If you are not a member of the Facebook Group called WooCommerce Help and Share, we would encourage you to join. We talk about solutions and tips for WooCommerce Store owners & make it a point to help other WooCommerce Store owners be successful.

Here’s a recap of our last 12 months of growth in the WooCommerce Facebook Group.

We finished the 2020 with over 27,016 active members contributing in some way or another to the group’s success. But as the year panned out and Covid started setting in, let’s look at each month’s metrics.

January

January had 947 Posts from WooCommerce Store Owners, with 3,340 reactions and 5,411 Comments on all the posts. Pretty good, right? Ok, now let’s look at February.

February

In February, the number of posts went up to 959 WooCommerce Store owner’s asking questions. Along with that came 5,738 Comments to those questions. Pretty awesome seeing all these folks get help, right?

March

March saw an even larger amount of WooCommerce Store Owners looking to post their questions and conundrums, with a slight decrease in the amount of comments to those posts.

Perhaps people were getting answers faster than the previous month, or maybe there was something else that resulted in the five percent decrease in the previous month’s comments.

April

Ok, it’s April of 2020 & the pandemic is starting to set in. Perhaps this accounts for the fourteen hundred and five posts in the group. But along with that did come an increased number of comments at 6,289. As you can see, the comments were up %11.

May

May 2020 had a whopping one thousand five hundred and sixty four posts with an astounding SEVEN THOUSAND six hundred and eighty eight comments. WOW!

Again, we can’t tell if this is businesses wanting to know more about WooCommerce simply out of curiosity or if it’s about business owners wanting to get their eCommerce sites up and running because of Covid-19 related issues.

Either way, it’s a huge contrast to the prior month’s numbers.

June

……..and then came the summertime.

Having built up this group over several years there is always an expected decline once school lets out and people begin to (attempt) their summer vacation activities.

And, while 2020 had a good deal of ups and downs, June was no exception to the activity in the WooCommerce Facebook Group. Only 1,236 posts & 5,561 comments.

July

July? Even a bigger downtrend in the number of Posts and Comments from WooCommerce Store Owners.

Again, I love the fact that 1,065 people had questions and that the group had over 4,676 comments on those posts.

And, the point of the group is for everyone to SEE and LEARN from those making posts and comments. As the admin, I can see all of the ‘REACH’ that each post actually has.

So, although the decline of interaction might be lower, it is still refreshing to know that the WooHelp Facebook Group is still making progress – even in the month of July!

August

Ok, folks are ramping up for school to come back in. And, at this point in 2020, Covid has fully set in. So, on top of existing Store Owners making posts, I did notice a spike in Membership requests.

Not only are the Membership Requests ramping up, but the comments topped out at 1,185 posts with 5,369 comments on those posts and questions.

September

September showed a slight increase in the number of posts, but was basically flat or similar to July’s activity.

While WooCommerce Store Owners still had questions, there were 1,174 posts and 5,033 comments on those posts/questions.

I’m always trying to be active in the group watching for spam, trolls, drama, and making sure threads stay SOLUTION oriented.

So, it’s good to see that 6,812 Members were indeed active for the month of September.

October

October saw a decline over September with some mixed numbers. Below, you can see that the number of Active Members increased to 8,354 yet the number of posts was 1,134 & the number of comments saw a %12 decline to 4,625.

….and now it’s onto the end-of-year rush….

November

November saw a very noticeable increase in the Group’s activity. But look at the chart below and you’ll see that aforementioned increase.

With almost 1,200 posts from Store Owners and a HUGE 6,576 number of comments, the end of November accounted for a substantial amount of activity from the group.

Checkout that huge spike around the end of November. That’s right around the Black Friday time period. Not only was there a sharp increase in the numbers above, but we can see that spike somewhat mirrored below with the number of Active Members spiking sharply right around the end of the month.

…..but watch how December ended out the year….

December

So, it’s the end of the year of the most weirdest years in history. While 2020 had ups and downs for all of us, our Facebook Group finished the year with some mixed reports as well.

There were 1,034 Posts and 5,855 Comments showing for the month of December. Again, notice that spike trailing off? That was from the Black Friday / Cyber Monday questions, comments, and posts from our fellow WooCommerce Store Owners.

But….. WOW! Did we finish with a GIGANTIC number of Active Members for December. There were over 21,671 Active Members in the group!

Overall

This year we broke through the 37,000 Member number.

Averaging an hour a day to accurately answer questions, another hour to scroll through and remove spam posts/comments, and another hour vetting the profiles to remove spam accounts from even getting in, and we’ve figured about 20 hours a week goes into simply managing a group with over 37,000 Members.

So that would be about ~1,000 hours goes into ‘admin’-ing and moderating a group this size. Is it worth it? Sure! Always.

If there’s anything that brings Joy to my World, it is the moment other WooCommerce Store Owners have that lightbulb moment.

If you, or someone you know would like to join our Facebook Group, please share this post.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/woohelp

If you open your email this morning and found a surprise from WooCommerce you’re not alone.

Today woocommerce announced that they are becoming a payment Gateway. So let’s look at what that means for store owners.

A link over to their announcement page and the sign up page is listed towards the bottom of this post.

So here’s the video that you going to see from that sign of page. And what it represents is a screen it inside your dashboard where you can manage all of your settings dispute transactions and your deposits.

So what this is showing here is that WooCommerce is now going to be interacting directly with your bank.

No Stripe Extension needed.

No PayPal Extension.

Forget Authorize.net

The merchant Gateway fees are quite comparable to the industry standard as they’ve announced over on their page to be 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction all United States issued cards only.

What does that mean for international payments? Well we have yet to find out. But of course that’s what their sign up page is for right? 😉

So what are the requirements for this?

You must be running PHP 5.6 or higher, (Dear 8lb. 6oz. Lord Baby Jesus Moses, please tell us you ARE!), must have WooCommerce Admin extension running, & of course a Jetpack account is required as well.

💡Note: Stop whining about Jetpack. It is the BEST place to store UNLIMITED VIDEO instead of making your viewers distracted via presenting video via YouTube! Think about that for a minute: UNLIMITED VIDEO!

Do you have to connect a WordPress.com account via Jetpack during the process?
ABSOLUTELY! (cbd, thc, whatever it’s called: STAY AWAY!)

Here’s a list of restrictions from their site. Copy / pasted word for word:

• Virtual currency, including video game or virtual world credits
• Counterfeit goods
• Adult content and services
• Drug paraphernalia (including e-cigarette, vapes and nutraceuticals)
• Multi-level marketing
• Pseudo pharmaceuticals
• Social media activity, like Twitter followers, Facebook likes, YouTube views
• Substances designed to mimic illegal drugs
• Firearms, ammunition

So, if you’re selling anything on the above list, don’t even waste your time!

Now, let’s move on to the next part.

After you get on the beta list to get WooCommerce Payments installed on your site what’s going to happen next?

See that button down there that says “Verify Details”? After you’ve installed the plugin that’s the first button you click on.

If you’ve ever set up the Stripe for WooCommerce Extension before, then this next part is going to be quite familiar. 👍

After you’re done on the first screen it’s going to redirect you over to the stripe API connection portal. And that screen is going to look like this:

Once done there, you are now connected and ready to start accepting payments.

Okay so this brings us to a lot of questions? Is there really much difference between this and the stripe extension that we’ve been using previously throughout the years?

Does this ‘new’ WooCommerce Payments work with WooCommerce Subscriptions?
Nope! 🛑

According to WooCommerce they “will support charging automatic recurring payments in a future version”. So if you currently have subscriptions on your site do not attempt this plugin.

So what about WooCommerce Pre-Orders?
You know those times when you run up a big kick starter or a big crowdfunding adventure and then release the product at a future date, or you just want to do pre-orders for a discount?
Nope.🛑

Don’t use this there either. Again, it “may support” doing those awesomely fun and revenue building pre-orders, however it would be “… in a future version.”

But….

For any other transactions? Yes, this new WooCommerce Payments Extension could work. Again though, it’s in beta and it is something you have to sign up for.

Remember the link I mentioned? Well, you’ve probably already seen it a few times already. However, we’re going to post it here for you to share, sign up, and tell all your friends about it!

👉 https://woocommerce.com/payments/ 👈

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Even though this is By Invitation Only, what are your initial thoughts on this?

If you are an existing WooCommerce store owner who is already using Stripe and PayPal what are your thoughts on this new plug-in and it’s new extension?

Would you switch?

…..and, ….uhm, (I’m sure more details will come) but why the heck would anyone want to use this over the already existing payment gateways? #JustBeingHonest

Again though, your thoughts matter even more!

Let’s talk about this in the comments below.

🚨 No More WooCommerce Plugins will be sold with Multiple Site Licenses.
What are your thoughts? 🤷‍♀️🤷‍♂️
And what do you need to know❓

 Howdy—I lead the WooCommerce business at Automattic, and just wanted to quickly chime in here.

It is correct that we have removed the bulk license discounts for new purchases—however:

If you are currently subscribed to any of these bulk packs, *your subscription will renew at your original purchase price (you keep the discount)*. This change only relates to new purchases. We’re in the process of emailing all impacted customers to share the same info.

Why the change? It’s pretty simple—only about 5% of our customers found value in these discounts, but it was adding confusion and friction in the purchase/upgrade flows for the other 95% of customers. It just wasn’t serving its intended purpose, and worse, was making things harder for the majority of people. I hope if anyone can appreciate efforts to optimize purchase flows, it’s this group!

Paul Maiorana

Do you think it was a smart move for WooCommerce to make these changes with no announcement?

It does seem like there’s a good chance that more people would have upgraded to multi-site licenses had they known ahead of time that this change was coming.

AJ Morris, our friend from iThemes, make a really interesting argument and I’ll just copy and paste it here for everyone to read

What would you define as “cheap host” because of the fact that you are running eCommerce, you have to consider what type of hosting you have (which is another bag of worms I’m not intentionally opening).

That said, I’m gonna open it. You have two instances here. If you are doing client work with the ability to put them on a maintenance plan you could use Cloudways or something similar. This type of hosting starts at $10/month, but I believe any eCommerce site making sales (or wanting to) is quickly going to surpass that. You have to consider different aspects of running a site, speed being the biggest (like in some cases you can’t cache everything…installing a caching plugin for speed improvements is not an option here).

So that leaves you with automatically paying more than what I would consider “cheap hosting.” You are looking at paying $40-60 to get started with Woo.

But my point isn’t to talk simply about the hosting. (I work for a host, helped build the first Managed Woo hosting, so I have the creds to talk about it).

Instead, my point is this. With Shopify, you have to consider all the monthly costs. Almost every time I build a site for a client, I needed 3-5 apps to build out their store. I was no longer paying the $29/month for Shopify (and really, I was likely moving to the base price of $79/month). I was paying closer to $200-300 per month for Shopify because of the monthly costs for all the apps needed to run/maintain the site.

Comparing this to Woo it breaks down similarly. If I’m adding 4-5 paid plugins to a client’s site, I can likely give them discounts because most plugins have multiple tier licensing, even unlimited licensing. I can pass savings on to my clients by buying unlimited licenses to the plugins. So really the 4-5 paid plugins I would need to install on Woo sites goes down to 1-2 that I might need for a specific project (say subscriptions or memberships, but there’s alternatives to the Woo “official” plugins, ones that do have multiple tiered licensing options).

If I’m at the point where I need to have a client pay for 1-2 paid plugins, when you break down the costs to run a site, it’s at least HALF of what I would do with Shopify.

It’s easy for us to say a $500 yearly license seems expensive. But if you break it down, if you talk through it, in the long run, it’s actually cheaper for the client to still go with Woo than it is with Shopify.

AJ Morris

As many people know I have used both WooCommerce and Shopify, & Shopify’s prices normally do rack up to well over a few hundred dollars per month. And that’s every month. Every month you’re paying 300 to 400 hundred dollars just to get the same functionality that you would need from a comparable WooCommerce site.

And while that may not be the exact point of this post it is an important aspect to consider.

So let’s get back to the point of this discussion which is to completely remove multi-site licenses from WooCommerce and to do it without any announcement whatsoever.

In the Facebook comment Paul mentions that only about “5% of our customers” found value in these discounts. But I’m wondering if he actually surveyed all of the active WooCommerce store owners to determine that amount.

Many store owners that I know of have multiple site instances for several plugins. There’s an individual that I can immediately think of off the top of my head which sells softball gear. The store owner has multiple sites and each one of them are using some of the same similar plugins and they were purchased with a multi-site license.

I’m not quite sure where Paul arrived at the conclusion that multisite licenses were “adding confusion and friction” but that might not be reality. I’m not in the least bit saying that multisite licenses might not have some element of confusion. But to state that “95% of customers” were confused by multi-site licenses is a bit of a stretch for anyone to imagine being grounded in reality.

So what does this mean moving forward?

Well for all of those using product add-ons or the USPS plugin, or the checkout field editor or the CSV import suite, and any other plugin for WooCommerce, this now means that each and every site will have to have its own purchase of the plugin – every plugin! – every site!

I do think that WooCommerce could have made a substantial amount of revenue if they would have made this announcement ahead of time. Something like “Hey, we are going to remove the multi-site license if you would like to buy a plug-in grab it now!” would have probably resulted in increased number of purchases for the plugins like Subscriptions and Memberships, and Bookings.

However, since this has been done without any announcement at all, it does somewhat put WooCommerce again in a bit of a momentary negative light. And unfortunately some of these situations seem to have a slight bit of “modification in retrospect” once it becomes more publicly known.

Are we going to keep using WooCommerce? Of course.

But do we need to reprice our budget for some of our stores? Absolutely.

There is a wonderful 11 year old who wanted me to spin up a new WooCommerce site for her to sell things and raise money for her summer camp. And of course we can all think of thousands of illustrations and examples…. However I now know that my license for product add-ons will not work for that store and I need to budget in an additional $49 for that plug in.

Is it a huge deal breaker for me personally? No. I’ve been doing this for 10 years.

Is it however a questionable mismanagement in handling this change from WooCommerce’s side?

Absolutely!

However, it is what it is and we’re not in charge.

But moving forward we all need to know and be aware as we build and budget WooCommerce stores that multi-site licenses are no longer available.

COMMENT! (b/c: ‘ya never know. someone important might be reading those comments and reconsider)

Selecting a WooCommerce Theme is a difficult choice.

If you’re browsing through all the themes over at {cough} “TheForest” {/cough}, you’ll be bombarded with a huge sales page going on and on and on about each particular theme’s 4 billion features and oh-so-freely included plugins…..

…and how fast the theme is, how wonderful the theme is, and how that particular theme is going to “Revolutionize” something-or-another to make your store suddenly generate gazillions of dollars.

Pay Attention and allow me introduce you to something fresh, unique & different:

A WooCommerce Theme With the Power & Options that YOUR STORE NEEDS!

It’s called SukiWP and it has quickly turned into the WooCommerce Theme that I think every store owner will want to use.

And, we’re not talking about “use for a few months, then go buy another theme” to try. I’m talking about:

USE FOR THE NEXT 5 YEARS!

There’s several very unique features of this Suki Theme for WooCommerce that I want to really highlight and point out to all the other WooCommerce Store owners.

It’s not that I want to recommend one theme over another, but the team behind SukiWP is doing things substantially correct and I think I owe it to
Y-O-U to show you what’s going on in here.

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As you read this, I want you to have their site open as well. And, in particular, after you click on the image below, go ahead and scroll down to this part of the homepage and look at the part that I’ve high lighted there with these obnoxiously gigantic red arrows:

❗☝❗☝❗That part is quite important❗☝❗ ☝❗

Having a theme, the theme itself, which does *NOT* need some insanely expensive and exhausting amount of hosting resources is !important – not to mention: a HUGE time saver!

Yes, your insanity level matters 😉
Your job is to run a BUSINESS! (not a WooCommerce Website!)

When you begin and start your store with a hugely bloated and confusing theme with tons of plugins, it’s a bit like beginning a journey with tons of ambition, but heading in the completely WRONG direction.

You want your base, your theme, your underlying core structure of your WooCommerce Store, to be as ⚡lightning fast and 🏋️‍♀️lean as completely possible! And, that is (only one of) the core differences you get when you make the choice to power your store with the Suki WooCommerce Theme!

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Ok, now that we realize how important it is to have a strong, lean, and fast WooCommerce Theme, let’s look at the actual powerful options for WooCommerce Store Owners.

Ready? Here we go!

As you enter a product into your store, do you ever have specific needs for different products, different product scenarios, unique product layouts, and more……?

So, let’s look at all of the product layout scenarios and configuration options within the Suki Theme’s options. As you’re entering products into your WooCommerce store do you ever have one of those ‘one-off’ products where you really do NOT need any kinds of permalinks displayed on the page?

Not a problem! In this theme, you can toggle those breadcrumbs on and off on a per product basis!

Yes!!!! That’s on EVERY product! All the time, Anytime! No code necessary!

Do you want your product’s images to always, Always, ALWAYS be in the exact same spot, all the time, anytime? Well, you might…. but,

There are times when you’d like to change things up a bit. And the Suki Theme has you WooCommerce store owners covered!

Check this out: In each product you can decide if you would like your product’s images to be on the left, right, or bottom of your product’s featured image!

And, let me mention this again: This IS NOT on a universal store level. You can change the image placement on every product!

Perhaps you would like to keep the customer’s eyeballs fresh and alert, so on one product you put your additional images to the left, then on the next product the additional images are on the right. Don’t laugh – because keeping your visitor’s eyeballs moving and engaged can have a very powerful affect on their level of engagement in your store!

What about all those tabs that are default in WooCommerce? Could you use code to remove them? Sure! Can you also purchase an additional plugin from WooCommerce called WooCommerce Tab Manager for $99? Absolutely!

But why do that when the Suki Theme has another powerful feature built into the theme already? Check out this next image below.

See how this theme has a simple built in toggle for the tabs? Pretty awesome, right?

There are always times when you want to remove those tabs – especially when making landing pages, and when there is simply no ‘additional information’ that would go in those tabs.

The Suki Theme empowers you to remove that distraction from the customer’s eyeball holes! It’s a bit like a good store employee picking up an unused coat hanger off the ground. If you don’t need those tabs, then simply toggle them off – again, on a PER PRODUCT level!

Now, we all know that we’ve got perhaps one or two products in our store which do NOT need those up-sells lurking down below.

• Maybe we’ve got a bookings page that doesn’t need customers seeing other tangible products in the middle of them creating their booking!
• Perhaps this particular product page is a higher end item & we want folks to keep looking at it w/out seeing the other items
• Or perhaps you’ve got a product that is a ‘one-off’ item like ‘Coaching’. In which case, you don’t really have too many other ‘items’ so it’s best to simply toggle those up-sells to NO and leave them off that particular product’s page!

Again, the amazing part about this is that all of these options are available on a per product basis. It’s not like you are having to write per-product coded rules to make all this happen.

And, just like with the up-sells option, the ‘Related Products’ can simply be unhooked and removed on a universal level within the customizer or you always have the freedom to toggle it off for any individual product that you want. Again, zero coding and no additional plugins are necessary to make this happen inside the Suki Theme!

Speaking of landing pages, this next image is not only built into WooCommerce product pages, but all throughout your site as well.

See how you can keep it to be what you initially set in the WordPress customizer? But then there’s more options as well.

If you’d like a normal (set) width you can specify that setting, or if you’d like one of those gargantuan wide (full width) pages, then that is YOUR option as well.

The same goes for the content and sidebar layouts. Many of you who’ve worked with layouts and optimized sites for conversions know exactly how important it is to retain visitors attention.

On a shop page and a product category page, you might understand that you need the sidebar for searches and filtering. However, on a single product page, you decide you want to remove that sidebar entirely.

Watch the INFINITE OPTIONS for EVERY ELEMENT of EVERY PRODUCT:

Before we get into the “reasons” and the “why” later in this article, first we are quickly going to go through the steps need to turn OFF the WooCommerce Market place suggestions

Remove “Get More Options” for
Marketplace Suggestions in WooCommerce and & “Allow usage of WooCommerce to be tracked”

🙋‍♀️🙋‍♂️
Why would you want to remove the
WooCommerce Marketplace Suggestions❓

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Annoying:

Some people feel that they are simply annoying. And that is indeed a valid point. You, the WooCommerce Store owner are entering a product into your store. So as you’re entering the details about your awesome product, why would you need to be distracted or sent pondering about a new extension from WooCommerce.com while entering product details into your store?

It’s fine to advertise and desire more awareness about New Extensions to grow your WooCommerce store. But remember, you’re probably getting emails about WooCommerce, you’ve got admin prompts, and you’re probably in one or more Facebook Groups about WooCommerce.

Inside the metabox as you are entering your product details, seeing an additional tab labelled “Get More Options”, can indeed be taken as quite annoying.

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Space:

Many argued that the metabox on the product entry page for WooCommerce should be reserved for ….well… entering product details! 🤦‍♂️🤦‍♀️

And, because of the need to keep that product details area focused on the WooCommerce Store Owner themselves and their own products, creating an additional tab for an Ad from WooCommerce.com simply takes up unneeded space.

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Wrong place for ads:

As mentioned before, it’s simply the wrong place to put an Advertisement for more extensions from WooCommerce.com.

Look, we’re all running a business here as well, right? Since you’re running WooCommerce, we all know we need to grow our revenue. However…..

Have you ever opened the INSIDE of your can of soup and seen an advertisement INSIDE the can? Even opened the INSIDE of your car to change a fuse and seen an advertisement INSIDE the fuse box? When have you (correctly) assembled a new princess castle on Christmas Eve only to find an advertisement INSIDE the magic winding staircase?

See the point? Once you’re already neck deep in WooCommerce & configuring your product details into the metabox, that’s when you should be focused on getting YOUR details EXACTLY RIGHT (not receiving an advertisement)

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PRIVACY! INTEGRITY! TRUST!

When this started, there were several write ups and discussions in our WooHelp Facebook Group, WPTavern, & in Github as well.

And this spans more than just the “Marketplace Suggestions” option as well.

Here’s the bottom line: First it says it does NOT send data, but then it does, but it doesn’t, but only when the T.O.S. change. #HeadSpinning

“…please note that no data is transmitted in this request about the site….”
“….That data is then used….”

Timmy Crawford https://github.com/woocommerce/woocommerce/issues/23198#issuecomment-479561992

And of course, in the same thread, Timmy does mention that an email was sent out notifying all users of this feature as well.

📢Let’s Clarify!

At any point in time, does WooCommerce have the right to modify, update, and/or change it’s Terms of Service? YES! ABSOLUTELY! WITHOUT A DOUBT! That is fully within their right & let’s not debate that point, but simply UNDERSTAND it and ACCEPT that reality.

It IS HOWEVER up to me and you as store owners to make sure we understand that reality and take appropriate actions.

😞At any point, do I know what the laws are in any of the 4 zillion countries around the globe? NOPE. (do you?)
😟 As a store owner, am I keeping up with all the political drama that unfolds every moment? NO. (can you keep up with the politics?)
😤 Do we really have a clue how, when, or what “terms of service” are about to change for WooCommerce or Automattic at any given time? MAYBE. (but probably not)

NO.

To play it safe, to keep our liability at a minimum, to keep annoyances out of the product metabox, and to make sure we don’t ever get close to any ‘gray area’, it’s best to keep the Market place Suggestions turned OFF – ALWAYS 👍

So to reiterate this again, you as a store owner have some solid reasons to disable WooCommerce’s Marketplace Suggestions & Allow usage of WooCommerce to be tracked.

Just so we make sure to help everyone out, let’s do picture by picture images & step by step instructions to remove the WooCommerce Marketplace Suggestions & Allow usage of WooCommerce to be tracked . Ready?

Step 1: Log in to your site to the wp-admin area

Step 2: Navigate to the WooCommerce Menu

Step 3: Click on Settings under the WooCommerce Menu

Step 4: Head over to the Advanced Tab

Step 5: Click on the blue text labelled “WooCommerce.com”

Step 6: Remove the Check next to box labelled “Display suggestions….” & “Allow usage of WooCommerce to be tracked”

Step 7: Click ‘Save changes’

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Do I love WooCommerce, the folks behind it, and the companies that have bought it?

Absolutely!

However, for the last 10+ years, my heart has never been ass deep in code nor have I ever stuck my head so far in the clouds to go-along-to-get-along.

My mind and my soul is always focused on the WooCommerce Store Owner!

I would NOT take my kid out to the edge of a cliff like this and I hope you would not either.

This is how you need to treat YOUR
WooCommerce store as well 👍

Frankly, none of us WooCommerce Store Owners should care about what WooCommerce.com is tracking. But that’s on a personal level.

I could care less if WooCommerce.com knows my DNA, how I’m using their extensions, or even if WooCommerce knows that I snuck off to Taco Bell instead of drinking my health shake thing this morning.

Personally, I really mind or care one bit.

But we’re not running personal sites are we? We’re running Business Sites! Most of us are receiving page views from around the whole globe!

While most/some WooCommerce Stores might not selling on a global level, there is still a huge liability that we ourselves bear once we leave that checkbox ticked allowing things like “Usage Tracking” and “Marketplace Suggestions”.

🛑If you are making sites for someone else and if you yourself have a WooCommerce powered site, then you owe it to yourself, your customers, and your own liability to simply go ahead and turn off the Marketplace Suggestions and the Allow Usage of WooCommerce to be tracked options.

It’s not about WooCommerce. It’s about reducing the liability for you, me, and the millions of other Store Owners.

After, you turn these two options off inside your own stores, please share this with those you care about and love & anyone whom you know that runs a WooCommerce site as well.

In this weeks edition of News To Use, we’re going to have two “guests” with us 👧👩
Feel free to comment with your encouraging words as you 👂listen for their contributions 👱‍♀️

Yes, we know we should get ourselves out of client’s sites and post more on our own site, but our heart is the WooCommerce Store Owner. So, we love to bring to YOU! content from around the innertubes that other folks have already written! Here’s 5 posts that are specific to YOU! the Store Owner. Enjoy!

Ecommerce Shipping Guide: Cost Calculations, Strategies, Methods, and Best Practices
https://www.cloudways.com/blog/ecommerce-shipping

SiteGround’s New Client Area & Tools are LIVE (and, we like it!)
https://www.siteground.com/blog/new-client-area-and-site-tools/

Google Cloud Platform hardware optimized for WordPress
https://wpengine.com/google-cloud-platform

5 Examples of Brands with Great Multi-Channel Marketing Strategies
https://www.liquidweb.com/woocommerce-resource/channel-strategy

📣COUPON FOUND💪

💲 https://go.liquidweb.com/managed-wordpress/back-to-school/?apply_coupon=LEARNWP
Back to School sale – Learn WordPress! Get 40% off 3 months of Managed WordPress hosting and a WP101 Lifetime Membership Included (Valued $99)

From Kinsta: Updating WooCommerce: A Safe and In-Depth Guide
https://kinsta.com/blog/updating-woocommerce

Aren’t these WooCommerce Plugin folks great? We get to use their tools and then show them to you. Then we BOTH get to read their juicy wonderful blog posts! Here’s 6 posts from WooCommerce Plugin related sites from around the globe!

OptinMonster:
New WooCommerce Integration + Campaign Dashboard Ready to Go!
👉 https://optinmonster.com/new-woocommerce-integration-campaign-dashboard-ready-to-go
👉 https://optinmonster.com/how-to-create-an-abandoned-cart-email-strategy/
👉 https://optinmonster.com/onsite-retargeting/

WPFusion: (if you’ve never heard of or read about WPFusion, we would encourage you to read up on it and consider all the ways that WPFusion can become the GLUE for increased conversions in your store)
Connect WooCommerce to Drip with WP Fusion
👉 https://wpfusion.com/tutorials/connect-woocommerce-to-drip

🎄🎅 Christmas isn’t the only season that drives sales. The Holiday Season does come up though every year so YOU need to be ready! 💡

Mandy and the team over at AffiliateWP have published an excellent article about knowing your audience and creating the right seasonal offers and relevant creatives to drive more sales to your WooCommerce Store!

AffiliateWP: (keep this post handy! think beyond Christmas and Holidays!)
Strategies for leveraging seasonality in your affiliate program
https://affiliatewp.com/strategies-for-leveraging-seasonality-in-your-affiliate-program

Barn2K: (there is tremendous value in creating EXCLUSIVITY! This post shows you HOW!)
How to Create a Private WordPress Client Portal
👉 https://barn2.co.uk/wordpress-client-portal

WPRocket: (there might be many other factors slowing down your site… This post covers the images! WPRocket can help with all those “other factors” as well)
How to Optimize WooCommerce Product Images for Faster Load Times
👉 https://wp-rocket.me/blog/woocommerce-product-images

WooCommerce’s Announcement of 3.7 Update:

Make Your Store Faster and More Flexible with WooCommerce 3.7
https://woocommerce.com/posts/make-your-store-faster-and-more-flexible-with-woocommerce-3-7

Some of the best tips come from WooCommerce Plugin and WooCommerce Theme Authors. And then there’s the tools that all of us running WordPress use that actually GROWS 🌱our WooCommerce Store!
So, from around the innertubes, here’s a few just for YOU to USE!

PixelYourSite: (this is one of those tools that everyone should have already bought and purchased the day you started your WooCommerce store!)

This article is actually a help doc from PixelYourSite that we reference quite often regarding how to Track Google Ads Conversion on WooCommerce
https://www.pixelyoursite.com/documentation/track-google-ads-conversion-on-woocommerce

SocialPilot:
15 Must – Try Social Media Promotion Ideas
https://www.socialpilot.co/blog/social-media-promotion-ideas

Fun Fact from RafflePress:
As you are reading the docs on RafflePress to grow leads in your WooCommerce Store, don’t forget this toggle right here:

This integrates your contest w/ Constant Contact, Drip &over 500+ other email marketing services.
https://rafflepress.com/docs/join-newsletter

WooRise: Similar to RafflePress, but offered as an external service is WooRise.
Again, what do YOU need to remember: 💡 CUSTOMERS are the lifeblood of your store. Without those customers, you simply can NOT grow!

💡WooRise couponcode = YEAH (1/2 off yearly plans!)

Retainful: Recover Abandoned Carts in WooCommerce

Mails can be well-timed with this abandoned cart recovery app. Boost sales using the benefits of well-timed emails because timely actions can reap you immense benefits!

Experiment with numbers and time intervals that should be set for abandoned cart recovery. Thereby increasing conversion rates for abandoned cart recovery by setting up well-timed emails.

Don’t forget to read up on Retainful’s benefits here https://www.retainful.com/abandoned-cart-recovery
…And also Retainful’s write up here as well: https://www.retainful.com/blog/how-to-recover-abandoned-checkouts-in-woocommerce

WooCommerce Theme News 🎨

We love 💓, Love 💓💓, LOVE 💓💓💓 write ups about theme announcements. WooCommerce Themes are the seems that keep your wallet held together and the foundation from which

Woostify: 👀
“…..This part is a big change in this version because in the past we divided Product card option to different layout and add divide option for each of them.
But in 1.3 version, we decide to organize them into some groups such as product image, add to cart button, quick view, etc. Therefore, you can change the add to card and the quick view by different way and mix them to the layout as you like…”

Since we 💓using and seeing new and unique WooCommerce Themes, we know you will probably want to go read up on this some more yourself. Here ‘ya go: https://woostify.com/big-update-on-woostify-1-3

Astra: Astra 2.0 reduced customizer loading time by 60.71%

We are positive that you fully understand the uncompromising importance of a fast loading site, so you can read more on their announcement over on the WPAstra announcemtn post here: 👉https://wpastra.com/astra-2-0

CommerceGurus: Simon is going to go through one of the many options used to customize your Thank You screen which you present to your customers using XLPlugin’s “Next Move” Option 🎉

Or follow along with the reading here from CommerceGuru’s writeup:
https://www.commercegurus.com/woocommerce-thank-you

SukiWP 💓
We love working directly with theme authors to put together the correct elements of a proper WooCommerce Theme.

We’ve seen a lot of themes trying to do this concept recently, but David over at SukiWP really does it correctly. And, here’s what we’re talking about:

So, what you are looking at above is the Custom Blocks area of the Suki Theme. The title of my block that I’ve created is named Specific ‘Product One’ Reviews. And, yes. I named it that on purpose 👍

So, now I’ve got a “Block” with a curiously genius name, right? You can fire up whichever Gutenberg Block you’d like. But then here’s the great part about that really-specific-named block (or any other block you’d like to create)…

…you can now position that block wherever you would like ❗❗ANYWHERE❗❗ all without know one line of code. No hooks, no filters, no php, no breaking your site, nothing! nada! zip! zilch! No code!

💡Now, I’m not going to show you where I put all of those blocks in a live link (just yet).
I want YOU to go experience it for yourself. However if you’ll notice, I did name that example block Specific ‘Product One’ Reviews, right? 😉 So, where would you want to put those product reviews for a specific product?

EVERYWHERE! On a blog post, at the top of the product page itself, in a dedicated reviews page, or anywhere else sprinkled throughout your site! And, that’s one of the many magical aspects of the Suki Theme!

Under no circumstances am I going to use a {cough} popular page builder, load up a bunch of ‘templates’, then attempt and try to make a page with the {cough, cough} popular page builder, or ever mess with ANY page builder at all!

All I do is simply use the native Gutenberg editor, create a reusable block, then tell that block when and where I want it to appear!

I know we all love page builders. Moving forward though, especially with WordPress 5.0+ and the Gutenberg editor, we are going to have to skip these themes that rely on page builders.

You need to start adopting a theme that keeps your site loading fast, and gives you incredible options which will stay current with WordPress and carry your business forward for the next several years!

https://sukiwp.com

Here’s our Weekly Roundup of helpful links that we have pain stakingly collected from all our 8 billion emails that we get, our 234 thousand plugins that we use, and resources that you’ll want to NOT share with your competition!

Top picks = 🏆#5 (Jivo+Woo) & 🏆#3 (fraud)

Let’s get this party started in reverse. Ready?

Coming in at 🏆#15 this week is from our friend Tavleen over at BuildWooFunnels. When you get tired of the default checkout page, there’s some great additions you can now add to your WooCommerce Store. And, yet again, they have managed to come out with even more additions! (wow. these folks just keep making it even better!)

The Checkout Fields Preview Feature: AeroCheckout V1.9 Out
https://buildwoofunnels.com/woocommerce-checkout-fields-preview/

🏆#14 This week is from Barn2 Media. You know how the ‘default’ WooCommerce Category Page can almost always seem to look quite disappointing no matter what theme your store is using? 🤐 Well, they’ve got a solution for that which is gonna give your category pages a makeover that is both clean to look at from the visitors point-of-view, and also really simple to navigate and convert more sales for your store!

How to Create a Custom WooCommerce Category Page Design
https://barn2.co.uk/woocommerce-category-page/

🏆#13 This is a particularly interesting post from WooCommerce’s Blog itself. There’s a really💡smart addition to Bookings which displays your store’s availability of bookings in a really clean, sharp, and easy to navigate type of layout making it much more effective for folks to book your site’s activities.

Harness the power of blocks with WooCommerce Bookings Availability
https://woocommerce.com/posts/harness-the-power-of-blocks-with-woocommerce-bookings-availability/

🏆#12 This week (and every week from now ’till eternity probably) RafflePress came out with another great post about running Giveaways. Now, we can’t show you one of our client’s dashboards just yet. However, we know from experience that EVERY STORE NEEDS LEADS! ….ALWAYS!! We’ll write more on how-to tailor these Giveaways specifically for WooCommerce store owners, but for now, head over and read RafflePress’s write up on their site!

How to Run a Giveaway in 8 Easy Steps (Beginner’s Guide)
https://rafflepress.com/create-an-online-contest/

🏆#11 This week comes from Josh over at WholeSaleSuite plugin. And, it’s a great guideline for the emails that WooCommerce store owners are sending. Yeah, we said emails! It’s kinda that ‘one topic’ that most folks love to ‘NOT’ talk about. But Josh is going to tackle it head on and show you some great pointers!

Guidelines For Stores That Send Email
https://wholesalesuiteplugin.com/guidelines-for-stores-that-send-email/

Ever hear one of those annoying Texan accents? Well, luckily Josh has a wonderful accent that we kinda love listening to. So, this week, we’re going to give him spot number 🏆#10 as well. WHY you ask? Because he’s done some great videos detailing how to go through the logged in/ logged out sessions of your store and how to offer coupons ONLY to certain folks!

How To Make A Coupon Only For Logged In Users In WooCommerce
https://advancedcouponsplugin.com/woocommerce-coupon-for-logged-in-users/

🏆#9 This week….. {shut the front door, did someone actually make a post on our OWN SITE? 😲 holy 🐄} we’re gonna give ourselves a bit of a shout out and link to a great series of posts about collecting leads and how to do it VERY EFFECTIVELY!

We’ve written a 5 part Must Read series on Forms and all the ins-and-outs of form aspects that really gets into the worst, best & Effective techniques for your forms!
https://woocamp.com/woocommerce-series/wpforms/

The ever so wonderful Bryce from Metorik is gonna get our 🏆#8 spot this week. He’s written a great article which really drills down and explains some of the metrics you should be watching. And, like a lot of things (which WE should be writing & publishing more about), Bryce’s article is 100% about the WooCommerce Specific metrics you need to keep an eye on! 🤜💥🤛(great job Bryce!)

Top 8 WooCommerce Metrics you Should be Watching
https://metorik.com/blog/top-8-woocommerce-metrics-you-should-be-watching

We know we’ve used, seen, and talked about many different plugins which optimize the checkout page in WooCommerce. However, we’ve found one that takes a really unique approach to the checkout page and that’s why we’ve included it for you as 🏆#7. The ONLY thing CartMize’s solution does is that it focuses on JUST the checkout page👍 (with ZERO other distractions!) Here, watch what this one does👀

WooCommerce Checkout Optimization plugin by Cartimize
https://cartimize.com/woocommerce-checkout-optimization/

🏆 #6 This week is an offer from LiveChatInc
LiveChat has decided to GRACIOUSLY GIVE everyone an extended trial to 32 DAYS (normally it’s only 14 days) AND $10 FREE CREDIT! (no, not ‘either’ / ‘or’. It’s BOTH!)

We simply cannot mention how well these live chat’s are doing for conversions! So, when you’re ready to give one a whirl, be sure to use the code they said so that you can get some additional time to tweak the chat the way YOU want it!
Once it’s done, let it simmer for a few days, and you’ll be able to see the conversions as well!

https://www.livechatinc.com/signup (you have to use the code they gave you of WOOCAMP or else you’ll be stuck at only the 14 day trial) 😏

…speaking of chat…. We’re going to give a mention to another Chat option which we’re about to implement on a rather larger WooCommerce Store…..

🏆 #5 This week (again) is the JivoChat + WooCommerce combo. They have teamed up to give WooCommerce store owners an integration that will let you see 👀 inside the visitor’s 🛒cart, and create tightly integrated product specific triggers inside your store!💪

(yes, this was mentioned last week as well. But the CONVERSIONS we’re seeing are incredible enough to mention it to YOU again! Snag the FREE PLUGIN from WooCommerce & get your free trial running for JivoChat & watch it yourself) 😉

🏆#4 is from our friends over at Jilt.com (and it might make you laugh🤣)

Of course we couldn’t help but to include some awesomeness which will prompt all of us store owners (yes, us as well!) to remember that the most important thing is how you make your customers feel at each interaction.

Follow this guide to adding humor into your emails:

How to employ humor in email marketing
https://jilt.com/blog/humor-email-marketing/

Landing at 🏆#3 this week is a post about 🕵️‍♀️Fraud Prevention🚔 from our favorite hosting partners! Really a great read about fraud. The most important word though is PREVENTION!

In 10 years of WooCommerce sites, we’ve never had one hack -EVER! And, yes there IS a reason. Actually, it’s MULTIPLE REASONS! That’s why we included it this week😉

The 2019 Guide to Ecommerce Fraud Prevention
https://www.cloudways.com/blog/ecommerce-fraud-prevention/

🏆#2 This week comes from Ben over at KadenceWP

Listen UP 👂Gutenberg is not going anywhere anytime soon❗ And that’s why we saved these 2 for last. The most important thing about any of your WooCommerce adventures is going to be the THEME that you choose!

The ONLY priority you need to remember is how well your theme itself integrates with WooCommerce and all of the various aspects of the WooCommerce core plugin!

The SECOND priority that you must remember is that Gutenberg is simply inevitable. Before we ever use a theme, we carefully scrutinize the theme’s longevity. In other words, will the theme be a tool that you can count on for the next 4 or 5 years?

That’s exactly why after over a year of watching Kadence’s progress, we have to make sure that we tell you 📢to point your eyes👀, your clicks💻, your theme choice🤔, your Gutenberg Blocks choice, and everything else over to these last two:

Video – Building with Kadence Blocks
https://www.kadencethemes.com/video-building-with-kadence-blocks/

🏆#1 This Week is The Suki Theme 🎈🎉🎈🎉

Remember that we mentioned nothing is more important that the theme?
It’s the foundation and the blueprint that you build your store on top of!

Because of this, the theme you choose to use should not be taken from just some “Sales Page” with tons of other Plugins bundled & reviews oozing off the page.

(yes, you’ve been to Themeforest and know what I’m talking about!)

David’s team at SukiWP has built one of the few themes that has already surpassed our high levels of selective scrutiny, stay fast, & keep your store running for years to come in the future of WooCommerce updates.

SukiWP Theme
https://sukiwp.com/pro

I would highly suggest that you snag a license and pay that team for their incredibly forward thinking WooCommerce Theme. Be it the $59 annual plan or even the $299 Lifetime plan for use on unlimited sites with unlimited WooCommerce Stores, this team deserves not just your eyeballs for a quick look at the theme, but opening up your wallet will be a smart investment that we are confident will net your store profits for many, Many years to come!

SukiWP Theme
https://sukiwp.com/pro/

🙋‍♀️👋🙋‍♂️ Ok, that’s a wrap for this week. If your store, company, or platform has any news that we’ve missed, please let us know here: https://woocamp.com/contact/

Hopefully our curation here has been a blessing to you and your store, given you great guides to think about, and will continue to help you in your WooCommerce journey just like it’s helped us and many others as well.

Will you do something? Think of at least one other person who can benefit from this and share it with them, perhaps post this in a Facebook Group of like-minded folks, and give it a tweet or two thanking those who’ve contributed 😀Thank You!

Please Tweeder Chirp the following as a Shout Out of THANKS for everyone in this list.

👍 Simply press 👆”Click to Tweet” 🤜💥🤛

• 2020 Year In Review of our FB Group WooCommerce Help and Share
• BIG Announcement📢: WooCommerce Becomes a Payment Gateway
• BIG NEWS: No More Multi Site Licenses for WooCommerce Plugins
• 8 Must Have Features from the Suki Theme
• How To Disable Market Place Suggestions in WooCommerce & Allow usage of WooCommerce to be tracked

Here’s a handy short list of news for WooCommerce Store owners to use which has been hand curated from around the web for the 31th Week of 2019 (July 28th):

Kadence Blocks Pro, which you are looking at right now (yep! We use it as well!) now comes with a Video Popup Block 💪Since WE are using Kadence Blocks, it would only make sense that we show you a quick demo of their new Video Popup Block using 🥁(drum roll please)🥁the Video Popup Block 🤣

So, what’s in it for you? Keep your videos looking sharp and larger than the smaller width of your regular content so that viewers can actually see 😍 your video content in crystal clear clarity! And the Popup Plugin from Kadence does EXACTLY THAT! 😎

Now, if you opened that video popup above👆, what did you see? 😲Yep, that video is of Kadence WooCommerce Email Designer!

(See, you knew there was a reason that WE use it on client’s sites as well, right?)

Well, their email designed is yet one more reason👍 As Store Owners you NEVER want your customers receiving boring, ugly, emails, after they just bought something from you right?

Here’s the link for their membership which includes the WooCommerce Email Customizer.
https://www.kadencethemes.com/product/kadence-membership/
https://www.kadencethemes.com/product/woocommerce-email-designer/

RafflePress came out a few weeks ago. What’s in it for you? Regardless if your store is new, just starting out, or you haven’t even launched…. If you’ve got sales coming out the wazoo or if sales have hit a ‘summer slump’…. If you are running any type of business, then you need LEADS!

Your site, your business, and your income will quickly dry up into 💀extinction without LEADS❗ Do you want to wake up tomorrow broke? 😱 Of course not! You ALWAYS need more oxygen to live 💨 and for your business to survive, you constantly need more leads or it dies as well 📉!
https://rafflepress.com/features/

SukiWP rolled out even more updates this week. (which is of course the theme that we are using right now) What we love about this theme is it’s BLAZING SPEED🚀, Custom Gutenberg Blocks 🎁, & Extensive WooCommerce Options🔧.

After 10+ years of WooCommerce, 🕵️‍♀️we look at a vast array of elements with absolute scrutiny specific for WooCommerce sites. We’re quite confident that the SukiWP WooCommerce Theme will become the next theme which will sustain you 5+ years into the growth of WordPress and your WooCommerce Store.
https://sukiwp.com/pro/ (for those of you serious about your WooCommerce Success, you’ll want to skip past the “Free” version & quickly jump on the Value of the Pro Theme!)

Elementor introduced Tailor Made Icon Sets which always help make a WooCommerce store look much more slick and professional looking for your happy visitors to open their wallets wide and dole out their money for your awesomely design, life altering, mind blowing, incredible products! (whoop whoop) 😎 When you’re using Elementor in WooCommerce, you are always going to want your site to be looking sharp, right?
👀 Look at how SHARP Elementor’s new Icons are, by clicking here 👇
https://elementor.com/blog/introducing-custom-icons

As most of you know, we’re huge fans of AffiliateWP because having a 💪healthy profit margin enough to pay for more marketing is just 💡smart business💲. So since you are interested in making your referral marketing work better for your store, read Mandy’s article to see if your store’s influence and ambassadors have these tools to use!
To Make Influence Marketing WORK, Read Mandy’s article Now https://affiliatewp.com/features-in-great-affiliate-marketing-platforms/

Simon from CommerceGurus wrote up a massively inspirational list of 38 Top Designs to Learn From. We never make changes to a design without quantitative measured analytical data to justify the redesign. 👀 So when we see something that can work better for our clients, you can bet that we’re going to keep this article handy as inspiration!
Great job Simon! https://www.commercegurus.com/woocommerce-examples

Christine from Warfare Plugins wrote a crucial article about optimizing your blog’s post titles. Absolutely imperative for WooCommerce store owners to remember that when you write, everything including your blog’s post titles, is a step closer to more sales and increased revenue. https://warfareplugins.com/optimize-blog-post-titles

Printful has a great list of of 7 Back To School Marketing Tips and they even included FREE Graphics files that you can use (regardless of drop shipping fulfillment platforms) 👕 Thanks Printful ✅
To Snag your Free Graphics and read Printful’s Back To School Tips, Click Here
https://www.printful.com/blog/5-things-you-can-do-for-the-back-to-school-shopping-season

https://printify.com/blog/30-tips-tools-on-how-to-sell-on-instagram/
Graham from Printify has a GREAT write up on 30+ Tips & Tools on How To Sell on Instagram

Scott from Amplify Plugins has a great plugin that takes conditional checkout fields to a whole new level with options to display conditional checkout fields based on quantity, conditional checkout fields for product variations, and more – all without touching a line of code or having to wait for a developer.
Click Here & think of your checkout fields while reading this from Scott👇
https://conditionalcheckoutfields.com/downloads/conditional-woo-checkout-field-pro

A few bits of articles from live chat providers that apply to our WooCommerce stores:
Formilla has a pretty powerful integration that let’s you see what’s in the cart 🛒of whomever your chatting with 😲
https://www.formilla.com/products/live-chat-features.aspx (you’ll need this plugin too)

PureChat wrote up a smart hack for Facebok https://www.purechat.com/blog/pure-chat-facebook-hack/

And JivoChat has a very informative article on HOW TO for us WooCommerce store owners!
https://www.jivochat.com/blog/ecommerce/online-chat-for-ecommerce-how-to-use.html

WPEngine cranked out another surprise-from-a-hosting-company and now Genesis Themes incorporate AMP directly into their framework: https://wpengine.com/blog/wp-engine-launches-genesis-3-0-first-wordpress-theme-framework-to-incorporate-amp-support-in-its-core/

Pressable wrote a great guide for obtaining backlinks ….CORRECTLY! 😀
https://pressable.com/2019/07/24/strategies-for-getting-backlinks-to-a-brand-new-website-part-1/

CloudWays (always our favorite for WooCommerce) wrote up a great article about packing slips & pdf invoices here: https://www.cloudways.com/blog/woocommerce-pdf-invoices-packing-slips/

Tapfiliate came out with a slick looking Affiliate System for WooCommerce
If you ever find a self-hosted option like AffiliateWP too much for you or your site to handle, swing on over and check out Tapfiliate! https://tapfiliate.com/integrations/woocommerce-affiliate-marketing/

Andy & Katie from Barn2 Media wrote up a great article about the hidden value of adding slick looking product filters to your site. links https://barn2.co.uk/woocommerce-product-filter and of course we can’t forget mentioning their Product Table Plugin for WooCommerce as well
🤜💥🤛https://barn2.co.uk/wordpress-plugins/woocommerce-product-table

PixelYourSite News:
Christian wrote an EXCELLENT article about the Ads Library and how to use them more effectively: https://www.pixelyoursite.com/facebook-ads-library 💯
And, of course, our favorite plugin is the Product Catalog for WooCommerce
https://www.pixelyoursite.com/product-catalog-facebook 😍

WooFunnels:
Of course we would be crazy not to call your attention to yet one blockbuster write up from Tavleen called
3 Building Blocks Of A Sales Funnel That Sells Like A Human
https://buildwoofunnels.com/sales-funnel-strategy/
If you haven’t yet read about the “Big Leap Forward” post on their site for UpStroke, your 💰wallet will definitely want to read it! https://buildwoofunnels.com/introducing-upstroke-2-point-o/

CheckoutWC wrote an excellent article titled How to Add a Shopify Style Checkout to WooCommerce
While we do still tend to trust and rely on BuildWooFunnels more b/c of their features, here’s an alternative (and a great post) from CheckoutWC https://www.checkoutwc.com/2019/06/06/how-to-add-a-shopify-style-checkout-to-woocommerce/

SocialPilot which is what we use) wrote a MUST READ post called 44 Social Media Growth “Hacks” 😖
📢Hey, all you folks that have your site up and running but need more sales: READ THIS 👇
https://www.socialpilot.co/blog/social-media-growth-hacks-for-marketers

HummCommerce (again, yes, we use this to justify the pinch points with data for eCommerce sites)
A great post for all the eCommerce folks wanting to get into making great looking images and pictures:
Beginner’s guide to ecommerce photography
https://www.humcommerce.com/blog/ecommerce-photography-guide/

WooRise (while we’re still currently crushing on RafflePress at the moment, we’ve used WooRise quite a number of times)
Again, back to the marketing and growth of your site, here’s a great list titled 50+ Social Media Management & Marketing Tools for Growth which you can bookmark, read, and RE-read here: https://woorise.com/social-media-management-marketing-tools
Plus, I saw a “Limited time offer” coupon code of “YEAH” which should give a 50% discount 👍

CSS Hero:
Ah, one of my go-to favorites when I simply want to work smarter not harder!
CSS Hero wrote some very thought provoking ideas on Call To Action Buttons! Hey, you want your visitors to convert, right? Better go read this! 👉 https://www.csshero.org/5-design-tips-high-converting-cta-button

Swift Performance can show us how to handle some really fine tuned performance issues here:
https://swiftperformance.io/blog/how-to-cache-ajax-get-requests-with-swift-performance-pro/
(I always 💖LOVE 💖 those advanced articles that explain the ultra fine tuning of the details) 👍

WP Rocket published an incredible How To article entitled:
How To Optimize WooCommerce Product Images for Faster Load Times
https://wp-rocket.me/blog/woocommerce-product-images/
(and of course, we all know our stores love those images right? 🤳)

(yeah, we’re mentioned in this one) 😉
Beaver Builder put together a great of WooCommerce Support Resources here:
Top 10 WooCommerce Support Resources Online for Beginners and Pros
https://www.wpbeaverbuilder.com/woocommerce-support

Bryce from Metorik has an incredible post called:
Top 5 Metrics to look out for in Metorik
https://metorik.com/blog/top-5-metrics-to-look-out-for-in-metorik
(if you didn’t already know, Bryce is one of the old-school original WooCommerce ninjas – even before they had a WooDojo😉 You’ll be doing your WooCommerce site a HUGE favor by using a tool like Metorik 👍💯)

TaxJar: I’m absolutely loving these folks so much, we’ve got 3 GREAT READS that we’re gonna point ‘ya to. Ready?

Shopping Feed When you are ready to put more 🎣hooks out there for the customers🐟🐠🐡 to nibble on, you’re going to want to Automate your listings across Ebay, Jet, WalMart, and Etsy! (wow! That’s a big pool of customers!) But, you’ve gotta automate all of that and make it super simple in order to be timely, efficient, and profitable, right?
Here ‘ya go! https://www.shopping-feed.com/en/features/
If your competition gets these Actionable Insights before you do, don’t say I didn’t warn ‘ya 😉
https://www.shopping-feed.com/en/actionable-insights/

WooCommerce Assistant: (If you missed this one, then you’re missing out on a big time saver from WooCommerce)
https://woocommerce.com/products/woocommerce-assistant
Pop over there and watch the video on it, but here’s what the site says about it:
Assistant is a WooCommerce store management extension that aims to reduce manual work by automating several routine tasks. With a simple set of rules, it can schedule sales, tweak prices, run clearance events – all completely unattended.
Seems like a 💡SMART IDEA, right? Keep your eye on that one especially! I know we are!
https://woocommerce.com/products/woocommerce-assistant

GoDaddy Acquires SellBrite: (wait, whaaaat?)
SellBrite is an Inventory Management Solution for Multi Channel Sellers.
Here’s the link for SellBrite’s WooCommerce Integration which allows you to publish your WooCommerce products to other channels, like Amazon and eBay, quickly & easily:
https://www.sellbrite.com/integrations/woocommerce/

🎉📣Sellbrite Joins GoDaddy To Accelerate Marketplace Growth for Small Businesses and Entrepreneurs:
https://www.sellbrite.com/blog/sellbrite-joins-godaddy-to-accelerate-marketplace-growth-for-small-businesses-and-entrepreneurs/

Our friends from SkyVerge have written a great post over on Jilt.com titled How eCommerce stores can benefit from thinking like a nonprofit. 💡 Quite a few interesting points for all us WooCommerce Store owners 👍
https://jilt.com/blog/ecommerce-thinking-like-nonprofit

CartsGuru: Abandoned carts is always an issue, right. Let’s face it, sometimes people get ….SQUIRREL!
Sorry, what was I saying? Anyways, here’s a much needed article for you to carefully read 👓 6 Best Practices To Recover Your Abandoned Carts and you can check it out here!
https://blog.carts.guru/2019/06/17/6-best-practices-to-recover-your-abandoned-carts/

EasyShip has a great WooCommerce Integration that you can find here: https://pages.easyship.com/integrations/woocommerce
✅Even better is a great write up on How to Write Product Descriptions That Boost Conversions which you can find right here https://www.easyship.com/blog/writing-product-descriptions

UseProof: Want to know The Top 32 Call to Action Examples That Make Customers Click ? Ok, read it here and see if your CTA’s match up: https://blog.useproof.com/call-to-action-examples/
UseProof has a GREAT integration for all our WooCommerce Stores that you can find here:
https://useproof.com/integrations-collection/woocommerce

QuickBooks For WooCommerce:
You’re all finally ready to use Quick Books with WooCommerce, right?
https://quickbooks.intuit.com/pricing/
The FREE “Connector” Extension is here:
https://woocommerce.com/products/quickbooks-sync-for-woocommerce/
The FREE (to use up to ??? transactions per month – see their site) is here:
https://myworks.software/integrations/woocommerce-quickbooks-sync/

Whew. This post is one of many that I hope to start bringing to you folks on a weekly basis.

But…. WOW That took forever! Will you do me a favor? Post this in your SpaceBooks and Chrip it in your Tweeders so that more people can find these tools! 🔨🔧🔩

Information that you need to know about WooCommerce and CBD products.

RUN. and RUN QUICKLY.

They will not tell you upfront which hosting companies Automattic has invested in. You will, however find out after-the-fact.

Pressable, BlueHost, and any other hosting company which Automattic has invested capital and revenue into will be on the list.

It does not matter if hemp cannabis or THC is legal or not.

The second you Connect Your Site, as the prompt suggests, you have now technically “connected”

• WooCommerce from WordPress.org is open-source software and is hosted through a third-party company.

However, regardless of where you downloaded it from, that’s not quite “all” the story. There’s much more to it.

The second you host it w/ an Automattic invested hosting company, you’re in violation. The instant you “connect’ you’re in violation. If you use any plugin directly downloaded “from”

Part of the Live Chat for WordPress series, let’s look at Formilla‘s unique features and how they can be utilized for live chat on your site.

You can use that screenshot, but out-of-the-box, the only content about it is the plugin itself that states: Shopping Cart Details: When using WooCommerce (WordPress ecommerce plugin), Formilla will automatically display a visitor’s shopping cart contents in real time during a chat. If you’re using one of our premium packages, you can also view your most active visitors’ shopping cart contents using the visitor monitoring feature from the live chat dashboard. Know what products visitors have added to their shopping cart, the quantity of each item, sub-total, and grand total. Use proactive chat or request chat functionality to ensure customers purchase before they leave your website.

Formilla is one of those awesome live chat providers for WordPress that really supersedes on some of its own benefits which are specific & unique only to the Formilla platform

The first and major screenshot that I want to show you from their live chat plugin is this one right here.

What you are literally looking at here is the customer on the front end of your site & you are seeing the value of that customer and what they have in their cart in real time!

What this means is that you can see the actual value of your visitors browsing session in real time as it’s happening. If you have ever wanted to increase your conversion rate this is EXACTLY how you do it! 👏

If you got a high margin item that you know consistently converts over and over again and you get solid sales on that specific product repeatedly throughout the whole spam of your WooCommerce site, here’s what I want you to do:

Go get this live chat right now. Start with the 15-day trial. Don’t worry there’s no credit card needed.

Now, look at the products that your customers are viewing. Take those high margin items, it doesn’t matter the price, but specifically the profit margin that you’re getting on those specific products and I want you to always, Always, ALWAYS reply to those people and engage with those people.

Just like you would expect someone at a retail store to do when you walk into their place of business I want you to look at the visitors that are on your website and pay special attention show me items that they are looking at and remember to engage with them because in Formilla you can see exactly what items and what their total cart value is in real time.

Moving forward….

When you’re on-the-go you don’t want to miss engaging with your customers as well right? Formilla has both an iPhone and an Android app as well to give you notifications when people are engaging with your site and you’re not near a computer. Hey, if they want to give you money, why miss the opportunity 👍

Remember how formula will tell you exactly what the persons cart value is? I want you to imagine yourself getting the tires changed on your suburban and while you’re playing solitaire on your phone, you’re now actively engaging with your customers because of Formilla‘s live chat options via their mobile app!

you can hear the cha-ching already, right? 💰💰💰

Of course if you need to take a break from all digital engagement completely & totally, that’s entirely understandable as well.

However, you never want to lose that opportunity to connect and engage with your customers via live chat.

So Formilla has canned messages which can be used to engage your customers as soon as they get on the website.

This is great because not only can you set it on a per page basis but you can also add specific short tags to collect and filter that customers information as well.

For those of you running WordPress multilingual for 🌎 worldwide domination, Formilla‘s unique in that it has international language support so you can include things like Hindi, Chinese, Dutch, Portuguese, French Texan, and Spanish languages automatically.

Installing the WordPress plugin is simple, easy, & direct. Plus with a simple copy and paste of your Formilla ID you can be up and running with the live chat plugin within seconds.

Of course you can set a schedule for when you are available and when you are away which gives you the convenience to customize what your visitors in your customers are receiving on their end.

What I sound quite compelling with Formilla is that you can customize the live chat messages based on some very intuitive criteria.

And of course you can always pass the returning visitors name into the chat as well giving them and even better personalized experience. How awesome is that? How many times do you go visit a website and get greeted by your first name? Pretty cool I’d say 👍

What are the other awesome features in Formilla‘s live chat for WordPress plugin is that it will also operate as a very solid CRM,

Your site can organize contacts & all your leads from right inside Formilla as well. 🏆#win

In case some of you are trying to overload your WooCommerce site with CRM features & things like that you can actually hold those inside Formilla which will free up your website for handling things like traffic, add to cart, and making sure that you have a fast loading website.🚀

If you open up your account information or you’ll find everything that you need like the full chat history that you’ve had with this customer & their email ➕ their first name ➕ their last name ➕ what URLs they have visited on your web site.

This powerful information really provides crucial insights for understanding your visitors needs and desires within your site.

In case you do not want an actual live chat window, Formilla has a very powerful feature which gives you the ability to use a button or even a simple text link to trigger the live chat to open.

Again for those running WooCommerce I want you to pay very, very, very close attention to this.

On your product page I want you to put this button on your product page itself. Place it near the call to action or put it near the price. Like this:

See how that big blue button gives customer’s immediate assurance and confidence in your store?

Whatever you do, do not leave this off of your WooCommerce site!

If you have a dedicated landing page for one of your products I want to encourage you to put the button on your product landing page as well.

What you’re doing is increasing the customer trust and engagement with your store and with your site. 🤙

Pretty important, wouldn’t you say? 😍

If you haven’t checked out Formilla for live chat, go check it out right now.

Don’t forget: sign up requires no credit card and is totally free.