According to Hubspot.com, mobile commerce makes up 30% of all U.S. commerce. So, if you have an online store that is not mobile-friendly, it may be the kiss of death to your profits. As digital technology continues to expand and evolve, it is going to be vital that you keep up with technology trends in order to get the best results for your online store.
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9 Ways to Boost Ecommerce Sales
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eCommerce Essentials: 11 Must Haves for Successful Online Stores
Hopeful entrepreneurs start up thousands of new eCommerce businesses every day. Nine out of 10 of the online ventures will not survive the first year. What makes the difference between eCommerce success and failure? For anyone with an online business or considering one, here’s our list of the top 11 must haves and excerpts from the online ‘buzz’ about them. Also check out Mailchimp’s article on how to start an online store.
1. A Niche Market
“Most people who are just starting out make the mistake of looking for a product first, and a market second. To boost your chances of success, start with a market. The trick is to find a group of people who are searching for a solution to a problem, but not finding many results.” Entrepreneur.com
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WooCommerce improves speed with “Dashing Dolphin” upgrade
WooCommerce released its latest upgrade, version 2.5 – dubbed the “Dashing Dolphin,” in January.
Here’s how the WooThemes product release announcement describes the new features:
This latest version focuses on getting the store itself to run quickly and is aptly named Dashing Dolphin.
We made several changes under the hood that improve the speed of your store.
First, we improved how WooCommerce knows who is on the site and what they have in the cart, known as a session handler. … We’re now storing less temporary data in the database, which speeds up every page load.
Several pages in the backend were improved, such as the tax settings screen. For store owners that collect taxes in a lot of regions, this screen will both save and load much faster.
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Social Media Marketing: Predictions for 2016
The abundance of new social media platforms emerging practically overnight has given new meaning to the adage “Social media never sleeps.” Have you checked out Periscope (live streaming)? Blab (live personal “talk show” chat)? Yik Yak (anonymous local conversations/chat)?
These are just a few of the new sites and apps seeking to tap into the ‘social’ scene — which the Pew Research Center found to include 65 percent of adults in the U.S. (October 2015).
Meanwhile, established players in the field such as Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus are introducing new capabilities in order to remain in the game.
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Selling Subscriptions? Check out the WooCommerce Tool Upgrade
Subscriptions have gone digital, extending the term well beyond traditional newspapers and magazines. Many businesses are finding the ‘subscription’ model lends itself well to generating recurring sales and revenue.
Businesses like Birchbox (beauty products), Blue Apron (make-at-home meals), and Dollar Shave Club (men’s razors) serve hundreds of thousands of customers per month through subscriptions, according to an Inc. Magazine article. But success is not a shoo-in.
“You can’t just convert to a subscription business and expect your revenue to grow,” Michael Dubin, CEO of Dollar Shave Club, tells the magazine’s reporter. “Is the subscription an enhancement for your customer? If not, then don’t do it.”
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Email Marketing on Steroids: Mailchimp Introduces “Pro”
“It is now 44 years since the first email was sent and its hard earned status as one of the strongest weapons in the marketer’s arsenal shows no signs of diminishing,” reads the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) National Client Email Report 2015.
How is this weapon working for your business? Are you ready to take it to the next level?
For small business email ‘power users,’ there’s a new tool available – MailChimp Pro. Designed with small businesses in mind, it’s targeted to those with lists of 50,000 or more who want to ramp up their email campaign results to grow their business.
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Membership Site Tools Now Available for WooCommerce
Does your business plan include offering an online community for clients and customers? Would you like to restrict access to content on your site to a membership community only?
WooCommerce now offers extensions that help their e-Commerce customers offer and manage memberships and subscriptions. If you use WooCommerce (2.2 or newer) for your e-store and offer memberships (or plan to), these extensions are worth checking out.
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Web Design: 6 Fundamentals of Customer-Centric Sites
Is your website designed with your customers in mind?
In his book The Invisible Computer, Donald A. Norman writes: “Quality only comes about by continual focus on, and attention to, the people who matter: customers.”
Norman, an advocate of designing products based on the needs and wants of the end-users, is credited with coining the term “user experience.” Now a buzzword in web design circles (and others), it has its own acronym: UX.
