Starting a WordPress eCommerce Store (20 Tips and Tools)
Master WordPress e-commerce with our top tips and tools, from SEO optimization to essential plugins.
WordPress, the most renowned blogging platform, also holds the title for being the most popular e-commerce platform. Its most widely used plugin for building e-commerce stores, WooCommerce by Automattic, powers over 25% of the world’s online stores, as per BuiltWith. This leads us to the question:
Why is WordPress so popular?
Primarily, WordPress is free, with the exception of domain and hosting costs. It is backed by a vast community of developers and users. Additionally, WordPress offers a variety of e-commerce plugins, most of which are free and provide extra features at reasonable prices.
If you’re planning to establish an e-commerce store, you’re in the right place. Whether you’re a beginner seeking valuable tips and tricks, or you’re searching for the best plugins and tools to manage your online store, I have you covered. In this article, I’ve gathered the top tips and tricks, along with the best WordPress plugins.
Diving Into E-Commerce: Do You Have What It Takes?
You may have come across this infographic depicting the new generation of tech millionaires under the age of... Read more
10 Essential Tips for a Successful WordPress E-commerce Store
Here are ten crucial tips and strategies for launching a successful e-commerce store. Implementing these suggestions can significantly enhance your store’s performance.
1. Use High-Quality Images
High-quality images are essential for showcasing your products, especially for design or fashion stores. They not only provide detailed product information but also increase your chances of being featured in Google Search shopping campaigns.
2. Incorporate Product Videos
Product videos are a powerful tool for boosting sales, particularly for electronic or digital products. They allow customers to see your product in action, fostering trust and familiarity.
3. Optimize Product Titles and Descriptions
Optimizing your product titles and descriptions for SEO can help your products rank higher in search engine results. Ensure your titles are descriptive and include relevant keywords.
4. Maintain Transparent Policies
Customers often review policies before making a purchase. Keeping your policies straightforward and concise can build customer trust, ensuring they don’t feel misled by complex legal language.
5. Simplify Registration
Online shoppers often seek quick purchases. A lengthy registration process can be off-putting, leading to abandoned carts. Therefore, your registration page should only request essential information.
6. Streamline the Purchase Process
A quick and straightforward purchase process is key to customer satisfaction. Include only necessary steps and data, and make optional features, like coupon application, non-intrusive.
7. Leverage Social Media
Promoting your products online can expand your customer base. Consider collaborating with influencers, launching advertising campaigns, running promotional contests, or sharing informative videos on social media platforms.
8. Add a Blog to Your Store
A blog can enhance your store in several ways. It provides additional content for SEO, allows you to share news or tutorials, and engages potential customers.
9. Optimize Loading Times
With mobile being the primary browsing platform, site speed is crucial. Slow-loading websites risk losing customers to competitors, so investing in a fast website infrastructure is essential.
10. Ensure Mobile-Friendliness
As most people now browse the web on mobile devices, it’s vital for your e-commerce store to be mobile-friendly. Your mobile site should load quickly, offer easy navigation, and include impressive features.
10 Essential Plugins and Tools for Your WordPress E-commerce Store
Let’s delve into the top plugins and tools you need to launch a successful e-commerce store using WordPress. Unsurprisingly, we’ll kick things off with WooCommerce. Did you see that coming?
1. HubSpot
HubSpot is a popular Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solution. HubSpot for WordPress brings its power to your e-commerce store. Its plugin helps you to grow your business by improving marketing, sales, and services.
It offers numerous features such as contact management, forms and popups, live chat and chatbots, email automation, built-in analytics, and a lot more.
2. WooCommerce
WooCommerce is a highly customizable and widely used eCommerce platform built on WordPress. Its flexibility allows you to enhance existing features or introduce new ones through various extensions.
Additionally, it offers mobile applications, enabling you to manage your store from anywhere. As the leading eCommerce platform, WooCommerce provides a vast array of options when it comes to selecting themes, service providers, or support for store setup.
Check out our list of 20 Useful WooCommerce WordPress Plugins.
3. MemberPress
MemberPress is a WordPress membership plugin that enables you to monetize your blog or website by adding a paywall. This means you can use MemberPress to limit access to certain content, charging users for access to premium materials.
With MemberPress, you can create and manage various memberships. You can then control access to specific content such as posts, videos, and digital files based on the membership level.
4. Easy Digital Downloads
Easy Digital Downloads offers an excellent platform for selling digital products via WordPress. It’s ideal for a variety of digital goods, including ebooks, photos, videos, software, and music.
This solution allows you to customize your website to suit your local audience and integrate various payment gateways as needed. Additionally, it’s expandable with extensions, empowering you to enhance your online store’s functionality.
5. ConvertKit
ConvertKit is an email marketing tool that seamlessly integrates with WordPress. It allows you to design and incorporate forms into your e-commerce website, transforming your readers into dedicated subscribers. But that’s just the beginning!
With ConvertKit, you can categorize your subscribers using segments and tags. This enables you to send personalized emails tailored to their interests. Additionally, ConvertKit can be integrated with various other tools to enhance your marketing efforts.
6. Veeqo
Veeqo serves as a comprehensive solution for inventory and order management specifically designed for WooCommerce. This centralized platform simplifies the management of orders, shipping, inventory synchronization, and return processing. It also extends its support to other e-commerce platforms.
Veeqo allows you to synchronize your inventory across multiple online and brick-and-mortar stores, preventing the issue of overselling products. Additionally, it streamlines the process of shipping and returning products, enhancing efficiency.
7. LearnDash
LearnDash is an excellent resource for launching your e-learning platform. It provides a wide range of features that allow you to construct courses, monetize them, and manage all the associated tasks. With LearnDash, you can create quizzes, integrate forums, and award badges and certificates to your learners.
In addition, it offers various monetization options such as subscriptions, memberships, course bundles, and licenses. Doesn’t that make it an impressive tool?
8. Relevanssi
Relevanssi is an enhanced search solution for WordPress. It supersedes the default search engine, offering improved results and a superior display.
This tool is packed with numerous features and customization options. It enables phrase searching and supports fuzzy matching, which allows for partial word matches. Additionally, Relevanssi can index custom post types and provides helpful “Did you mean?” suggestions.
9. 404page
The 404page plugin is a popular tool for creating custom Error 404 pages in WordPress. Traditional 404 pages often lack information, which can lead to customer loss if they land on such a page in your online store due to an unavailable page.
The 404page plugin addresses this issue. It allows you to design personalized pages to replace the standard error pages. These custom pages can include useful information and links to products, enhancing the user experience even when they encounter an error.
10. Clever Ecommerce Ads
Clever Ecommerce Ads is a robust marketing automation tool designed to enhance your marketing strategy through Google Ads. It automatically generates pertinent keywords derived from the products and categories in your store.
If you choose to use Google Ads, this plugin can be a valuable asset. It optimizes your advertising campaigns, fine-tunes your bids, and ensures optimal utilization of your budget.
That’s all about the best tips and tricks and the must-have plugins and tools for launching an e-commerce store with WordPress.