If you’re looking to launch your own online store, WooCommerce is a great choice to build your business with. Coupled with WordPress, WooCommerce is a robust and flexible system that puts a range of powerful tools at your disposal to sell your products and services the way you want. And it certainly doesn’t hurt that this full-featured, extendable and widely supported plugin is free to get started with and that there are tons of great themes for it on ThemeForest, plugins on CodeCanyon, and more.

But how do you go from building an online storefront to running a successful business? The key is to focus on improving your users’ experience, so that shopping at your site is easy, quick and delightful. In this article, we’re going to explore some helpful tips and ideas that can make shopping at your store a pleasure for customers, so they come back time and time again. 

Use Attractive And Engaging Photos

Getting great pictures of your products is an important step towards getting your customers to browse through and eventually buy from your store. Sourcing good shots or arranging to have appealing photographs of your products taken is extremely important so that users can see the details and finish of your products, and if possible, see them in action too.

If a user visits a product page then they certainly want to see a picture of the item. We recommend using large images, taken from a variety of different angles. Implementing a lightbox plugin such as Simple Lightbox is a great idea as it will allow your users to zoom in on individual and multiple images. 

Also, remember that if you’re arranging to have your products shot, ensure that they are photographed with a consistent style, setting and lighting conditions. This will allow customers to compare products on your site easily and accurately decide what they like best.

Make Your Products Discoverable With Categories And Subcategories

When it comes to WooCommerce tips this is such a simple but effective one. One of the most common mistakes people make when designing a WooCommerce store it that they forget to add categories and subcategories. So, why do you need category pages? The first big reason is for SEO. The more specific pages that have long tail keywords the more likely it is that new customers will discover you in search engines like Google or Bing. So while having a “Dresses” category is great, adding subcategories for “Little Black Dresses” and “Festival Ready Festival Dresses” gives you even better odds of ranking.

Include And Involve Users

Today’s shoppers are vocal, and want to share their experiences with the products they buy—and that’s a wonderful opportunity for your store to capitalize on. Allow users to submit reviews and ratings of your products to let others know what they liked and what they didn’t. These reviews will also give you insights into what customers are interested in and what’s important to them. Reviews can often help increase product conversion rates too.

Add A Live Search To WooCommerce

In an effort to make it easy for your customers to find exactly what they want we also recommend using Live Search. With it, prospective buyers will be able to view out the most popular and relevant search results of your eCommerce site in real time speeding up the online shopping process. You can also add this features to any site using the WooCommerce Product Search extension, or by choosing a theme that already includes this feature. Typing just a few letters into the search-box will auto-display matching store results and the more you type the more narrowed the results become.

Remember To Backup Your Site

Whether your site faces a hacker attack, needs to be migrated to a different server or web host, requires upgrades or even changes to the theme, it’s always a good idea to have a recent backup of all your files, content and databases so that you can restore order at a moment’s notice.

Give Shoppers More Options By Adding A Wishlist

Sometimes customers might visit your store just to browse or compare products to purchase later. Or, they might want to create a personal registry for others to easily find the right gifts for them. The nifty WooCommerce Wishlists extension allows them to do all that and more and lets you fine-tune the functionality to suit your store and audience best. With Wishlists, you don’t have to turn customers away if they don’t want to buy something just then—and you’ll have a reason for them to come back.

Offer Excellent Customer Support

Customer support is a crucial part of running an online store. It’s not only about handling problems with shipping and refunds, but also about helping customers find products they want and making them feel comfortable shopping on your site.

The easiest way to get started is to answer the most common questions shoppers usually have, such as those concerning shipping policies and pricing, returns and guarantees. Write these up on an FAQ page and encourage customers to contact you with any queries they might have, using a contact form.

You can also assist shoppers with LiveChat. This incredible support service adds a discreet tab to the bottom of your site window that lets customers ping you when you’re available to ask questions. Plus, it shows you which page a customer is browsing through, allows you to save chat transcripts, and generates detailed analytics and reports to give you a better overview of your customers’ support needs. LiveChat is easy to install on any WooCommerce site, is very reasonably priced and you can even try it out for free.

Reach Out With A Newsletter

Email newsletters have been around for ages, and they’re still a favourite mode of communication among marketers who want to reach customers with news about products, offers and events.

Email marketing is a great way to privately share useful information with customers who are interested in your brand, with the added benefit of being able to track the response from your audience—when they choose to unsubscribe, which links they click on, and how often your emails are forwarded. The more you target and personalize these mailers based on users’ habits and purchase history, the higher the returns. 

Newsletter is one of the best free newsletter plugins available for WordPress — currently boasting well over 200,000 downloads. This plugin lets you have unlimited subscribers and send unlimited emails.

Summing Up

Running a successful online store takes a lot of work, right from stocking quality products to bringing in customers and keeping them interested over time. It’s not easy, but with these tips and tools, you should be well on your way towards making sales and creating lasting connections.