8 Bulletproof Ways to Increase Your WooCommerce Sales
WooCommerce is an Open Source and easy-to-use e-commerce plugin for WordPress. With 43,774,435 downloads and counting, it is one of the most popular choices among all types and sizes of online merchant, powering over 28% of all online stores. Learning how to use this platform strategically will allow your brand to scale to the next level. Let’s go through some of the tactics you can use to increase your WooCommerce store sales.
1. Have a Recognizable WooCommerce Theme
Incorporate bold typography, contrast or vibrant colors to ensure that your website is eye-catching and stands out amongst the competition. Depending on your brand, you might want to have a simple yet modern theme with a splash of bright color. No matter what theme you go for, make sure that it fits well with your brand identity and has the ability to connect with your audience. You can choose from a list of recommended WooCommerce themes or design your own. Make sure to have a central theme color since it can increase your brand recognition by a staggering 80%.
2. Enhance User Experience (UX)
By integrating the fundamental concepts of functional UX such as user interface, usability, visual design, information architecture, interaction design, you can drastically improve the flow of your website and improve the customer journey. It only takes 2.6 seconds for a user’s eyes to land on an area of a website and form their first impression; therefore, make sure you emphasize on UX and customer interactions.
Help your customers discover new products by having smooth transitions and consider installing a 1-click buying feature. By thinking from the perspective of your visitors and enhancing their shopping experience, you can build trust and long-lasting, mutually beneficial relationships.
3. Design for Mobile
Mobile devices have exploded in importance within the past few decades. Every year, we are introduced to the latest high-end cell phones, always more capable and powerful than the previous year’s model but the real revolution is in the vast number of low-end smartphones being bought by first-time owners in poorer countries, giving them constant Internet access for the first time. By next year, the number of smartphone users will surpass five billion.
These new Internet users are skipping the whole desktop/laptop stage of Internet use and, for many, online stores are the first form of mainstream consumerism that they have daily access too. For many, working long hours and living in areas underserved by brick n’ mortar stores, the convenience of online shopping is a revelation.
It is no longer enough just to have a well designed online store that is functional and viewable on a desktop. Instead, many companies are designing for mobile because the ones with the best mobile designs often attract more customers. When designing an online store, we need to think about how our e-commerce store might appear on other devices such as phones or tablets. It’s important to find all the ways to eliminate potential design problems in order to improve the mobile UX.
4. Build Trust Through Security
Almost every week, we hear about some big company whose customer information has been compromised by hackers. To succeed online, it is vital to keep your customer’s personal data safe and secure. Keep up with the latest digital threats and remember to continuously monitor your website. Use the latest version of your theme and plugins, a simple failure to keep your code up-to-date is the main reason why WordPress installations become vulnerable to hacker attacks.
While the threats are real, staying secure is quite simple through regular maintenance and automated tools. When it comes to online security, stay vigilant and don’t be caught in a vulnerable situation that could potentially hurt your customers and damage your company’s reputation.
5. Incorporate Artificial Intelligence
Internet giants such as Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Microsoft already incorporate artificial intelligence (AI) into their services. For an e-commerce store, it is important to stay aware of the growing AI-related possibilities, such as chatbots or voice search, because anything that allows your visitors to more easily find the products they are searching for will increase your sales. Keeping up with the cutting edge is the best weapon we have to compete with the giants.
According to research, 34% of customers often use a chatbot while waiting for human customer service agent and 50% of all searches will be voice-enabled by 2020. Using AI, customers can look up products or solve problems on their own, freeing up your staff to focus on solving more complicated problems.
6. Keep It Visual With Video Marketing
Visual content is abundant across social media, websites, and various platforms used for content marketing. Since YouTube was launched in 2005, we have seen an increase in video marketing and visual ads. This major shift in communication makes sense because customers often prefer to watch videos about products instead of reading about them. By 2019, Internet video traffic will account for 80% of all consumer Internet traffic.
If you have not yet included video marketing in your WooCommerce storefront, make sure to start now. Browse through some of the reliable video production agencies and read about how they can help grow your business. Visual content is crucial nowadays, as it allows your customers to gain more understanding of your company and your products.
7. Images Speak Louder Than Words
The visual impression is the most important for customers when buying products online. Use high-quality images to showcase your products. Allow customers to zoom in and out of product images. First impressions matter: 94% of users form their strongest impression within seconds of arriving on a website.
So, make a good first impression by incorporating a hero image and a well-organized navigation. Images speak volumes, so, use more images and less text for your product descriptions.
8. Use Rock-Solid WooCommerce Hosting
© 2018 SpaceX
Any form of e-commerce is complex, it has to keep track not only all the details for all of your products but, also, the details of all your visitors. WooCommerce has revolutionized WordPress e-commerce, putting incredible power in the hands of regular website designers, but that does not make what it is doing any less complex or resource-intensive. Being significantly more complicated than a regular WordPress sites means you have significantly more things that can go wrong once you are under load. Having a regular website become slow or momentarily go down is bad enough, it loses you traffic and hurts your PageRank, but with an e-commerce site you also lose any sales that were being made and the confidence of your customers.
Setting up a store is a lot of work and, these days, it is an increasingly competitive market, I would question the logic of even bothering if your hosting is going to let you down. Of course, every host claims they are able to handle WooCommerce but if you pay close attention you will notice that they are just rehashing the same claims they make for their regular WordPress hosting. Only one host has a team working fulltime on creating technology that caters to the specific needs of WooCommerce stores and that is Liquid Web Managed WooCommerce Hosting.
They are not cheap, and saving money is why a lot of people were attracted to Woo Commerce in the first place, but performance is likely to be the main factor that decides whether your store will build momentum and become profitable, or be just another unprofitable site that soaks up your maintenance time. If it is worth your time and effort to build an online store, it makes sense to use the best possible hosting.
Optimize for Success
In conclusion, following the above tips will set you on your way to having a successful WooCommerce store. Research shows that 75% of consumers admit to making judgments on a company’s credibility based on their website, so make sure that your customers leave your website with a positive and strong impression. In summary, make sure that your website loads fast on both desktop and mobile, contains relevant information, has an intuitive design and, above all, has a seamless UX.
