WooCommerce is a great platform for starting an eCommerce business. This free plugin is enough to build any kind of small and medium type of online store. However, when it comes to increasing conversion rates and sales, WooCommerce lags behind.
WooCommerce comes with all the essential features to manage basic online stores. But to increase sales we need some additional features. And for that, we need some plugins to extend its functionalities. So in this blog post, I will discuss about the most effective strategies to increase sales and the plugins that are required to execute them.
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15 Proven Ways to Increase WooCommerce Sales
Only having effective plugins can not guarantee that you will get more sales. It is the strategies and executions that create positive impacts and eventually generate more sales. So before recommending plugins, I would like to discuss a little bit about the most widely used strategies that will surely boost the sales of your store.
Optimize Your Product Pages
Before going to any advanced way, the first and most obvious thing to optimize is the landing pages. For eCommerce stores, it is the product pages. Yes, I know WooCommerce automatically creates product pages and the design comes from your current theme. But you need to ensure that the design reflects a good brand identity and the exploration & buying process is smoother for the shoppers.
Improve Website Speed
Do you know, that almost 70% of customers say slow-loading websites reduce their willingness to buy. So having a good-looking website is a plus but to ensure that you are not compromising the loading time.
Making a fast fast-loading site is very challenging, especially if it is built with WordPress. However, still, you have to find a way to make your site load faster.
Offer Discounts and Promotions
Offering discounts is the most widely used strategy to increase sales. However, overdoing it may also harm your business and brand. You have to find a balance and choose the right time to offer promotional offers. How?
Offer discounts on special occasions and make sure to mention the reason. Otherwise, potential buyers might lose interest in buying from your store.
Use Abandoned Cart Recovery
Abandoned carts are one of the most common problems of any eCommerce site. I guess you are also frustrated about your abandoned cart rates. But I would suggest you be calm and take it as an opportunity.
For example, if the abandoned rate for you is 60%, don’t think of it as a threat. Grab it as an opportunity as you can increase your sales by reducing the abandonment rates. Your potential customers are already making the decision but not completing the purchase. So you just need to find out the problems and solve them accordingly.
Collet Leads and Start Email Marketing
More than 90% of visitors don’t convert at the first visit. So you should try to collect their emails and later reach them again by sending newsletters. And don’t forget to give them reasons to reconsider purchasing your products.
Improve Checkout Process
A complex checkout process is another common reason for losing potential sales. So you should try to keep the buying intention positive by making a smoother checkout process. For that, you might need to create a custom checkout page.
Give Confidence and Create Urgency
Sometimes potential customers need an extra push or motivation even if they are already interested in placing an order. Showing a real-time sales notification can increase and give your buyers confidence.
For creating a FOMO you can add a visual presentation of the remaining stock to create scarcity. And add a Cart reserved timer to encourage the shoppers to complete the purchase sooner rather than later.
Run Paid Ads
After setting up an eCommerce store, the next thing you need to do is bring traffic. The most popular way to do that is paid advertising. Google Ads helps you to find your target audience via search and display ads no matter which type of products you sell (legal products). Another great platform is Facebook, from where you can create a page and create your brand identity through paid marketing.
Leverage SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
Most small eCommerce stores make a common mistake which is they only rely on paid marketing. However, it is very difficult to sustain only with paid traffic. So, you must also focus on SEO to rank product pages to keep getting organic traffic regularly.
Improve Customer Service
Once you start getting traffic to your online store, you also need to ensure great customer support. Make sure to focus on both presale and after-sale support. It will help you to create a loyal user base and increase the rate of repeat purchases.
Upsell and Cross-sell
Once you start getting some sales, you may face another common problem which is low order value compared to customer acquisition cost. There are some effective approaches that you can try to overcome this kind of situation. You can boost the order value with the same number of sales by executing upselling and cross-selling strategies. The best part is you don’t need to spend any extra money on customer acquisition.
Referral Programs / Affiliate Marketing
Referral programs or affiliate systems are another effective way to build a sustainable business. If you can create an affiliate system with an attractive commission, you will be able to run your business on autopilot.
Retargeting Ads
Retargeting ads is a great way to bring the users back to your site and boost sales. Most of the visitors will not purchase at the first visit. But you can reach them again by using retargeting ads on both Google Ads and Facebook.
Similarly, you can also reach out to your loyal customers who have already purchased from your store with retargeting ads.
Blogging
You can start creating relevant content to help users make better buying decisions. It will help your business to have a loyal user base and increase brand credibility. But make sure to produce and publish quality content that is helpful for your targeted audiences.
Start Wholesaling (Optional)
You can also start wholesaling to the same retail store without compromising the experience of your existing customers. So if you have the resources to maintain a B2B+B2C hybrid business you should consider doing it. Because it will not only scale up your business but also help you clear your flop inventories.
List of Best WooCommerce Plugins to Increase Sales
As I have already explained about the most commonly used and effective sales-boosting strategies it’s time to start enabling them to your WooCommerce store. For that, you need to use some additional plugins. Here is the list of the best plugins that will help you increase the sales of your WooComemrce by implementing all of the above-mentioned strategies.
1. WowStore – Gutenberg WooCommerce Builder
WowStore is an all-in-one solution to redesign the full WooCommerce stores either with premade templates or from scratch. It will help you redesign your product pages to make them more user-friendly and conversion-focused. Moreover, you can create custom Cart and Checkout pages to make the buying process smoother.
WowStore has more effective features like sales push notifications which will give your buyers confidence to place an order. The stock progress bard feature will create scarcity. The cart reserved a timer creates FOMO (fear of missing out) and encourages shoppers to complete the purchase faster.
WowStore will be a great choice as it offers all the essential features. So you can keep the plugin count low and ensure a better loading time.
Main Features:
- Product Grid and Slider Blocks
- WooComemrce Builder
- Premade Templates
- WooCommerce Wishlist
- Preorder and Backorder
- Stock Progress Bar
- Cart Reserved Timer
- Animated Add to Cart
- Variation Swatches
- Product Filter
- Name Your Price
- Sales Push Notification
2. WowRevenue
WowRevenue is a futuristic plugin that comes with all essential upselling and cross-selling discount campaigns. So you can increase the average order value without spending any extra money for marketing.
As I have already mentioned upselling and cross-selling are some of the most effective strategies to boost sales. WowRevenue’s discount campaigns are developed in a way that you can place the right offer at the right position and attract customers.
With features like product bundle discounts, you can encourage shoppers to grab bundles instead of single items and get exclusive discounts. And the features like Frequently Bought Together, you showcase items that are closely related or essential for the main products that the customer is considering purchasing. Will they consider buying the additional products? Of course, they will consider getting the recommended items as they are getting discounts.
WowRevenue is full of this kind of effective discount campaign. So make sure to explore all the campaigns and consider WowRevenue as your discount, upselling & cross-selling plugin.
Main Features:
- Product Bundles Discount
- Mix and Match Bundles Discount
- Bulk / Quantity Based Discount
- Buy X Get Y
- Frequently Bought Together
- Spending Goal
- Double Order
3. LiteSpeed Cache
The most common struggle of WordPress and WooCommerce website owners is the loading time. No matter how lightweight your themes and plugins are, you will still face the same issue. Thanks to the LiteSpeed Cache plugin, you can effortlessly optimize your websites and achieve a faster loading time. It is fully compatible with WooCommerce. On top of that, it is totally free, so you don’t need to worry about extra costs.
Main Features:
- Object Cache
- Lossless or Lossy Image Optimization
- Lazy Loading Images
- Find and Optimize Critical CSS
- Minify HTML and CSS
- Delay JS Loading
- Automating Page Caching
- Cloudflare Integration with API
4. Mailchimp
Mailchimp is one of the best email marketing and CRM tools which is trusted by more than 2 million WordPress users. It will help you to send newsletters with helpful resources and promotional offers. So you can stay connected with potential buyers and boost sales.
Moreover, it helps you to create an audience segment to send newsletters and create email automation. Furthermore, you can create newsletter signup forms and place them anywhere to collect leads.
Main Features:
- Newsletter Subscription Forms
- Email Marketing
- SMS Marketing
- Social Media Marketing
- Premade Templates
- Customer Segmentations
- Marketing Automation
5. WowOptin
WowOptin is a new but promising optin and popup builder plugin. It helps to create announcement banners, popups, floating bars, and inline forms. You can decide and select which users will see which optins and when they should be visible. So using this single plugin, you can collect leads, increase sales, boost conversions, and reduce abandoned carts using the exit intent popups.
As I have previously mentioned, you can take a cart-abanding audience as an opportunity. So using the WowOptin plugin can surely bring impacts.
However, the main attraction of WowOptin that makes it better is its Canva-like editor. Yes, you read it right WowOptin brings Canva’s flexibility to WordPress. So you can edit the premade templates or build optins from scratch with ease. The drag and drop, and floating elements to adjust position flexibilities will save you time and help you build effective optins faster than ever.
Main Features:
- Announcement Banners
- Popups
- Floating Bars
- Inline Forms
- Advance Audience Targeting
- Smart Triggers
- Display Rules
- Optin Intervals
- Collect Leads
- Reduce Abandoned Carts
6. Rank Math
Rank Math is one of the best SEO plugins for both WordPress and WooCommerce. It has a dedicated module for WooCommerce that helps to optimize product pages based on targeted keywords. You can also do the same for other WooCommerce pages including, Shop, Archive, and Product Categories.
Rank Math also has a product schema for WooComemrce. Using it ensures Google will consider your product pages for rich results. And the checklist always reminds you of the missing things on the basis of on-page SEO.
Main Features:
- One Page SEO Checklist
- Product Schema
- Meta Title
- Meta Description
- Product Category SEO
7. AffiliateWP
AffliliateWP is the best affiliate management plugin for WordPress. It helps interested people to create an account as an affiliate and earn commission by promoting your products. You just need to decide on your commission rate and configure it accordingly. AffiliateWP will effectively detect referring sales and show them in the dashboard of both the admin & affiliate marketers.
You can also make the payments directly from your dashboard using Stripe or PayPal. The fraud protection system will keep you secure by avoiding revenue loss.
Main Features:
- Fast and Easy Setup
- Custom Dashboard
- Smart Commission Rules
- Detailed Reporting
- 1 Click Payouts
- Fraud Protection
- Support for Upto 30 languages
8. PostX
PostX is the #1 Gutenberg-based plugin for creating any kind of News, Magazine, or Blogging site. The Post blocks allow you to display blog posts in an organized post grid or list layout. And with the Starter Sites, you can make your website or blog section ready in a few clicks.
PostX also offers full customization freedom for all of its blogs and templates. You can change the colors, typography, and layouts as per your requirements. So that you can make a pleasing brand identity. If you want to add a blog section to your WooCommerce store, PostX will be a great choice.
Main Features:
- Gutenberg Post Blocks
- Starter Site Templates
- Advanced Post Filter
- Ajax Pagination
- Query Builder for Post Sorting
- Dynamic Site Builder
- Front End Submission
- Reading Progress Bar
9. WholesaleX
WholesaleX is one of the best WooCommerce plugins to start wholesaling without compromising the experience of your retail customers. Its exclusive features like user roles and a private store help you to create a Wholesale area to manage a B2B+B2C hybrid store.
The Dynamic Pricing and Discount rules will help you set different pricing for different users. And you can also offer discounts based on multiple criteria including, cart total/quantity discounts, payment method discounts, quantity-based discounts, payment method discounts, etc.
So you can use WholesaleX in two ways, either you can start wholesaling or use its dynamic rules to offer discounts based on multiple criteria.
Main Features:
- WooCommerce User Roles
- Custom Registration Form
- Wholesale Prices
- Dynamic Pricing and Discount Rules
- Bulk/Quantity Based Discount
- Cart Conditional Discount
- Catalog Mode
- Private Store
- WooCommerce Store Wallet
- WooCommerce Request a Quote
Final Words
I have mentioned all commonly used strategies and plugins that are required to increase WooCommere sales. Now it’s your turn to grab the plugins and start optimizing your store. I have recommended the plugins that I have already used. However, you are free to choose alternative plugins as well. Please let us know which plugins you are going to use for which strategy. You can also share your feedback in the comment section.
