woocommerce checkout Tag Archives

How to Increase Conversion Rate By Adding WooCommerce Side Cart Plugin

March 4, 2020 By John Leave a Comment

Did you know that you can increase conversion rates by adding the WooCommerce Side Cart plugin to your website?

Improving the customer journey in your WooCommerce is a great way of boosting your conversion rate and this simple plugin gets the job done by adding an intuitive site-wide cart icon to your WooCommerce store. When you click on the icon, it brings up a view of your cart. When checking the cart contents, your customers don’t need to leave the page they are on which makes for great user experience.

Our Own Experience

We tested the plugin on GardenWare among others, but here’s how it looks on GardenWare. You can tweak the look to fit your brand with some custom CSS. You can adjust the position of the cart icon depending on your needs. You can also remove items or add quantity without refreshing the page.

Increase Conversion Rate By Adding WooCommerce Cart to Your Sidebar - GardenWare

Increasing Conversion Rate

After installing the plugin on Gardenware, we took the data after 3 months.

To account for seasonal data, we compared the data with the same months of the previous year, and we get an increase in conversion rate of almost 10%.

It is important to note that improving the customer journey and user experience leads to more conversions. From our user testing, the plugin does help improve user experience by a great deal.

How to Install and Set Up WooCommerce Side Cart

To get more conversions by using the WooCommerce Side Cart, you have to first install the WooCommerce Cart plugin. You can download the plugin here or search for it from the plugin repository.

We recommend testing this first on a development site to make sure the plugin does not conflict with any other plugin you are using. It’s a good idea to extensively test your product purchase process to make sure there are no issues.

After installing and activating the plugin, click Woo Side Cart from your WordPress Dashboard to see the plugin settings. You can tweak the settings based on your needs.

WooCommerce Side Cart Plugin General Settings

WooCommerce Side Cart Plugin Other Settings

You can also tweak the CSS to make sure the sidebar cart colors and style fit your branding strategy.

Should you need assistance with setting up and customizing the plugin, we can help. Or if you have any questions, you can let us know in the comments.

How to Add a Custom Note on WooCommerce Checkout

July 1, 2018 By John 8 Comments

There are times when WooCommerce store owners need to add a custom note on checkout. This can be done by adding some custom code to your site. Read on below to learn how to add a custom note on WooCommerce checkout.

What Situations Would I Need to add a Custom Note on Checkout?

There are several situations when you’ll want to add a custom note on checkout such as:

If you are having checkout problems and you want to inform your customers of a workaround to the problem
If you want to let your customers know about a coupon code that they can use on checkout
If you want to remind your customers about an ongoing promotion so they can add more items to the cart

Adding the Custom Note on WooCommerce Checkout

To add the custom note on WooCommerce checkout. You will need to edit your child theme’s functions.php file.

A word of caution before proceeding. The functions.php file is a sensitive file and editing it can cause your site to do down and even lock you out from the WordPress Dashboard. We recommend letting your developer do this. You can also edit the file using an FTP client so you can easily revert any changes in case you mess something up. If you have no developer and need help getting this done, you can contact the Wooassist team to help you out.

To get started, click on Appearance > Editor.

Next, choose the active theme. Make sure you are using a child theme. Click “Select”. If you are using Storefront theme and don’t have a child theme, check out this guide.

Find the “functions.php” and click to open it.

Copy the code below and paste it on the bottom part of the file as shown in the image. Edit the “Add custom note here” text with the custom text that you want to add.

/** Custom Note on Checkout - By WooAssist  **/

add_action('woocommerce_review_order_before_payment','wooassist_custom_note');

function wooassist_custom_note() {

echo 'Add custom note here'; //You put your own note here between the  

}

That’s a done deal but you may want add some styling to your custom note it will look professional. Add this CSS code by clicking the Customize link on your WordPress admin bar. Then click on Additional CSS.

You can then copy and paste the CSS code below and hit publish to save.

.custom-note {

display: block;

margin-bottom: 10%;

color: #c12a2a;

background: #f5f5f5;

padding: 5%;

}

Note that you may need to tweak the values in the code depending on your theme.

You can now see the styled custom note section on your WooCommerce store’s checkout.

Did that work for you? If you have any questions, let us know in the comments.

How to Increase Mobile Conversion Rates for Your WooCommerce Store

January 21, 2020 By John Leave a Comment

Over the last few years, optimizing for mobile devices has become increasingly more important. More and more users browse the internet using their phone. According to Statista, 52.2 percent of web traffic comes from mobile phones and it has only been increasing from the previous years. As a WooCommerce store owner, you must optimize your website for conversion on these smaller screen sizes. Learn how to increase mobile conversion rates for your WooCommerce store by following the tips below.

How to Increase Mobile Conversion Rates for Your WooCommerce Store

How to Optimize Your WooCommerce Store for Mobile Devices

Use a Responsive Theme

All modern themes are now built to be responsive. A responsive theme adjusts to various screen sizes. You can check with your theme developer if your theme is responsive. You can also do a quick test by going to your WooCommerce store and then try scaling down the size of your browser. If you see the elements on your website move to adjust to the smaller window, then you are using a responsive theme. If you find that your theme is not responsive, don’t worry. You can switch to a responsive theme. We can recommend Storefront and the Genesis framework.

Storefront was made by the same developers that developed WooCommerce. It is built specifically for WooCommerce so you can expect full compatibility with WooCommerce and official WooCommerce plugins.

Genesis, on the other hand, is a framework. You need to use a Genesis child theme with the Genesis framework. Genesis is well-maintained, responsive and compatible with WooCommerce.

User Test Your Mobile Site

Open your WooCommerce store on your smartphone and do some user testing. Perform actions that you expect your customers to do on your WooCommerce store. Important elements to test are:

making a purchase
subscribing to your newsletter
sending a message using your contact form
filling out the checkout fields
updating your shopping cart
commenting on blog posts
tapping on call-to-action buttons

There may be more that you need to test that is specific to your website. Take note of any difficulties that you encounter and get them fixed. Should you need help fixing any issues, the Wooassist team can help.

Use White Space and Large Fonts

Don’t skimp on using white space on your mobile site. Use it to your advantage. Since mobile devices have small screens, it makes it hard for the user to navigate or read your site if the elements are too close together. Also, make sure your site is easy to read by increasing font size.

Optimize Your Checkout Page

Your checkout page is one of the most important pages on your website. Limit your checkout form fields to only the necessary details. Remove any distractions to completing checkout. Make sure that the form fields are tall enough that they are easy to tap and fill out. Make the checkout button large enough so it is easy to tap. Don’t make the checkout process a burden to your customers.

Remove AutoPlay Videos and Pop-ups

Pop-ups and autoplay videos are annoying for desktop sites. Even more so on a mobile site. Don’t burden your customers with extra data charges from autoplay media. In some cases, these elements may be necessary. But if they don’t help you increase your sales, consider removing them. Instead, focus on making your customers click on your call-to-action buttons.

Improve Your Site Speed

Site speed has become very important as it is now a ranking factor for SEO. On the mobile platform, site speed is critical with mobile data speeds being slower than a wired internet connection. If your mobile site takes too long to load, the user will just leave. There are a lot of tools at your disposal to determine how you can improve your site speed. Google PageSpeed Insights even shows recommendations specific to your mobile site. Other tools that we can recommend are GTmetrix and Pingdom Website Speed Test.

Optimize Your Images

This is related to site speed but deserves its own section. Many WooCommerce store owners neglect optimizing images and just upload willy nilly. If you upload large images without optimizing them, your mobile conversion rates would take a hit. You can use a plugin to optimize the images you’ve already uploaded. However, if you’ve uploaded images that have dimensions bigger than the image placeholders, they will need to be manually optimized. If you’ve been doing this for years, then you’ve got a big task ahead of you. To manually optimize images, you can follow the instructions in this blog post.

Optimize Your Site Navigation on Mobile

Poor navigation can make or break a mobile website. Make sure that your mobile website is easy to navigate otherwise your customers will leave your site out of frustration. Use a hamburger menu. If you are using a responsive theme, the hamburger menu should be built in. If not, you can custom code your mobile menu or use a plugin.

Offer Multiple Payment Gateways

It is important to offer the payment gateway that your customers prefer. On the mobile platform especially, depending on your location, mobile wallets are a thing. If you can tap into that market, you can improve your conversion rate. For iPhone users, there’s Apple Pay which you can enable on WooCommerce.

Just follow all the tips above to increase your mobile site’s conversion rates. If you have any tips that you can add or any questions at all, let us know in the comments.

How to Recover Abandoned Carts in WooCommerce?

November 30, 2019 By John Leave a Comment

It’s not uncommon for ecommerce shoppers to abandon carts. You may not know it, but your store might also be suffering from carts being abandoned. This problem can be addressed however. To start, you must determine why your customers abandon their carts.

Why online shoppers abandon carts and what you can do about it?

There are various reasons why online shoppers abandon their carts. We lay out the most common ones and what you can do to address them.

Checkout is Too Complicated

Your customers will nitpick and that is to be expected. When you make your customers jump hoops during checkout, you’re not doing them a favor. Your checkout should be quick and straightforward. If you must add some other stuff that will complicate checkout, consider if you can add it on the thank you page instead. The thank you page is the page where the customer is redirected to after making a successful purchase. If you need help tweaking your thank you page, the Wooassist team can help.

Users Need to Create an Account to Check Out

Internet users are already burned out having to create an account for each internet service that they use. Don’t add to that burden. Don’t force your customers to create an account if it’s not necessary. To enable guest checkouts on WooCommerce, go to your WordPress Dashboard, click on WooCommerce > Settings. Under the Account and Privacy tab, enable “Allow customers to place orders without an account”. You can tweak other account related settings here to your liking.

Too Many Checkout Form Fields

The default WooCommerce checkout page is good enough as it is. There is no need to add more fields unless necessary. If you’ve edited your checkout page before to add some unnecessary fields, look into it and consider removing it.

Unexpected Charges

Customers will abandon your checkout when they see the shipping fee. No one will force you to offer free shipping if it will make your business unsustainable. There are however some things that you can do to reduce abandoned carts as a result of shipping and other fees. People now are more accepting of shipping fees. For other fees, be transparent from the get-go. If you charge taxes, handling fees, and other fees, make it clear starting from the product page that you charge these fees. If they are suddenly greeted by these fees on checkout, it will look like unscrupulous practice.

Too Many Clicks to Checkout

Reducing cart abandonment is all about simplifying your product purchase process. Ideally, it should not take more than three clicks for a customer to check out. If it takes four clicks to check out, that is one click too many. Get rid of unnecessary barriers to completing checkout.

Don’t Make it Hard to Contact You

Some of your prospective customers will look for your contact details before they make a purchase. If they added a product to their cart but could not find your contact information or even a contact us page, there is a high likelihood that that user will abandon that cart. To prevent this from happening, make sure you have a contact us page. Even better, if you can add your email or phone number on your WooCommerce store’s header.

Payment Issues

Another common reason for abandoning shopping carts is payment issue. When the customer tries to pay for his/her order and it fails, you can bet that cart will be abandoned. The solution here is simple. Offer more than one mode of payment. Some common payment channels you can use are Paypal, Stripe, Authorize.net, Apple Pay, Amazon Pay, and Square.

Other Things You Can Do to Reduce Cart Abandonment

Show Security Certificates

To be able to sell your products or services online, you’ll need to be able to establish that you are trustworthy. You can show security certificates and security seals on your checkout page to improve your trust rating. Some security seals that you can add to your site as Norton, McAfee and TRUSTe.

Offer Free Shipping

Free shipping can significantly reduce your cart abandonment rates. However, not every business can make a profit when offering free shipping. As an alternative, you can offer free shipping when your customers meets a required minimum order value or quantity. This strategy can also help improve your average order value.

Offer a Money-Back Guarantee

Most consumer laws dictate that you should have a return policy anyway. So there’s no reason not to do it. Making your money-back guarantee known shows your prospective customers that you have faith in the quality of your product or service. Don’t worry about the people that might abuse your money-back guarantee. It hardly ever happens. And if it happens a lot, the problem might be your product.

Improve Your Page Load Speeds

If your site is slow, some of your prospective customers might get frustrated and abandon their carts. Make sure your site is fast.

How to Recover Abandoned Carts

There are many ways to recover abandoned carts. Some of the more common methods are remarketing and abandoned cart emails.

Using Remarketing to Recover Abandoned Carts

There are many platforms that you can use for remarketing. Essentially, remarketing works by saving a cookie on the user’s browser so you can show them your tailored ads. Neil Patel details how you can use remarking on Adwords to recover abandoned carts. Facebook is another platform that you can use for remarketing. SproutSocial details how to use remarketing on Facebook.

Using Abandoned Cart Emails to Recover Abandoned Carts

Abandoned cart emails send your customers a reminder email if they did not complete their purchase. For guest checkouts, this requires that the user must at least have entered his/her email address. This won’t be an issue if you require your customers to register before making a purchase. Do note however that requiring customers to create an account may hurt your conversion rates. There are a lot of abandoned cart email plugins that work for WooCommerce, you just have to find the plugin that works for your needs.

Recover abandoned carts and improve your sales by implementing these strategies. If you have any questions, you can post a comment below. If you need help setting up abandoned cart emails or anything else, you can send us email.