For creating online stores from scratch, WooCommerce is one of the best open-source eCommerce platforms. With the plethora of available extensions, sometimes store owners can get confused about picking the right plugin for the store. 

In this article, you will find a curated list of top WooCommerce plugins that take your business up to the next level. 

Without further ado, let’s get started.

Reason to Choose the WooCommerce Platform 

First of all, it’s a completely free resource. For online stores, this platform makes the work done easily. After installation, this plugin builds a basic eCommerce store instantly. The best part is this platform supports tons of plugins to offer the finest shopping experience for customers. 

Some of the key features of the WooCommerce platform are,

• Adds all necessary eCommerce functionality immediately.
• Offers user-friendly best eCommerce solutions for online stores.
• This platform allows advanced customization to set up a smoother selling process. 
• Built-in analytics are available that help to track store performance.
• A modular system to support tons of plugins from the WordPress repository.  

Choosing the ideal plugin will increase store efficiency and sales in no time. Let’s find out how to pick the plugin for your online store. 

9+ Best WooCommerce Plugins for your eCommerce Store

WooCommerce plugins help eCommerce stores to create effective product listings using numerous customization options. Here you will discover top WooCommerce plugins to build your store and increase sales effortlessly. 

WooCommerce Best Sellers

This plugin will allow you to advertise best-selling products particular products in the online store. The Best Sellers plugin for WooCommerce creates the chances of boosting product sales at ease. With this plugin, you can make attractive best-selling product badges.

The plugin supports both variable and simple products. You can create sliders on multiple pages like a shop page, product page, or category page. The plugin will help you to set the limitation for showing high-selling products. 

You can encourage customers to purchase best-selling items with the help of setting a sales countdown timer. You can customize the badges that suit your store layout. It allocates highly purchased products based on the ranking system. 

Key Features:

• The plugin creates a separate page for best-selling products. 
• You can customize and display best-selling labels on the product thumbnail. 
• This plugin will help you optimize the best-selling slider view for multiple devices like mobile, tablet, or desktop. 
• It excludes the out-of-stock product from displaying in the product slider.
• You can choose custom images for creating the best-seller seal. 

Price: $49/year  

MonsterInsights

Analytics is a key tool for an online business to track customers’ data and store profits. This analytics insight plugin allows the store owner to track numerous data based on demographics, user behavior, average order value, search console, and more from one place. It generates reports for websites from the WordPress dashboard.

This WordPress analytics plugin comes with powerful features such as universal website tracking, individual dashboard, page tracker, optimizer, and so on. Integrating the analytics plugin into the store will help you to discover accurate reports and analytics. 

The plugin will help you build a strategic way to increase sales. This plugin is made with the learning of google analytics progress. That gives easy access for the store owner to track customer data. 

Key Features:

• Generate detailed audience reports. 
• The behavior report gives an idea of how customers approach websites, the number of clicks on the site, keyword analysis, and more. 
• Optimize the content easily using this WooCommerce analytics plugin. 
• Get exclusive information for eCommerce websites like conversion rate, total revenue, referral source, and more.   
• Without coding knowledge, the plugin allows you to set up complete google analytics in a few minutes. 

Price: $99.50/year

Category Discount Woocommerce 

For creating discounts in online stores, you need to create a separate campaign from scratch. Using this category discount plugin, store owners can build the discount readily in a few clicks. It includes bulk discounts, specific category discounts, and time validity discounts. 

You can choose the discount type to create your best category deal. The store owner can create discounts based on product categories, product attributes, product tags, and more. You can set the discount limitation from minimum to maximum for specific categories of discount. 

Key Features:

• Build exclusive discounts based on product brand.
• Exclude the specific product from certain categories or attributes.
• This plugin uses a high-end AJAX-based UI for better performance. 
• Schedule the campaign to offer discounts later for customers.
• Create a win-win discount for your store effortlessly. 

Price: $25/year

WebToffee WooCommerce Gift Cards

The WooCommerce gift card is one of the best plugins for boosting seasonal sales.  It will let you create unlimited gift cards for customers. They can email those cards to their close buddies on special occasions. 

The plugin has 20+ predefined templates for the online store. It will let the store owner customize a bunch of gift card products for the WooCommerce store. This plugin will help in leveraging brand awareness. 

You can make customer purchase gift cards using store credits. As it can work with other coupons, it increases sales of discounted products. You can set the expiry limit for gift cards in the WooCommerce store.

Key Features:

• Store owners can upload the custom gift card template. 
• The plugin will let you generate gift cards based on order status. 
• It will allow customers to schedule gift cards to share with their close ones. 
• Customers can choose the custom gift card amount. 
• Exclude specific products or categories from redemption.  

Price: $99/year

Customer Reviews for WooCommerce

This Customer Reviews for WooCommerce plugin sends an automated review request email after post-purchase. It will let you set the time gap to generate emails for customers. You can gather positive reviews from customers and convert them to brand advocates. 

Posting a positive review on the product page will increase the conversion rate. It creates opportunities for future hold customers to review the product & gain trustability for purchasing products. 

The plugin will let you send an automated or manual reminder email for review. It consists of voting, images, ratings, and more. You can provide incentives in exchange for each review submission.   

Key Features:

• Custom emails for review can be generated for selective orders. 
• Enable reCAPTCHA to avert spammy reviews. 
• It allows filtering reviews from up to date. 
• It will let the customers create their own avatars. 
• You can export or import reviews quickly.

Price: $49.99/year 

Ultimate Product Catalog

When customers visit the store they expect to see clear product features to buy a product. This Ultimate Product Catalog plugin will allow you to show a modern catalog for buyers using simple steps. 

Custom block-based themes can be employed the way you want with the help of Gutenberg blocks or shortcodes. Shortlist the product using various filter options. It includes a custom field for product tags, an inquiry cart, multiple catalog layouts, product thumbnails, and more. 

Key Features:

• It allows the customer to choose multiple catalogs to compare products. 
• Display product ratings on the main catalog page. 
• The custom field allows for adding the product manual, additional information, and more. 
• Embed WooCommerce checkout in the product catalog to proceed to order quickly. 
• Enable social media sharing to boost your store sales. 

Price: $57/year

Display Discounts for WooCommerce

The Display Discounts for WooCommerce is a great tool to attain customer attention effortlessly. This plugin will help you to create the countdown banner for your store. It creates the fear of missing out on moments for customers to complete the purchase sooner. 

Choose a suitable template for showing coupon banners on the specific product page. You can determine what coupon is to be displayed or not. The plugin allows you to set the maximum coupon to be shown per store.  

Make this option exclusive for customers to show coupons only for logged-in users. You can activate single click copy for accessing coupons to apply for products. 

Key Features:

• Define where to display discounts on product pages.
• Create a link for a specific product set. When the users click on the coupon it will redirect to eligible products. 
• Customize the appearance of the banner effectively. 
• Set the coupon to count down to stimulate urgency for customers.  
• This plugin also helps to elevate engagement in online stores. 

Price: $49/year

All-in-One SEO

The All-in-One SEO is one prominent plugin to optimize websites to grow search ranking and traffic. This plugin also helps to create a suitable SEO strategy to run the business without any hassle. 

It includes SEO features like meta titles, descriptions, open graphs, social media integration, XML sitemaps, SEO keywords, search console, SEO schema markup, and more. 

The plugin will let you dive deep insight into SEO analysis and optimize the store promptly. It can be used in both Gutenberg block editor and classic editor. 

Key Features:

• Assist the website to set up a complete SEO checklist in one place.
• In a few minutes, this smart plugin allows you to configure advanced SEO features. 
• TruSEO score helps to give you insight into the site performance accurately.
• Content optimization allows you to generate the content that the audience looking for. 
• This plugin integrates with the foremost webmaster tools and social media.   

Price: $49.60/year 

MyRewards

Incentivizing customers for each purchase is one of the best ways to engage & retain them. The MyRewards plugin will help you create an effective loyalty program for your store. 

Reward your customers based on certain actions like money spent, first order, number of orders placed, referral, product reviews, birthday, and more. It allows you to create more than 10+ rewards as per your needs. 

It will let you generate a seasonal reward for a specific occasion as Christmas, New Year, Black Friday, and so on. This reward system supports multi-currency third-party plugins. 

Key Features:

• It directly converts loyalty points into discounts on the cart page. 
• Set point expiration for your reward system based on different methods.
• Create a custom loyalty point name or use an image instead of points. 
• Appreciate your customers for their achievements using customized badges. 
• You can notify customers to open new rewards via email.   

Price: $108/year 

Notification for WooCommerce

This notification plugin will help the bustling store to display social proof on the storefront. It will show the what customer has bought recently. This will create urgency and demand for the product to purchase. 

The plugin will allow you to promote specific products using fake order notifications. You can do that for selected products & categories. It also works with newly launched products to encourage purchases. 

You can generate multiple notification messages for different pop-ups. You can add the custom field using WooCommerce shortcodes. Customize the appearance and make it more captivating for visitors. 

Key Features:

• You can create notification layouts adaptively for both desktop and mobile. 
• You can configure notifications for the customer’s current product page using the plugin.
• There are 22 templates available to customize for the store’s notification popups. 
• You can pick the pop-up placement position like top, bottom, left, or right.
• It supports AJAX to load the notification pop-ups.  

Price: $30/year 

WooCommerce Checkout & Funnel Builder

CartFlow’s WooCommerce Checkout Builder plugin is a modern checkout to make the purchase journey smoother for customers. It rectifies all distraction & set up a fast optimized funnel to convert prospects to leads or clients.

It’s an amazing replacement for typical checkout to assist customers in completing the order. It makes the buyer choose the payment gateways, valid the email in real-time, auto-complete address for registered users, and more. 

Hence, the store optimization is in good shape it provides a better user experience for buyers. It enhances the average order value, ROI, and conversion. 

Key Features:

• CartFlows integrate with well-known page builders like Elementor, Divi, and more. 
• Custom field manager to add, remove or reorder fields from the checkout page.
• Store owners can go for one or two-column layouts as per their requirements. 
• Control the coupon box visibility on the checkout page. 
• You can make use of analytics to track down real-time data to improve the funnel and grow your revenue. 

Price: $79/year 

Mailchimp for WooCommerce

Mailchimp for WooCommerce is a well-known plugin to create a complete email campaign from scratch to approach clients timely. 

It’s a free plugin but in order to use it you need to sign up for the service. This email plugin provides insight data to track the customer journey and send out mail on time. You can create various campaign as cart abandonment, an order placed, remainder mail, and more. 

Key Features:

• You can categorize customers based on purchase history or purchase frequency. 
• A dashboard is there to track down marketing performance. 
• The plugin will let you add the discount or promo code block in the email.
• It supports WPML and compiles post-purchase information to a MailChimp account. 
• Using this plugin, the store owner can easily target audiences, and do ad campaigns and remarketing to increase profitable customers. 

Conclusion

Each retailer faces challenges while trying to choose the ideal plugin for their store. You can choose the best plugins for your online business from this post in accordance with the store’s demands. With the right plugin, you can maintain your competitive edge while generating high profit and conversion rates.

Even a slight delay can be enough for potential customers to click away in search of a better alternative. With this in mind, it’s vital that your WooCommerce store is fast, responsive, and fully optimized for easy navigation.

In this article, we’re going to explore how to optimize your WooCommerce store. These help to maximize your chances of conversion and turbocharge your store for quick and reliable performance.

These easy-to-implement tips range from choosing the right theme to streamlining your plugins and cleaning up your WooCommerce database.

How Does Website Speed Affect Conversions? 

But first, let’s look a little deeper into why speed matters when it comes to your WooCommerce store. We’ll learn how to measure your site’s current performance as every second is important for keeping visitors’ attention at your WooCommerce store.

Slow loading times increase your bounce rate, with each additional second bumping your bounce rate percentage up. Bounce rates are important because they indicate the percentage of visits in which users viewed only a single page before clicking away.

If bounce rates are high, search engines will lower your rankings. They are a strong indication that your website performance is poor or your content is not useful.

This matters because a low search engine ranking means that fewer visitors will find their way to your store in the future.

Ideally, you want to keep your WooCommerce store loading times no longer than around the two-second mark—that’s where bounce rates begin to increase exponentially. Research has found that one out of every four visitors abandons a website that takes more than four seconds to load.

What’s worse is that if potential customers have a disappointing experience with your store, they are unlikely to ever return again. 

Website speed becomes even more important on important eCommerce holidays like Black Friday and Cyber Monday. With competition at its highest and a whole range of tempting offers to choose from, customers are even less likely to stick around on clunky and inefficient websites in this crucial period.

Always make sure that your WooCommerce store is fully optimized before the holidays to maximize your conversions and gain an edge over the competition.

How to Measure the Performance of Your WooCommerce Store

So how to check the performance of your WooCommerce store? And how to measure if your adjustments are having the desired effects?

The next step is measuring the performance of your WooCommerce store. When you’re trying to check the performance or measure if any adjustments made are working out, you can turn to website speed tests. An example of such a site is Pingdom.

This free performance testing tool is one of the most popular among WooCommerce store owners. It’s often given praise for its ease of use and simple, graded results.

Pingdom also gives actionable insights on the areas that can be improved for faster speeds, making it easy for you to identify your problem points.

To test things like WordPress Plugins, themes, and other functions, use Query Monitor.

Query Monitor helps to quickly identify problematic plugins, as well as any themes or functions that are not compatible with each other.

It also enables:

• Debugging of database queries
• PHP errors, hooks, and actions
• Block editor blocks
• Enqueued scripts and stylesheets
• HTTP API calls
• And more

Query Monitor is free and saves time that you’d otherwise spend manually uninstalling and updating plugins while trying to search for the culprit.

The kind of technical information that Pingdom and Query Monitor provide is useful as it provides clear and actionable data on how to improve to boost site performance.

However, be careful not to rely on numbers alone—the actual user experience is far more important than your performance score. Always test the usability of your site by visiting it frequently yourself and don’t be afraid to ask for the opinion of other visitors too.

How to Optimize Your WooCommerce Store

We’ve gained some insights on how to measure your store’s performance—now we need to address improving it.

Naturally, there are quick and simple methods you can utilize to improve your conversions. For example, implementing cart abandonment measures that reach out to customers leaving your site early.

While this optimizes your customer’s journey and experience, there are other ways you can optimize your store in general. Let’s check out a few easy and effective tips that you can implement immediately.

Check Your WooCommerce Settings

The most obvious place to start is by ensuring that your WooCommerce settings are properly adjusted to the needs of your store.

A few effective changes you can implement here include:

• Disable pingbacks: Pingbacks are unique, automated comments that are created when you link to another blog post. While linking to other sites can be somewhat beneficial to your SEO, pingbacks are often abused by spammers and only serve to clutter your site with low-quality links and unnecessary queries that slow down your site.
  
  
• Limit the blog post’s number on your feed: Keep the blog posts on your feed down to a reasonable number. For example, 10—just like this article. While it might seem a small detail, fewer blogs to load leads to faster loading times. These kinds of small tweaks can add up to the better overall performance.
  
  
• Change login page URL: WordPress provides a site login URL by default, which is domain.com/wp-admin/. Bots, spammers, and other shady characters know this, so it’s a good idea to change it to avoid attacks.

Explore your WooCommerce settings and set limits for any unnecessary features that might slow down your loading times. As well as blog posts and pingbacks, you can also consider implementing limitations on your site. For example, how many reviews and images do you choose to display on your pages? 

Don’t Go Overboard With Plugins

There are thousands of WordPress plugins to choose from. Many of these are useful, which is why many WooCommerce merchants load up on plugins as the answer to all their store’s problems.

However, not all plugins are created with the same quality and compatibility. Some can cause problems and affect your store’s performance.

The more plugins you install, the more likely you’ll see conflicts arise. More plugins make it difficult to keep an eye on their functionality and whether they need any updates.

Think carefully when choosing plugins for a clear and specific purpose. Research plugins thoroughly beforehand and ensure that the benefits outweigh any potential negatives.

One way to lessen compatibility issues is by utilizing WooCommerce Extensions. These are tailor-made for your eCommerce store and are much more likely to work seamlessly together.

There are many different extensions for virtually every need. This includes:

• Marketing automation
• Shipping
• Inventory
• Analytics

These allow you the freedom to select the areas of added functionality that best fit the needs of your business.

Compress Your Images

High-quality images are vital for any ecommerce site that you should not compromise on. However, images are also your site’s largest element in terms of data. This means they drastically affect your performance if they aren’t properly optimized.

Start by choosing your images carefully, including only those that serve a clear purpose. When you’ve done this, reduce the file size of your chosen images using a tool such as Imagify, Optimole, or Shortpixel. These handy plugins compress your images without sacrificing too much in terms of quality.

WP Rocket is another handy option, especially if your site requires a lot of images. It allows you to introduce lazy loading, meaning that an image will only load when the user scrolls down to it, rather than downloading them all at once upon opening. This will make your initial loading time much shorter, as your site only needs to load the images at the top of the page.

A quick checklist for image optimization includes:

• Choose your images in the correct format (JPEG, PNG, etc)
• Compress your images using suggested plugins
• Make sure your images are responsive to fit mobile devices
• Use lazy loading on images that require scrolling to reach

Choose the Right WooCommerce Theme

There are thousands of different themes to choose from. It’s tough to settle on the one that best represents your personal taste and the character of your store.

Looks can also be deceiving—your chosen theme might look great, but it may come with several negatives. For example, it might come packaged with unnecessary functions and features that dramatically affect the speed and performance of your site.

The key is to choose a theme that looks great and fulfills your particular business needs, yet is lean and fast enough to keep your loading times down.

To help you make your choice, check out the 10 fastest WooCommerce WordPress themes in 2021 as tested by WP Rocket. Start by listing all of the features that you need for your store (multiple languages, one-click checkout, quick view functionality, etc.) and choose a fast theme that best meets your requirements.

These fast themes are flexible in terms of design, so you should have no problem customizing them to an aesthetic of your choosing.

If you can settle on a fast, reliable, and suitable theme from the very beginning of your eCommerce journey, you’ll avoid many of the most common website performance issues and will drastically cut down on the number of plugins you’ll need to install in the future.

Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN)

We’ve looked at some pretty useful ways to directly optimize your store so far, but none of these things solve the problem of distance. If you’re based in the UK and someone is opening your page in Australia, there’s always going to be some performance lag.

This issue can be solved by delivering from a server that’s closer to the user’s location. That’s why it’s useful to invest in a WordPress CDN.

WordPress CDN is a global network of servers that can cache and deliver resources wherever your customers are located. This includes images and JavaScript for faster loading times.

A CDN automatically determines the closest server to the user’s location and delivers your site’s content from there. This results in decreased loading times of up to 50%.

It’s generally better to choose a CDN with a wide variety of server locations spread evenly across the world, especially if your store caters to an international audience. StackPath is a fast and popular CDN that has servers across the world, including:

• The United States and Canada
• Australia
• Spain
• France
• England
• Germany
• Poland
• Belgium
• Sweden
• Italy
• The Netherlands
• Singapore
• Hong Kong
• Japan
• South Korea
• The Philippines
• Brazil

Investing in a CDN is essential for global eCommerce businesses. It helps deliver a fast, consistent experience for their customers—no matter where in the world they are located. However, if you have a very localized audience, your optimization efforts would be better directed elsewhere.

Cache Your WooCommerce Store’s Resources

You can temporarily store pages on your site that look the same to all users on the server or user’s device for quicker loading on the next visit. For example, with similar-looking product pages.

This is known as ‘caching’ and is one of the easiest and most effective ways to speed up your WooCommerce store.

Caching essentially reduces the amount of work that WordPress has to do every time someone browses certain static pages on your site. In fact, frequently visited pages with no dynamic content can be loaded almost instantaneously when they have been effectively cached, drastically improving the browsing experience for the user. 

You should try to use caching as much as possible on your WooCommerce store. It helps with load speeds and reduces the strain on your web server. Some hosting providers and CDNs provide caching capabilities, which automatically implement bytecode cache, object cache, and page cache at the server level.

However, if your hosting provider doesn’t handle caching, you’ll need to find third-party solutions in the form of plugins. Cache Enabler is an excellent free option for those on a budget, providing reliable and fast caching for a full range of image formats and with easy-to-use settings. For more advanced options, WP Rocket is again a premium service, but it does come with a price.  

Optimize For Mobile Users

With more than half of all internet traffic now shopping from mobile devices, it’s surprising to find (and annoying for consumers) that many eCommerce retailers have still not optimized their websites for mobile users. 

Check that your store is mobile-friendly by entering your URL into Google’s mobile-friendly test tool. This enables you to see your site as a mobile user would and will list any inconsistencies or issues that you might have. This is the ideal place to start when optimizing your store for mobile devices, in addition to exploring your store with your own mobile device.

A few tips to streamline your store for mobile users include:

• Choosing the right theme: Not only should your theme be fast, lean, and look great, but it should be responsive for mobile devices too. Take this into consideration when choosing your theme.
  
  
• Keep pages simple: Endless scrolling to find a product isn’t fun, so keep your pages as simple as possible. You can include an easy search function to help customers quickly find what they need.
  
  
• Make checkout an easy process: Checkout on mobile devices can be difficult if there are too many fields to enter, so eliminate steps where possible. Consider adding WooCommerce extensions such as WooCommerce Social Login and One Page Checkout to simplify the process.

Regularly Update Your Store and Plugins

Both WooCommerce and WordPress receive regular updates that improve speed and security, as well as all kinds of useful features. Keep an eye out for these updates and make sure that you install them when they become available. This is an easy and effective way to improve the performance of your site.

Your theme, extensions, and plugins will also receive updates from time to time, so keep on top of these too. If you find that one of these third-party additions to your store has become obsolete and is no longer supported by its developers, make sure you properly uninstall it and find a suitable replacement.

That being said, we’ve all had experiences with updates that were buggy, slow, or less useful than what came before. With this in mind, it’s useful to check out some reviews on WordPress forums first. This is especially true if you rely heavily on third-party plugins—it only takes one malfunctioning or incompatible element to disrupt your entire site.

Remember to keep a recent backup close at hand—just in case something goes wrong with your updates.

Keep Your Database Clean

Your WooCommerce database is growing all the time. It includes things like order history, user account data, product information, and much more. If you leave your database unchecked, all of this information can quickly begin to affect the performance of your site.

Manually removing certain aspects of your database is time-consuming and risky—you could quite easily delete vital information and cause all kinds of problems for your store. Fortunately, there are some handy database optimization plugins that can do the job for you, keeping your database lean and efficient by safely removing unnecessary clutter.

Check out WP Sweep and WP Optimize for database optimization, these are both great options that deliver results quickly and easily.

WP Sweep is the simpler of the two. It’s a smaller plugin that is focused only on cleaning your database. WP Sweep focuses on old revisions, expired transients, and database tables, as well as disabling non-essential features that can slow down your store’s performance.

WP-Optimize also offers these cleaning services as well as a few other optimization features. These include regular scheduling and more granular control of which items you’d like to remove. 

Invest in Quality Hosting

You can optimize everything from your side, but things can still run slowly. With so much of your site’s performance depending on the quality of your server, it’s time to check your hosting provider to make sure that it’s up to scratch.

Shared hosting arrangements, which divide a server’s resources between a number of users, are popular and cost-effective, particularly for eCommerce retailers who are just beginning their journey. This is a reasonable solution if you have relatively low traffic to your growing store and are hosted by a well-known and reliable provider.

However, as your business grows, you’ll need to upgrade your hosting to manage the higher number of visitors to your store. A common step up from shared hosting is via an optimized eCommerce hosting, Virtual Private Server (VPS), which allocates server resources to each individual user according to their needs, rather than sharing a common pool. This gives you more control and customization of your settings and allows you to pay for better plans with faster speeds if needed.

Taking it a step further, dedicated hosting enables you to have exclusive access to your own server. This is a much more expensive option but gives you the best flexibility in terms of choosing your own configuration and enjoying the best possible performance.

High-traffic stores that experience considerable spikes over busy periods should consider dedicated hosting, but most other businesses should manage well with a high-quality VPS arrangement. Whichever you choose, make sure you do your research and choose a reputable provider—good hosting is one of the best investments you can make for your WooCommerce store.

Wrap Up

With website conversion rates dropping by an average of 4.42% with each additional second of load time, time is literally money when it comes to the speed of your WooCommerce store.

By taking the time to test, adjust, and optimize your website, you’ll maximize your chances of conversions. Ideally, it should load within two seconds. This way, you’ll make sure that users are getting the shopping experience that they expect.

Not only that, but search engines are much more likely to give you a high ranking if your site is quick, responsive, and has relatively lower bounce rates. 

Run through the tips provided in this article to find areas of your store’s performance that you might be able to improve. Remember, good technical scores and percentages aren’t the only goals here—test your results on real-life users as well as the testing tools suggested.

Ultimately, there are all kinds of different things to consider when running a successful eCommerce business. However, by getting the basics right and offering a fast, reliable WooCommerce store, you can move forward with confidence—safe in the knowledge that you are building on firm foundations.

Are you looking for the perfect WordPress BackUp plugin? With many options available out there with different use complexity, we have selected a list of well-tested WordPress Backup plugins that we have used personally over the years on our WordPress centric projects.

So, without further ado, here are the top backup plugins you can try out for your new or existing WordPress projects.

Top Backup WordPress Plugins for 2022

●     UpdraftPlus WordPress Backup Plugin

●     Duplicator Backup Plugin

●     BlogVault – Backup & Staging

●     BackWPup – WordPress Backup Plugin

●     Backup Guard – WordPress Backup and Migrate Plugin

●     All-in-One WP Plugin

UpdraftPlus WordPress Backup Plugin

Image Source: WordPress.org

When it comes to free backup plugins, none of the other options mentioned in this article come close to what UpdraftPlus has to offer.

Image Source: WordPress.org

With over 3 million active installs and a 5-star rating, you don’t have any reason not to use this plugin for your backup needs.

UpdraftPlus is a WordPress Backup plugin that makes backing up and restoring websites as easy as pie.

Image Source: WordPress.org

It integrates with top cloud storage services like Dropbox, Google Drive, Amazon S3, UpdraftVault (Their personalised cloud storage), Rackspace Cloud and much more to allow Website to Cloud Storage Direct Backups.

Image Source: WordPress.org

UpdraftPlus even supports direct backups via FTP which makes it one of the most extensible Backup plugins available for free on the WordPress Repo.

Another extra feature which you would expect to pay for is Scheduling Backups. With UpdraftPlus, you can automate backups daily to any selected storage location for absolutely no cost.

UpdraftPlus also has a premium version (with pricing starting at $70 for two site licenses) which extends its functionality, even more, features like Incremental backups, a powerful add-on for smooth migration (Migrator), an option to backup non-WP files, database encryption and

More storage destinations.

You can download UpdraftPlus from here.

Duplicator Backup Plugin

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Duplicator is a WordPress Backup/Migration plugin that enables WordPress owners to Backup their site for absolutely free.

With more than 20 million total downloads since release and 1 million active installs, this is amongst the most popular WordPress Backup you can consider.

Image Source: WordPress.org

Duplicator works by creating a package that contains parts of your website you want to backup; you have the option to backup your database, site plugins, files or your entire installation.

The free version of the plugin allows you to backup and download your site to your local machine as frequently and much as you want.

Image Source: WordPress.org

You can restore a backup using their wizard (Quite complicated for beginners) or install on a new server if you want (migration).

To Backup your site to cloud storages like google drive & dropbox, you would need to upgrade to the Pro version which pricing starts from $59 & comes with some extra advanced backup features as well.

With the Pro version of Duplicator, you can schedule backups daily, weekly or even monthly and Duplicator will automatically store each snapshot to a selected cloud storage location.

This feature gives complete peace of mind as you always know your site is secure with several backup snapshots arranged by date.

All for a one-time fee of $59 (license for three websites)

Even without the Paid version, it is still considered one of the best plugins to backup your website with

BlogVault – Backup & Staging

Image Source: WordPress.org

If you are a total non-tech-savvy WordPress user, then you might most likely run into problems trying to use the other BackUp plugins on this list. Well, not except BlogVault.

Image Source: WordPress.org

Blog Vault is a backup plugin that takes out all the complexity in backing up your WordPress website and restoring them.

Image Source: WordPress.org

We included this plugin because it does not require any technical skills to use; you simply install it and follow the setup wizard and voila; it does all the work for you.

Image Source: WordPress.org

It comes with many premium features (provided for free) like incremental backups, free offsite storage, one-click backup restore, migration, etc.

Blogvault is not just a Backup plugin, but more of a Backup service just like hosting backup tool notably “CodeGuard” that is used by Bluehost among its package addons, Blogvault is actually used by some of the largest web hosting companies out there.

From WPEngine, Pantheon, FlyWheel to many more and aids their free migration services.

It comes with several other features like migration and staging, with Backups being the main focus.

The premium version of the plugin (starting at $89 a year) provides backups in real-time as well as being completely compatible with WooCommerce with a Backups Archive period of 90 days.

If you just want an easy way to backup your WordPress website, you can try out Blogvault, but I would advise you combine this plugin with another as your backup data is stored on an external server that can go offline anytime any day.

You can try BlogVault out by downloading from the WordPress Repo.

BackWPup – WordPress Backup Plugin

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One good alternative to UpdraftPlus you could consider if run into issues with it is BackWPup.

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This plugin shares many similar features with UpdraftPlus and allows you to backup your WordPress Website for free.

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It also allows Cloud storage locations with a few services like Google Drive being limited to Premium users only.

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You can back up just individual parts of your websites like the Mysql database or your WordPress installation with ease.

With a 4.5 star rating and regular plugin updates every month, this could be the best option for your backup needs.

You can download the BackWPup plugin from your WordPress plugin repo.

Backup Guard – WordPress Backup and Migrate Plugin

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Backup Guard is a Backup/Migration plugin that provides you with an easy way to backup, restore, and migrate WordPress Website.

What we like about this plugin is its simple and easy to use User interface, especially the dashboard.

Image Source: WordPress.org

Backups are sorted by date of creation and you the option to either download them to your local machine or Dropbox for free.

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To add more Cloud Storage services, you would need to purchase the premium version of the plugin, but by default, the free version allows you to move your backups to dropbox.

It also has BackUp scheduling, Notifications, and migration features just like the other plugins on this list but only for Premium users.

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The only thing free about this plugin is creating unlimited backups and restoring them.

You can download the Backup Guard plugin from your WordPress plugin repo.

All-in-One WP Plugin

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All in One WP plugin is actually a migration plugin that can be used for backing up your WordPress website.

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It provides functionality to backup (in an export file) your entire WordPress website, including the database, media files, plugins, and themes without any technical knowledge.

Image Source: WordPress.org

It is also quite extensible and does support cloud storage locations like Dropbox, FTP, Google Drive, Amazon S3, OneDrive Box, MegaNZ, DigitalOcean, Microsoft Azure Storage, etc. on purchase of the extension.

With each extension having a starting price of $50 50 $99, this is considered pricy compared to the other plugins on this list.

Image Source: WordPress.org

It provides an easy Drag & Drop backup restoration wizard which makes this ideal for backing up small sites with minimal content if you consider going for the free version.

You can download the All in One Plugin from your WordPress plugin repo or the WordPress.org plugin page here.

Our Personal Favourite (Recommendation)

UpdraftPlus no doubt, has the best to offer when it comes to backing up WordPress website.

Not only is it a powerful plugin, but it’s also free with several premium features you would otherwise pay for to use on other backup plugins.

Image Source: WordPress.org

Duplicator is also a good option but only when you have plans of migrating your backup to another server at a later date as it’s straightforward to do that with the duplicator.

Finally, a tip that’s worth mentioning, if you prefer to minimize the plugins installed on your site, then in that case, then you should know that there are some hosting companies out there that offer Automatic Backups feature. So you might want to keep that in mind

Conclusion

Each Backup plugin has there advantages and disadvantages, it up to you to test them and find the one that works best for what you’re trying to achieve.

You might need to upgrade to a premium version to get what you want but at the end of the day, you should have a well functioning Backup Plugin working smoothly.

Also, make sure you have more than one backup location, never put all your eggs in one basket, i.e. storing backup files in the same server as your website.

Anything can happen, and at any time, so you have to be ready.

That’s all for this article. We hope you found it useful, If you have a question about any of the plugins on this list, please do not hesitate to add a comment below and we would respond as soon as possible

When you’re selling in the digital space, you need to take every opportunity you can get to get your product out there. Some of the ways you can increase your online presence are by sharing on social platforms and maintaining a brand website. 

Your website serves as a central brand hub that can provide information about your brand and products. At the same time, you can use social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to build a community and interact with your target market. Setting up social media accounts is pretty straightforward. On the other hand, building and maintaining a website will require more time and effort. 

So, if you’re a marketer or business owner who wants to start blogging on sites like WordPress but don’t know where to start, we’ve got you covered. We’ll show you how to launch your WordPress site in ten easy steps:

1. Choose a domain name that is timeless and best reflects your brand

One of the first few things to do when creating a WordPress blog is securing a domain name to go with your website. As an Amazon FBA seller, choose a domain that’s easy to remember and/or reflective of your brand to increase recall and recognition for your target audience. Similar to a brand name, you’ll know that you’ve selected a good one if it leaves a lasting impact on your audience.

Another thing to know about your website’s domain name is how it affects SEO. Therefore, we suggest (if possible) incorporating your brand or product name in your domain. For example, if you’re selling watches, it’s a good idea to include the term ‘watch’ as a keyword in your web address. Doing this will help increase your organic searchability for a particular keyword when searched.

Here are some tips for choosing a domain name for your website:

• Use either a .com, .net, or .org. These are the most popular top-level domains for legitimate and authoritative websites.
• Avoid hyphens and numbers since it may lead to confusion.
• Avoid short-term trendy names. Instead, think about a long-lasting name that can reflect your brand through time.

2. Sign up for a web hosting service

A web hosting service is what powers and will help with speeding up your WordPress website. You’ll need this to ensure your store stays running 24/7 with up-to-date information. Without a reliable hosting service, your website can experience site crashes – this is especially true if you’re expecting heavy web traffic due to promotions and sales. Keep in mind that personal blogs and other smaller businesses can rely on WordPress to power your website without a hosting service. If you don’t fall under that category, consider looking into a third-party host. 

When you start building your WordPress website, look into reliable hosting services. There are a lot of available web hosting services out there, so choose wisely. Keep reading for tips on how to decide the best one for your business.

Consider the uptime they can provide

Uptime is how long the hosting service can guarantee your website will stay running through the day. Values closest to 100% mean it will run for the majority of a day. Due to everyday fluctuations, a 100% uptime will be challenging to obtain. A 95% uptime is a perfectly acceptable and impressive number to consider. 

Know your website’s monthly traffic

Since most web hosting services package their services based on your site’s monthly traffic, try to get an estimate of this data for your website. Although the host won’t block people from seeing your store, you may be charged for the excess traffic not covered in your chosen package. 

So before you select a hosting web service, it’s best that you already have a clue on how much monthly traffic you’re expecting. If you don’t have this information handy, overestimating is better than underestimating in this case. 

3. Install the WordPress software and log in to the website

After you’ve decided on a web hosting service and domain, you can begin installing WordPress on your website. Some hosting services, such as BlueHost, let you install it automatically, but if yours does not have automatic installation, you can use third-party tools such as Fantastico.

You can still choose to install WordPress by following instructions manually:

1. Download the WordPress package file and unzip it.
2. On your web server, create a database for WordPress. Include all users who will have privileges on accessing your site.
3. On your web server, upload the WordPress files in your desired location.
4. Run the script by accessing the URL in your web browser.

4. Choose your site’s title and tagline

In addition to your domain name, consider adopting a catchy title and tagline for your brand and website. All of these should align with your brand and message for your audience.

These elements immediately speak for your brand and are vital parts of your branding process and how you communicate with your target audience.

So if you’re currently choosing the appropriate site title and tagline, here are some tips for you on how you can come up with your own fresh ideas.

How to build a site title for your website:

1. Use words that best describe your brand or what you do. Be as honest and accurate with your title. The last thing you want is to mislead your target audience through your titles.
2. Keep the title short and under approximately 66 characters as much as possible. It should be to the point and memorable.
3. Incorporate the main keyword you want to rank for into your title or tagline.
4. Don’t forget always to include your brand’s name in the title.
5. Consider using a word generator if you’re running out of ideas on how to name it. List down the suggestions and see which works best for you.

How to build a site tagline for your website:

1. The tagline should be short but catchy. You know you have a good tagline if your audience can recognize your brand or product by the tagline.
2. It should be related to your website’s title.
3. Use active voice instead of passive voice.
4. Incorporate powerful words such as expert, best, master, and the like.

5. Create a new post to start blogging on your new WordPress site

Now that you have your WordPress website, the next thing to do is fill it with posts. This is where you’ll add content and exert a lot of time and effort to create high-quality posts. It might get a bit overwhelming to put out enough content, but you can manage it by building out a content plan.

A content plan is an organized way to manage your content. It allows you to plan out your content strategically before you post. You can also use it to manage your topics, plan out the schedule for your posts, and organize it in a manner that best suits your team’s productivity styles. It’s a great way to create a system and stay on track with your website’s content.

If you’re stuck in writer’s block and don’t know what content to post about, here are some ideas to help you get started:

• Instructions on how to best use your product
• Information about how you developed your product (material, ingredients)
• Guest posts from experts in your industry
• Reviews from your customers that reflect a positive experience with your product
• Benefits of your products, how it exceeds your competitors
• A story about how yourself and how you began your business
• Answer frequently asked questions about your product

These topics are a great way to start but don’t feel limited to posting content about your products. Instead, widen your reach and engagement further by diversifying the topics on your blog. When you include content related to your product and industry, more people can come across it increasing traffic and awareness of your brand or product.  

By now, you should have already decided on a web hosting service, domain and have WordPress on your website. Remember, your content should all be optimized to increase your organic searches. Install WordPress SEO plugins like Yoast SEO so you can see if your post is optimized and searchable. Try reaching the suggested SEO target score so your efforts won’t go to waste!

6. Remember to add content to your blog by uploading images, videos, links, and quotes

Don’t entirely focus on text when creating a WordPress site! Instead, make your website visually attractive by incorporating other forms of media like images and videos. Nowadays, many people don’t prefer or have time to read long-form content and simply scroll past it. Ensuring that your content is eye-catching and exciting can help you grab users’ attention, especially with so much competition going on. 

So instead of posting blog posts that are heavy in text, try to break up the long content by adding related images.  As an alternative, if you have the resources to turn the longer pieces of text content into videos, give that a try too. This way, you’re adding more visuals and sounds to your website, making it more immersive than relying solely on text.

Images aren’t only great to make your content more presentable. You can also add tags to pictures and videos with the right keywords and increase your SEO score! Don’t forget, you’re not only doing this for your readers but for the algorithm, as well.

Adding links, such as backlinks and internal linking, are great ways to increase your SEO score further. Unfortunately, not doing this is one of the common mistakes for those just starting to create a WordPress site for their business. 

Don’t be afraid to backlink! As long as you’re pointing your users to an authoritative and non-competing website, you’re good to go. Doing this not only increase your SEO score, but you’re also supplementing more information to your readers, putting you in a position of reliability and trustworthiness. 

7. Plan out the design of your blog by choosing colors and fonts that reflect your brand

When you’re managing an online store, it’s essential to stand out from all the competition. Consider using Amazon DSP and the other advertising services if you want your products to become more visible. With added marketing initiatives, your traffic will increase. Ensure your website is presentable and valuable for a user or potential customer. 

The great thing about WordPress is it allows you to explore your creativity. It offers a ton of customization and colors to check out and select from, so see which ones fit your branding best. Choosing when you have a wide array of choices can get overwhelming, but don’t worry! You can choose from the templated designs available and modify them so that you may personalize your page with ease.

When you’re creating the design for your website, always remember to follow your business’ branding. Ensure this is well-defined before you work on any marketing materials, and that includes your website. If you have a creative team, ask for help developing a branding board that best describes your brand, or, as an alternative, build one out yourself. There are many free tools online that can help create branding boards. The purpose of your branding is so you can create cohesive material across all of your content, whether it be on your website, Amazon, or social media pages.

8. Include widgets like social media buttons and Google Adsense ads for added functionality

Widgets are a great way to promote other initiatives on your website. You could add widgets for many reasons. For example, you can build brand loyalty by sharing your social channels or generate a passive income on your website by promoting advertisements. Keep reading to learn how to use widgets on your website.

Invite your audience to find you on social platforms by adding social media buttons. By doing this, you can connect with them through the platforms that they often visit and inform them of updates and promotions from your brand. By doing this, you can increase your followers across social media platforms, better connect with your customers and build a community for your brand. In addition, you can run interactive content through social media like giveaways, surveys, or polls as a way to get feedback directly. 

Another way to use buttons and budgets is by using add Google AdSense to your website. Enabling this option means you are allowing Google to run ads on your page. So even if monetizing your site from ads is not your main priority, there’s no harm in integrating this option and earning passive income in the meantime.

9. Customize your menus and sidebars for a more “personalized” feel

After choosing the right theme and font for your WordPress website, customize your site by modifying your menus and sidebar. If you’re going for a minimalistic but modern look, a menu will be enough. But if you want to maximize the space, you can always add both.

The menu can contain items that include, About, Services or Products, Location, Contact, Gallery, and Blog, among many others. Of course, you can always customize this with the items that you prefer to highlight. 

Blog archives, categories, search bar, and social media links are typically included in the sidebar. You can also include your Instagram feed in this area, so users don’t have to click on your Instagram page to see how it looks.

Selling on WordPress opens up a lot of opportunities for you to promote your brand, especially if you sell on Amazon. Get creative by personalizing your website features for your brand. Develop the experience you want your customers to have when they encounter your brand.

10. Create pages for different sections of the blog like the “About” section or “Contact Me” page

Now it’s time to fill the page with valuable content that will benefit both you and your site visitors. 

Although creating an “About Us” page is optional, we recommend putting some time and effort into building one. It’s an excellent way for you to familiarize your customers with you and your brand, allowing them to connect better with you. By including a “Contact Us” page, you can open communication between you and your customers for questions or concerns about their order or product. It allows you to remedy any issues and avoid your reputation from turning sour from an undealt problem. 

You can include how you came about the business idea and what it was like getting started. Nowadays, consumers don’t just buy the product. More often than not, they buy the brand and the story behind it. 

Your website should be where your customers learn more about your brand. You can be as honest or as selective as you’d like to be. While your social media pages will include many story-telling contents, you should consolidate everything on your website. Remember, your WordPress website has the advantage of sharing long-form content over trying to put all this information together on Instagram or Facebook pages.

Final Thoughts: Start Creating A WordPress Page For Your Amazon Business Today

Are you a seller currently using Amazon as your main e-commerce channel? Increase your reach by thinking outside the box and promoting your brand off the Amazon marketplace! Just because you’re selling on Amazon doesn’t mean you cannot take advantage of other platforms to increase your growth. 

There are so many benefits to being able to promote your products and brand on an external e-commerce site. Working solely on Amazon can often feel limiting on what you can or can’t do creatively on their platform. Having a website off of their marketplace allows you to create the experience you want for your customers on your store and share it the way you want. Maximize your resources and consider building a WordPress site for your e-commerce store!

Starting an eCommerce business can be exceedingly complicated to ascertain given the numerous steps and things in which a user has to go through. Above all, there are a bunch of useful content shared on this blog to help individuals derive a clear and direct experience on their WordPress site. One of which is the WooCommerce Multi-Vendor Plugin.

In this blog post, different multi-vendor plugins are put out here for users. These are some of the plugins we feel would be of great advantage to you. To be on a clearer stand, we’ve also explained what the multi-vendor plugin means and how much importance it plays for users.

You want to achieve a successful WooCommerce workplace. Follow this guide and assimilate its content. Feel free to reach us if you have any troubles assimilating the content of this blog. You would surely get a response as soon as the comment is dropped.

What is WooCommerce Multi-Vendor Plugin?

This is a medium to simplify the organization of your eCommerce store. First, WooCommerce on WordPress is a great way for users to begin their website with a host of opportunities to look out for in this workplace.

The phrase “multi-vendor” concerns a marketplace with lots of sellers. So, this plugin is a way of connecting a buyer with a seller and in that same instant, increases the sale and commission of the seller. Also, the maintenance, design, payment, shipping, and business translation are run by the plugin.

There are a lot of advantages this would give to you if employed on your website. You just started your site? This is a great way to begin. Apart from the large number of WooCommerce extensions designed to help you attain an easy and smooth expedition, the workplace plugin creates a world where buyers can reach sellers conveniently and simply.

And luckily for you, there are tons of WooCommerce Multi-Vendor Plugins to begin with!

Benefits of WooCommerce Multi-Vendor Plugins

The benefits are;

Ten WooCommerce Multi-Vendor Plugins for an eCommerce Store

For this guide, we are going to center our point of discussion on the various plugins that can help you attain the marketplace you yearn but by embedding this plugin on a WordPress site.

Read this section carefully. They are not arranged by ranks or in order. There are a lot of multi-vendor plugins out there and we have chosen ten(10) of these plugins which we perceive to be the best for an eCommerce store. You can employ any of the discussed plugins below. Their pros and cons would also be explained alongside their well-defined features. Therefore read carefully and pick the best for you!

1. Yo! Kart Multivendor

This is one of the topmost and well-grounded multi-vendor marketplaces with lots of thrilling attributes. One major feature of Yo! Kart, what sets it apart is the referral module designed to help users attain a wider audience or customer base.

For this multi-vendor marketplace, the referral module creates a shareable link that the user can distribute to his customers or friends for support. It even makes it more captivating because each individual gets a referral point. Pretty cool right?!

Other thrilling features of this multi-vendor marketplace are;

• It is extensively customizable. With a host of customizable options, you can switch up the design of the plugin to suit your theme or brand style.
• There is a regular update on the content such as the visual content, layout, design, etc. So, this leaves your viewer excited for the next update.
• This plugin permits purchases from multiple vendors but the checkout would be in a single cart.
• Switch between languages with Yo! Kart multi-vendor system. There are over seventy translated languages to choose from for your eCommerce store.
• The organization of the product catalog can be easily managed from the admin page of the plugin. Update the settings to match your preference.
• Choose between over twenty payment methods and an option to install more payment gateway.
• In the admin dashboard, you can easily create and design a coupon tab that can be used for promotion and thereby increase sales.

Some of its benefits are;

• It is easy to use.
• It is extensively customizable.
• User-friendly Interface.

It can also be disadvantageous because:

• You can utilize just one domain.
• And it lacks some basic features that can be necessary for users.

2. Dokan Multi-Vendor

This multi-vendor system creates a whole new level for users that utilize the plugin. This is the best storefront multi-vendor plugin and also the most popular. It has a lot of improved features that differentiate it from other plugins out there which makes it widely utilized.

Apart from being the most popular WooCommerce multi-vendor plugin, it also allows users to take control of their plugins. You can easily control what happens on the plugin interface. The best yet is the fact that each vendor gets a dashboard where they get to keep track of their progress. 

This multi-vendor plugin offers a host of captivating features, some of which are;

• A front-end dashboard is created for sellers. This is the admin area where most settings of the plugin take place. So, the control is in the hand of the seller.
• You can easily create a workplace on Dokan in less than an hour. 
• Each seller gets their dashboard with stunning and attractive storefront styles branded to the user.
• There is a unique URL administered to the seller.
• Sellers can create and manage coupons easily. There are lots of options designed to make the coupon on their site pleasing and captivating.
• Get more authority and control with the PRO version. There are more options and more outstanding features designed for the users.

Some of its benefits are;

• Versatility. 
• It is easy to use.
• It is a workplace with unlimited vendors
• Outstanding controls and features.
• You can earn in multiple ways, not just through product sales.
• Accepts all themes in WordPress

But it can also be;

• Costly.
• There is little or low support.
• And could be somewhat buggy.

3. WC Marketplace 

With a simplified and hassle-free process, you can easily create an eCommerce store with WC Marketplace. It is a great opportunity for beginners to kick-start their online business. This workplace creates a vendor dashboard for every seller which enables them to monitor their business progress, make significant changes to their site, and a host of others. The best thing is that in WC Marketplace, there is a marketplace for every online store. Do you want to achieve a large and successful online store like Airbnb or Amazon? Or you are thinking more of a rental marketplace like Yo! Rent. WC Marketplace has almost every type of marketplace that can be done with the plugin. 

This multi-vendor plugin offers a lot of thrilling features, some of which are;

• Every vendor gets a personalized and user-friendly dashboard.
• Flexibility. You can easily maneuver your way using the WC marketplace and there’s a setup wizard provided to supplement the user’s convenience.
• Vendors can easily create pages using a comparable Elementor feature.
• There is a marketplace for every type of product.
• To secure the workplace, a list of vendors is provided for users which includes their basic information. This is to create a level of trust between the buyer and the seller.

Some of its benefits are;

• It is easy to set up.
• They have an impressive support team
• Regular upgrades to fix security issues and bugs.
• And supports multiple languages.

However, the plugin can be;

• Often Buggy, and 
• The frontend interface is quite basic, nothing new about it.

4. WCFM Marketplace

WCFM Marketplace designs a lot of rich collections and tools for user satisfaction. This plugin is a made-up version of WC Lovers. We have the pro version as well as the free version. So, you can take up the free version minding your budget, and later on move unto the premium version. The premium version offers a lot more features but the free version is quite great as well. 

This multi-vendor plugin offers a lot of thrilling features, some of which are;

• It permits users with lots of customizable options on the plugin.
• There is an app for easier management and organization. You can easily oversee your website with the application.
• There is a provision for extensive payment options for users. This is ranging from Stripe to PayPal to bank transfers, and a host of others. And an option to integrate another payment gateway if required.
• Integrate and design your website with Elementor Options.
• It provides for commissions that can also be customized. These commissions are not limited to product price, membership commission, fixed, vendor sale, and a host of others.

Some of its benefits are;

• It is one of the best free frontend multi-vendor plugins on WordPress.
• Impressive refund system 
• Your buyers get to pay for products in numerous ways possible.
• Its shipping management is very flexible to manage.
• It supports some add-ons that can be integrated to give you a better user experience.
• Live Chat Module.

It can also be disadvantageous in other ways because; 

• Their customer feedback often complains about their support team.
• It can be pricey to manage given the premium add-ons and pro version of the multi-vendor plugin.

5. YITH MultiVendor

This is a prominent WooCommerce Multi-Vendor plugin greatly utilized by users who would like to manage more than one vendor. There is a distinction between the administration and the vendor. And although, they both have their distinct functionalities. 

This plugin provides its users with pleasing and thrilling features that are captivating and hard to look back on. This plugin permits super admin control (pro version), generates commission, and you can also earn from the products published on your site.

Let’s take a deeper dive into the features of this plugin.

• One can have more than one elected administrator to run the online store.
• It allows users to sell and edit their products on the site.
• It permits vendors to effectively create coupons.
• A user can effectively manage the commission rates.
• Get a reported analysis of your business from time to time.
• Manage the site from an administrative dashboard.

Some of its benefits are;

• The best and quite easy to use because of its simplified process.
• Generate recurring income from the products published by your customers on the site.
• This plugin keeps everything in check. You can easily manage orders, control reviews, manage passive income, and so on.

It could also be disadvantageous in the following ways;

• There is no provision for a front-end dashboard for vendors.
• Users might experience some glitches while setting it up.

6. WC Vendors Marketplace

There’s really no limit with WC Vendor Multi-Vendor Plugin. It is very extensive and does not constrain users on the number of products or vendors that can be placed on the site. So you can have varieties of products available on the site. Also, customize your site to your brand’s theme and let WC Vendor help you generate incurring income. There are so many ways to earn with this plugin. However, let’s dive into some of its features;

• There’s no restriction on the number of products or vendors that can be set on the website. 
• Multiple Payment Gateway
• It allows users to earn in different ways or commissions.
• There is an adequate amount of user control of the marketplace.
• It also creates the WC Vendor Membership which permits the creation and selling of the membership.

Some of its benefits are;

• It is versatile and easy to use.
• You can earn in multiple ways under commission.
• Effectively manage your product from the admin dashboard.
• You can have varieties of vendors or products on your site.

It can also be disadvantageous because;

• It does not generate a report analysis for users’ business progress.

7. WooCommerce Product Vendors

This Multi-Vendor plugin is created by the WooCommerce team. It empowers sites to become versatile and the best marketplace for varieties of purchasing and enhances business transactions between the buyer and the seller. You can sell anything on this marketplace. Therefore it is not restricted; products or vendors of different kinds can be displayed with this plugin.

It permits a lot of useful features that can aid the vendor in achieving and managing his marketplace in the best way possible. Some of which are;

• You can sell anything in this marketplace.
• It gives some level of control to vendors in the management of the site.
• It gives reports after analysis of the business every month. 
• You can set a specific commission rate in the marketplace.
• The plugin can be linked with WooCommerce Bookings in order to keep up with a time-based environment for the vendors.
• You can make payments to vendors manually, instantly, or in between a time frame.  

Some of its benefits are;

• Vendors can manage their public profile which is a good thing in the long run.
• There are no restrictions on the type of products or vendors that can be in the marketplace.
• Receive commission payment which could be a recurring income for you.

It could also be disadvantageous in this way.

• Its features can be said to be lacking compared to other WooCommerce Multi-Vendor Plugins.
• It has no basic front-end dashboard for the user or the vendor.

8. WC Vendors Pro

This plugin is quite flexible and it adds features that permit the marketplace to be extendable to all other functions that can reduce the workload of the user. These features are updated regularly. Therefore, the functionality of the plugin keeps growing further. 

It provides a front-end vendor dashboard that manages the basic settings of the product, coupon, and other similar things in this line. And the marketplace admin deals with the marketing tactics put forward to deal with captivating potential customers to your marketplace.

However, some of its thrilling features are;

• It permits multiple commission types for users.
• With a dashboard created for vendors, they can manage some basic settings on the site.
• Provision for shipment tracking. A great way of ensuring goods accessibility and security.
• Customizable template to suit your taste.
• Social media accounts can be integrated into the marketplace.

Some of its benefits are;

• It supports and enhances most marketing tactics.
• Impressive support team.
• It can be best used for digital products.

It can also be disadvantageous because;

• Its features are minimal compared to other WooCommerce Multi-Vendor plugins.
• It is built specifically for digital or virtual products.

9. Mercado Pro

This is a new plugin but its functionality can be very beneficial to users. It offers lots of appealing features such as a personalized dashboard, internal chatting between the admin and the vendor, and so much more. You even get more with the pro version.

Some of its unique features are;

• There is a separate personalized vendor store. The vendor manages the product, order, coupon, and so on from this store.
• Some level of managing capabilities is granted to the vendor.
• It puts everything under your control as the admin of the marketplace.
• Multiple commission
• Multiple vendors 
• Google Map and Mapbox API can be integrated into the site.
• It accepts Ajax live sort, filters, and search.

Some of its benefits are; 

• It is simple, flexible, and easy to operate.
• Vendors get front-end dashboards without any reload issues.
• Live chat supported.
• Ajax supported 
• Vendors can track their sales funnel.

It can be disadvantageous because;

• It’s a new plugin that is new to the market, and therefore still requires some adjustments.

10. Webkul WooCommerce Multi-Vendor Marketplace Plugin

This is one of the best multi-vendor plugins for all eCommerce stores out there. The plugin offers some unique and appealing features that would surely help turn your WooCommerce store into a multi-vendor store. Some of its features are;

• It permits multiple sellers with multiple profiles.
• Sellers can view and edit the profile information.
• The marketplace admin can enable the users to enlist themselves as sellers through the seller central option.
• The admin asserts a ranging level of control over the production management, commissions, track sales chart, and so on.
• A URL can be incorporated into the marketplace for SEO purposes.
• The admin manages the review of the seller from his end.
• Google Analytics can be incorporated to help find and track some useful data.

Some of its benefits are;

• The mobile app is supported by Android/iOS/tablets.
• Supports SEO tactics for marketing products.
• The admin level of control could be put to good use.

It can be disadvantageous because;

• The front-end dashboard is bland( nothing special about it).

Follow this table for more insight and then pick your choice. 

Final Content

All the required information has been put together. Try reviewing all the content and let us know which you think is best! 

This is a common showdown among users who are confused as to which to pick. Whether you’re a beginner or long-term user, looking at redesigning your website or want to commence a bandwagon for your product or content. Then stick around till the end and know how much impact the right platform can do on your site.

We are going to dive in deep, strategically covering up the necessary points that would aid your knowledge and reading. 

So, if you’re in search of a simplified yet detailed understanding of both platforms. Then stick around, read to the end, and let us know what you think in the comment section. 

What is WooCommerce?

So, for the better understanding of readers, most especially newbies who are inexperienced with the whole concept of WooCommerce. Or are wondering why they come across the word so much but have no idea what it means. Long-term users, on the other hand, can just follow the overview in a like-mind.

WooCommerce is not exactly an eCommerce site but the significant feature it offers as an open-source plugin for all sites to make it function properly as an eCommerce site.

WooCommerce kicked off in 2011, but now, it is the most popular eCommerce platform utilized by over three million users on their WordPress site. This plugin is installed and activated on the website. 

One distinguishable feature between WooCommerce and Shopify is that the former is distinguished to be a natural platform for WordPress and it is flexible and convenient for users to modify their site to their discretion since it is self-hosted. By self-hosted, it means the store files remain in a single server that is embedded in it, unlike Shopify. 

What is Shopify?

Shopify was launched in 2004, but unlike WooCommerce, the former is not an open-source platform but runs powerful features provided to its user at a monthly fee and commission. But aside from this, it makes up for this by providing users with reliable and user-friendly components that are variously employed to run their eCommerce store.

Another notable feature is the fact that Shopify employs a user-friendly nature that gives room for beginners and individuals with no technical skills. However, the utilization means that your store would run by Shopify software which although is wide but limited. Therefore, you can only make modifications that are permitted by the software, unlike WooCommerce which is self-hosted. 

Trend Overview

Although this is not a major factor for you to decide which is best for your site. But since we are looking at a lot of grounds in this article, we are going to cover the market share trend and figure out the popularity level of both platforms.

As claimed by BuiltWith, it states that as of 2018, 21% of websites employ the use of WooCommerce compared to Shopify that uses 18% of users’ websites. And this research was carried out on the top one million sites on the web.

But with more critical analysis, the research done with other top ten thousand websites stipulates that WooCommerce is 17% behind Shopify and it is greatly utilized by top authority companies. WooCommerce is seen as one of the top alternatives to Shopify but the differences give room for both platforms to grow and perhaps outgrow. 

You should remember that WooCommerce was earlier launched compared to Shopify that has been established for quite a while. The milestone Woocommerce has reached should not be overlooked. 

Let’s take a look at Google Trends as well.

WooCommerce being blue and Shopify being red. We can see the steady growth between both platforms as it gradually passes over the years. And at the end of the trend, there’s a slight increase by Shopify.

And though this is not a reason to choose one over the other. It’s preferable you gain more insight into the features they provide and choose the one comfortable and convenient for your eCommerce store.

However, before moving into the features comparison, let’s take a look at this breakdown. 

What to look out for when choosing between WooCommerce and Shopify? 

Picking the best from both eCommerce platforms can be herculean because both platforms provide users with lots of indisputable features. These features are best used by users to improve their eCommerce store, promote awareness, and obtain a better rank on the search result page. 

So most users are either eager to choose the best for their store or would just want one that perfectly suits their taste, budget, and convenience. 

Therefore if you want to know which to pick between WooCommerce/Shopify, stick around, and let’s discuss the factors or grounds you should consider before deciding the one that best satisfies your needs. 

1. Installation Process

Due to popular opinion, yes, the installation process of both platforms does matter. 

For WooCommerce, it takes the process of installation and activation and a level of knowledge on WordPress sites (this is pertinent where you have barely any knowledge as to the connection of your site to WooCommerce). 

The WooCommerce installation, fortunately, comes with a guide to take you through the whole process of connecting your site to it. So, don’t feel discouraged because it’s straightforward and only takes a few minutes of your time. And in addition, there are provisions for blogs, tutorials, and the WordPress Site community who would come up with discussions as solution to issues on one’s sites. 

However, you have to go through the process of installation and activation of the plugin, installation and configuration of WordPress, and other basic information such as the tax payment, payment gateway, shipping features, and a host of others. This has to be done accordingly before you can use WooCommerce on your eCommerce store. 

A step-by-step guide on the installation process of WordPress sites with other related plugins can be found here.

For Shopify, this is undoubtedly more simple compared to the WooCommerce installation process. All you have to do is create a Shopify account, sync an existing domain name or buy a new one, and finally set up the payment getaway or if you already have an existing Shopify payment gateway process, then it’s easier for you to evade that step. 

2. Practicability

This is also a good factor to consider when comparing both platforms. Now, we would want to figure out which is practical enough for your understanding, that is, easy to use and manage. 

With the aim of giving your visitors the best website experience, you would want to choose a platform that can be easily managed and operated to suit your convenience. Here, you are tasked with making online deals, managing customers feedback, vendor issues, and a host of others. You should ascertain that the platform suits your eCommerce store and can therefore match your work line. 

Here, WooCommerce wins this round because it provides features that help users to simplify their site’s setting to fit their convenience. For example, the eCommerce payment processing feature. 

3. Level of control over site’s functionality

Another thing to look out for is the level of control you would have over your website over time. You would want to choose that which is flexible and administer a level of website control to the user. 

Here, we have WooCommerce as the clear winner. 

Shopify gives its user some level of control of the website functionality but it is a limited variation, meaning that it’s not a self-hosted site and can not assert the same flexibility that WooCommerce provides.

With WooCommerce, you can;

• Customize your theme. There are unlimited themes to choose from(both free and paid).
• Customize your domain code 
• Extend your WooCommerce feature with additional plugins designated particularly for WooCommerce. Amazing right! There are lots of WooCommerce extensions that can aid your WordPress site. To mention a few, we have; WOOCS – Currency Switcher, Stripe and/or PayPal, Custom Product Tabs, Fancy Product Designer, Beeketing, WooCommerce Memberships, and a host of others. There are thousands of them out there. 

You can visit our blog site for more tips on how you can effectively employ WooCommerce to increase sales on your site. 

In comparison, Shopify offers limited flexibility to its users. This does not imply that it has no flexible content that it provides to its users but is limited. Like the product variation restriction placed in Shopify. Unlike WooCommerce that has no restriction, Shopify restricts its product variation to 100 variations for each product and three total product options. And this is not defined by the plan you are on. 

Apart from that, Shopify allows users to customize their HTML but only applies to their homepage and not all pages. 

So, Shopify allows a measure of control of the website functionality by the user but in comparison, it is unlike WooCommerce. 

4. Extension to Third Party Platforms 

Another factor to consider is if the eCommerce platform you want to set up for your store is not limited to just its features but can extend its thrilling features to external platforms. Things you have to consider here are things like if the platform allows the extension to other social media tools, and email marketing tools as well. 

These tools are to run side by side with the platform chosen in your eCommerce store. You might not be able to get it all with WooCommerce/Shopify but with the extension, you can get it all.

WooCommerce, like earlier discussed, there are over 50,000 extensions made available for WordPress websites to add. And we also have MailChimp; a third-party integration of WooCommerce that further aids email marketing. You can find more third-party extensions of WooCommerce here.

Shopify runs an app store with about 500 applications but if you want your eCommerce store with more admissible extensions, WooCommerce is a better choice.

5.  Customization

For this category, it’s hard deciding which is the winner in the WooCommerce vs. Shopify showdown. You should know that the theme and design play a major role in attracting your website visitors. Some visitors use the website theme and design as a reason to stay on the site. 

So, you have to buckle up and figure out the theme that matches your product and is capable of driving sales to your site. 

Shopify offers over sixty curated themes that can match your product website. In comparison, WooCommerce has lots of thrilling themes, and therefore, the user has a wide range of choices to pick.

Storefront is the official store for WooCommerce themes. 

To know exactly what you want, there is a detailed blog that discusses WooCommerce themes and picking that which you need for your eCommerce store. 

6. Payment method 

A major factor to also consider. Although both eCommerce platforms support lots of payment methods and even the popular ones. 

WooCommerce has a lot of support for major payment methods and even minor ones as well. They have over seventy payment gateway options made available for you.

The major difference between WooCommerce vs. Shopify in the payment option is the fact that Shopify charged up to 2% extra charge on external payment gateway in addition to the normal payment gateway fee. 

7. Hosting Option

You should also try looking at the hosting features in Woocommerce and Shopify.

For Shopify, you don’t get the alternative of choosing another host, unlike WooCommerce. Here, your site would run under the Shopify server.

This is unlike WooCommerce where you get to pick the hosting provider of your site from a wide variety of host providers and subsequently you get to choose the host features such as the size or the bandwidth and other considerable things.

You have to determine the host plan you want to go for, pick the one suitable for your website and matches your budget size. You don’t want to pick a host that might fluctuate on days when you’re running a sale or special event on your website. This is why the option to choose your server is a good thing which is admissible only under WooCommerce.

And you can see how to improve the speed of your site and what may cause the slowness here. 

8. Maintenance Option

For this category, maintenance is wholly operated by the users unlike Shopify since it is not a self-hosted platform.

WooCommerce gives control and ownership to the user, therefore, the job to secure and maintain your website is given to the users. This is why the web host provider you choose has a great role to play in your website’s maintenance.

Your eCommerce store should have a good hosting provider because this decreases the level of maintenance you have to uphold on your site. This does not delimit the level of security and reliability which WooCommerce provides for its users.

9. Cost of Operation

Another factor to consider is the cost of operating WooCommerce or Shopify. The thing is, it is hard to ascertain which has a higher cost of operation since it depends on the package run by the user. For instance, the premium theme and plugins for WooCommerce, as well as the premium theme and apps for Shopify. This varies accordingly and can affect the cost of operation differently.

WooCommerce has a static price for the domain, hosting, and payment gateway. Shopify is also accountable and has a static monthly payment price that covers most activities done on your site. But this can also be affected by extra fee charges like the one placed on the external payment gateway on Shopify.

10. Multilingual Support

You would be surprised to find out that Shopify is not a great option for a multilingual store. So if your eCommerce store requires communication or connectivity with the world outside your location then you have to restrategize.

To enable Shopify multilingual support, you have to install Langify but have to pay $17.50 every month to continue enjoying its functionality.

Pretty high right! In a year, you would have spent over $200 just to enable the multilingual feature of your site with Shopify. This is aside from other charges you’re still going to make for your site with Shopify.

A preferable alternative is WooCommerce. It provides a multilingual feature with the installment of WPML.  And it is priced at $29 for the first year and $21 for the preceding years, or you can pay once at a commendable fee of $195.

Do the calculations.

11. Support system

Another factor to examine is the support system of WooCommerce and Shopify. Although they are versatile, there might come a time where you would need the support system for any issues.

For WooCommerce, it’s an open-source platform with no formal support system. But this is supplemented with a host of other mediums such as blogs, tutorials, and even the WordPress active community where various issues are collectively discussed and solutions are given.

There is no official support channel indeed but this does not seem to be a hassle because there are other means by which users can easily obtain information on a certain WooCommerce issue smoothly.

For Shopify, there’s provision for an official support medium. There is provision for emails, chats, or you can even try to get hold of their social media handle to communicate with them, and of course there’s the option of hiring a Shopify specialist to help with an issue in your eCommerce store.

12. Dropshipping Feature

For people who are new to the dropshipping feature, it allows eCommerce stores to be an intermediary between the actual supplier and the buyer. This permits the retailer to hold no inventory but displays the goods or product on the site and acts as an intermediary between the buyer and the actual supplier.

Both WooCommerce and Shopify make provision for the dropshipping features. This is to the level that they allow add ons and extension plugins and apps that support the drop-shipping feature on your site.

So I guess both platforms win this round.

Our top Pick- WooCommerce vs. Shopify

There are various reasons as to why we should pick WooCommerce over Shopify and vice versa. But it is pertinent for you to note that Shopify can be termed to be a storefront with product pages, so if you want more classical pages about your store, then WooCommerce should be your top pick.

We are choosing WooCommerce because of its;

• Flexibility
• User’s Controllable features
• Customization
• Multilingual support at a low-cost range, and
• Reliability. Some products are banned from the Shopify product page. You can find more information here.

Conclusion

Our top pick is in no way degrading the excellent feature that Shopify provides to its users. The various factors discussed are a way of showing how much impact both platforms have on the world. But we are picking WooCommerce for the top five reasons stipulated in the preceding subheading.

If you have other reasons, do let us know.

However, choices in this showdown may differ, there are other blogs out there that pick Shopify over WooCommerce, this shows how both platforms provide excellent features to cause such an uproar.

So, take a step back, check the factors discussed again and figure out the one that would best suit your site.

You can also take on a trial period for each platform. But decide this knowing fully well that it is technical going through the migration process of your website for both sides.

If you’re in search of simplicity, Shopify is good for you, whereas if you seek ownership plus flexibility, then WooCommerce is the best option for you. But at the end of the day, it’s all up to you.

Adding WooCommerce to WordPress is a limited privilege available to WordPress sites only. Therefore, if you have a site that’s not WordPress, these features do not apply to you. 

WooCommerce is software that has been coded to work only on WordPress websites. So to enjoy the great benefits of the WooCommerce tips, be sure to have created a site on WordPress or have an existing site on it. 

For easy guidance, a table of content has been created for your convenience. At the end of this guide, you would have so much to tell on WooCommerce and how you can effortlessly apply it to your website.

TABLE OF CONTENT

• What does WooCommerce do?
• How does it work?
• How to successfully add WooCommerce to your WordPress site.
• Various ways to increase sales using WooCommerce tips. 

What does WooCommerce do?

As earlier stated, WooCommerce offers various productive tips and tools that are used to greatly improve your website, increase sales, and additionally give it that professional look and touch.

You should remember that this is a plugin. Therefore, you can easily add it to your WordPress site and enjoy the improved performance of your site with just a few settings changes.

The productivity of WooCommerce will go a long way in positively changing your site’s performance and getting the sales or frequent customers you seek on your site. In other phrases, WooCommerce improves the site with some effective marketing tactics.

This is exceedingly advantageous to users. And with over twenty-seven million downloads with millions of active installations as well, WooCommerce is everyone’s choice and its productivity is glaring from the number of people that use and download it.

How does the WooCommerce tips work?

WooCommerce tips offer amazing features to its users. It is more amazing knowing that it is free to download. However, it is not free to effectively use and manage it. Here, I mean the cost that comes with marketing, domain fee, advertising, hosting fee, and customization. This is of course to be paid according to your discretion. You should know how much rebranding you would like for your site.

In this guide, we are going to show you how to easily download and connect WooCommerce to your WordPress account.

How to successfully connect WooCommerce to your WordPress website.

Step 1:First thing first, download WooCommerce from the WordPress store or directly from the WordPress dashboard.

Either way, download and connect it to your WordPress website.

.

If you are installing it from your dashboard, activate it after installing the plugin.

Step 2: Moving forward, the Setup Wizard consists of some essential questions about your store; this helps WooCommerce understand your store, the marketing tactics you want to employ, and so on.

The front page of the Setup Wizard should look like this:

The Setup Wizard is user-friendly and although optional but advisable. So for the front page, it asks you questions like where your store is based, currency type, and a host of others.

You don’t have to worry, the settings selected can still be changed in the future, if need be.

Step 3: For the next step, choose your preferred payment option. For online payment, there’s Paypal and Stripe.

As indicated, an additional payment can be installed too if you do not prefer any of the options. And offline payment is also made available for users to use conveniently.

Step 4:The next is the shipping page.

Here, you would choose your preferred shipping rate and may choose different shipping rates for your customers based on their location/zone. You can also make it cost-free as well.

Step 5: At this point, you’ve completed and answered the questions needed to set up your store. The next step is the recommendation page.

These are recommended features, though not compulsory to use them all. This would enhance your store website and give it that final touch to perfection. The Storefront Themes is highly recommended too.

Step 6: The next step is the Jetpack installment.

It is not compulsory, so it’s purely discretionary in its use. Although, it offers a lot of analytical features plus security, and others.

Step 7: Your WooCommerce is connected and ready to drive up sales for your store website!

At this point, you’ve successfully connected WooCommerce to your website and can now enjoy the thrilling benefit that comes with it.

Step 8: After successfully connecting it, you can now set up your online store. In your WordPress dashboard, two new outlines came up because you connected WooCommerce to it.

However, to add new products for your store, go through Products > Add New. It would bring you to this page;

Add a title and a short yet catchy description for the product. Then you should have something like this at the end of it all.

Note: This is just a preview, yours might differ in other ranges. You just have to make sure that all details inputted are done correctly and appropriately. You do not want to defer your customers from buying the product or from visiting your website because of a perpetual mistake.

Various ways to increase sales using WooCommerce Tips.

As earlier discussed, WooCommerce is very beneficial to users who run a store website. It gives you numerous features that can be used to increase sales to your website, and turn your one-time customers into a more regular one.

So, whether you just opened up your store website or have been running it for a considerable amount of time, you might want to take a step back and evaluate your e-commerce store and observe deeply the marketing tactics applied.

This is where the WooCommerce tips helps the user. This is a WordPress plugin that widely helps users to add effective e-commerce tips and tools that can heighten the websites’ views and commercialization.

Easy-to-follow tips have been created. They are simply explanatory, so you follow these tips accordingly and apply them to your store website.

Choose the right theme for your store website

As much as we hate to admit it, we all judge a book by its cover. Having an eye-catching, attractive theme that is professional and speaks about your store can go a really long way in attracting customers and increasing sales. 

The theme of your site should be attractive, easy, and speaks about your product or store. You do not want a clustered theme that does not give an easy interface to your site. It would definitely drive the customer into frustration and we know how that ends.

In addition, your theme should speak more of your product or your store. It has to fit in. For example, you are managing a store website and marketing “baby dolls”. You should consider having a light theme that can depict a friendly attraction. Having a dark theme might not fit so well with your product.  

So, your theme should fit your store website or product.

Next is considering the type of theme you would like to apply to your site. Predominantly, WordPress themes can be categorized as;

• Free Themes,
• Paid Themes; and
• Customized Themes

Although you have to go along with your budget and strength, it is more advisable to go for the paid themes. They have better features, attractive schemes, and all others to help your customers enjoy the beauty of your store website. 

At Sparkle Themes, they offer elegant and versatile themes that would suit your taste and budget. Highly recommendable. And in addition, you have wide varieties of choices to pick from. Themes can go a long way in increasing sales on your store website.

Let’s begin by differentiating these themes.

On Sparkle Themes, themes created especially for e-commerce are made available. This means that the theme has been coded to match your store website. 

There are; 

Appzend Commerce – WordPress WooCommerce Themes

This category has stunning themes and even lets you customize. There are over ninety demos in this category and are termed to be perfect for modern online stores, and other features that make this theme excellent and compatible for a wide range of products. 

You can learn more info and description from the website.

Online eStore – WooCommerce WordPress Theme

This creates a functional and effective theme that can match users’ experiences. Also, this has been categorized to be a great choice for modern digital agencies, bloggers, e-commerce shops, construction companies, etc. Additionally perfect for WooCommerce. It has a whole lot of other valuable features on it. You can get more details on the site.

CrazyStore – Best eCommerce Theme on WordPress

The e-Commerce theme is easy to use and install. With over twenty demo templates ready to serve you, and it is also compatible with most plugins to give you the best experience and further promote sales on your store website through the eye-catching theme.

SparkleStore Pro – Best Premium eCommerce Theme on WordPress

Sparkle Store Pro is simple and easy to install. Also, offers compatible and functional themes for users. With over twenty-five templates available, you have varieties of choices to pick from.

SparkleStore – Best Free eCommerce Theme On WordPress

This theme helps users get classy themes compatible with most major plugins at zero cost. Another thrilling thing about this theme is that it requires low maintenance. So best pick your choice.

Buzzstore Pro – Best Premium eStore Theme On WordPress

Another Premium theme for eCommerce stores. It has somes premium features and can be easily used by users. More information can be gotten from Sparkle Theme website. 

BuzzStore – Free eCommerce WordPress Theme For Online Store

Buzzstore offers simple to install, pre-installed homepage layouts, and a host of others. More information can be gotten from the site. You should know that the features offered here are 100% free.

All these Sparkle themes are available on the store website. Short details are provided here but you can attain more details from the website. And although all these themes are distinct and peculiar in their way, it’s your job, however, to figure out which theme is compatible with your store website and the product you market. You can also employ the advice of a professional if need be.

This WooCommerce tip has proved to be very helpful and resourceful to users.

2. Start out a strategic discount coupon 

Everyone loves coupons. After dealing with activating or connecting WooCommerce to your site, and after generating a considerable amount of customers, you can start by creating a strategic discount coupon that you know the customers would not be able to resist that easily. This can really help you increase sales on your store website.

This coupon, if done accordingly and appropriately, should be able to drive new customers to your store market and make old passive customers more active. 

Since you’re in charge of giving out the coupon, you could be more strategic and give out the coupon in a way that’s more beneficial to your market, like targeting a specific category. All you have to do is pick out the right distribution channel and also pick the best campaign website that works for you.

In addition to picking out who gets the coupon, you are also in control of the sustainability of the coupon, the limit of the coupon, its impact, and so on. This can also be strategically tuned to drive sales to your store website. 

You can even use the discount and coupon together. For example, use COUPON 456 to get 10% off any product. And running a discount sale periodically can drive more customers to your store website to take advantage of the opportunity.

All you have to do is set up the coupon/discount and create awareness of it. Give it an attractive look and description that would make it difficult for anyone to turn a blind eye to it. Therefore, it has to be distinctively attractive and eye-catching.  This is also a great WooCommerce tip to users that utilise it properly.

3. Provide a user-friendly experience

The truth is your website visitors are not going to find your site great if it is hard for them to navigate through the site or the site is clustered or understandable. That is so wrong. Create a website that can be easily navigated, clear, and responsive. 

There is lots of competition and you have only a few seconds to prove to your visitors that your store website is the best they can find and you have just the thing to fill their taste buds, and this also aids you in increasing sales to your website.

Now, a tool you can use to create an easy-to-navigate site is WooCommerce Breadcrumbs.

This aids navigation for your visitors. All you have to do is change the default settings and enable a way whereby your visitor can go back to their previously browsed categories without leaving your page. This keeps them on your site for a prolonged period. Moreover, this also aids search engines in cataloging our page search rank. So you can kill two birds with a stone here; aid navigation for your customers and earn better search ranking with an easy-to-navigate site. 

In addition, WooCommerce SEO is better experienced with Breadcrumbs. Here, you have an SEO extension that can help optimize your content as well as other pages in your website such as the sitemaps, product pages, and so on. Although this does not automatically give you a better ranking, it’s an ongoing process; and it rather aids it.   

A product table can also be set up for your visitors’ convenience.

As seen, this organizes your content or product into a list and keeps them there whenever the customers use your site by searching or filtering. However, this aids your customer’s navigation and further creates a user-friendly experience because they would find your website more convenient and comfortable.

There are WooCommerce tools that can help in setting this up. We have ‘Product Table for WooCommerce by Nick McReynold’.

4.  Start a contest 

Contests are the biggest thing for marketers because if done correctly, it ends up winding up lots of sales and interest from visitors far and near. 

Therefore, you set up a contest where the winner(s) takes a valuable prize. Although I do not advise you to do this out of your budget, ensure that this is something you can lose conveniently. 

And, short-lived contests do not actually bring out the result we seek. Instead, you can divide it consistently and make it into an ongoing edition. Therefore, there’s going to be more coming up. This is why some marketers hold an annual contest or monthly, purely discretionary. 

So, organize a contest and set out the terms of the contest, and decide on the prize to be won. This has to define your store and should be strategic enough to keep them on your store website. For example, a talent hunt. However it is, let it speak of your brand.

5. Selling vouchers/gift cards

This is another strategic way in which you can harness the tool provided by WooCommerce. This entails selling gift cards or vouchers on your store website and making them redeemable by the purchaser or the recipient if gifted. 

Gift Cards are a great way to heighten your customer’s loyalty, improve performance, and drive more sales or revenue. Using gift cards is very convenient and people appreciate it the most. So, try and create gift cards or vouchers for your customers, and this is sure to increase sales to your store website. 

6. Flash Sales

Flash sales are an excellent and popular way of driving sales to your product. You would be surprised at how much people pay or look forward to events like this. 

Flash sales are discounted prices on products that most online stores employ to drive up sales. In this type of thing, the product in question is limited and there’s also a ticking time set, therefore stating how long the flash sale would last. Flash sales are not for long; most times they are done just for a day. This is to balance the owner’s market and also give the visitors the taste of ‘impulse buying’.

And flash sales are most times propagated with the use of social media. Make sure you create a lot of awareness. It is a very resourceful WooCommerce tip.

7. Provide points on some selected activities.

This is another great strategy. You can provide points for purchases, referrals, and other activities done on your store website. These points earned on your site would be able to make your customers continue that act and come back for more points. The redeemability of these points is up to you, you can make the point redeemable for every product on your store website or just some selected ones.

At Starbucks, for example, their customers earn stars for every purchase.

A Lot of online stores make use of newsletters but very little pay close attention to the customization. You can utilize the use of a newsletter to engage your customers and update them on a new event going on your website.

It’s a great revenue strategy that you can also employ.

8. Use of Customized Newsletters

A Lot of online stores make use of newsletters but very little pay close attention to the customization. You can utilize the use of a newsletter to engage your customers and update them on new events ongoing in your website.

However, when using this, you should try to individualize it. For example, by writing out their names in the newsletter. This would make them feel more ‘talked to’, instead of the usual broadcast message that is normally used.

9. Provide an easy-to-share button

Another great tip is creating an easy-to-share button for your customers to engage their social media friends and thereby creating a shopping community.

This is especially effective when you have a referral contest or you enable the referral button on your website. Customers can utilize this and share your store website nor product on their social accounts. This would further aid your awareness scheme. You can make use of Envite for this tip.

10. Emails on deserted carts

Another great tip is sending out emails on a customer cart that is occupied but deserted. Here, you have to send the email out in a positive and impactful manner; even much better if it is accompanied by a discount or coupon offer or any other beneficial event ongoing on your site. 

This way the customer can keep up with the cart and if forgotten, your email can do the wonder of reminding him or her. This could try up sales and even increase the conversion rate.

Conclusion

These tips have been carefully crafted for your understanding. And if followed promptly and accordingly, they would constantly increase sales and also heighten the awareness of your online store. And in a while, your stores are already booming with satisfied customers who leave great reviews on your site that would entice other customers to your online store. These WooCommerce tips can give you what you seek in your store accordingly.

WordPress is the preferred content management system, powering and owning 34% and 60.8% of internet sites on the web wholly. As a significant user, there are lots of opportunities at your dispersal, so you have to make good use of this opportunity.

Sadly, most step-by-step guides are too technical and not simply graspable for beginners. In this guide, however, there are lined and systematic steps which will facilitate and improve your WordPress SEO and drive constant traffic to your website. 

This guide covers tons of grounds, thus to avoid clustered reading and aid understanding, it’s desirable if you assimilate the content bit-by-bit and apply it afterwards on your WordPress account.

By the end of this guide, you ought to understand the nature of WordPress and how it is SEO-friendly. And also, you’ll be able to expertly utilize the thrilling options of WordPress to your website.

Introduction

Starting a WordPress site may be scary at first especially for a new user who knows little to nothing about owning a site on WordPress.

However, this guide can be termed to be sufficient to equip you with the basic knowledge to get started and lead through.

Get the knowledge you need here and apply them simultaneously on your website.

What is SEO?

SEO is an associated word form for “Search Engine Optimization”. Essentially, it’s the technique of enhancing your website in an order that its visibility is heightened whilst Google, Bing, and other engines are linked to your business. You are much more likely to entice new and existing customers for your commercial enterprise if your pages appear better in search results.

This is an approach used by several customers to attract site visitors to their websites. Once you understand how SEO works, you should be capable of effectively using distinctive processes to increase your web page’s visibility or rating in the search end result.

SEO, in other phrases, is about creating an internet site with optimized code and safely formatting it, so it’s a lot easier to discover on the web. And while people look for your content on the web, it generates greater visibility and earns you more clicks.

Why is SEO important?

Search engines are taken into consideration to be the largest source of site visitors for most websites.

Statistically, it’s far established that customers are most likely to focus at the pinnacle of the search engine result pages. Therefore, you have only some seconds to electrify your audience and effectively optimize the rank of your website amongst all other websites.

These search engines like Google and Yahoo use superior algorithms to rank pages accurately within the search result. But, this isn’t always rocket science. You must continue to optimize your content to offer it a certain part in its optimization within the search result.

In sum, SEO is the bedrock for an integrated advertising and marketing atmosphere. Knowing your users’ preference permits you to use that knowledge in your internet site, campaigns (paid and natural), social media sites, and extra.

The Core Structure of WordPress Search Engine Optimization

Knowing the core structure for optimization of your content material on WordPress can also do wonders. Contrary to public opinion, you ain’t have to be a tech geek to effectively optimize a site on WordPress.

Mastering the fundamentals structure of this guide can provide you with important increase on your site visitors.

So stick ’round and observe the guide and apply appropriately on your site.

Take a look at your website’s health.

Site health is a feature on WordPress that permits customers to know how their website is doing. It consists of two elements; the Status page and the Info page. Here, to get into your page site health, you can navigate via Tools > Site Health in your WordPress backend. Plugin builders also can connect to the Site’s health page in addition to WordPress’s test.

You need to log into your account as an admin to attain access to this.

Status Page

This operates a performance and security analysis and gives you feedback as a notification on the health status of your website, and recommendations as well. These notifications are collapsible if disturbing or not required.

The circle that is a little bit coloured at the top of the page gives you an idea of how healthy your site is. If it’s red however, then there’s an issue.

Info Page

This section gives small but detailed information about the site’s performance. You can easily use this info to figure out what is wrong with the site whenever it is giving a sign or not functional, or you could easily copy and paste it to a web developer.

Review the site’s settings

Going over all sections within the website’s setting is completely worthwhile as a result of a number of these options will influence the SEO of your WordPress site.

WordPress offers users the choice to cover their websites from search engines. This offers you time to travel over your decision and properly publish this website after you, later on, decide to.

However, make sure that the website is visible to the general public once published. Sometimes, this selection could also be accidentally checked which removes your website from search engines.

Now what you have got to try to do is, log into the admin space of your account on WordPress, and visit the Settings > Reading page.

To make your website visible, you’ve got to confirm that the box “Discourage search engines from indexing this site” is turned off or unchecked. 

Click on “Save Changes” to store your modification before exiting the page. 

You should additionally check your Writing > Reading choices and certify they’re set properly, as they verify your default choice and what seems on your homepage. 

Do not forget to supply a compelling tagline for your website in Settings > General.

Choose the proper permalink structures

The structure of your permalink incorporates a direct result on the SEO of your website. It dictates however your page would be formatted and also the URL would take further.

Some permalinks are termed Seo-friendly whereas others don’t seem to be.

Examples of SEO-friendly permalinks URLs are;

These URLs clearly outline itself. And it provides your website a lot of skilled and discoursed look.

Examples of SEO-friendly permalinks URLs are;

example.com/?p=123

http: //example.com/archives/123

These permalinks are okay but not exactly perfect and might negatively have an effect on users’ view of the quality and essentiality of your page.

Therefore, choosing the proper permalink structure is very important, deciding to alter it presently might cause some problems. This can be as a result of, on a well-known website, you risk losing all social media shares and SEO ratings by removal of the permalink structure.

You can visit the Settings page > Permalinks to decide on or amend your permalinks.

So, between plain, month and name, day and name, numeric, and customized structure, post name is more desirable. However, if you’re using other alternative choices for a substantial quantity of your time and have already gained a sufficient quantity of audience with that universal resource locator (URL), go along with it rather than changing it. 

If required, then you ought to interact with a  skilled personnel to change your permalink structure for lesser risks. Though you are still going to lose your social sharing counts on the pages.

Choosing between computer network vs non-WWW in URLs

As a brand new user, you’ve got to choose between inserting or excluding ‘www’ in your page universal resource locator. For instance, selecting between computer networks (http://www.wordpress.com) or non-www (http://wordpress.com) in your site’s universal resource locator.

To result in this selection, visit the Settings > General page. Your universal resource locator (URL) ought to be included in the ‘WordPress Address and Site Address’ fields.

From an SEO and technical perspective, there is very little distinction between using WWW or non-www. there’s no definite advantage of one over the opposite. Thus this is often left to the discretion of the user.

The Best WordPress SEO Plugin 

However, this part of the guide makes provision for comparison between many WordPress SEO Plugins that may work best for your website. 

A lot of articles online would offer various recommendations on SEO plugin tools or ‘the Best WordPress SEO plugin’. This could be quite overwhelming for brand new beginners or those who don’t seem to be tech-geeks.

Choosing the most effective WordPress SEO Plugins

When it involves selecting the most effective WordPress Plugin for your website, you’d most likely narrow it right down to the foremost popular; Yoast SEO or All in One SEO (AIOSEO).

However, in this guide, the main target would be through Yoast SEO, and also the following screenshots would be by it.

Yoast SEO could be the right WordPress Plugin with wonderful options to assist beginners or long-term users in optimizing their website’s rankings, keywords, and site’s content.

WordPress XML sitemap

Search engine improvement (SEO) is also improved by the usage of an XML sitemap. Although internal linking might not be good, it permits Google to grasp your website structure and acquire key pages of the internet site quickly.

XML Sitemaps are formatted data that list each page on your website in sequence. As a result, search engines are most likely to locate your material.

As you add or delete material, the sitemap index and individual sitemaps are straight off updated to replicate the changes. Additionally, they specify the post types that you need the search engines to add to their indexing algorithms. Sitemaps don’t recognize post types labeled as “no-index”.

Google Search Console – Add to your website

Google’s Search Console tool provides website owners with a wealth of data on their site’s performance, and it’s fully free.

Apart from showing how your website functions on the inside, it conjointly shows how searchers view it in the search results.

Learn how your cellular website operates inside the engines like Google and which key phrases and inquiries are optimizing traffic. And in addition, discover if Google does have access to the content on your page.

We are advancing to battle a handful of guides relating to joining the site and connecting it to Google’s Search console, but first, you should own an account first. Join now or log in to begin.

1. Input your details and log into the account

2. Then, click on ‘Add Property’ seen at the downward part of the page

You can even upload up to 1000 properties.

3. Input your website URL address to the appropriate field as seen. However, note that you have to input the correct address, exactly accurate. If unsure of your address, seeking the expertise of a host provider is more advisable in such instances.

Then ‘continue’.

4. Next, you would see an arrow beside the ‘html tag’, click on it. There are various ways to affirm ownership. Although in Yoast, the authentication code is just needed for verification, then it is affixed on Yoast search engine optimization.

5.The meta-information provided, make sure you copy it.

Point-out the tag code and copy it.

6. Next, you sign into your WordPress account, then Dashboard.

7.Then Menu > SEO> General > Webmaster Tools

8. The tag code which you copied should be pasted as a verification code in the highlighted box and store modification.

9. Finally, move to Google Search Console and ‘verify’.

Then Done. You have successfully associate your WordPress site to Google Search Console and can also submit sitemaps.

Optimize your blog posts for search engine optimization (SEO)

Don’t get mistaken. SEO is an ongoing process. Some individuals are of the thought that having a good SEO Plugin is all it takes. However, on the contrary, users ought to make the most of the options that come with blog posts for SEO. 

Majorly, most SEO Plugins go together with these options- SEO Title, Description, Targeted Keywords, Meta Description, Meta Keyword, Key phrases, and so on. 

All these listed may slightly differ based on the Plugin you’re operating. However, confirm, you are taking advantage of all of those options regardless.

A preview is additionally created for you to ascertain how your content would appear to a reader. 

We suggest that you just pay sufficient attention to the Title, Description, and Targeted/ Focus Keyword.

Keyword research is even recommended. This is very important. Your initiative as a new beginner is deciding what your users would search on and in what format.

For example, you’re sharing a post on connected health problems or optimizing a post per se and you use ‘Healthy Living’. This keyword is okay but general and would have a lot of competition. Due to this, you could rather use, ‘Drinking Problem’, ‘Sugar level’, ‘ Lice’, and so on. You’ve got to be specific here.

This is essential as a result of your want for individuals to use your website and want to attain a much better ranking on the net. You can even make use of long-tailed keywords though they’re less often searched and have less competition compared to shorter words. Therefore, you’ve got to work out an acceptable keyword for your content. 

There are numerous keyword analysis tools that will assist you to discover appropriate keywords and may even tell the keywords your competitors are running. We tend to suggest SEMrush; trustworthy and popularly utilized by users adept in SEO.

Practices for WordPress Users

These are some practices that you can use alongside the other alternative practices discussed. it would go a long way if controlled properly.

Consequently, it’s simple to grasp and apply.

Properly harness the effect of Categories and tags in WordPress   On WordPress, there are two ways in which contents are structured; categories and tags. Categories have a way of finding a niche for your content and exercises this in a hierarchical manner. For instance, an internet site regarding baking, ‘Dessert’, ‘Home-Cooked’, ‘Recipes’ may be used as categories.

Whereas, Tags are non-hierarchical and might be used to describe your content in additional detail. For instance, your tags may be ‘Low-calories’, ‘Wedding Theme Cake’, ‘Pie’, ‘Bread’.

Visit the admin page, and from Dashboard, then Post, and down to Categories or Tags.

Categories and Tags can be said to be useful tools for users because it creates an easier avenue for them. It conjointly aids search engines within the long haul.

Constantly interlink your content

As a beginner, you must cultivate the habit of linking your content with other varieties of posts on WordPress. Doing this would further drive traffic to your website,  increase users’ time on the page, and increase page view in the long term.

Google and other search engines award a score to every page on your website (page authority). Although, one can not accurately confirm the calculation of this score as a result of its unbroken secret. Consequently, people cannot manipulate the outcomes in any manner.

Nevertheless, links are by far the foremost signal givers.

Optimize WordPress Comments

The comments on your site are just like the defensive structure of your page. As a beginner, you would like to seek out some way to urge comments and additionally optimize them.

Akismet comes with each WordPress website. This assists in fighting or preventing spammed comments. you should make sure that the comments are spam-free as a result of the drawback of getting such in your comment field is that it repels your users and will additionally ruin your search ratings.

Improve the quality of your content 

The content you offer on your website gives your site an extended approach in driving traffic and improving SEO on your site. People look for engaging, straightforward, and content that will offer answers to their queries or problems. 

It all begins along with your distinctive thoughts or perspective on a particular issue while producing high-quality content for your WordPress web blog. 

In addition, it involves presenting these ideas in an approach that’s well-organized and simply intelligible. As a result of these efforts, you’ll be ready to attract the audience you seek and keep them interested.

Thereafter, you’ll improve the standard of your content on your website by;

• Making helpful analysis when necessary 
• Providing your users with outstanding content
• Individual posts and pages ought to be extremely optimized
• Assert internal control over the content
• Avoid accidental duplication of material or keyword pattern (similar or identical content or a similar keyword).
• Engage international audiences

These points are unambiguously created to assist beginners to assert enough management over the content expressed. And bear in mind your content must talk to the reader instead of being talked at. In addition, your content must be clear, applicable, problem-solving, and accessible furthermore. 

Keeping these facts in mind, you’d be assuredly distinct in your content.

Speed and Security for WordPress SEO

After taking you through the core structure, best plugins, and best practices, all of which might mean nothing if the protection of your website is poor, or the speed is slow, or your website gets hacked.

These tips would, sure enough, guide you as a beginner in securing your website. 

Accelerate and improve the overall performance of your website

Search engines rank a faster website performance. And apart from that, a slow website would do very little to nothing when attempting to attract or interact with your users. 

You can manually improve the general performance of your website by optimizing your image (oversized pictures could cause slowness of the site), update plugins, shut down databases, modify GZIP Compression, decrease CSS, hypertext markup language & JS files, modify caching, and a bunch of others. 

You can conjointly reach a far better and quicker website with the utilization of SiteGround or Bluehost.

Security and safety for WordPress SEO 

After making your website on WordPress, as a beginner, you must note that it’s necessary for you to secure your website against malware and hackers. Google blacklists about 20,000 sites a day for malware problems and about 50,000 for phishing. 

The security and safety of your {site|website|web website} are terribly important! All effort on your site would be null if it’s blacklisted or hacked at the end. 

For starters, you’ll attempt installing an SSL(Secure Sockets Layer) Certificate on your website. This changes the http: to https, where ‘S’ stands for secure. A padlock image seems within the browser’s address bar to suggest that an internet site is SSL-secured.

If it doesn’t work out, go online to the admin page >  General Settings, and alter the site and home address from http: to https: 

Or, you can get a plugin that may help secure your website safely.