WooCommerce is the eCommerce solution of choice here at Grenade. It is by far the cheapest and easiest way to launch your eCommerce business and start earning money. Below is a list of valuable tips that we have accumulated through running and developing various WooCommerce stores.
1. Gain trust by adding logos to your checkout screens
First time buyers are always skeptical. It doesn’t matter how many Facebook fans you have, how amazing your theme is, or how excellent your courier company is, people always think twice about handing over their hard earned cash for the first time. It’s your job to make these first time users feel as comfortable as possible. A very effective way to do this is by adding the logos of your payment gateway to your checkout screen. It’s likely that if your customer has made an online purchase before, he/she will recognise your payment gateway. Seeing something that they recognise and trust will make you look more legitimate and make your customer feel more comfortable with their purchase.
2. Build a mailing list
Email marketing is still one of the most effective forms of digital marketing. It is a cheap way to market your goods and by organically growing your mailing list you are capturing the details of people who are genuinely interested in your products and services. The chances are high that if they see something they like in your email newsletter, they will consider making a quick purchase. Using a service such as MailChimp you are able to send out marketing material to up to 2,000 subscribers for free! There is a really nice WooCommerce / MailChimp bridge plugin called WooCommerce MailChimp that will automatically capture the email addresses from new purchases to a mailing list.
3. Automated email campaign after first purchase
So you’ve received the first purchase from a new customer? As long as you did a good job with the fulfilment process, they might consider buying from you again. MailChimp has really nice campaign functionality called “drip emails” that sends automated emails to new subscribers on your mailing list. This can be really useful for encouraging future purchases from someone who is new to your products. For example, a store that sells bicycles could send out a few emails at set intervals after they purchase a bike; perhaps an email advertising maintenance products, another advertising cleaning products, and another advertising spare parts.
4. Related products with flow graph
One of the flaws in WooCommerce is that related products are often not matched very well so cross-selling opportunities are not as effective as they should be. GraphFlow identified this weakness and created a very powerful comparison algorithm which you can install as a free plugin. After installing the plugin, all your products are indexed and the algorithm runs in the background. GraphFlow then monitors your customers’ browsing and purchasing behaviours and recommends products that it feels they might be interested in. Recommendations can then be added to product pages or even on your checkout screens. Placing recommended products on the checkout page is a powerful way to upsell to your customers and increase the average revenue spend per customer.
5. Email campaign AB testing
MailChimp offers excellent AB testing functionality. What this does is allow you to send out different layouts of an email campaign and evaluate which layout performed best based on various metrics. This is a brilliant way of testing the effectiveness of an email marketing campaign. Once you have determined which layout works best you can stick with it and slowly improve it over time.
6. Do you host events? Use your WooCommerce store to sell tickets!
If you run events then you must take a look at Grenade’s WooCommerce Events plugin. This is a simple and effective way to start selling tickets on your own website. A huge bonus is that customers won’t be redirected to a 3rd-party events website, and as such, you don’t need to share your revenue with them. It also gives you more control over your events and makes it possible to cross-sell other products.
And there you have our 6 pro tips to boost sales on your WooCommerce site. If you have any other suggestions please feel free to comment below. If you live in the Johannesburg area, we highly recommend that you attend the Johannesburg WooCommerce Meet-up. There are lots of useful tips that are shared there.