Let’s start with the motivation behind the attacks on a website and their consequences for your business:

1. Sending spam. It’s not that popular nowadays, but people still do it. Consequently, your hosting or SMTP accounts can be blocked.
2. Infecting customers’ devices with malware. This is a more typical case. As a result, you may lose revenue and customers because of antivirus warning messages. Your SEO position and reputation are on the line.
3. Testing credit cards, also known as carding. Hackers can use the checkout page on your site to determine if stolen credit card data is valid. It’s the primary reason for spam orders. The payment gateway usually blocks your account if this issue is not resolved quickly. Switching a payment gateway, especially with subscriptions, is not the experience you want to have. This can also result in massive expense – if your store is connected to a 3PL, products could be shipped automatically. And worse, you may end up having to pay for hundreds of even thousands of disputes if you are unable to cancel or refund the transactions before they are disputed.
4. Stealing credit card data. This may have the worst consequences for your business. The fines can be as much as $5,000 to $100,000. PCI compliance testing is not enough – you are responsible to keep your customer’s data safe on your site.
5. Other motivations, like using your server to attack other sites.

As you may see, there are more than enough reasons to consider your store security seriously.

How the attack is performed

It all starts with getting access to the server. There are a few main ways how sites are hacked:

1. Vulnerability in a plugin, theme, or WordPress core. Outdated plugins is a common vulnerability in WordPress sites.
2. Using non-genuine (nulled) versions of plugins and themes. A lot of them contain malicious code or a backdoor.
3. Stealing the password or cookies from the admin user – this is often performed using an XSS (Cross Site Scripting) attack. Browsers attempt to prevent these types of attacks, but they are still possible, especially if your site has insecure plugins.
4. When another site on the same server is hacked. It’s important to not host eCommerce sites on shared hosting. While most hosts have good isolation of sites to prevent one site from accessing another site, it is still a possibility and no hosting service has perfect security.
5. By brute-forcing logins and passwords. In this case, a hacker tries to log in under well-known logins and passwords. Using a script, they can try thousands or millions of common username and password combinations. In fact, it’s likely that your WordPress site is currently being attacked this way right now – you just don’t have the tools in place to detect it.

Once the hackers get access, they do the following:

1. Upload special scripts to different folders and attach the malicious code to files. Those scripts grant access to files from the web.
2. Some of them create additional admin users to ensure continued access.
3. Add malicious code doing all those bad things I described before.

How to prevent security breaches

There are a few steps to avoid being hacked:

Update WordPress core, plugins, and themes regularly. To help avoid issues, you should have a staging site where you test updates before deploying them to your live site. Starting with WordPress version 6.2, it is now easy to rollback plugin updates if an update causes a problem.

Use complex passwords and do not open suspicious links, even if they point to your website.

Use a web application firewall (WAF). It blocks suspicious requests and network attacks.

I suggest using Cloudflare WAF. It’s easy to configure, has a decent free plan, and does not generate additional load on the server.

If you can’t use Cloudflare for some reason, consider a security plugin for WordPress like Wordfence, Sucuri, or Solid Security Pro. It makes sense to use them only if you need features like 2FA and a malware scanner in addition to a firewall.

Please note that those plugins are heavy and can cause additional server load. Having them just for the firewall does not make sense.

I prefer Wordfence because it offers a decent free tier, a reasonable malware and file modification scanner, 2FA, and many other features.

Here are some notes about the Wordfence configuration:

3.1. Enable two-factor authentication for administrators and your account. It’s located under the Login Security menu:

3.2. I recommend turning off the XML-RPC authentification. This is an older, obsolete API for accessing your site that you almost certainly don’t need, but hackers love it.

3.3. I recommend enabling security scans. You can find those settings on the All Options page:

Make sure that the sensitivity is set to Standard Scan or High Sensitivity. Also, check the list of excluded files. Sometimes, hackers add their scripts there!

3.4. Make sure the firewall and brute force protection are enabled:

They are beneficial against attempts to find the passwords and logins.

3.5. In some cases, it makes sense to enable rate-limiting:

It’s essential when you have a DDoS attack or when your server is experiencing many requests from a few addresses.

Note that Cloudflare WAF offers way better protection against DDoS than any security plugin can provide!

As for the other settings, they are less common.

You can use the invisible reCAPTCHA for checkout and payment pages. It helps prevent credit card testing (carding) attacks and spam orders.

Please note that any captcha implementation can negatively affect your conversion rate. Use reCaptcha only if you have problems with spam orders or see unusual activity in your payment gateway account.

If a full interactive reCAPTCHA is required, I prefer using the reCAPTCHA for WooCommerce plugin. It works smoothly with CheckoutWC.

Setting up reCAPTCHA is fairly straightforward:

4.1. Go to the reCaptcha Admin Console:

4.2. Specify the label for the key, type (V3 is best for new sites), and domain

4.3. You will be given a Site Key and Secret Key, which you will enter in the plugin’s settings:

4.4. If you need reCAPTCHA, it makes sense to enable it for the checkout page:

4.5. It also makes sense to enable reCAPTCHA on the Add Payment Method page to prevent card testing attacks.

Please remember that reCAPTCHA may slightly decrease the conversion rate. Use it only if you have a problem with spam orders or see some weird activity in your payment gateway account.

You may find more information about similar tools here: How To Prevent Fraudulent Carding Attacks On Your WooCommerce Store.

Keep your server’s software up-to-date – this is especially important if you manage your server’s software yourself.

How to detect if the store was hacked and how to fix it

The easiest way to detect if your store is compromised or hacked is by using the Wordfence malware scanner.

It’s not perfect, but it can detect most issues. Here is what it looks like if your site has been hacked:

As you may see, the report shows that a WordPress core file has been modified. This is very common on a hacked site.

Let’s click on the View Differences button:

As this is just an example, the file changes are not important. If this was a real example of a compromised site, you would be able to click the Repair button to restore the original and correct version of the file.

If you have out-of-date plugins, you will see a Medium priority alert for each one. Don’t disregard these – remember that out-of-date, insecure plugins are the primary way that WordPress sites are compromised.

Unfortunately, the Wordfence scan does not scan the content of some widgets, posts, and plugin settings. You may need to check these things manually.

For example, if you use a plugin like Custom CSS & JS to add code to the page you will need to manually check those snippets to make sure they have not been corrupted.

Often, malicious code snippets may look like a valid code, but it’s not:

If you find a snippet that is corrupted, you can remove the malicious code, or remove the entire snippet.

As you have no doubt noticed, determining whether a script is safe or not requires some knowledge and expertise. But if you are following our recommendations, the chance that you will have a compromised script is very low.

Keep your site safe

Keeping your WooCommerce site secure is important even if you have a relatively small store.

Wordfence and regular updates offer good enough protection against most attacks.

Has your WooCommerce site been hacked before? How did you resolve it? Share any tips you learned in the comments below.

I hope you’ve learned something!

Follow me on Twitter for more WooCommerce security tips: Andrii Toniievych (@TwistedAndy)

The post WooCommerce Security – How to protect your store appeared first on CheckoutWC.

Having the right shipping solutions in place tends to be about the speed of shipping and the price of it, both of which are important to ecommerce customers. In fact, shipping factors heavily into reasons given for cart abandonment. “Extra costs”, including the price of shipping, and “delivery was too slow” are among the top reasons given for cart abandonment.

It’s worth ecommerce retailers spending some time on their shipping strategy and making sure it is designed to attract the right customers. In WooCommerce, you’ve got many options, so let’s break them down in this quick guide:

Shipping solutions for WooCommerce stores

In WooCommerce, you can choose to operate using just the built-in features, or you can add a plugin for your shipping solution of choice. There are pros and cons either way, so it’s important to investigate and develop an understanding of exactly what the solution will mean for you as a business, and importantly, for your customers.

For example, in the last few years there has been a lot of press around huge delays experienced across various US carriers. While your customers may be understanding to a degree, many expect retailers to find alternative solutions that get them their order faster. Having options may be a good strategy for you.

Here are some popular shipping options for WooCommerce stores:

WooCommerce default options

Let’s say you’ve just installed WooCommerce out-of-the-box on your website. By default, it comes with a shipping calculator for the cart page, the ability to select a shipping location, and an option to attach a shipping method to that location.

Shipping rate options include:

• Flat rate shipping – Where you choose one rate for all shipments. An advantage of this is that shipping is kept simple and predictable for your customers. A potential disadvantage is that shipping may actually cost you more than what you charge at times, or the customer may pay too much at other times.
• Free shipping – This can be set up to be triggered by certain rules. For example, “free shipping when you spend $50 or more.”
• Local pickup – Perfect for bricks and mortar businesses that offer local pickup.

These shipping options can be setup from your dashboard under WooCommerce > Settings > Shipping.

WooCommerce Shipping

The WooCommerce Shipping extension allows you to print USPS and DHL shipping labels directly from your dashboard. It saves you time as you don’t need to do any copying and pasting into other programs to generate a label.

Table Rate Shipping

Table Rate Shipping is a paid extension that is helpful when you need some more complex calculations built into your shipping. For example, you can set up multiple tables of rates per shipping zone. You can also set up different types of calculations, such as per order, per item, and per class.

This extension also allows you to add some additional rules, such as weight-based, number of items, and number of items by class and price.

A pro of this extension is that you can add as many or as few rules as you like so that you build a shipping pricing structure that makes sense for your business. The extension also has an easy interface for this, which can otherwise be a downside of table rates. A con of this shipping setup is that it can seem more complex for your business and customers. It’s more likely to lead to “surprises in the shopping cart,” which we know customers don’t like.

Table rate shipping is an option for ecommerce merchants who need to set more complex rules around shipping their orders
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Conditional Shipping and Payments

This is another paid extension by WooCommerce which allows you to use conditional logic to restrict the shipping and payment options available in your store. For example, if you offer free shipping, you can set conditions so that it’s only available for certain products or shipping classes.

You can also restrict shipping methods based on package weight, item count, or other rules. You can set up other restrictions, such as preventing certain products from being shipped to countries, states or ZIP codes. You’ll see this type of rule in action sometimes on Amazon, where they’ll raise a flag in your cart and tell you an item can’t be shipped to your location due to restrictions.

Other conditions include things like limiting some products or shipping types to certain types of customers (such as members). You can also restrict payment methods to certain types (such as when purchasing subscriptions).

Shipstation

Shipstation for WooCommerce is an integration built for subscribers to Shipstation. It’s a paid subscription, made to help ecommerce businesses ship orders faster and cheaper.

A huge advantage of Shipstation is that it can centralize your orders from multiple platforms, such as your website and channels like eBay, Amazon, Walmart, and Groupon. They also have international capabilities for various platforms.

Shipstation aims to get subscribers the deepest USPS discounts available and to provide choices across other carriers, such as FedEx, UPS and DHL. Their app also helps on the customer end, by automatically providing tracking information and notification emails.

Shipstation provides tiered pricing depending on your number of users required, and number of monthly orders shipped. They offer several automations and are a feature-packed solution for ecommerce businesses.

Individual carrier extensions

Individual carrier extensions such as USPS, UPS, and FedEX offer you the ability to fetch real-time rates based on shipping type and location.

An advantage here is that you’re able to charge customers exactly what the shipping costs, rather than taking a stab at a flat rate. This can be especially important for ecommerce stores that ship items which are heavy or a nonstandard size.

Again, a potential disadvantage is that shoppers won’t know the cost of shipping until they’re in the cart.

Amazon Fulfillment for WooCommerce

You can remove the entire hassle of fulfillment and shipping on your end by using FBA (Fulfillment By Amazon). This means that your products get stored in an Amazon warehouse and even if the order comes from your website, it’s fulfilled by them.

The advantage of this is that you don’t have to worry about fulfillment and shipping as this is outsourced to Amazon. Your customers may potentially enjoy faster shipping from Amazon. A disadvantage is that you’ll have lower margins due to the cost of outsourcing your fulfillment.

WooCommerce Dropshipping

Dropshipping is an ecommerce strategy that saves merchants on overhead as they don’t need to buy in inventory, pay to store it, or ship out orders themselves. Instead, when an order is placed on their website, a supplier receives it to fulfill. The trade-off is lower margins on products as a chunk of the sale goes to the supplier.

However, this is a great option for many merchants who prefer to have a lower inventory risk, or even to test out new products before committing to stocking them. WooCommerce Dropshipping is one option for an extension that will connect you with dropshipping suppliers.

Conclusion

Here at CheckoutWC, we’re all about optimizing the shopping cart experience for WooCommerce stores, and shipping plays an important role. Merchants need to strike the right balance so that customers are happy with shipping options, and the business doesn’t lose out on them.

The options outlined are some popular choices for WooCommerce, but as always, there are many extensions to chose from. We suggest making a short list of your must-have needs in a shipping function, and finding the extension that will best meet your needs.

And of course, pair this with an optimized WooCommerce shopping cart experience! Try CheckoutWC risk free today.

The post Ecommerce Shipping Solutions: Quick Guide for WooCommerce Stores appeared first on CheckoutWC.

Why? There are plenty of reasons, from not having to hold inventory to providing a low cost, low risk environment to test ecommerce products. Dropshipping can cover a vast range of product categories and suppliers – if you can conceive of it, it’s probably out there.

The good news for WooCommerce store owners is that it’s relatively easy to get your store set up for dropshipping. There are many options available to help you create a smooth operation.

In this quick guide, we’re exploring the basics of dropshipping and how to get started on WooCommerce – check it out:

What is dropshipping?

Dropshipping is an ecommerce strategy where you, the store owner, take orders for products you aren’t physically holding in inventory. Instead, a supplier receives those orders and ships them out from their inventory.

Essentially, the retailer is acting as a “middleman,” but the customer doesn’t know any different. As far as their experience is concerned, they order from the retailer’s website and receive their package like any other ecommerce transaction. They don’t know that the order went somewhere else to be fulfilled.

Pros and cons of dropshipping

Dropshipping is one strategy out of a few options for ecommerce and as with anything, there are pros and cons. Here’s a quick rundown:

Pros of dropshipping for ecommerce

• It’s a low-cost option to set up because you don’t have to purchase a whole lot of inventory.
• It’s low-risk in that you won’t have inventory sitting on the shelf that you can’t move.
• You can easily pivot or introduce new products.
• Dropshipping can be a great way to test out products before deciding whether you want to switch to holding your own inventory.
• Dropshipping can offer a way to scale your business without having to take on extra work. For example, whether you have 100 orders or 1000, you’re not fulfilling them yourself – although you can expect to have a higher customer service request volume!
• You really can run your business from anywhere as your part is not location-dependent.

Cons of dropshipping

• One of the biggest cons is that your profits are a lot lower for sales. You make a portion of the sale, while the supplier makes the rest.
• Part of your customer service operation will always be outside of your control. This can be a pro or a con, depending on how reliable your supplier is!
• You can lose touch with the quality of your products, especially if you’re never actually seeing them.
• Sometimes you might find you’re out of the loop when it comes to inventory issues, such as low stock.
• You’re still the “face” of the products, so have to take responsibility for any issues, even if they originate with your supplier.

Dropshipping offers ecommerce retailers a lower-risk sales strategy. #WooCommerce is a great platform to try it out
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Steps to set up dropshipping

How can ecommerce retailers get started with dropshipping? Here are some steps:

1. Decide your product strategy. For example, will you specialize in a particular niche? Will you offer a broader range of products? How will you source those products?

There are typically two main ways that dropshipping retailers source products. One is to go through a marketplace where you can find merchants that dropship. The advantage of this is that it’s easy to find a wide range of products and willing merchants. A downside is that many dropshippers end up offering similar products.

The second way is to source merchants yourself, perhaps from within your geographic region. You can look for merchants with products you’d like to sell who offer wholesale services. Many of these are willing to dropship. It’s more work to find these suppliers, but you may be able to offer customers a more unique, memorable shopping experience.

2. Have a platform to sell from. If you’re reading this, you either already have or are thinking of building a WooCommerce store. You need a mechanism for selling, even if that’s just your social media channels.

3. Have an audience. You can’t sell without having an audience to sell to! You may be coming from a position where you already have an audience (such as a blog or popular social media channels). If you don’t, then you’ll need to build one. Start by defining who it is that you want to attract as your target audience, then find ways to bring them in. For example, this might include creating the types of content that they are interested in consuming.

4. Have a marketing strategy to consistently draw an audience. Even dropshippers who already have a large audience need to be consistent with marketing. Think about how you will differentiate from your competition, e.g. with your content and/or with your unique product catalog.

Dropshipping tools for WooCommerce

WooCommerce is a very flexible, scalable platform and ideally-placed to set up a dropshipping operation. The basic requirements are:

1. A WordPress website with quality hosting.
2. The WooCommerce plugin installed.
3. A dropshipping plugin that is compatible with WooCommerce.

There are three main kinds of plugin that facilitate dropshipping for WooCommerce, these are:

1. Plugins that connect store owners with a dropshipping marketplace from which you can source suppliers. AliExpress is a well-known example of such a marketplace.
2. Plugins that provide the connection between you as the seller, and the supplier. Basically you and your supplier set up the software, each on your own end, so that you’re able to automate the dropshipping process. You need this if you’re seeking partnerships outside of marketplaces. Mothership is one such software that facilitates this setup.
3. Plugins for on-demand designs. These connect you with manufacturers who will produce and send out your custom-designed goods on-demand. For example, Zazzle offers custom apparel and accessories.

We always suggest that you look for a solution that meets your desired product strategy, while having high standards for quality and reliability. The software should have excellent user support available so that you can keep your operations running smoothly. It should also be regularly updated to account for software and security changes.

Next, we’ll look at some examples of WooCommerce plugins that facilitate dropshipping.

WooCommerce plugins that connect you to marketplace suppliers

The following plugins will connect you with marketplaces where you can find dropshipping suppliers:

• Spocket – This plugin helps dropshippers find high-quality US and EU-based suppliers.
• AliDropShip – This connects you to AliExpress for dropshipping, with suppliers mostly in China.
• Dropified – This plugin presents curated products from suppliers, so you don’t spend a lot of time going through multiple suppliers.

WooCommerce plugins to connect with your own suppliers

These plugins allow you to set up custom connections with your own suppliers. Basically, both you and the supplier will need to set up so that your processes are automated:

• Mothership – Set up your own, unique dropshipping relationships and let the software handle the key details. Mothership is known as a well-supported, streamlined software.
• WooCommerce Dropshipping – This plugin allows you to set up with your own suppliers. It also includes AliExpress and Amazon Affiliate support.

WooCommerce plugins for on-demand design suppliers

These plugins connect you to suppliers who produce your product designs on-demand:

• Zazzle – Sell unique items, from cards, to gifts, to home decor.
• Printful – Sell custom-designed mugs, t-shirts, and more.
• Gooten – Another print on-demand solution with a wide range of products.

Conclusion

Dropshipping can be a great way for WooCommerce store owners to enter ecommerce, or to reduce inventory risk for their ecommerce store. It allows you to take orders which your suppliers fulfill, so you don’t have to hold inventory.

A trade-off of dropshipping is that your margins will be lower than if you held inventory and fulfilled orders yourself. Still, if you can attract customer volumes, you can turn a decent profit and offer a range of products.

The post A Guide to WooCommerce Dropshipping appeared first on CheckoutWC.

WooCommerce vs. Shopify is a common debate. Both platforms serve millions of clients and are capable of powering very successful businesses. It’s fair to say that each is an ecommerce giant in their own right.

You may have heard rumors such as “Shopify is easier to use” or “WooCommerce gives you more options,” but how much of that is true?

Here, we’re comparing the two ecommerce powerhouses. If you were to choose between WooCommerce and Shopify, what are the relative pros and cons?

WooCommerce vs. Shopify: A breakdown

There are a number of key factors that are of more or less importance to ecommerce store owners. WooCommerce and Shopify each have their own ways of tackling those things, so here we’re breaking them down into sections, highlighting pros and cons:

Initial setup

There’s a key difference in setup between Shopify and WooCommerce. Shopify is a hosted program, meaning that Shopify itself hosts the platform and you set everything up in one place. To get started, you go to Shopify’s website and follow the instructions. You can even purchase a custom URL within this process and get it setup. For anyone who needs “simple and intuitive,” Shopify fits the bill.

On the other hand, WooCommerce is an open-source ecommerce plugin built for WordPress, which itself is an open-source platform. Before you download WooCommerce, you’ll need a WordPress website. You’ll need to decide where and how this is hosted. If you need a custom URL, you’ll need to purchase it separately. On the setup side of things, WooCommerce is more complex, with more decisions you’ll need to make.

With these key differences in mind, you could argue that WooCommerce is less beginner-friendly than Shopify. Build time to get a store setup can take a lot longer than Shopify as you need to decide every detail, whereas Shopify has features already built-in. On the other hand, WooCommerce does offer more customization abilities.

Pricing

Shopify works on a monthly subscription basis for the platform. This will vary depending on your plan, with a basic plan starting at $29 per month, the Shopify plan at $79 per month, and advanced at $299 per month. You’ll also pay credit card transaction fees, starting at 2.9% per transaction. If you choose a custom domain, you’ll pay an annual fee to hold it. If you choose to use third party payment gateways, you’ll pay 2.0% on each transaction as well.

Another cost to factor in is any apps you add to your Shopify store in order to extend its functionality. These are often billed monthly and can quickly add up on top of your regular subscription fee.

WooCommerce is a free platform, but with that said, you’ll be paying something for the hosting of your website. Decent hosting is generally somewhere in the region of $15 to $60 per month (what you need depends upon your traffic volumes). You may also pay for plugins or extensions that you add to your website. WooCommerce offers a lot more options for free alternatives to premium plugins, whereas you always pay for Shopify apps.

Transaction fees will vary depending on which payment gateway(s) you choose to use. There’s potential to save money here, and WooCommerce does in general offer a lower cost option to get set up.

Functionality and ability to customize

Shopify as a hosted platform strictly limits how much people can customize their websites. On the other hand, with WooCommerce being open-source, you can customize your shop however you like. You’ll also find there are many people out there capable of custom coding for WooCommerce, so you could quite literally build your own unique site.

Plugins and extensions on WooCommerce, or apps on Shopify are “out of the box” coded options to add functionality to your website. Shopify has an app store with more than 3000 apps available, but WooCommerce has more than 55,000 plugin options.

This means that WooCommerce offers more ability to customize functionality on two counts: available plugins and ability to custom code. A potential con is that since it’s open source, anyone can build apps for WooCommerce, so not all are high quality.

WooCommerce vs. Shopify? There are pros and cons to each…
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Designs and themes

Shopify is regularly praised for its professional quality designs and themes. It’s relatively easy to gain a curated, stylish look even during the initial setup of your new website. Shopify designers spend a lot of time optimizing designs to improve the user experience.

WooCommerce, with its boundless customization, offers even more opportunities to get the look that you want. However, design work can be a mixed bag on the open source platform and there are often learning curves for how any given theme works. It can take a lot more work to produce a good-looking, optimized website.

Shopify has worked on presenting a beautifully optimized checkout to encourage customers to buy. On the other hand, WooCommerce’s default checkout design leaves a lot to be desired in terms of optimization. We have a great solution though – CheckoutWC is a customized shopping cart for WooCommerce that brings a “Shopify-like” checkout experience to WooCommerce users.

Sales features

Shopify builds in sales features such as cart abandonment recovery, unlimited products, the ability to offer coupons and discounts, and access to different payment options. It’s an easy, logical setup.

With WooCommerce, you need to start from scratch and add in the sales features that you’d like to have. This will generally involve adding plugins or extensions, some of which may cost you extra to include. With that said, you’ve again got the benefit of a large range of options.

Payment options

Shopify offers its own payment solution, as well as most of the popular third party payment gateways. If you choose to use Shopify Payments, you’ll pay credit card transaction fees, but no other fees. On the other hand, if you prefer to use a third party payment solution, you’ll pay those credit card fees AND a 2% transaction fee. This is on top of any fees you pay to the third party gateway. In this sense, Shopify can be expensive, especially if you have a certain volume of transactions where it doesn’t make sense to have so many fees.

WooCommerce offers access to basically any payment gateway, including smaller, regional options. As they are an open source platform, they don’t charge transaction fees – you’ll just pay whatever your bank or payment gateway charges. WooCommerce Payments doesn’t charge a credit card fee per transaction either, making it a lower cost option to take payments than Shopify.

Support

Shopify offers extensive 24/7 support. As a hosted platform, they’re responsible for any sort of performance issues with your website, including updates. It’s easy to get help whenever you need it.

As an open source platform, WooCommerce does offer extensive documentation-based support and recently enabled 24/7 chat for anyone who purchases a premium plugin. However, help may be dependent on the individual who developed the plugin, or the hosting company for your website – it’s not a “one stop shop” for getting help. On the other hand, there is an extensive network of WooCommerce developers, so it’s often relatively easy to find that sort of support if you need it.

SEO features

Shopify has built-in features for SEO, but you are limited to only changing what they allow. This is often limited to the very basics of SEO, which may be enough for your site, but also may not offer you as many options as you need to show up in search results.

WooCommerce again has an advantage here because of the volume of options available. It is code-optimized for SEO, but also offers many great plugins and guides to help you optimize for SEO. You also have more options available to you to pursue different SEO strategies, due to the ability to customize your approach. WooCommerce comes out ahead of Shopify here, just for having more options available.

Conclusion

How can you choose between WooCommerce and Shopify? There are pros and cons to each, so here’s our take…

Shopify may be for you if you need a solution that you can easily DIY out of the box and get a slick, professional website. You’ll have to be prepared that you may face limitations on functionality and you may pay more in transaction fees.

WooCommerce is for you if you either have coding abilities, or you’re prepared to hire a developer to help you achieve the exact website that you’d like. If you need more control and more ability to customize your website, this is for you. As an added bonus, there’s the potential to save money on transactions.

Which is for you?

The post Choosing Between WooCommerce and Shopify? The Pros and Cons appeared first on CheckoutWC.

Of course, effectively building an audience and getting sustainable traffic to your website are easier said than done. There’s a lot of competition out there and frankly, some stores are still trying to use outdated techniques to draw people in.

What can you do to build buzz? There are many possibilities, and options for different budgets. Here are six strategies you can try, along with some WooCommerce recommendations to help:

#1. Email

What? Email? While you might think email is so old now that it is too dated as a marketing strategy, that’s not the case. Average retail open rates hover around 17% and email remains one of the most cost-effective marketing methods for businesses, with an average ROI of $36 for every $1 spent.

Email marketing involves a few steps:

1. Growing your email list
2. Developing a regular email marketing program
3. Setting up strategic email automations.

In the ecommerce (and any other) space, you’ll get more effective results from email if you focus on sending out relevant messages to the right people, at the right time. This means you need a robust email tool that allows you to segment your email list, as well as set up automations based on triggers.

In the B2C (business to customer) space, emails with short, punchy copy backed up by quality imagery tend to do better. If you’re selling consumer goods from an online store, people want to know the basics, not read an entire essay about it. It’s a good idea to develop a branded email template.

WooCommerce offers extensions with multiple different email tools. It’s to your advantage to use a tool with an extension as integrating with your website gives you access to functions such as list building.

Email marketing is a low cost, high ROI method of promoting your WooCommerce store
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#2. Social Media

Social media platforms are still very important to businesses for generating brand awareness. Around 55% of customers learn about brands on social media, while 78% are willing to buy from a company after having a positive experience with them on social media.

The key for your business is to be very strategic about how you use social media. There are now multiple channels to choose from, but you should never try to cover them all. Start out by defining your target audience and figuring out which platforms they are the most likely to use. Data from companies such as Statista can help you to uncover the platforms that your audience uses.

With that done, here are some other key tips:

• Have a documented strategy, including goals for your social channels.
• Conduct a social media audit. Review how each account is operating, the results you’re seeing, and whether or not any updates (such as for branding consistency) are required.
• Determine what your metrics are going to be to measure success.
• Have a content calendar and follow it. Use scheduling tools to help. (Hootsuite has integrations with WooCommerce and some great tips for creating a social media calendar).
• Stay engaged. Respond to comments and cues from your followers.
• Assess what gets the most engagement and adjust your strategy accordingly.

Check out WooCommerce’s variety of extensions for social media.

#3. Paid marketing

Paid marketing includes strategies like PPC (pay per click) advertising and paid social media marketing. Most businesses will find that some level of paid marketing is essential, especially if you’re trying to build up a larger audience in a shorter period of time. Organic growth is hard – you often need the push of paid media.

An advantage of today’s paid advertising is that audience targeting has become more focused than ever. In fact, being hyper-targeted is a best practice if you want to get the best bang for your advertising buck. Google ads and social media ads allow you to define the audience you’d like to reach.

Video advertising has been a recent trend in paid media. If you can get onboard with it, 86% of marketers say video has been effective for generating leads.

WooCommerce has instructions for setting up your site for Google advertising here.

#4. Referrals for WooCommerce

Referral marketing can be a great way to get more customers for less spend on your part. Generally speaking, referral programs encourage your current customers to refer you to new business, in return for some sort of incentive.

Referrals are powerful because they’re generally made by a person that the potential customer already trusts. People are four times more likely to buy if they’re referred by a friend.

There are a couple of keys to a successful referral program: 1. You’ve got to find an incentive that people want, and 2. You’ve got to have a simple process for referring and being referred. People don’t want to mess around trying to figure things out.

WooCommerce offers multiple referral program extensions, so you can set them up from your store.

#5. SEO for WooCommerce

SEO is a must for every website. Search engine optimization means that your website shows up more readily in search engines due to you following some techniques on your site.

The thing to be aware of is SEO strategies should be tied into the ranking factors that search engines use. While Google and others don’t share every last detail of how they determine rankings, they’ve shared enough, and SEO experts have tested to find other ranking factors. Backlinko provides a list of 200 ranking factors for Google.

For optimizing your WooCommerce store, look at strategies such as good product descriptions and high quality images. Use alt text to describe the product images as this helps them to show up in search results.

SEO is a HUGE topic, and we could devote a book to it, so in the meantime we suggest using a basic checklist, such as this one. There are also several SEO tools that work with WooCommerce and will prompt you to take action.

#6. Influencer marketing

Our last strategy for building buzz is to turn to influencer marketing. While many thought it would decline during COVID, the opposite actually became true, with platforms such as TikTok exploding.

Influencer marketing basically involves leveraging someone else’s audience for exposure. For example, if someone is popular on Instagram and gets a lot of engagement from their followers, you might pay them to promote your products. “TikTok famous” or “Insta-famous” are terms synonymous with products that influencers have caused to rocket in popularity when they promote them on those channels.

Tools such as Upfluence allow you to connect your WooCommerce store with an influencer marketing platform. Of course, you can also find influencers yourself who are a fit for your brand and contact them about promotion. Most will have some sort of details available about how to contact them for that purpose.

Conclusion

Your WooCommerce store isn’t a “build it and they will come” situation – you need to market your store and build up an audience.

The six strategies outlined above can meet different budgets and levels of involvement. You can’t expect quick fixes from strategies like SEO or email marketing, but you can expect that consistency will pay off.

Lastly, if you’ve spent time and money investing in marketing, make sure you’re driving traffic to an optimized checkout page. CheckoutWC streamlines the WooCommerce checkout so that more of those customers convert. Check us out here.

The post 6 Ways to Build Buzz for Your WooCommerce Store appeared first on CheckoutWC.

You might wonder, why should we pay much attention to merchant services? Isn’t it okay, as long as we have a way to collect payment? The bottom line is that you need to be able to offer payment methods that customers want to use. Baymard Institute aggregated data on ecommerce cart abandonment and found that lack of preferred payment method is just one reason why customers leave their carts.

To add to this from a retailer perspective, you need to find merchant services that best suit your business too. They can be a mixed bag in terms of fee structure, so they’re definitely not “one size fits all.”

Fortunately for all our WooCommerce users, there are many options for connecting up different merchant services in your shopping cart. You can pretty much take your pick, so here’s our guide to helping you choose the right merchant services:

What are merchant services?

Merchant services refer to the various platforms that allow your ecommerce business to accept payments online. You may also see the terms “merchant accounts” or “payment gateways.” They’re often used interchangeably.

A merchant account is essentially a type of bank account that allows ecommerce businesses to accept credit or debit card payments online, or payments from other types of digital wallets. These are essential to have because they facilitate payments in a secure way, without storing customer account information on your website. You don’t want credit card details or other sensitive information stored as this can leave your business vulnerable in the event of getting hacked.

Instead, the customer’s payment details are securely handled outside your website by the payment gateway. When the payment is settled, it goes to your merchant account with the provider, and you can transfer to your own business bank account.

Merchant services help ecommerce store owners to securely process payments outside of their website
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How payment gateways work

We can sum up payment gateways with these steps:

1. The customer enters their payment information to place their order. That information is encrypted.
2. Encrypted payment information is sent to the merchant for processing.
3. The payment processor sends the charge to the customer’s credit card association, which charges an interchange fee.
4. If the card is valid and active, with enough funds to cover the purchase, the transaction will be approved.
5. With the transaction authorized, this chain of information is reversed, arriving last at your ecommerce store with payment confirmation.
6. The customer’s payment appears in your account, usually within 24-48 hours.

Payment methods in WooCommerce

If you do a quick search, you’ll find that almost any payment gateway is available in plugin form for WooCommerce – that part is easy. In order to use the particular service, you’ll need to set up a merchant account with the payment gateway.

Many payment gateways offer different tiers of service, depending on factors such as transaction volume, account type, or the redirect type required for your website. Some examples include:

• WooCommerce Payments – This allows you to accept credit or debit card payments with no setup or monthly fees. You do pay transaction fees for each transaction. This plugin also allows you to accept Apple Pay, Google Pay and a few other options. Check out the countries it is enabled for first to make sure yours is there.
• Stripe – Stripe allows you to accept credit and debit card payments and is used in 40+ countries. An advantage of Stripe is that customers stay within your ecommerce store to check out, rather than being redirected elsewhere. Stripe charges transaction fees.
• PayPal – PayPal is very widely used across the globe, and this plugin allows you to accept it in your store. Note that for US-based customers, it also allows you to accept Venmo payments, while there are some other country-specific payment methods available too. PayPal charges transaction fees and will redirect people off your site to confirm their details.
• Square – Square boasts clear rates and fast deposits (within 1-2 business days). They accept all major debit and credit cards, with some country-dependent variability in fees.
• Apple Pay – Apple Pay allows you to reach any customers who have Apple Pay set up (which immediately excludes non-Apple users). It has the advantage of no merchant fees, but the disadvantage of not covering all of your customers.
• Amazon Pay – Amazon Pay charges transaction fees and allows anyone with an Amazon Pay account setup to checkout using their stored details. It’s easy and convenient for Amazon shoppers.

How to choose merchant services for your store

There are several factors you should consider when assessing possible payment gateways. Here are some:

1. Is the payment method popular among your customers? Not all customer bases are the same, so it’s important to choose methods that best suit your own customers, rather than just using the same methods as other ecommerce businesses.
2. Consider the fee structure. For example, some merchants charge fees as a percentage, a flat rate, or both. It might make sense to only use a flat rate merchant up until you reach a certain volume of transactions. After that, percentage fees may make more sense.
3. Operational fees. Some payment gateways charge monthly fees, or extra fees for certain types of transactions (such as credit card surcharges).
4. Your operational needs. For example, do you need to be able to accept recurring payments for subscriptions? Not all payment gateways offer this feature.
5. Compatibility with WooCommerce. Your life will be much easier if you choose a merchant type that works with WooCommerce.
6. Ease of use. This should be considered from your perspective, and from that of your customers. If a payment gateway is difficult for customers or tricky for you to make changes in the background, it will become a significant frustration.
7. Support for your country. Not all payment methods are available in all countries. You need one that is specifically supported in your country.
8. Affordable currency conversion. What happens if you sell to someone using a different currency? Your payment gateway should support currency conversion and have affordable fees for doing so.
9. Reputation and security. These two factors often go hand-in-hand. You want a reputable merchant that is known for staying up-to-date and maintaining top-level security protocols.

Payment gateways and CheckoutWC

CheckoutWC provides a streamlined checkout for WooCommerce. Of course, accepting payments is a core part of checkout! What we’ve found is that 99% of payment gateways work straight out of the box with CheckoutWC, so it’s important to test your gateway first. If you still can’t get it to work with testing, you are welcome to contact support for help figuring it out.

Conclusion

This has been a very quick guide to merchant services for ecommerce store owners, particularly those working with WooCommerce. The great news is that you have a lot of options! You should absolutely be able to find the right combination of payment options to suit your customers.

Remember to define a checklist of your needs in a merchant service so that you can confirm that you’re choosing the best option.

The post A Quick Guide to Merchant Services for Ecommerce appeared first on CheckoutWC.

This is a particularly important issue when you sell goods through multiple channels, such as via bricks and mortar stores, pop-up stores, farmer’s markets and your own website. You need to be able to keep track of all transactions accurately and reconcile sales data.

What is point of sale and how can you manage it through WooCommerce? Let’s take a closer look:

What are point of sale transactions?

A point of sale (POS) transaction refers to any time a payment is made by a customer, whether in-person or online, in exchange for products or services. There are two user roles in any POS transaction; the buyer and the seller. The hardware and software systems used to process and track these transactions are called point of sale systems.

A POS system is beneficial to retailers because it allows them to automate the transaction process, along with keeping track of key sales data. POS systems track daily, monthly or annual transactions and calculate cash generated each day on the sale of different products. 

Most POS systems include additional useful features, such as inventory management systems, stock management, customer profile management, POS report generation, and inventory forecasting tools. 

Why use a point of sale system?

Point of sale systems help retailers to maintain reliable sales records, streamline their systems, and keep accurate oversight of their business. They can measure their progress, knowing that the POS system is bringing all data together.

This is important because when you sell via multiple channels, it’s easy to lose information when it’s not together in one spot. For example, what if you had a product that doesn’t sell well at all online, but flies out the door in a retail shop? You might look at data online and be tempted to discontinue the product or sell it at a discount, when you could just make sure it is available in your bricks and mortar store.

Accurate oversight of inventory is another key benefit. When sales data is synced up, this includes inventory to make informed decisions and get better forecasting insights. Without a sync between different channels, you might be unaware of having either too much or too little inventory.

On the financial side, POS systems allow retailers to track ​​pricing accuracy, inventory changes, gross revenue, and sales patterns. They can catch pricing or cash flow discrepancies before they lead to losses. Importantly, they can better tailor their purchasing and marketing to customer behavior because the POS system gives them detailed oversight.

A WooCommerce POS system allows retailers to easily sync data from different sales channels
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Managing point of sale in WooCommerce

Fortunately, WooCommerce makes it easy to set up a POS system with several extensions or plugins built for that purpose. You’ll need to find a solution that will be a good fit for your particular business, so here are a few tips for making that choice:

• Know what problems you need solved. Not all POS solutions are built with the same features, so it helps to understand which problems your business needs a POS system to solve. For example, if you’re struggling to manage omnichannel retail, you need a solution that offers you omnichannel features. If you struggle with inventory issues, you need a solution with powerful inventory management features.
• Know your budget. Most POS plugins for WooCommerce are billed either monthly or annually. There’s considerable variation in price, so know what you’re willing to spend.
• Make sure good support is available. This goes for any new plugin you might decide to use; make sure support is there if you need it and that there is an active developer behind it who makes regular updates.
• Look for compatibility with any third-party integrations that you need to have.
• Look for good reviews. The best solutions tend to be popular and well-reviewed. 

Here are a few POS plugins for WooCommerce:

Point of Sale for WooCommerce

Point of Sale for WooCommerce is a plugin that helps you handle and sync up data between physical and online stores. It manages orders, customers, and inventory. One feature that physical store owners will appreciate is the ability to create multiple user profiles.

This plugin is licensed for one year with the current annual fee set at $199. It allows for multiple customizable features, including the ability to create a custom POS experience for each department of your store.

Inventory information is synced and updated automatically, and you can easily use this system to access information on previous orders for customer service queries.

FooSales for WooCommerce

FooSales provides a secure system so you can manage all cash transactions from your browser. You can process and manage orders in your physical store while linking data with your WooCommerce store online.

FooCommerce is well-rated for its intuitive user interface and synchronized dashboard, providing a good overview of your inventory and order details across channels. It is billed annually, currently at $149.

Lightspeed POS Integration

This is for bricks and mortar users of Lightspeed POS. This integration allows you to connect your WooCommerce store to your physical store. It’s as easy as installing the plugin, then connecting it to your Lightspeed retail account.

The Lightspeed POS integration will keep your stock and order information updated in WooCommerce and Lightspeed simultaneously. It allows you to manage your inventory from your POS system, manage customer relationships, and access robust reporting.

WePOS

WePOS is another popular option that offers extensive customization options for WooCommerce. You can track inventory in real time through your WooCommerce store while accepting orders via multiple channels.

WePOS is also reviewed well for its intuitive user interface and easy front-end login for cashiers. It supports multiple payment options and automatic tax calculation. Pricing starts at $199 per year.

YITH Point of Sale for WooCommerce (POS)

YITH boasts the ability to turn your WooCommerce store into a cash register for any type of store or business. This can save businesses money by removing the need to buy traditional point of sale tools with yearly subscriptions.

YITH allows you to create multiple user profiles and centralize order and sales tracking through your dashboard. As they say, “you can sync your store point of sale with orders, customers and product listings of your online shop and vice versa. You’ll have full control over your business.” YITH is currently priced at $189.99 per year.

Conclusion

Point of sale refers to the point in time that a customer exchanges money for a product or service. This can happen in-store or online, so it’s important for retailers to be able to reconcile data between both if they use multiple channels.

A point of sale system allows retailers to sync sales, transaction and inventory data so that they have a clear overview of the state of their business. This is helpful for making key decisions about strategy and inventory management.

For WooCommerce users, there are several plugin options available to create your own POS system. Find one that solves the problems your business needs taken care of.

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Most businesses have seen mobile traffic grow significantly over the last few years, with some even finding that most of their visitors now come via mobile. What this means for WooCommerce store owners is that it’s more important than ever to be optimized for mobile.

The goal is to offer a great customer experience, whether the person shops on desktop or mobile. This means acknowledging that mobile has its own set of challenges and needs when it comes to presenting a streamlined experience.

Is your WooCommerce store optimized for mobile? Here are some key strategies for doing so:

The state of mobile shopping

First of all, let’s check out the state of mobile shopping. It’s fair to say that things have moved quickly in the last couple of years for online shopping as a whole, with reports finding that the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated a shift toward online shopping by five years. 

Forecasting from Statista predicts mobile commerce growth will outpace both desktop and bricks and mortar stores, while Insider Intelligence forecasts that US mobile commerce will nearly double its share of total retail sales between 2020 and 2025.

Source: Statista

Insider Intelligence notes that mobile commerce has typically suffered from poor conversion rates, largely due to customer frustration with the checkout process on a small screen. Despite this, smartphones have driven growth, with US volumes poised to increase from $128.4 billion in 2019 to $553.28 billion through 2024. 

The customer view of mobile shopping

Retail success always hinges on the customer experience, so what are customers saying about mobile shopping? While mobile shopping is a practice that’s growing, the most common mobile activities were still researching an item before purchasing and checking the price of an item.

Customers talked about their need to see good quality product images on mobile, have a mobile optimized version of a website, have product descriptions available, and be able to read customer reviews on mobile.

Being optimized for mobile can also be a competitive advantage. 40% of consumers surveyed  have turned to a competitor’s site for a better mobile experience.

When we look at the big sale days of the year, data from Black Friday 2021 shows that nearly 40% of sales came from a mobile device. For Cyber Monday, 33% completed their purchases from a mobile device.

It’s also worth noting that 90% of shoppers report having had a bad experience when seeking support with mobile. Other common frustrations include difficulty with navigation and with completing the checkout on mobile.

Mobile shopping is on the rise, and customers are demanding an optimized experience.
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5 keys for optimizing WooCommerce for mobile

Data shows the need to focus on optimizing for mobile, particularly in ensuring that the customer has a great experience. Here are five key strategies you can action in your WooCommerce store to optimize for mobile:

#1. Design for mobile-first

It’s usually best to start with a mobile-first approach to design from the outset of your WooCommerce store. If you’re opening a new store or starting from scratch for whatever reason, building your store to be mobile-friendly in the first place is always easier than going back to fix it later.

In WooCommerce, that starts by choosing a high-quality, mobile-optimized theme. This means that the experience of your users is not exactly the same on mobile as it is on desktop, because it shouldn’t be. The mobile version of your site should take into account:

• Simple navigation on mobile. Users shouldn’t have to pinch or expand their screens to be able to access menus or click on buttons.
• An optimized view of your website for mobile. For example, you don’t want key information hidden down a page that requires the user to scroll forever to get there.
• An optimized search function. There are a couple of key principles for this. First, the search function should be easy to click on and use – it shouldn’t be hard for the user to type a search request. Second, the search function should return highly relevant results. It’s harder on mobile for people to browse around, and they’ll quickly become frustrated by irrelevant results.

Your theme plays a key role here. If you’re not starting from scratch and your site isn’t very well optimized for mobile, you may benefit from switching to a mobile-friendly theme. You should always test a theme before uploading it to make sure it shows up well on mobile devices. Check it out on your own smartphone and look for things like easy navigation and images that show up well.

One thing we’d add if you are changing themes: be on alert for how the change might impact the user. WooCommerce makes it fairly easy to make a theme change, but sometimes doing so will be jarring to the customer, especially if it changes your whole look. You also need to check that all functions that you’re keeping still work properly.

#2. Reduce or remove pop ups

Love them or hate them, pop ups are still in place on thousands of websites – and yes, they can still get results! The thing about pop ups is that they’re only really good for desktop: on mobile, they create a horrible experience.

One example that you may have come across is sites that publish links to their stories on Facebook. You read the blurb about it on the post while browsing on your phone and think that it sounds interesting enough to click on. What happens when you do? You find that popups render the site almost impossible to use on mobile. You can’t scroll by or click away, and sometimes the screen goes completely blank. 

It’s a best practice to remove pop ups, or at least keep them to bare minimum on mobile. You should especially ensure that pop ups never cover your main content – that’s a quick recipe to have users exiting your site.

#3. Create mobile versions of key pages

Besides optimizing for mobile by using a mobile-friendly theme, there’s an extra step you can take to really nail the experience for mobile users. Creating mobile versions of key pages means that the pages are designed specifically for use on mobile devices.

The website responds to the device being used and delivers the mobile page version. Doing this means that you get the best UX (user experience) possible for your mobile users. 

In WooCommerce, there are a couple of ways you can achieve this. There are plugins available for WordPress to help you create mobile versions of pages. Specific Content for Mobile is one example.

Also, there are plugins that allow you to turn certain elements of your pages on and off, displaying some only on desktop. An example is the Elementor plugin.

Think about your checkout here as well. If you want to sell more on mobile, the checkout experience is key. You need a WooCommerce checkout that has been optimized for mobile users.

#4. Optimize your site speed

What does site speed have to do with mobile optimization? Quite a lot, actually. First of all, Google has stated a preference to give faster sites higher ranking on mobile search. So if you want to attract organic mobile traffic, optimizing for speed is a must.

Site speed also relates to the user experience on mobile. People just aren’t going to hang around and wait for pages to load. You can put strategies in place such as using a CDN (content delivery network) and site caching to help speed up delivery.

You should also check out options like your hosting service to see if a change can improve site performance. Another tip is to optimize site content. This is important for mobile and desktop, but one thing to be especially aware of is your images. We know mobile users are asking for better images on mobile to help them make purchasing decisions, so make sure yours are of an appropriate size to load quickly and render well on-screen.

#5. Test all aspects for mobile UX

Our final tip is that you should always test every aspect of the mobile user experience. This means checking on every function people use: filling out forms, navigating the site, searching, adding items to the cart, and checking out.

Pay attention to aspects such as your checkout flow. What works easily on desktop may not be as user-friendly on mobile. For example, you definitely don’t want multi-column layouts on mobile, as this makes it difficult for people to go through the process.

Conclusion

Mobile optimization is an absolute must for all WooCommerce sites. With growing traffic numbers coming from mobile, you need to offer the best possible user experience on mobile to capitalize.

The five tips we’ve outlined can help you to create a great experience for mobile users and hopefully encourage them to follow through with purchasing. If a mobile-friendly checkout is high on your list, take a look at CheckoutWC. Our mobile-optimized checkout for WooCommerce will help you with those conversions.

The post 5 Keys to Optimize Your WooCommerce Store for Mobile appeared first on CheckoutWC.

For ecommerce store owners, clogged supply chains and inventory shortages have fallen at critical times, including some of the busiest online sales days of the year. And that’s not all: raw material shortages have meant that in some cases, there are genuinely no products to be had, while truck driver shortages and diminished delivery guarantees from postal carriers have led to further delays.

It can all add up to a stressful time for merchants. Product shortages impair sales while delivery issues diminish the customer experience and can also be bad for business. 

There will always be some things that fall outside of your control, but there are some practices you can follow to improve supply chain management in an uncertain environment. Here are our thoughts:

The state of supply chains

To begin with, demand for online shopping has never been higher, which is great for ecommerce merchants! It is estimated that COVID-19 accelerated the growth of ecommerce by five years. Even as brick and mortar stores have opened back up, digital shopping channels remain more popular than ever, with 68% of consumers preferring to shop online.

From a logistics perspective, this means that home delivery is in high demand at a time when shipping delays are commonplace. USPS in particular has had mail delays and price hikes, but other carriers have had declines in service standards too, thanks to factors like a lack of new drivers and increased turnover.

Labor shortages have impacted fulfillment operations, with 77% saying they’ve felt the effects of being understaffed. Slower order processing times and customer service failures have impacted the overall customer experience.

Inventory issues have struck many, particularly with shipments being held up and deliveries of goods delayed. Inventory management remains a high priority for many merchants – stock-outs are costly for business and can often lead to customers departing for good. 

This might sound very doom-and-gloom, but in reality, these challenges present opportunities for merchants who are able to do well at what they can control. Customers are demanding online retail and looking for trustworthy merchants. Following some good practices can help to meet the need for a satisfying experience.

How to mitigate supply chain issues

There are obviously no easy answers regarding factors that merchants can’t control, but there are some ways to maintain revenue and customer satisfaction:

Have a pre-order system

Pre-orders are great on a couple of fronts for the merchant. First, they can help keep revenue consistent during tumultuous times. You’ve still got bills to pay regardless of how delayed your products might be. Upfront revenue can help you keep the lights on while you wait.

Second, pre-orders help you to better estimate what you need to hold in inventory. You can predict demand and aim to strike a healthy balance of having just the right amount in stock. 

For customers, as long as you are upfront about timing and keep them informed of any changes, pre-orders are often a convenience. The ability to pre-order means that they can mentally check that item off their list, rather than having to remember to return to order when it’s in-stock. 

With new product lines, pre-orders often give customers the satisfaction of being “first” to get their hands on a new product. Buyer psychology comes into play!

Pre-orders can be helpful for both merchants and customers during supply chain challenges.
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Automate inventory management

Inventory management can become tricky, especially as you grow in size and in the number of products you offer. An automated inventory management system helps you to stay proactive and on top of fluid inventory situations.

For example, stock-outs are costly for retailers. You can lose out on significant sales, especially if competitors aren’t out of stock at the same time. Inventory management software analyzes your data and factors in things like shipping turnaround. This allows you to stay as close to on top of your inventory as possible, ordering ahead of stock-outs.

Incentivize shoppers who don’t need products immediately

You’ve probably seen this tactic if you’re an Amazon Prime member. They frequently offer coupons or credits if the customer is prepared to accept slower shipping, or wait for all items to be available to send in one order.

If customers take you up on this, it can make a significant difference. For example, you might be able to source slower, cheaper shipping. If you offer a coupon that is valid for their next order, it can be a win-win, with repeat business coming your way.

Audit your shipping operations

Large retailers frequently hire services to audit and optimize their shipping operations. Delving into the data can often reveal seemingly small savings that add up to large sums of money across volumes of orders. Outside of costs, it’s also about looking at efficiency – what is the best way to get that package from your warehouse to the customer?

If you’re a smaller retailer without the funding to pay for a consultancy, there are some “DIY” approaches that can help. Software such as Reveel and Sifted helps retailers to gather insights with the assistance of AI.

Investigate alternatives

If supply chain issues are impeding your ability to maintain appropriate levels of inventory, it can be worth investigating alternative products or suppliers from a different area. If supply-side contracts aren’t a roadblock, you just might be able to find an acceptable substitution at a reasonable price. 

Maintaining a positive customer experience

The customer is at the heart of any ecommerce business, so maintaining a positive experience, even in the face of supply chain challenges is vital. Some tips for doing so include:

Be transparent

Customers hate vague timelines and broken promises. Be upfront about expected delivery times. Once a customer orders, keep them informed. Some of the bigger national chains dropped the ball heavily on this in the last few months, with customers complaining that they’d place an order, then not get an update for weeks.

At the very least, customers want to know that they haven’t been forgotten and that their order is still being worked on. You should also be very transparent if products are on backorder. Another common complaint is when customers place orders in good faith, only to be informed afterwards that the item is on backorder.

Maintain high quality

If you do need to look elsewhere for alternative supplies, do not compromise on the quality that you are otherwise known for. It’s better to be upfront about an inventory delay than to use an alternative that doesn’t live up to your usual standards.

Provide great customer support

Another big complaint over the course of recent supply chain troubles is that customers have found it difficult to get hold of customer support. When combined with a lack of updates on the status of their order, retailers find they get cancellations and chargebacks.

On the other hand, a great experience with customer service can turn around what might otherwise have been a poor situation. Give people timelines for when to expect to hear back from customer support and make sure they do hear back within those timeframes. It really can make a difference to get the basics right.

Conclusion

Supply chain issues have been a headache for ecommerce merchants and other retailers. During a period of many uncertainties, it can be challenging to maintain sales and a standard for the shipping of your products.

There are a few best practices you can follow to help mitigate shipping issues, but if there’s an underlying message, it’s to look after the customer first. The most successful merchants are those that communicate clearly and maintain transparency. This builds trust with customers, who are more likely to come back. 

The post Best Practices for Improving Supply Chain in an Uncertain Environment appeared first on CheckoutWC.