to power more than 94.3 percent of WordPress eCommerce sites.
According to builtwith report, in January 2019, a total of 2,906,789 websites use WooCommerce, or 53,045 of the world’s top million websites. That’s 0.6% of all websites, or 5.3% of the top million websites.
Why WooCommerce Is the Best Choice for Your Online Store
We’ve mentioned that WooCommerce is easy to install and configure, even for the beginners. Just by using the basic free plugin and its default settings, you can easily set up a store in a minute. This significantly lowers the threshold for eCommerce beginners, while still giving you control over to your store.
Once WooCommerce is installed, you can easily configure and manage everything from a single user-friendly interface. This includes product costs, item details, shipping fees, taxes, inventory, images, and more. You can also use woocommerce checkout add ons to suit your needs. Special thanks to customizable carts, geo-location features, and several different payment options.
The best feature of WooCommerce plugin is its flexibility. It really is a one-size-fits-all solution, that works equally well for small independent stores and large, ambitious eCommerce businesses. As your business grows over time, WooCommerce’s scalability makes it easy to expand your store accordingly.
While the plugin’s default settings work well for a more modern site, the plugin can be configured and customized to match your needs. You can change the outlook of your store using different themes, and add new functionality through dedicated extensions.
What You Need to Do Before You Launch Your WooCommerce Sale
To ensure your sale goes off without a hitch, you need to plan it out thoroughly. First and foremost, you have to define the length of your sale and decide when it should be launched.
While it’s a great idea to start sales close to a big holiday or celebration, you shouldn’t restrict yourself to these times only. Instead, target to run several sales over the year, mixing up the duration of each discount coupon. For example, you could run a flash sale that lasts for only a day or two, and a week longer event.
When and how long you run your sale depends on the type of promotion you’re planning. That’s why it’s important to consider the purpose of your sale, such as which products you’re going to include. For instance, the above-mentioned flash sale are great for clearing out excess stocks.
You should also think about how you’ll promote your store sales. This applies both off and on your online store. It’s important to spread the word on social media and through ads but equally vital to make the sale visible on your store. Consider highlighting it on your site homepage, along with what deals are included. You can even create a dedicated FAQ page with information about the deals, and an ‘On Sale’ page that features all included items.
WooCommerce, even enables you to augment your sales through the use of extensions and other plugins. You could also add a countdown timer to appeal to your customer’s Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO), for instance, or create coupons that can be used to get special discounts on special occassion.
How to Improve WooCommerce Sales
We’re going to look some tips you can run use to improve WooCommerce sales. You should be able to find at least one option on this list that suits your store’s needs (and hopefully more!). Let’s start.
1. Standard Product Discounts
A discount is the most classic promotion to improve WooCommerce sales. This is when you specify a temporarily lower price for a specific or more products. When you do this in WooCommerce, the regular price will usually appear with strikethrough with the sale price next to it.
The exact appearance that you see in the above screenshot may different according to the WooCommerce theme you use.
However, the basic functionality is the same. When you’re editing a product, you can use the Sale price field under the General tab to set the new price without affecting the old one.
You can also schedule a product sale to specify when you want the new price to be active.
In the WordPress admin panel go to Products and then click on one of your products.
Scroll down to the Product Data tab and right to the next to the Sale Price click on the Schedule link.
When you click on the Schedule link two new fields will popup. The start date and the end date.
With this handy feature, you can easily apply your discounts in advance and promote your sale ahead of time. This works particularly well for holiday-based or occasional sales.
If you want to apply a discount to an entire category of products, you can do it quickly using a plugin like Woo Product Category Discount.
2. Coupon Codes
Coupon codes are another classic marketing tool for targeting potential customers to improve WooCommerce sales. This is basically a short code that a customer can enter during the checkout process to get additional offers or discounts on their order.
This is a rewarding technique that makes the benefit to the customer very clear. Most coupon codes will apply a percentage discount on a customer’s entire order or on a specific product (excluding taxes and shipping).
WooCommerce has a built-in coupon management features by default. You can access them by going to WooCommerce > Coupons.
When you add a new coupon, you can specify the coupon code to the customers who will use to apply the deal. You can also configure the discount that the coupon will apply. This can be a fixed amount or a percentage reduction.
The most important settings are the usage restrictions, which determine how and when the coupon will be valid.
You should make sure to look over all these options carefully.
When your coupon is ready, you can give it out to your customers. How you distribute the coupon code will depend on its purpose. A coupon code could be part of a marketing campaign, or it could be intended solely for specific customers. As we mentioned earlier, you need to consider your sale’s target carefully before starting as this will let you know who the recipients of your coupon code should be.
3. Free Shipping
Free shipping is a sure way to improve sales in your WooCommerce store. Even if your margins do not allow to offer free shipping for every products, you can still set up a minimum total amount that a customer has to spend to get free delivery.
WooCommerce enables you to create a free shipping offer in different ways. You can use the coupon code method we described earlier to apply free shipping. Just:
- Go to WooCommerce > Coupons.
- Select Add Coupon.
- Tick the Allow Free Shipping checkbox.
- Publish.
Or, you can also set Free Shipping as an available option for a particular shipping zone.
To edit a shipping zone:
- Just go to: WooCommerce > Shipping > Shipping Zones.
- Hover over Zone Name, and the option to Edit and Delete appear.
- Select Edit, and a screen appears so you can change the name, regions or shipping methods.
- Now Save changes.
Both of the above methods give you a lot of freedom in deciding how the free shipping works and who can use it. For example, you could offer free shipping on all orders over a certain amount for a limited time, create a dedicated coupon that you want to distribute to particular customers, or spread the word via your social media channels.
4. Products of the Day – Offers
The perfect ways to improve sales in WooCommerce is to highlight specific products. You can place the spotlight on one particular item.
To create this type of offer you can use Products of the Day extension. This plugin enables you to specify one or more products for a given day, which will be highlighted on your eCommerce store using a widget.
By default, this is a simple way to encourage the sales of particular products. However, you can extend the deal by also applying a discount to each daily item. For example, you can schedule a sale price for a specific product, and then add it to this widget.
Not only this will increase the visibility of the promoted products, but it also gives your users a reason to check your site regularly to see which products will be on sale each day.
5. Members-Only Sales
A sale is not just useful for bringing new customers. You can also use it to reward your existing customers and members. Exclusive offers can significantly increase customer loyalty, which can, lead to improve WooCommerce sales.
When it comes to WooCommerce, you have a number of options for this type of offer. For example, you can create a coupon codes that you can quickly distribute to select the users, such as through an email newsletter.
Make sure that this code can’t be leaked or used by non-members. You can specify the exact email addresses that can use the coupon.
You can also use the WooCommerce Memberships extension that allow you to create and sell online membership access to your site. It also restrict access to posts and pages on your website. Memberships also integrates with WooCommerce Subscriptions to sell memberships and provide expanded features like upgrades or downgrades for memberships.
This plugin provides plenty of features relating to sales, such as member-exclusive offers.
6. ‘Buy One, Get One Free’ Offers
“Buy one, get one free” or “two for the price of one” is a common form of sales and marketing promotion.
This could be used in various ways. You can simply offer two of the same product for the price of one, or include a different product as an extra when a customer purchases something complimentary.
You could also specify different quantities, such as ‘buy four, get one half price.’ All you need is the right plugin, which in this case would be Dynamic Pricing.
This plugin enables you to set dynamic prices for your products by specifying specific criteria. You can determine the number of products that will make the Buy One Get One Free offer valid. The discount will then be applied automatically when the user adds the right products to their cart.
As with most promotions, the key to making this one work is to ensure that your customers are aware of the deal and the specific criteria required. For that reason, it’s best to feature it prominently on your website home page, and on individual product pages where applicable.
7. Discounts For Future Purchases
Another smart way to get customer loyalty by offering discounts that a customer can use on their next purchase.
There are a various ways to do this in WooCommerce. The simplest is to create a coupon code that you publish to your customers, which we’ve already discussed. The Follow Ups plugin makes this method even easier, because it lets you automatically email customers with a notification about the coupon code.
You can also set up a rewards system which gives customers ‘points’ when they make a purchase. Later, they can use these points on further orders to get a discount that’s relative the amount they’ve earned. The Points and Rewards plugin makes it easy to add such a system to your store.
To make the deal even better, you can offer double points during specific periods. This will further convince your repeat customers to complete more orders and can be used to increase sales during times when your store is usually quiet.
8. Live Chat
The customer is the king, and customer support is the key to success for an online store. If your customers feel valued, then they are more likely to go back to shopping from you and recommend you to others.
Live Chat is a WooCommerce plugin that helps improve customer experience. It helps you connect with website visitors in real-time, so you can offer, help, generate leads and convert them into a customer.
There are many such types of plugins that integrate live chat capability directly into your WooCommerce store to make your web store more accessible.
9. Product Q&A
You might have noticed this on Amazon product pages. Most popular customer questions being posted alongside the product, and answers by different customers themselves. This is an interesting way to build trust for a product and answer questions a customer might have before making a purchase.
Fewer customers will feel a need to use the live chat or other support features like answers to popular product-related queries beforehand. This will give some breathing space to your online support team.
It is advisable to frame some real questions. Not only just some technical jargon. The language and solution should be simple and easy to understand.
Try to include a Contact Support button near the set of questions and answers, just in case, customers have more to ask. Every lead is equally important to improve sales. Make sure you don’t leave any small margin for it to slip away.
10. Add Social Proof
Social proof is a sure way to build trust with your potential customers. Surveys show that most of the people shopping online like to see reviews on a product before purchasing. And some are more likely to choose a website that has reviews over time to time. Basically, if a buyer has any objections before ordering, reviews help them to overcome these objections ? and go through with the order.
WooCommerce Product Reviews Pro extension add well-designed review forms to your store and allow displaying customer’s photos and videos on product pages.
What to Do After Your Sale Ends
You might think that once a sale is over, all is end and you will just count the money you’ve earned and prepare for the next promotion. However, this is not the ideal way of approaching your sales strategy. If you don’t take the time to analyze the results of your sales campaigns, you won’t be able to get even better results.
To do this in WooCommerce, you should purchase the Google Analytics extension. This will provide you the details information about your users’ behavior and purchasing habits. While there’s a lot to consider after a sale is over, these are the few most important results you should pay attention to:
- Interest and usage: How many users showed their interest in your sale versus how many actually completed a purchase? This shows you whether you need to work harder next time to close the deal or walk through the same way.
- Time and duration: You’ll also want to consider if the time and duration of your sales could be improved. To do that, you can compare the latest promotion’s results against similar offers that have run at different times of the year.
- Sale frequency: If you see a steady drop in conversion rates for each promotion, it might be worth your while to make sales less frequent. If customers know another sale is just around the corner, they’re less likely to buy during this one.
Take all of these factors into consideration, and you’ll be more informed and prepared when it’s time for the next sale!
Conclusion
WooCommerce is an amazing CMS platform for eCommerce stores. If you apply the above WooCommerce sales tips for your store, you can see a significant increase in revenue.
Although this is particularly crowded and the competition is fierce, there is always room for everyone. The important thing is to build a sales marketing plan that takes into consideration emerging trends and technological innovations.
