WooWeekly #363: Exceptions

Hello there, how you doing today?

Here in Palermo, Sicily, all is well; we’ve had quite a lot of rain lately, especially in Catania, and I’m now regretting to have spent most of the summer indoor despite being 20 metres to the beach 😀

Anyhow, welcome back to WooWeekly, your appointment with WooCommerce tutorials, tips and updates handpicked for you so that you can learn something new!

WooWeekly is put together by myself, Rodolfo Melogli, founder at Business Bloomer, your go-to blog for WooCommerce tips and David Mainayar, co-founder at PeachPay, the backed-by-WooCommerce 1-click checkout solution. If you wish to spread the word about WooWeekly you can tell friends and colleagues to sign up at wcwkly.com

So, let’s get the party started… enjoy!

BUT FIRST… THANK YOU, STAGE SPONSOR!

Built for WooCommerce, Metorik gives your store eCommerce superpowers. Add your store in just a few clicks and get real-time sales reports, infinite segmentation, product & category sales, customer insights, exporting, costs & profit tracking, MRR and retention reports for WooCommerce Subscriptions, and 100s of other features. Metorik also includes an email automation and abandoned cart email tool that makes emailing your customers a breeze. Even Rodolfo is using it to send this email! 😍

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Want to sponsor WooWeekly to an audience of 15,000+ active readers as well as being featured on our website (dofollow) for a lifetime? Info on our sponsor slots are available at wcwkly.com/sponsors – we’re now selling slots for Dec 2021 and Jan-Apr 2022

1. Brand New WooCommerce Content

[WooCommerce Snippet] “Hide Out of Stock Items” Exception

WooCommerce stores with large inventory often decide to hide out of stock products from the website. As you all know, there is a WooCommerce setting for that, right under Settings > Products > Inventory called “Out of stock visibility“. With the tick of a checkbox you can toggle the visibility of products that ran out of stock and immediately return a clean shop page with no unpurchasable items. The story is, it could be you may want to still show out of stock items on a specific page via a custom shortcode, or limit the out of stock visibility setting only to certain categories. Well, today we will learn a cool WordPress hook called “pre_option_option“, that basically allows us to override whatever settings we have in the WordPress admin, and assign our own value on a specific page or condition. Enjoy: https://www.businessbloomer.com/woocommerce-hide-out-of-stock-items-exception/

[WooCommerce Tutorial] Why & How to Bundle Products

Maximizing sales and revenue is every eCommerce store’s top priority. And a time-tested strategy to achieve this is – creating product bundles. Bundling happens when you combine complementary products and sell them as a package – often at discounted rates. This helps you sell more items, increase your average order value (AOV), and thus, earn more profits. It’s also a smart way to clear surplus stock and increase sales of slow-moving items. And that’s not it. Bundles benefit customers as well – they get more value by purchasing multiple products and save time and extra shipping charges, which further helps improve their experience at your store. But you don’t have to do this manually, you can easily start selling bundles using product bundle plugins. And given their extensive grouping and customization features, WooCommerce plugins remain a top choice for bundling products. Let’s begin: https://www.businessbloomer.com/woocommerce-bundle-products/

[Business Development] Testing, 1, 2, 3…

It’s yet another Saturday, and this morning I’m speaking at WordCamp Italia for the second year in a row. I’m delighted my talk was selected and I hope the topic will interest many attendees. I will be streaming live from my own home so I have to rely on two very unlikely events: that my internet doesn’t go down, and that my 10-months old son doesn’t cry. Anyhow, while I’m here (not) rehearsing my talk and testing my microphone and video setup, I’m actually thinking at the exact reason why I pitched that talk: https://rodolfomelogli.com/testing-1-2-3/

THANK YOU, ORCHESTRA SPONSORS!

Shoptimizer is a FAST WooCommerce theme that comes with a ton of features all designed to help you convert more visitors into customers. It’s built for speed and conversions and is based upon real eCommerce research we’ve validated to generate millions of dollars on some of the biggest WooCommerce stores in the world. It includes the CommerceKit plugin which takes WooCommerce to the next level, with ajax search, order bumps, and much more. Grab a copy today for only $49!

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Want to join these sponsors and advertise in front of an audience of 15,000+ active readers? Read more at wcwkly.com/sponsors 

2. David’s WooCommerce Highlights

Here are a few notes written by David of PeachPay, WooWeekly co-author:

1. To Hide or Not to Hide: In case you’re wondering whether you should hide wp-admin or not, Chris Wiegman at WP Engine has a word for you. Well, two, actually: you shouldn’t. I would recommend reCaptcha instead (to begin with). 
2. Behind the Purple Curtain: What’s it like working at WooCommerce? Bob at Do the Woo has interviewed quite a few members of the WooCommerce team by now, but his recent interview with Gary Murray, Product Lead, goes particularly deep. 
3. Classic Pareto: You know about the Pareto Principle, right? 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. As it turns out, that is true in the WooCommerce world, with customers and revenue. What to make of this? Luke Marr has you covered. 
4. Automagic: The folks at TechCrunch recently compiled their 4 articles on Automattic, which together clock in at almost 11,000 words. Tl;dr Automattic has done everything wrong (according to venture capitalists), and yet here it is today. Bigger than ever and still growing fast. It’s Automagic. 
5. The Personal Touch (Part I): WooCommerce In-Person Payments are here. Connect the BBPOS Chipper to the WooCommerce mobile app, and BAM! You’re ready to process transactions through WooCommerce Payments. 
6. The Personal Touch (Part II): WooCommerce merchants now have the luxury of being able to choose an in-person payment system that works for them. You got the last option (WooCommerce Payments), Square, and now GoDaddy Payments. Very competitive transaction rates, and obviously pairs well with the hosting plan.
7. Product Page Engineering: Learn how to beautify product pages like never before using ShopEngine and Elementor Free. Cool video from one of the bigger WordPress/WooCommerce YouTube channels out there.

THANK YOU, BALCONY SPONSORS!

We are AG creates WooCommerce plugins that offer payment processing solutions for WooCommerce store owners. We then ensure these solutions work well for you, both now and in the future with prompt updates and support where necessary.

WP Frontend Admin’s Restaurant Management free course will show you how to create a Restaurant Management platform using WordPress, WooCommerce, WP Ultimo, and WP Frontend Admin. Restaurants will register on your site, create their own sites, pay you a monthly fee for their site, and they will be able to sell food online, manage orders, and register team members. They will manage their sites using a beautiful frontend dashboard, you can use a custom design for the dashboard to simplify everything and show your custom brand.

Want to sponsor for as little as $97 for 4 issues? Find out more at wcwkly.com/sponsors 

3. Bloomer Armada Headlines

Here are the latest news and perks regarding Bloomer Armada, Business Bloomer’s private premium WooCommerce community.

1. Armada & Partners: Welcome to Aleksandar Vucenovic from Woopt WooCommerce Pixel Manager, as well as Tim and Ilona. This brings our membership count to 375 Armada fans!
2. Up the Discounts: As a partner, Aleks also decided to issue a coupon code for Bloomer Armada members. You can now get 20% OFF Woopt WooCommerce Pixel Manager to track visitors and conversions in Google Analytics, Google Ads, Facebook, Microsoft Ads and many more. Woopt joins WooCommerce, YITH, Aelia, IconicWP, Tyche Softwares, We Are AG, Shoptimizer, Business Bloomer Online Courses to widen Bloomer Armada membership benefits.
3. Let’s Slack: We’re slowly transitioning Bloomer Armada members to our private Slack channel for WooCommerce mentorship / support / learning / jobs / partnerships. 17 members out of 375 already signed up. Once again, if you purchased Bloomer Armada, join us here.
4. Slack It, Fix It: Tim made the most of his new membership and asked a WooCommerce question about overriding the “Hide out of stock items” setting. Fix was first suggested and then published on Business Bloomer. Cool, ha?
5. Superscriptions…: You’re familiar with WooCommerce “Subscriptions”, but I don’t like that “sub” word at all. It goes against everything I believe in. Last week, Bloomer Armada became a Subscr… Superscription model: members can now enjoy benefits with an active yearly subscription, for as long as they wish.
6. Affiliate Program For All, All For One: Bloomer Armada FANS, SUPPORTERS and PARTNERS can now join the official Business Bloomer Affiliate Program to make a side income. Have you joined yet? I recommend doing so before Black Friday 🙂
7. Include or Die: I’m hoping to find a way to make Bloomer Armada more diverse, as right now we have 95% men. I’ve posted this on Post Status Slack and already got some suggestions to make the wording and visuals more inclusive as well as displaying a curated list of testimonials and members. Especially if you’re NOT a man, please check the Bloomer Armada page and then email me back with your feedback so that I can make it more appealing to everybody.

4. ICYMI

[WooCommerce Snippet] Create Product Programmatically

No matter if this snippet suits your needs or not, it’s still interesting to see how you can create a brand new WooCommerce product programmatically / automatically when a certain even triggers. In this case studio, we’ll see how to generate a brand new product, set its featured image, price, category, title and a download file as soon as an image is uploaded in the WordPress backend Media section. This would be super useful for photographers for example – simply upload a new image to the WordPress Media Library, and a new product is automatically created. Of course, you can customize the code and use it with different triggers. For example, you may need to create a new product automatically when each phone product needs always a matching case product, just with a different title. Or maybe you want to tie product creation once an order is placed. Either way, enjoy: https://www.businessbloomer.com/woocommerce-programmatically-create-product/

[WooCommerce Tutorial] Why Use Country-Based Plugins (Germanized, Japanized, …)

What do Germany, Japan, Brazil, and the Czech Republic all have in common? If you guessed that, in each country’s case, local WooCommerce merchants benefit from a country-specific plugin; I’m talking about Germanized for WooCommerce, Japanized for WooCommerce, Brazilian Market on WooCommerce, and WPify Woo Czech. If you’re in one of these countries, then you should definitely check the plugin in question out. We’ve spoken about how WooCommerce is going global in past posts and about what you need to do to internationalize your WooCommerce store. If you’re charting an expansion to one of the aforementioned countries, then you are also in the target market: https://www.businessbloomer.com/woocommerce-country-based-plugins-germanized/

[WooCommerce Tutorial] Top Checkout Field Editor Plugins

If you haven’t thought about checkout page customization before, perhaps it’s time to start doing so. There’s no question that it’s a hot topic in the WooCommerce community since, admittedly, the default checkout page leaves a lot to be desired. You don’t want to be behind the curve. Here at Business Bloomer, Rodolfo has put out 90+ different checkout page snippets that have been eagerly lapped up by the WooCommerce developer and merchant community. Seriously, these are some of our most widely read and engaged posts. But in addition to snippets, it’s worth checking out some checkout field editor plugins. Sometimes, instead of a specific tool with a narrow focus, you need a Swiss army knife. Think of snippets as the tools, and checkout field editors as the Swiss army knife: https://www.businessbloomer.com/woocommerce-checkout-field-editor-plugins/

[Business Development] An Armada of Affiliates

One of the most important items on my to-do list was to revamp Business Bloomer affiliate program (I mean, I never did anything with it really, so anything would have been awesome). Today, I focused on Business Bloomer Affiliate Program. I’ve had this active for years but never did anything with it, so it was right about time to redesign it and rethink the whole strategy. Here’s a quick recap so that you (maybe) can do the same with yours or get some inspiration: https://rodolfomelogli.com/an-armada-of-affiliates/