The WooCommerce shop and ecosystem are booming right now, with thousands of new WordPress shop owners getting started every day. People love the platform that gives them control over their online storefront and lets them sell whatever they want to whomever they want. Common WooCommerce errors usually happen, but it’s essential to address the problematic areas then and there.
According to statistics by Web Tribunal, more than 4 million live websites currently use WooCommerce. Moreover, the platform is considered the most popular plugin on the internet, with a usage distribution of 68%.
While there are many reasons to go with the WordPress ecommerce platform, there are also some mistakes and errors you might make as a business owner that could be costing you sales hindering your site’s success. The blog discusses the 12 most common mistakes in WooCommerce shop owners make and how to avoid mistakes for shop owners and make the proper changes to your approach.
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Having Slow Website Load Times
One of the smartest moves WooCommerce stores make is to pay closer attention to their website’s speed seriously. The faster your website speed, the better your revenue. Speed is vital for ecommerce businesses where potential customers need instant access to products and prices. Even more important than optimizing a WordPress site for speed, make sure that you equip your site with a fast host that helps optimize loading times as much as possible.
Choosing the Wrong Shipping Methods
The second common mistake in WooCommerce stis choosing a shipping method that doesn’t match their customer base. You must have the right yet fair shipping strategies if you ship worldwide.
On the other hand, if you offer free shipping on certain products and not others will significantly impact customer satisfaction rates. As per a survey by Digital Commerce 360, 68% of online shoppers in the U.S. won’t make a purchase over half of the time if the brand doesn’t offer free shipping.
Not Being Able to Follow Up with Customers
Don’t leave a chance for the customer to leave your store forever when you can follow them up and get them back. Hence, you must follow up with customers who have left their contact information on the order forms.Ensure to get your customers’ approval for sending a follow-up email during the checkout. To do this, you may add a checkbox or drop-down menu where they can choose whether they want weekly specials and new product alerts or not.In WooCommerce you can often see customers abandoning their cart. For this situation, you can send abandoned cart recovery email as a follow up email to get them back to your store. Likewise, you can send follow up emails for various situations.
Poor Customer Service Skills
You need to manage a lot of things to run an ecommerce business successfully. Among them are customer service skills. A good product or great shipping isn’t enough—you also need stellar customer service for people to keep coming back. It’s challenging, but make sure to stick with it and learn from your mistakes. You can make your customers truly happy.
Bad Website Design or Usability
If a website isn’t easy to use and navigate, customers will leave and not come back. It’s especially true for ecommerce sites selling products that are somewhat complicated or have high price tags.
For example, if you’re selling expensive electronics or appliances online, it might be hard for some customers to make buying decisions for products they can’t see in person first. But if your site is too confusing or difficult to navigate, you could lose those potential buyers before they can get to the checkout process.
To avoid making these general WooCommerce mistakes, consider hiring a professional web designer specializing in creating attractive and functional websites for businesses like yours.
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Not Listening to Customers
You’ve certainly heard this before: the customer is always right. Customers pay your bills and give you a reason to keep your business alive. Without them, you don’t have a business.
That being said, listening and taking on feedback doesn’t necessarily mean making every change requested of you. Instead, be sure to listen carefully to what your customers are saying and think about how you can use their input as an opportunity for improvement. If someone says they want better security features on your site, maybe take some time to brainstorm how you could do just that without going overboard or breaking your budget.
In other words, listen but don’t necessarily follow feedback blindly. There are many ways to improve upon an existing product or service without reinventing it entirely—or breaking your bank account. Just be sure to look at every comment as an opportunity for improvement rather than a complaint or criticism.
Not Providing Great Product Selection
When it comes to great product selection, variety is key.You want customers to find whatever they’re looking for in your store; otherwise, they’ll get frustrated and leave. To solve this issue create variable products and offer WooCommerce dynamic pricing, so that customers can have options to choose from variety of products with discounts. To keep people engaged with your business, make sure you have everything they need in stock and avoid filling your shop with products that don’t resonate with a general audience.
Personalization can also be a great factor. As revealed in the report by Retail TouchPoints, 36% of shoppers claimed that businesses should offer more personalized shopping experiences for them to buy a product or service.
No Loyalty Program or Incentives for Repeat Purchases
Loyalty programs are a simple way for WooCommerce shop owners to incentivize repeat purchases. WooCommerce has number of Points and rewards plugin which helps you to engage with your customers on a regular basis.Give customers one point for every dollar they spend and give them special discounts or coupons when they’ve earned enough points. For example, you can offer free coffee after customers earn enough loyalty points, which will keep them coming back for more!
Ignoring SEO Basics
Not optimizing your store for search engines is one of the common WooCommerce errors. For example, if you have a home goods store, but you fail to include keywords like bedding and tableware in your product titles, you’re bound to lose potential customers.
Getting started with SEO is easier than you think. For starters, just make sure your product pages contain both title tags and meta descriptions. That way, your site will appear at or near the top of search results when someone searches for tableware on Google or Bing.
Another tip is to make sure that each page of your site contains at least one internal website link. Internal links are important because they help search engines better understand what content is most important on your site.
Underestimating Competition in Your Niche
Underestimating your competition is one of the ecommerce mistakes to avoid. Before pouring a lot of time, energy, and money into your ecommerce store, make sure that you’ve done your research. Use competitive analysis tools, such as keyword analysis tools and website crawlers, to determine the available demand for your products or services. And remember, it’s never too early to check out your competition.
Not Investing in Shopping Cart Software Systems
It may be the least of your priority, but you need a shopping cart system! The best shopping cart software systems can help your business by adding features that allow you to customize your site, manage inventory and orders, receive payment processing, and more.
Whether you’re planning on building your own website or are ready to launch with a hosted solution right away, you’ll find multiple shopping cart software solutions available, so you have lots of choices. Just make sure to research thoroughly to find out which is best for your business.
Using an Outdated Version of WooCommerce
One of WordPress’ best features is that it’s constantly being updated. The same goes for the popular WordPress plugin WooCommerce. If you want your site to be fully functional and secure, it’s important that you update your software regularly. You can also keep your product catalog up-to-date by using an up-to-date version of WooCommerce.
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Final Thoughts for WooCommerce Shop Owners
Store owners makes general mistakes in WooCommerce. With all the excitement comes inevitable bottlenecks and challenges, especially when you’re new to the platform and trying to figure out how everything works in the first place.
Fortunately, you can avoid many of these Woocommerc store errors with a few simple steps. You don’t have to worry if you experience these challenges. Read through the list above carefully and search further online for tips from other users.
