WooCommerce is one of the more popular e-commerce platforms today. It is estimated that 3 out of 10 online stores are powered by this WordPress-based platform. A quick look at its feature list will give you an idea why it has become so widely popular. It allows users to sell everything from physical goods to digital items, to memberships and services. Moreover, it doesn’t take a transaction fee which makes it all the more enticing for budding entrepreneurs.
How to get started on WooCommerce
If you want to sell on a WooCommerce-powered store, you have to begin by creating a WordPress account. Aside from being free, creating an account on WordPress is quick and easy.
Then WooCommerce will ask questions about things like the products you’ll sell, the industry you belong to, your preferred payment options, among others.
Creating a store on WooCommerce
When you go to the WordPress dashboard, there’s a WooCommerce menu that you can use to help you guide in setting up and configuring the site. The wizard will cover admin basics like prompting your store’s address, setting the home currency, and determining the type of product you would want to sell (physical or digital).
Adding product images on WooCommerce
As you are setting up an online store, you should naturally prepare photos or images of the products you are to sell. WooCommerce facilitates quick and easy editing of images and product details because these are based around WordPress editor.
Running the online business on WooCommerce
Once your online store is set up, you will find that the platform gives you all the tools you need in managing your business. For example, there are tools for stock handling that lets you track stock levels. The platform also keeps you updated on your inventory.
And blogging won’t be a problem because with WordPress, you can easily develop a store blog to keep things interesting for your customers and entice them to buy from your store.
Once only known for enhancing and sharing pictures, Instagram has become a social media giant. Small business owners have also been using it to reach out to their target markets. But many small entrepreneurs hit a wall upon signing up and setting up their profiles . The familiar question is– what should businesses post on Instagram?
Hiring a digital marketing agency is not as easy as it seems. While there are numerous firms that claim to be experts in digital marketing, it would be wise for any online entrepreneur or brand to invest time, money, and effort in finding the right one for them. In this article, we list down some of the more important questions to ask before hiring the services of a digital marketing agency:
For many companies, going on social media is mainly driven by the need to increase brand awareness and consequently improve sales. But social media is also a good outlet for customer service. Providing customer service support over popular social media channels like Twitter and Facebook can result to stronger, closer relationships with customers.
What does it feels like to be an entrepreneur? This is a pretty harsh question.
What we know for sure is that the 500,000 (and more) retailer who adopted Shopify to run their businesses, “entrepreneur” takes many shapes.
When you put these excellent entrepreneurs and business owners together, it’s palpable.
We met thousands of Shopify businesses owner during our Workroom event in both Los Angeles and New York this month. Everyone we met had a fascinating story to tell.
Entrepreneurs all around the United States shared their striking and peerless journeys with us. They were all different, but despite where they live or what they sell, they all had one thing in common: enthusiasm for what they do.
We asked the most successful business owners about their motivation to start their businesses, about the “cha-ching” moment when they made their first sale, and what they took from Workroom that will improve their businesses.
Monica started her business by chance. She doodled little characters during a boring meeting which later became really important. After Monica gave birth to her first daughter, what was once distraction now became the base for a new and fascinating business idea.
She expanded on her world of characters, writing backstories and also songs for each one of them,and she also tested the designs on real products. She executed her idea on Shopify and used Printful and Printify to print and deliver “The MoMeMans” products, adding mugs, leggings, and decorations for kids.
Despite her past life gave her a good knowledge in marketing, her experience was only limited to large stable brands. She found out quickly that launching a small business from nothing implied a different skill set.
“I asked a friend of mine for SEO-help to make sure I was correctly labeling everything because if someone was tagging something, for example, on Pinterest I wanted it to be sure that it would come back to me. He said: ‘I really have to help you with this because your stuff is good but no-one is going to see it. This is the ardest part.
This is the hardest part: getting noticed. And I’m still trying to figure it out!
In 2014 in Colombia, Giovanni and Todd find out the Wayuu tribe and became captivated with their beautiful handcrafts and with their style of life. They learned, though, that they were a tribe at risk of extinction.
So they launched Putchipuu, that means protector and messenger of the word, to help the Wayuu tribe through marketing their products. Thanks to their earnings and activism, Putchipuu helped protect their tribe and improved their daily life style.
The two guys now sell handcrafted Wayuu bags and accessories in their Shopify e-commerce. Every single product page reminds the client of their important mission with this message “A purchase of this item provides 30 people water for one week.”
The first sale: teh sound of the Shopify App “cha-ching” made it feel that everything was possible. We had now started our first business.
What was the best lesson learned at Shopify Workroom?
We learned that content creation was the key. We started posting every week blog posts, videos and more content.
After 22 years of working in the book publishing sector, Janet Talbert began working on her true dream. Janet launched her brand “On This Rock Jewelry” in 2009 and has been making inspirational jewelry for Christians ever since. Her first big success came when the well known Kathie Griffin chose her silver cuff as one of her “Favorite Things” in 2010.
“A lot of orders needed to be fulfilled so my teacher Chris helped me. It was similar to one of those Chrismas films when everyone helps each other. It was ama amazing moment and the support of Chris and my community was crucial.
Thanks to a friend, Janet secured some TV love for her jewelry once again, so she was able to make it wear to Susan Kelechi Watson on the NBC hit series “This Is Us”.
“Leave an advice for everyone who wants to start their first business”
“Don’t let fear block you. Keep moving towards your goal. Keep going for it. Never quit”
Any BFCM plans?
“Debut a limited edition suite of jewelry, tag all items so they are Instagram-ready, and follow the instructions in the marvelous BFCM Toolbox. I will also be doing a pop-up at West Elm Lincoln Center on Saturday, the 25th and I’m excited to use the Shopify Card Reader!”
Don’t let fear block you. Keep moving towards your goal. Keep going for it. Never quit
Named for two literary tomboys, Kirrin Finch is the business brainchild of Laura Moffat and her wife Kelly. The couple knew that they were fed up with clothing lines for women. Even if they found options they liked in menswear, they didn’t fit their bodies. With zero knowledge in fashion (Laura was in sales and Kelly was a teacher) they quit their jobs and started their business.
Kirrin Finch, a brand selling only online manufactured in New York, mate menswear style with women’s fits. With the help of the Brooklyn Fashion Design Accelerator, the women learned the ropes, hired a pattern-designer, and built a community on their brand.
What was the best thing you learned at Workroom?
“The things I like about Shopify are all the apps that give you so many opportunities as an e-commerce company to keep improving your site and growing your business. There are so many to choose from, you can really level up your site. I spoke with one of the gurus about what apps she thought were the best for a growing e-commerce company and I got awesome bits of advice. I also felt supported in our approach and I am thinking to add a referral program in a month based on her feedback.”
Great things in business are never done by one person. They’re done by a team of people.
Steve Jobs
These days, you don’t need to hire an IT wizard to be able to put up your own online store and sell on the Internet. There are numerous e-commerce platforms that you can use to launch your online business such as Shopify and WooCommerce.
Just like any website, online stores are not spared from errors on pages. E-commerce websites are even more prone to these technical glitches because of the number of pages involved. If you own an e-commerce store, what should you do to keep your site error-free?
The stiff competition between companies that engage business on the Internet has further underlined the importance of digital marketing. Is your firm’s business getting the kind of push from your digital marketing efforts? If you feel that isn’t the case, here are four digital marketing tactics you might want to try:
We’re excited to announce new, easy-to-access metrics for all physical retailers: Our improved Retail Analytics puts the data that matters most at your fingertips. You can now track and act on cricial metrics right from your Shopify store, like staff performance, location performance, and much more.
Your Shopify will now feature new reports from Shopify POS, including sales by:
Retail location
Staff
You can also quickly get key insights on your improved dashboard, including:
Total sales
Average order value
Total orders
Top products by units sold
If you use both Shopify POS and Shopify’s Online Store, you’ll now be able to see all of these reports directly on your important online store reports.
Collect data about Staff, Store Locations, and More
The improved Retail Analytics helps you make the most out of every transaction, employee, and location. With the these reports, you can now easily:
Recognize top performing staff and reward them, push new goals, identify what made teh succeed, and Help other stuff member acheve their full potential.
Recognize best-selling products on all your retail shops, so you can laser-focus on what’s working and take weighted decisions.
Use compounded metric to imporve your ROI (return of interest) by comparing sales by location and staff performance with units sold.
Benchmark total sales with different time frames, to assess seasonal ups and downs, identify incoming hard times and prevent them.
Determine AOV (average order value) so that you can profit margins, promotions, sales, and other tactics in order to grow your traffic to your store.
New Improved Retail Analytics:
Big data analytics examines large amounts of data to discover hidden patterns and correlations. But today’ it’s possible to analyze your data and get answers just in seconds so you don’t have to waste days and nights and you can finally focus on the fun part of you business – an effort that’s slower and less efficient with more traditional business intelligence solutions.
The major that big data analytics brings to the table, however, are speed and efficiency. Whereas a few years ago a business would have gathered information, run analytics and unearthed information that could be used for future decisions, now this business can identify insights for immediate decisions. The ability to work much faster gives organizations a competitive edge they didn’t have before.
Two of the more popular e-commerce platforms today are Etsy and Shopify. A common question asked by novice online retailers is ‘what are the differences between these two platforms?’ If you are one of them, it is important to learn the answer to that question as it can help you determine which platform is better suited for your online business.
