Hello there,
Welcome back to WooWeekly, your weekly 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 customization tips and David Mainayar, co-founder at PeachPay, the backed-by-WooCommerce 1-click checkout solution.
On a personal note, I still find it hard to function due to the inevitable fake & real news stream of the last 2 weeks. There is one thing that is definitely real, though: there are so many things we don’t and will never know, especially at political level. And as a single human being, I feel very uncomfortable about that.
Anyhow, let’s get back to Woo. Enjoy!
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1. Brand New WooCommerce Content
WooCommerce Snippet: Automatically Register Guest Checkouts
There is a way to turn guest checkouts into registered customer ones. Of course, “Allow customers to place orders without an account” must be enabled in your WooCommerce settings, otherwise you’re not allowing guest checkouts and the snippet will be irrelevant. So, here’s the fix. Enjoy: https://www.businessbloomer.com/woocommerce-automatically-register-guest-checkouts/
WooCommerce Tutorial: How to Add Breadcrumbs
One of the most important factors that ensure a positive customer experience is intuitive and seamless website navigation. Enabling breadcrumbs makes it easier and quicker for your customers to move around and navigate through your WooCommerce store and find the page or products they’re looking for. But before getting into it, let’s see how your store can benefit by adding breadcrumbs: https://www.businessbloomer.com/woocommerce-add-breadcrumbs/
WooCommerce Tutorial: How to set up a dynamic pricing strategy
Pricing strategy is an invaluable tool for ecommerce sellers and an essential part to maximizing your store’s revenue. Companies have long followed similar pricing strategies but the advancement of technology has given rise to a new effective method, dynamic pricing. This pricing strategy can help increase your sales along with the average order value per customer. In this post, we will examine the nuances of this model and how to set up WooCommerce with dynamic pricing: https://www.godaddy.com/garage/woocommerce-dynamic-pricing/
WooCommerce Tutorial: How to Enable Distraction-free Checkout
It’s always a sign of success when customers show interest in your products, add them to their carts, and proceed to checkout. But what’s the point if they drop off and leave your site in the middle of the checkout process? The idea is to remove as much clutter and distractions through the checkout procedure – so customers can focus on completing the checkout entirely and end up buying your products: https://www.businessbloomer.com/woocommerce-distraction-free-checkout/
2. David’s WooCommerce Highlights
Here are a few notes written by David of PeachPay, WooWeekly co-author:
Enough about you, let’s talk about me!
I was reading about this year’s recipient of the Retail Excellence Award when I came across an interesting take from a marketing professor at Wharton. His view is that more than ever before online consumers are preoccupied with “companies’ values, purpose and mission and…are more conscious than ever of the effects of their consumption on the world.”
I think this is broadly correct given how long we’ve heard about corporate social responsibility. As more and more companies have made an effort to craft and disseminate their mission, yesterday’s competitive advantage has become today’s practical business necessity. Furthermore, as retail is increasingly digitized, it is important for that message to be made clarion clear in the online store itself.
An easy way to go about it is simply ensuring your “About Us” page is as informative and inspiring as possible. You can go one step further with a page explicitly devoted to your company values and mission, one step further still with a page about your team, and even further with a “sustainability-focused” checkout experience a la Shop Pay.
As regards that last step, though, there doesn’t seem to be too many WooCommerce-focused plugins in the sustainability niche. I think there may be an opportunity for plugin developers there.
Buy American…or local… or diverse
Hearing about Sam’s Club recent push to diversify the businesses it works with got me thinking about something that is, in fact, still a competitive advantage: the characteristics of your supply chain. The vast majority of businesses, big or small, focus on cost optimization, and that is understandable because at the end of the day price tends to be the paramount consideration for consumers. However, what is too often neglected is the distributional advantage to be gained by sourcing products from alternative sources that people want to support.
In Sam’s Club’s case, it is differentiating itself by sourcing goods from minority-owned businesses. Another way to go about it is by sourcing goods from your local region or even simply from your country, especially if you and your target market are based in North America or Europe. In the United States, “buying American” has become a competitive advantage for more than a few businesses, and I only see that trend accelerating in a world with increased levels of automation and geopolitical instability.
No matter which way you go about it, you must be sure to be loud about it. Consumers at every end of the funnel should be bombarded with information about your virtuous product sourcing decision — from targeted Facebook ads to the home page to the order confirmation page. Even if this route is costlier, I think it is at least worth a try for the potential increase in conversion rate, not to mention the fact that you would get a chance to do some good by supporting the underdog supplier.
The Future of Commerce: Omnichannel
A vivid picture of the future — and even, to some degree, the present state — of commerce was provided in a recent article I read about consumer trends in 2022.
The future is one where “…a customer might call a store and want to chat with an employee, then place an order digitally, pick it up in store and later request that a consultant visit their home to troubleshoot an installation problem.”
Again, something we already see provided in the present by the biggest brands and retailers. However, the vast majority of online store owners are nowhere close to providing their customers with all these touchpoints. As is often said, the future is already here but unevenly distributed.
There are some things you can do with relative ease to increase the number of touchpoints you provide your customers, even if you have no brick-and-mortar presence. Instead of forcing your customers to pay through your online store, you can accept cash on delivery as WooCommerce’s plugin ecosystem enables you to do with comparative ease. Furthermore, you can ensure your customer support is optimized by making yourself reachable via phone, email, and live chat.
One opportunity for plugin developers interested in customer support can be found on Shopify, where merchants have access to the newest type of live chat hitting ecommerce in the form of video. I sure would like to see that on WooCommerce!
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3. ICYMI
WooCommerce Snippet: View Thank You Page @ Order Admin
A major problem I’ve always had while troubleshooting or working on the WooCommerce thank you page was that I had to build that URL by hand in order to view it again or to avoid placing yet another test order. Well, from today, you can access that order thank you page URL directly from the “Order actions” dropdown. Enjoy: https://www.businessbloomer.com/woocommerce-view-thank-you-page-order-admin/
WooCommerce Tutorial: How To Set Up Buy One Get One Free (BOGO) Offers
One effective strategy is offering the Buy One Get One (BOGO) offer and discounts, which helps acquire new customers and turn them into repeat buyers. Before we explore how you can add BOGO offers to your store to offer discounts to your customers and improve sales, let’s see how exactly such an initiative helps your store’s bottom line: https://www.businessbloomer.com/woocommerce-buy-one-get-one-bogo-offer/
WooCommerce Function Of The Week: wc_get_logger
The wc_get_logger function lets you create your own event log. You might want one for troubleshooting something under development or to give your clients a handy report of what a plugin or code snippet did on any given day. Not sure why and how you should use wc_get_logger? Here’s more context, some case studies, and a code example. Enjoy: https://poststatus.com/woocommerce-function-of-the-week-wc_get_logger/
WooCommerce Snippet: Truncate Tag List @ Single Product Page
Today’s snippet is indeed a way to truncate that list to – say – 3 tags only, and add a “+” to show the rest upon click. In this way if the customer is really interested in that they can expand the view, otherwise tags will take up a single line only. Enjoy: https://www.businessbloomer.com/woocommerce-truncate-tag-list-single-product/
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