Tag: woocommerce

Woocommerce Vs Shopify for Your Small Business

Woocommerce & Shopify are both great options for building and hosting your eCommerce website. But if we compare them side by side is there a clear winner? With a large percentage of retail and other types of sales, up to 75%, predicted to be online in the next couple years, its a question which will interest many budding store owners, especially as these two platforms are now seen as the de facto options for eCommerce owners.

It will ultimately come down to what you’re looking for in an eCommerce platform and what the needs of your business are. It also depends on how much you want to fool with back-end machinations from simple HTML tweaks to full-on coding. However, they each have particular things that they do really well. Because of this, you should be able to make an easy decision on which one is going to be the right fit for you.

Is Shopify the One?

Shopify is an incredible eCommerce platform for businesses that need a seamless integration into their web presence from start to finish. It does a lot of things really well and doesn’t ask a lot from the user in return. Except, perhaps, a bit more money, but more on that later.

Handling your product collections is a breeze with Shopify. And it can create automated ones once you feed it with the filters you want. You can practically curate an entire e-commerce website with adequate product categories using only attributable rules for your products.

Getting Help

Shopify offers more than 2,000 apps to help you customize your website. While that can’t compare with the number of WordPress apps that the open source platform has created, it is likely more than enough for most users. And if you can’t accomplish what you need with the apps already on offer, there is always the option to pay for help. Shopify excels when it comes to customer service (which is free with a subscription). They can point you toward the right group to help you with creating customized functionality for a fee.

Products Selling

The Shopify platform was built to help you sell your products online right out of the box. While that may make it sound like the best choice straight away, just keep in mind that it has its limitations and drawbacks. Shopify will likely be at least a little more expensive than WordPress. And it has comparatively less functionality assuming you’re someone who is experienced and willing to do some of your own coding.

But it is one of the best, dedicated e-Commerce platforms out there all the same. It is user-friendly. It is exceptional if you’re business makes use of drop-shipping.

SEO

Search engine optimization is a strength for Shopify even though it may be edged out by WordPress because of its exclusive and excellent SEO app, Yoast (more on this later).

Functionality

It is easy to use. Product pages have dedicated boxes for alt tags and meta descriptions. Allowing Google Search Console to crawl the site is a breeze because your sitemap files are already created for you. If you decide to change the name of a page, your 301 redirects are automatically done for you. And while Yoast is exclusive to WordPress, Shopify does have some pretty nice apps that can get the job done.

Overall, it does a more than passable job. But assuming you’re using the Yoast companion app, WordPress is slightly better. The biggest issue is that it URLs are not quite as clean as they could be with unnecessary prefixes added onto pages’ addresses.

This is a sitewide issue that becomes exacerbated when you consider its effect on blogging. Each and every post is going to have an extra “/posts/” prefix added into the URL which is less than desirable from an SEO perspective.

Blogging

That does not mean you cannot create a great blog on your Shopify site, though. And you certainly should. Blogging is a fantastic way to generate excellent, rich content on subjects pertaining to your website in order to drive traffic. It’s called inbound marketing and it works like this. You come up with subjects which are going to be thick with target keywords. Then, write amazing blog posts/articles that are going to be highly useful to your customer base and followers while at the same time adored by the major search engines. Voila. Increased traffic that will naturally turn into more website conversions.

Software Updates

Those converting customers will always be confident that they’re shopping on a secure site, as well. Shopify does everything for you in terms of software updates and all that behind-the-scenes maintenance that you probably don’t have time for even if you do have the expertise to handle. With WordPress, it is up to you to keep your plugins, themes, and software up-to-date. If a server goes offline, you’ll be chatting with a representative trying to figure out what went wrong. That’s not to say that this is a prevalent issue on the platform. However, Shopify already does all of this for you. And, whenever you do need a professional to help, most plans cover your phone conversation with an expert who will be prompt and professional with assisting you.

In that same vein, all Shopify sites come with SSL certificates which means to get the “s” in “https” for your URL, signifying a secure site. You can add this with WordPress, but you’ll have to come up with your own SSL certificate.

Shopify is The One if you:

  • Require no coding or HTML work
  • Have a bit more to spend on your website
  • Need eCommerce functionality built-in to your platform
  • Drop-ship goods
  • Are planning to mostly pay for SEO as opposed to going organic

Is Woocommerce the One?

Out of the box, WordPress cannot do eCommerce. You will have to make use of one of many plugins like WooCommerce in order to convert it into a market-friendly site and this is something that Xhostcom specialize in along with other technologies. Woocommerce can easily handle large sites with a lot of products and is a good alternative to the more expensive Magento, which is also far more resource heavy, re server requirements etc, and is easier to use for admins than Magento.

Content Versioning

Content is one thing that Woocommerce excels at. There are several reasons for this. One is that the platform offers content versioning, which is to say that each and every time you update a page or post, you are creating a different “version” of it which is stored and able to be accessed or reversed to at any time. This is something Shopify cannot currently do, so in Woocommered you can go back to any version of a page you created earlier.

Inbound Marketing

It’s also why Woocommerce beats out Shopify for inbound marketing. Considering that the platform has been a natural partner of the blogger since its inception, it comes as no surprise that features such as archiving, using tags as well as categories within a post, and clean URLs remain a cornerstone of its commitment to professional blogging.

SEO

For search engine optimization purposes, Woocommerce wins hands-down solely because it has the Yoast SEO plugin. Yoast gives you a clear, color-coded and bullet-pointed list of SEO-related observations that are easy to act on. Red for an imminent change needed, yellow for something more borderline and green for stuff you’ve already done well. It acts in real time and it’s actually quite satisfying once you get everything checked off and achieve a full green score on your page.

SEO-Friendly Sitemap

Yoast will go even more in depth than this, though. It even allows you to create SEO-friendly sitemaps – files that make it easier for Google to understand your website’s architectural structure. It also gives you the ability to choose canonical URLs which really makes Google’s heart throb. This means that you get to set which of two identical pages (which might happen if you have pages in different sections of your site out of necessity but they are the same content-wise) is the one that Google should recognize as the original and most important so that it isn’t duplicating your valuable content.

Clean URLs

Another win for Woocommerce is clean URLs. Web addresses should be as human-friendly as possible. That’s the best way for us to read them and it’s how the search engines like it, too. If your web page is finished off with a bunch of alphanumeric text, that just looks junky. That isn’t to say that Shopify does a poor job with this. It is just a bit easier to accomplish on Woocommerce.

Mobile Apps

Both platforms, however, have exceptional mobile apps that excel in different areas. Woocommerce focuses on content, allowing you to update pages and posts right there from your phone. Shopify is all about the eCommerce side of things. With their app, you’ll be able to perform product updates and keep in touch with your customers. It all makes sense, really. Woocommerce is the writing site while Shopify is the shopping site. It stands to reason that they would transition these major focuses on the mobile side of things.

That isn’t to say that eCommerce sales can’t be accomplished on Woocommerce. It really just depends on using the right plugins, and there are a huge variety. Also, you can code your own plugin or a developer like Xhostcom can do this for you.

Useful Plugins

Anti-Spam

This plugin is one of the best plugins to avoid unwanted comments. Some plugins like Akismet come by default on Google. But the anti-spam plugin is essential for your blog since it works differently; this plugin does not send files to the unwanted folder what the rest does. Anti-spam directly prohibits robots to enter and even leave comments in this folder.

Shopify Vs WordPress

It is also very easy in use. With this free plugin, you will be more than protected.

Setup time: 1 minute

Yoast SEO 

Yoast is among the best WordPress plugins. Without a doubt, it is an essential plugin for SEO. There is not any person who omit this plugin to be installed or another similar SEO plugin. Yoast SEO is a perfect WordPress plugin that can familiarize you with SEO techniques when you get started.

Shopify Vs WordPress

Although it consumes some resources, the benefits it gives are fantastic. Besides, this plugin makes things much easier if it is configured correctly.

Mainly this plugin realizes a real-time SEO study of each entry you make. Its function is to correct everything that is missing from the post to be correctly optimized: keywords, title, meta description, paragraph length, etc.

This is only one of the main functions, but it has many more.

Setup time: 15 minute

Woocommerce Plugin

This a required plugin for an eCommerce store using Wordpress (or ClassicPress) If you want to sell products, assign colors, sizes, prices and turn your website into a virtual store, this is the best plugin to use, along with associated eCommerce orientated plugins to get the best out of your site.

Shopify Vs WordPress

You can simply drag and drop to adapt the store with the possibility of choosing a wide variety of additional widgets and customizing it with customer opinions, images, shopping cart, etc.

Setup time: 60 minutes

WP Smush

It is used to reduce the weight of the images. WP Smush is a WordPress plugin that performs a general size reduction of all the images on your website automatically and without losing quality.

Shopify Vs WordPress

If you have previously done your particular compression, it will make the images very light for your blog and increase the loading speed as well.

Setup time: 1 minute

Elementor

Elementor cannot be missed out of this list of essential plugins. If you have bought a WordPress template and your idea is to start building your website only with your options – just forget because you need a layout plugin.

Shopify Vs WordPress

Elementor Page Builder is a plugin with the help of which you will be able to create the pages of your website in an easy and fast way with spectacular professional results. With a drag and drop system (Drag & Drop) you can do absolutely everything that crosses your mind: forms, buttons, backgrounds, sliders, galleries, effects, gradients. 

Have you seen a web design that you loved and would like to replicate? With this layout plugin, you will get it.

It has a free version with which you can get results that you will hardly achieve with the template unless you use CSS code. 

Woocommerce is The One if you:

  • Are fine with a bit of coding and can be more independent on the troubleshooting side of things
  • Want a professional site that can be customized for your own brand.
  • Are going to be focusing a lot of your efforts on SEO
  • Need more customization and flexibility
  • Are building a site focused on content-building over e-commerce (selling on the side)
  • Want more control over what goes in to the back end of the site.

Keep in mind that none of these final traits preclude either site from being good for e-commerce business or content marketing. Each is fully capable of doing both admirably.

However, the strengths and weaknesses of each platform detailed in this article will hopefully give you an advantage when choosing which is going to combine best with your own goals and specialities. If you enjoyed this post, which has just been a short introduction to the platforms, and decide you like Woocommerce, why not check out this article on WooCommerce Dynamic Pricing and Discounts!

Post by Xhostcom Wordpress & Digital Services, subscribe to newsletter for more!

Filed under: Development, eCommerce, WordpressTagged with: ,

Build An Online Clothing Store with WooCommerce

If you’ve recently started a clothing boutique or fashion store, or you’re moving to WooCommerce from another platform, getting started may seem a little overwhelming.

This guide was designed to walk you through the setup process, teach you to create successful product listings, and show you how to market to your ideal audience. 

To begin, we recommend that you review the Getting Started with WordPress documentation.  This will teach you how to install WordPress on your hosting account, how to get started, and how to interact with posts, pages, comments, and more.

1. Selecting a theme and customizing your site design

After you’ve installed WordPress and logged in to your dashboard, you’ll need to choose a WordPress theme, which will play a role in the design of your site.  There are a lot of options available, from free themes to paid themes, and they can vary in quality.

Here are a few things to consider when choosing an effective WordPress theme:

  • Does it integrate seamlessly with WooCommerce? – A theme that’s built for WooCommerce makes the process of setting up your store and designing your site much easier.  While there are some great premium options out there, WooCommerce does offer the free Storefront theme, which was built specifically for online stores.  The Galleria child theme and the new Threads theme were both designed with clothing stores in mind, although other themes, both from original PSD and HTML designs and prebuilt, can be made to integrate with Woocommerce 
  • Does it come from a reliable source? – Make sure that you choose a theme from the WordPress repository or from an experienced, legitimate company.  Doing a little research and checking theme reviews can save you a lot of time and frustration!
  • Does the theme load quickly? – While there are a lot of ways to improve performance and load time yourself, choosing a theme that’s already optimized for speed starts you off on the right track.
  • Is it mobile friendly? – Check the theme demos on a mobile device and look at the documentation to ensure that it looks just as good on phones and tablets as on your desktop.
  • Is it SEO-friendly?< - Read through the documentation to see if the developers built the theme with SEO in mind.
  • What functionality and features do you want? – Make a list of the features you’re looking for in a website.  Do you want a product slider on the home page? How about built-in FAQ support?  While there are plugins you can add for additional functionality, it’s often easier if the theme already provides what you’re looking for.

Once you’ve chosen and installed your theme, it’s time to think about your website’s design. While your theme might have its own options and page builder, WordPress and WooCommerce offer easy ways to design your site however you’d like. 

If you go to Appearance —> Customize<, you’ll find settings that will allow you to upload a logo, change the colors and fonts used throughout your site, change the layout for WooCommerce pages, add custom CSS, and more.

The new Gutenberg editor allows you to build any page that you’d like through flexible blocks.  Drag and drop headings, text, images, columns, videos, buttons, galleries, and more.  

A great way to find design inspiration is to look at what other clothing stores are doing.  Of course, it’s important to come up with your own design and not copy others’, but this is a good way to get an idea of design and layout options.

2. Choosing the pages on your site

While the exact pages that you need will vary based on your business and audience, here are a few that work well for the clothing industry:

  • About – Use this opportunity to describe your mission and story.
  • FAQ – Answer the questions your customers ask all the time. 
  • Collections – Separate clothes based on season, gender, style, and more.
  • Fit Guide –  Describe how items fit, how customers can measure themselves, and the measurements for your clothes.
  • Stores – Do you also sell your products in retail locations?  List those on this page.
  • Contact – Make sure your customers can reach you with questions or feedback.
  • Policies – Describe your return policies, exchange policies, etc. and describe how you use and protect customers’ data.
  • Lookbook – Feature real life people wearing your clothing and show how to pair items together to make cohesive outfits.

If you have an existing business, you may want to consider reaching out to your customers to find out what they wish was on your site.  What information was hard to find or missing? This is a great way to learn the kind of pages that will connect with your customers.

3. Extending your store<

Think about additional functionality you might need or want on your store.  What business model will you use to sell your products? How will you accept payments?  Do you want shoppers to customize your clothes?  

WooCommerce offers a variety of useful extensions that will help you create any store that you can envision!  Here are a few that are particularly useful for fashion boutiques:

  • WooCommerce Subscriptions – Sell themed clothing subscription boxes or send clients a new pair of fun socks every month.  Easily manage recurring payments. 
  • Product Vendors – Allow different clothing designers to sell their products on your store and control commissions easily.  Perfect for a multi-vendor marketplace!
  • WooCommerce Brands – Create, assign, and list product brands.  Then, allow your customers to filter your clothes by brand.
  • Variation Swatches and Photos – Showcase color options for your clothes with visual, interactive image swatches.
  • Catalog Visibility Options – Only interested in selling your designs in a physical location?  Use WooCommerce as a catalog and remove all checkout functionality. 
  • Product Add-Ons – Allow your customers to request personalization, like text or graphics, to your t-shirts and other clothing.  Offer gift wrapping and additional options.
  • Smart Coupons – Sell custom-designed gift cards and offer advanced discounts.
  • WooCommerce Dropshipping – Manage drop shipping and send automated order notifications to your suppliers.

When deciding which payment gateway is the best for your store, consider your specific needs.  Here are a few things to think about:

  • Do you want to integrate with the POS that you user in-store?
  • Do you want to accept recurring payments?  Here are a few payment gateways that provide this functionality.
  • What fees are involved?
  • Do you need to accept multiple currencies?
  • Can you accept mobile payments?

Explore the payment gateway extensions that WooCommerce offers.

4. Writing Effective Product Descriptions for Fashion

Since your online store doesn’t provide shoppers with the ability to touch your products, try them on, or see the exact color in person, it’s imperative that you write product descriptions that provide them with the same experience.

Start by considering your target audience.  Are your clothes specifically for professionals?  Address their pain points. Discuss your anti-wrinkling technology that’s perfect for business travel and how your clothes can easily transition from the office to dinner.

Or do you sell kids’ clothes?  You may want to talk to their mothers.  Mention how easy they are to wash, how quickly a mom can get their toddler in and out of them, or how they age up with the child.

By speaking to your customers’ specific needs, they’ll better understand why your clothes are the perfect fit for them.

You may also want to consider suggesting ways to style your clothes.  If customers know that there are a variety of ways to use your product, they’re more likely to spend the money on it.

In your short description, don’t just list specs.  Show the personality of your brand and share the benefits of your products.  This is your opportunity to be unique and fun! Share what you love about your clothes, how it will make your customers feel, and how it will make them look.

Then, use longer description fields to list all those details. Jakke does a great job of utilizing these spaces.  They have a description that shows personality, showcases the style of their coats, and shares their benefits, all while using descriptive language.  Below that, customers can find a fit guide and specs about the product.  

Some information to consider including in your specs:

  • Size and fit – Does your product run large, small, or true to size?  Link to or include a fit guide so your customers feel confident that they’re buying the right size.
  • The size of your model – If you have pictures of a model in your clothing, you may want to mention how tall they are and what size they’re wearing.  This helps customers understand how your clothes fit different body types.
  • The fabric and materials used – But don’t just list “100% cotton” or “silk”.  This is where your creativity can come into play!  What does it feel like? Use descriptive language like “ribbed”, “breathable”, “walkable”, and “elasticized.”  These types of words help customers imagine what wearing your clothes will feel like. Learn more about the psychology of product descriptions.
  • Washing instructions.  Are your products dry clean only or can you throw them in the washer?
  • Other fit details – Consider pointing out the rise of jeans, the length of a jacket, or the height of a pair of socks so your customers can understand exactly how they’ll look.
  • Other important features – What makes your products stand out?  Are they insulated? Do they have hidden pockets? Do they glow in the dark?  

5. Choosing Effective Product Photos 

Because you want your store to emulate the in-person shopping experience as much as possible, it’s important to have good product photos.  It may be a good idea to hire a professional, but if you do take the photos yourself, make sure they’re clear and crisp, have good lighting, and are accurate representations of dimensions and color.

Make sure you show a variety of angles so your customers get a good idea of what your product is really like.  Show the front, back, side, and any other applicable angles. Also grab pictures of details, like unique patterns or embellishments.

Ena Pelle even uses videos to show several angles of their clothing.  Hovering over each product on a category page plays a video of the model slowly turning in a circle to display all sides.  The motion also showcases the products “in action.”

A variety of pictures with different body types and sizes, and several outfit pairings help people picture wearing them on an everyday basis.

6. Blogging Regularly

Blogging is an excellent foundation for marketing campaigns.  Creative content can be used in email marketing, social media marketing, digital advertising, and more.  It’s also a great way to educate your customers, answer their questions, and show that you know what you’re talking about.  Plus, consistent, high-quality blog posts play a big role in search engine optimization.

Clearly, blogging is important.  But how do you come up with topic ideas on a regular basis?

The best place to start is a brain dump.  Start a document on your computer and list out all the ideas that immediately pop into your head, no matter how good they are.  Even if you don’t go with those topics, you may get inspiration from them.

Here are a few other ways to find idea inspiration:

  • Customer questions – What questions do you get via email, social media, and phone calls?  Answer them thoroughly in the form of blog posts.
  • Seasons and events – You might want to put together a winter style guide or a list of Christmas gift suggestions.
  • Capitalize on trends – Is velvet very “in” right now?  What about neon or camo? Consider discussing how to incorporate those styles into outfits using your clothes. Google Trends is a great tool to find out what people are searching for and interested in right now.
  • Read other blogs in your industry – Follow top bloggers in the fashion industry and use their ideas for inspiration.  Don’t copy their posts, but instead use them to spawn your own ideas and apply to your own situations.
  • Share what you’re passionate about – Write about your business, tell your story, share the charity that you donate to, or highlight team members.  Customers love to know more about the people they’re buying from.
  • Use Quora – Make a list of words that relate to your products or industry and use them to search Quora.  Go through the conversations and you’ll find endless ideas!
  • Join social media groups – Find Facebook groups related to your industry and pay attention to the questions that are being asked.  Write on those topics.

Think about what information your customers will really find useful rather than promoting your products in every single post.  Be a source of information for people and they’ll be more likely to purchase from you long-term.

7. Optimizing for Search Engines

While there are a lot of pieces to search engine optimization, the biggest thing to remember is that Google focuses on the user experience.  They want to show high-quality content to their users, so it’s important that your site provides just that.

Consider terms (or keywords) that your customers might use to find your products.  For example, someone might search, “comfortable winter sweater for women” or “white lace dress.”  Try to incorporate those keywords naturally into your content. Don’t just stuff them in as often as possible!

Blogging and good product descriptions are a great place to start.  Once you have that nailed down, it’s time to consider on-page optimization.  Here are the main components:

  1. Page or Product Title – Include keywords naturally and make it compelling to users.  This should make people want to click on your page or product.
  2. Meta Description – Write a short snippet about your page topic and make it interesting!  Users should want to read more.
  3. Slug (or URL) – Keep it short, but descriptive, and include your keyword.
  4. Alt Tags – Alt tags are how Google and Screen Readers “read” your images.  Don’t stuff these full of keywords, but instead describe exactly what’s in the picture.

The free Jetpack plugin helps with page optimization by eliminating the need to edit any code and allowing you to customize the above fields.  

There are also other aspects to consider like site load time, website structure, accessibility, and more.  Here are some more articles to reference if you want to dive further into SEO:

Ecommerce

8. Marketing Your Clothing Store

Now that you have everything set up, it’s time to start reaching out to your audience.  There are a lot of different marketing strategies and the perfect marketing mix will be unique to your business.  Here are some effective ways to market a clothing store:

Abandoned Cart Emails.  Learn more about abandoned cart emails.

Social Media Marketing.  Instagram is a great place for fashion brands to start.  It’s the perfect visual format to showcase your products.  Their new shoppable posts feature even makes it easy for your followers to shop your products right on their phones.

Facebook can also be a great tool.  It provides a better method of connecting directly with your customers through Facebook groups, reviews, and longer, text-based posts.  You may want to share customer stories here or create a photo gallery of outfit ideas.

You can use our Facebook for WooCommerce extension you to quickly integrate your WooCommerce store with both Facebook and Instagram.

Hashtags are an important part of reaching your target audience on social media.  Spend some time researching the hashtags that your specific customers follow and try to incorporate those into your posts.  HootSuite provides a great guide to finding effective hashtags and utilizing them.  

Pinterest Marketing. 

The Pinterest for WooCommerce extension helps you sync your entire inventory with Pinterest and gain valuable analytics data.

Tailwind is a great tool to use for fashion retailers.  You can add images in bulk and automatically schedule them in the time slots that are most effective for your account.  Tailwind Tribes also allow you to join groups of like-minded, fashion-focused brands who all want to share each others’ content.  Find the best Tailwind Tribes for fashion.

Influencer Marketing.  An endorsement from a celebrity or social media influencer can be huge for your business!  There are several ways you can approach this, including:

  • Blog post – The influencer would wear an outfit that includes your clothes and blog about it, either in exchange for a free product or for money.
  • Try-on haul video –  The influencer would post a social media video trying on a bunch of different items from your store and link to them.  This is particularly great for vloggers!
  • Event styling – Dress a celebrity or influencer for an event or the red carpet.  Their audience will ask where they got their outfit and they’ll be able to answer, “Who are you wearing?” with your name!
  • Design collaboration – Create a line of products in tandem with a celebrity and include their name on the collection.
  • Social media post – The influencer would post a video, picture, or story about your products.  Feel free to be creative – the sky’s the limit!

Learn more about connecting and collaborating with influencers.

Giveaways.  It may seem counterintuitive to give away your products for free, but it’s an excellent way to gain social media followers or email subscribers.  People love free stuff!  

On your website, ask for an email address in exchange for an entry into your contest – just make sure to let them know that they’ll be joining your email list, too!  Or, use one of these giveaway tools to get likes and comments on your social accounts.  You can even partner with other retailers or bloggers in your industry to garner more engagement!

Digital Advertising.  Online advertising can be an excellent way to reach new shoppers or connect with previous customers.  There are a variety of platforms – Google, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, etc. – and choosing the right one often depends on where your customers spend their time.

For example, Google Shopping ads put your products in front of customers who are searching for them on Google in a visual, compelling way.  But if your audience spends the majority of their time on social media, you may want to invest in Facebook ads.

Also consider remarketing ads, which target the people that have already been to your site or customers that visited a specific page (like your Checkout or Cart pages). You can create ads that offer a coupon code, advertise a sale, or address specific pain points – shipping concerns, pricing concerns, quality concerns, etc.  This can be an especially helpful way to gain sales.

Start Your Online Clothing Store 

Starting a fashion website may seem overwhelming, but the key is just that – start!  If you work through the steps in this article, spend time connecting with your customers, and create high-quality products, you’ll be on the right track.  Happy selling!

Start your WooCommerce store with these five steps. and if you enjoyed this post, why not check out this one on Wordpress Dynamic Content?

Filed under: eCommerce, WordpressTagged with: ,

Integrate WooCommerce with Your eBay or Amazon Store

If you have a successful storefront on eBay or Amazon, you might have thought about expanding to your own, standalone WooCommerce store. It may seem a bit overwhelming, especially after you’ve invested time and money into getting where you are right now.

But it’s worth it

Yes, Amazon and eBay come with a host of benefits like a built-in audience and brand recognition. But a WooCommerce store will help you provide more product offerings, build your brand, and, ultimately, grow your business.

You can even integrate WooCommerce with your existing eBay or Amazon store seamlessly, so your business can benefit from both existing marketplaces and a standalone online store.

Here are just a few ways that a WooCommerce store will help you grow:

Make more money

Let’s face it – we all want our profit margins to be as high as possible. The higher our margins are, the more money we take home at the end of the day.

If you sell your products on eBay or Amazon, you’re familiar with the various fees they charge each time you list or sell a product. The exact amounts vary based on what subscription plan you have, what products you’re listing, any promotions you may use, etc. Here’s a quick breakdown:

eBay charges (for a store subscription):

  • Monthly subscription fees – starting at $4.95 per month
  • Listing fees after monthly free listings are used – as much as 30 cents per listing
  • Final value fees after your product sells – as much as 10%

So if you sell a product for $100.00, you may have to pay up to $10.30 of that back to eBay, plus your monthly subscription fee. That may not seem like a lot at first, but when you’re regularly paying 10% of your income to a third party, it adds up very quickly.

Amazon charges (for a professional seller):

  • Monthly subscription fees – $39.99 per month
  • Referral fees – varies based on product category, but 15% on average
  • Variable closing fees for media items – $1.35 per book, movie, video game, etc.

On that same $100 product, you may be paying $15.00 to Amazon, plus the monthly subscription fee. Again, 15% of your income adds up!

By starting a standalone WooCommerce store, you won’t need to worry about those fees. There are still overhead costs involved – hosting and domain names, for example – but WooCommerce itself is free and you won’t need to pay any listing fees or percentage of sales. You can expect much higher profit margins!

Maintain full ownership

With an Amazon or eBay store, your business is completely dependent on their platforms, technology, and executive decisions.

What happens if Amazon or eBay decides to shut down your store? That’s definitely a possibility and they don’t even need to provide you with a reason. If that’s your only source of income, you’ll be left floundering, trying to figure out another way to sell your products.

That seems like the worst-case scenario, but consider these possibilities:

  • They could raise their fees and prices at any time.
  • They could change their selling terms and conditions.
  • They could change their search algorithms, making it harder for customers to find your products.

With a standalone store, you have full control. You’re not reliant upon a third party’s decision.

And, of course, if you want to maintain your successful eBay or Amazon store, your own website would provide both an additional income stream and a fallback should anything change with the other platforms.

Photo © https://www.thorogoodusa.com/

Build a brand

Building a brand is important for any business. Good branding establishes credibility, quality, and experience. It sets your products apart and keeps customers coming back time and time again.

While eBay and Amazon do allow some customization, you are limited as to what you can change. You can add custom images, logos, headers, and text, but most stores end up looking about the same. It’s very difficult to make yours really stand out.

Building a WooCommerce store allows you to showcase your brand’s personality! Create beautiful photo galleries, highlight your team members and tell their stories, use video backgrounds, add fun animation and custom illustrations, build interactive elements, and more. You can create anything that you want – the sky’s the limit!

There’s more to your brand than just design, as well. It’s important that you provide the best possible experience for your customers. With your own store, you can install customer service plugins that allow you to respond to questions and problems, set up searchable FAQ pages, and provide a variety of contact methods that make it easy for customers to get in touch with you. You can also integrate social feeds that show your products in action.

Decide your own terms

While you do have some control over terms and conditions on Amazon and eBay, you are limited in many ways. In the end, you’re reliant upon their policies.

For example, on eBay, you can decide that you don’t accept returns. However, if a buyer claims that the item they received was not as you described, eBay makes the final decision on a refund.

Of course, it’s important that you make ethical decisions as a business owner. Writing accurate descriptions and delivering high-quality products is key to success. But there are customers that will try to take advantage of your company and receive items for free. Having full control over your responses, refunds, shipping, and other policies allows you to make decisions for yourself.

Screenshot of a product page from 2 Hounds Design, which uses WooCommerce to allow product customizations.
Photo © https://www.2houndsdesign.com/

Add additional functionality 

eBay and Amazon both provide basic eCommerce functionality but there are definitely a lot of constraints. WooCommerce has virtually unlimited options, especially with their ever-growing extension database. Here are just a few features you can add to your WooCommerce store:

Sell subscription boxes. While Amazon does allow subscription boxes, eBay doesn’t currently provide that functionality. WooCommerce allows you to accept recurring weekly, monthly, or yearly payments with signup fees, free trials, and more.

Allow for customizations. Again, this is a feature available on Amazon but not on eBay. WooCommerce supports customizations of all kinds: create custom t-shirts, add monograms to products or design custom cards. Add on personalization fields like dropdowns, text areas, checkboxes, and sample images.

Accept a variety of payment types. Accept virtually any payment gateway you’d like rather than being dependent on eBay and Amazon’s limited options. Stripe, Square, PayPal, and Authorize.net are just a few of the built-in options, or create custom APIs to integrate with other, less common gateways.

Add a measurement calculator. Configure a pricing calculator based on dimensions, square footage, volume, or weight submitted by the user. This is particularly useful for flooring, wallpaper, frames, and similar products.

Bundle products. Sell a group of related products together as a package deal. Allow customers to add products to an existing bundle. This is a great way to upsell!

Sell memberships. Build an entire membership system with drip content that can tie into your existing products. For example, if someone purchases a meal kit subscription box, they may also get recipe videos each month on your membership platform.

Keep customers updated. Blogging is a valuable way to answer customer questions, connect with them, share your story, provide tips, and grow your brand. Since WooCommerce is built on WordPress, you can start blogging right away and reach your customers.

Learn about additional WooCommerce extensions.

Market more effectively

With a standalone WooCommerce store, you have the ability to collect customer data and use it more successfully. eBay and Amazon have some marketing capabilities, like email marketing and online advertising, but you’re very limited with what you can do and what you can include in marketing materials.

For example, while you can send follow-up emails and coupons to existing customers, you have very few options to reach site visitors who haven’t yet made a purchase. When it comes down to it, eBay and Amazon own your customer data and you have limited access.

However, with a WooCommerce store, you have the ability to collect data and use it for marketing purposes. Here are a few ways that you can market to potential and existing customers:

  • Abandoned cart emails. Send emails or target ads to people who added products to their cart and left your site. Offer free shipping or a coupon to increase their chances of making a purchase.
  • Remarketing. Remarketing ads allow you to reach your previous store visitors as they browse other sites. While Amazon does offer a form of remarketing, it’s nowhere near what Google and Facebook offer. With a standalone WooCommerce store, you can track your site visitors and use Google and Facebook’s advertising capabilities to send ads to the people most likely to purchase your products.
  • Cross-sells and upsells. WooCommerce offers more advanced ways to upsell and cross-sell to your customers. Automatically suggest related products on individual product pages or your cart and checkout pages.  You can even suggest items that they looked at but didn’t add to their cart.
  • Marketing based on specific actions. For example, send emails to customers with coupons related to products they’ve previously purchased. You can also send thank you emails, coupons, or free shipping codes to recent, first-time, or repeat customers. This leads to more effective and successful marketing.
  • Facebook lookalike audiences. Send ads to people that are similar to existing customers using lookalike audiences. You can create these using your own email list or from information gathered when you install the Facebook Pixel on your site.

And, of course, accessing more customer data helps you understand more about your audience, their preferences, and their actions. This can help you make decisions about pricing, website layouts, product descriptions, product offerings, and more.

Group of men and women standing with shopping bags.

Gain more loyal customers

While eBay and Amazon are an excellent way to gain new customers thanks to their built-in audiences, it’s much more challenging to cultivate repeat customers. Because, let’s face it, these shoppers are typically loyal to Amazon and eBay first.  

Especially in the case of eBay, customers are often there to find the best deals. So if they run across a product that’s similar to yours at a better price, they’re likely to purchase that one instead. In fact, Amazon and eBay even send out marketing emails to their customers with recommended products that compete with yours.

With your own website, however, your potential customers aren’t presented with an array of competing products. You have the opportunity to connect with them on a deeper level and share your brand story. They’re more likely to understand the value of your products and become loyal, repeat customers.

Get started with WooCommerce

WooCommerce has made connecting your eBay or Amazon store a seamless process with Amazon and eBay Integration for WooCommerce. You can match up products on your existing marketplace storefronts to products on your new store and sync inventory, pricing, and more.

Once you’ve set up your WooCommerce store (you can find great documentation here), download and install the extension and connect your store. Here are some of the great features you’ll find:

  • Link existing Amazon and eBay products to items on your WooCommerce store.
  • Create new Amazon and eBay listings individually or in bulk.
  • Set pricing rules, fulfillment rules, and product details for Amazon and eBay listings based on existing WooCommerce products.
  • Sync inventory, orders, pricing, and product details in real-time.
  • Receive eBay and Amazon orders directly in WooCommerce.

To learn even more about how it works, check out the Amazon and eBay Integration for WooCommerce documentation.

Filed under: Marketing, Strategy, WordpressTagged with: , ,

Denzilla High Quality Furniture & Interior Design

Custom Built Branded Business, Built Site and Domain For Sale

eCommerece Dropshipping stores are becoming a good way for people to get in to the online selling industry, however, many people struggle with a lot of the aspects of setting one up. Things like finding a niches, finding suppliers, setting up social media accounts, setting up the store, paying monthly fees, and quite a few other things mean that it can be a non starter for many.

Fortunately, I have a couple of examples which are available for shrewd entrepreneurs, and here is one of them.

Its called Denzilla, and it comes with all the rights to the .com domain name, the business name, any logo which is produced for it, the social media accounts already set up with user name “denzillarama” and quite a lot more.

Denzilla

We’ve got verified suppliers for high quality furnishings including leather sofas, fabric sofas, chairs, wardrobes, dining tables, kitchen furniture and a whole lot more. These are verified and high quality people who will dropship the items and take care of the insurance etc, and they are not Ali Express. Currently UK and Europe, with a USA option available aswell. So a great possibility to build a global brand which is highly recognisable across all major social media channels and also offers a dual revenue opportunity with the option for service based interior design work. The current design is a sample and in fact we can build any theme or original design for the site as required and all will be custom built and extremely well engineered.

There is an example site at Denzilla.com, and this can be built according to taste, as above, with any design if necessary and high quality hosting and maintenance. Also any integrations and CRMs, custom plugins etc including the potential to be one of the first furniture outlets to use Matterport 3D for Virtual Display of certain products if necessary. This niche has high profit margins, and is mid to high ticket, with turnover being easily 500K upwards PA, so if you want to get in to and build a recognisable brand this is a great opportunity for budding furniture moguls and/or interior designers to start at relatively low costs and build up a great brand name get in touch at [email protected] for more information and a chat on how we go about it.

In fact you might kick yourself if you miss this one!

Get in touch at +1 (646) 224 2225

If you enjoyed this post, why not check out this article on using Instagram Shopping to increase your store revenue!

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Filed under: eCommerce, Marketing, Trends, WordpressTagged with: ,