Harmi, Author at SAU/CAL

Either way, a “good” conversion rate doesn’t have to be in the double digits to be effective, but your goal should still be to work toward a conversion rate that’s higher than your current rate. Even a 1% lift from 2% to 3% can mean 50% more revenue for the same amount of traffic.

Of course, the 2-3% is just an average for your overall conversion rates, but in terms of what makes a good rate for specific commerce-related areas of your site, here’s what you’re looking for:

Product Conversion Rates: above 5%.
Cart Abandonment Rates: below 70%
Checkout Abandonment Rates: below 75%
Mobile Conversion Rates: half of your overall rate

Ideally, if you can get higher than 2-3%, that’s awesome and definitely possible. 5% is a solid benchmark, and we’ve seen sites as high as 20-25%. Of course, those are champions, so don’t fret if you aren’t there!

Get Conversions Where You Want Them

Once you’ve gathered all of your data and you can see where your conversion rates are strong and where they may be faltering, you’ll probably be wondering how to boost those rates a little bit higher.

While it’s true that there are many different variables that affect conversions – such as sign design, loading speed, product demand, and more – there are also things you can do to improve those rates in each area.

Watch Your Bounce and Exit Rates for Clues

Beyond watching the conversion rates above, you also want to measure similar data like bounce rates and exit rates as well as average session duration.

Your bounce rate is the percentage of people who leave after viewing a single page, which is usually because they’re not finding what they want on your site. You can reduce your bounce rate (and improve conversions) by:

Including product tags for better searchability
Highlighting products on different landing pages
Making categories readily available on your homepage
Creating more categories for easier searching
Making sure your site is loading quickly
Avoiding a hard sell

Your exit rate is the percentage of people who leave after viewing your site without taking an action, and your analytics reports will let you know the last page they were on before they left. If you have a high exit rate for a certain page, that’s a red flag, but in general you can also do the following to minimize your exit rate:

Include a strong CTA on every landing page
Include visual cues and symbols to direct people to take action
Use clear navigation to help them find what they’re looking for

The average session duration gives you a general idea of how long people are browsing your site. A high bounce rate with a low average session duration means that your pages aren’t grabbing the right sort of attention.

Screenshot-2016-05-01-18.27.00

You can help maximize conversions by:

Simplifying your designs and including white space to draw attention to products, “add to cart” buttons and other CTAs
Remove unnecessary elements that might distract or confuse visitors
Use sharp images that grab the eye for both product pages and landing pages
Provide important information and explanation for confusing products/features of your site on the whole

By improving the overall experience of your storefront you’ll minimize your bounce and exit rates and improve conversions rates, too.

Look at Your Sales Funnel for Clues

Technically, all conversions aren’t created equal.

There’s a difference between what is considered a “micro-conversion” (e.g. a newsletter) that would happen at the top of your sales funnel, and a stronger conversion that happens near the bottom of the sales funnel, like a purchase.

If you’re noticing more newsletter subscribers but your actual sales figures haven’t improved, it could be an indicator that your tactics are being focused in the wrong place.

While a micro-conversion is still good because it leads your users further into the funnel, you want to make sure that your conversions are strong from top to bottom to maximize effectiveness.

Looking to improve your conversions? Here’s a list of 9 ways

Final Thoughts

Be sure to watch your metrics on a daily or weekly basis, look for red flags on certain products or landing pages that might be causing low conversions, and make any necessary changes as needed.

Determine which specific actions you want your users to take and then create design elements that help them make that action, whether it’s subscribing to a service or newsletter or purchasing a product.

Oh, and don’t freak out if your rate seems low at first. Remember that 2-3% is normal, and you can always improve it over time.

written by

Digital Marketing

Come to think of it, human error seems to be a common theme.

Why Your Lame Passwords Will Be the Death of You

15 Aug

Cybersecurity is a big deal, and if you’re not paying attention, it can come back to haunt you.

You may be thinking, “Who, me?” Yes, you.

While there probably isn’t a crew of expert hackers trying to steal your data or net millions of dollars in credit card information (you’re not Target, after all) the vast majority of hackers do want to use your server to send spam emails, which is the number one reason for hacking smaller sites.

That’s why it’s super important to make sure your WooCommerce site is fully secure. But before you shrug your shoulders believing that WordPress has you covered already, think again…

Don’t miss: Has My Website Been Hacked? Your WP Security Checklist

Why It’s Easy to Overlook Security

Best-WordPress-Security-Plugins-shutterstock_252971932

Don’t get us wrong, WordPress is a killer platform, and we wouldn’t be in business if we didn’t see its inherent value. While its biggest draw is that it handles a lot of the work for you, it’s also easy to assume that WordPress is handling all of your security concerns.

Sure, you might install Akismet to protect against those pesky spammers, but when is the last time you really looked at how easy your site is to hack? We’re not putting words in your mouth here, but probably never, right?

What WordPress/WooCommerce Does Protect Against

Well the good news is that you’re not totally screwed, because like we said, WordPress does protect you against some things. For example:

WooThemes for WooCommerce frequently works with WordPress security professionals who audit their work, frequently checking for vulnerabilities
WordPress can use SSL certification (through your hosting service) to create safer shopping experiences
There are various plugins that will help protect your site further
Latest version releases come with built-in security features against most major threats

What It Doesn’t Protect Against

Here’s the bad news. Less than three years ago, 73% of the popular sites using WordPress were considered “vulnerable” to cyber attacks. In fact, of the 10 most vulnerable plugins, five were commercial plugins available for purchase, and one of them was an honest to goodness security plugin.

Which is why you need to be extra vigilant. Here’s what WordPress or even our beloved WooCommerce might not protect against:

You forgetting to keep your theme, plugins, and version of WordPress up-to-date
You downloading plugins from an unreputable or untested source
You using “admin” as a username
You not changing your passwords often or using weak passwords
You configuring your file directories the wrong way
You forgetting to backup your site on a regular basis

Actually, come to think of it, human error seems to be a common theme here. But if we’re honest, forgetting to update to the latest version of WordPress the second it comes out isn’t going to topple your e-commerce empire. Rather, the biggest thing that you’re not safeguarded against on that list is weak passwords. Here’s why…

Why Passwords Are Your Biggest Risk

Have you ever watched a hacker movie or literally any episode of a detective show ever made? There’s always that one character that is (thankfully) working for the good guys who can guess the password on a suspect’s computer simply by knowing what the person’s dog’s name is or their birthday.

We may giggle at it in retrospect, but people are notoriously bad at picking passwords. In fact, 21% of people use passwords over 10 years old, 47% of people use passwords at least five years old, and 73% of all online accounts are guarded by duplicate passwords.

While it may seem like no big deal to you, we should remind you that you’re running an e-commerce business built on thousands of user generated passwords, and if a hacker gets access to one, he gets access to them all.

Your mission, therefore, if you choose to accept it, is to not only create secure passwords for yourself and your team, but also do everything in your power to encourage your customers to do the same.

What Secure Passwords Look Like

We’re not trying to scare you, but the fact is that hackers are getting smarter, and hacking technology has significantly improved in the last few years. You’ll have to go above and beyond to create a truly secure password. Here’s what a secure password includes:

Avoiding “dictionary words” (common words), anniversaries, and birthdays
Including a mix of capitals, lowercase, numbers, and symbols
Prioritizing length – long passwords are less likely to be hacked
Generating random passwords whenever possible
Creating unique passwords for each account and site

We know that the last one is a tough one, because remembering random strings of letters and numbers over multiple accounts and profiles is genuinely hard, but the more random the password can be, the safer it is from hackers. The best approach is to use a dicelist to generate a completely random password (here’s a good one, and this one too) that’s less likely to be hacked.

If you manage multiple WordPress/WooCommerce sites or you have a larger team that all need access to your site, consider using a service like ManageWP. It’s also extremely important to have a good host for your WordPress site, as we’ve mentioned before.

How to Incorporate Secure Passwords Into WooCommerce

Okay, now for the good news. Since the release of WooCommerce version 2.5, secure password strength indicators are built in to the system. Whenever a new account is being created, a popup will appear and hassle the user (not really) until the password meets certain standards.

pw-strength
But the creation of the password is still up to you and your customers. That’s why it’s a good idea to remind them using text and microcopy around your forms and landing pages about the importance of creating secure passwords.

You can also do a few other things to make sure your site is safe from even the laziest of passwords:

1. Enable two-factor authentication (2FA) on every account. Just because your admin account has an amazing hacker-proof password doesn’t mean all of your accounts do. 2FA relies on a second step, like sending a text to a smartphone, to authenticate a password, which makes it helpful against potential threats.

2. Limit brute force login attempts with Jetpack Protect. One thing can be said about hackers is that they never really give up if they want something. Thankfully, Jetpack’s security features – Jetpack Protect, for instance – allows you to limit the number of times that someone can unsuccessfully login to your site. And if you’re worried about forgetful customers getting locked out, you can also whitelist IP addresses.

Screen-Shot-2016-02-15-at-8.41.33-AM

3. Use (trusted) security plugins to scan your site. As long as the plugin is from a trusted source (look for good reviews from users and that it’s verified with your version of WordPress – and frequently updated), you shouldn’t have to worry too much, just make sure to keep it updated and implement the other security measures. Don’t just rely on a plugin.

Final Thoughts

We’re not saying that your passwords need to be a version of the chess game from War Games in order to be successful, but they do need a level of complexity more than adding your birth year to your favorite child’s initials.

Make sure your admin accounts (which shouldn’t be called “admin” as a username) and each individual account associated with your site have complex and lengthy passwords. Encourage your users in as many ways as possible to beef up their passwords, too.

Finally, it’s okay to trust WordPress to do their job, but you can’t forget to stay vigilant on your end. Not to say that hackers are lurking behind every bush, but hey, if Hollywood is anything to go by, crazier things have happened.

OH NO! Has your site been hacked? Check out our security checklist just to be safe.

written by

WordPress

You can actually sharpen your resized JPEG images while they’re uploading.

6 WordPress Image Hacks You Need to Know ASAP

01 Aug

We know what you’re thinking: “If they so much as mention image compression in this post I’m clicking away.” Don’t worry, we hear you.

For the WordPress uninitiated, there are plenty of image hacks out there to optimize your site (image compression being a big one, and FYI, we recommend this plugin). In fact, the folks over at WPExplorer have a whole guide dedicated to optimizing images for easy reference. But whether you’re a WP native or just a newbie, there are a few things about image optimization you might not know about yet, but you definitely should if you’re looking for results.

After all, images are far better at generating revenue than text alone, and that’s especially true for e-commerce sites. Most people remember up to 80 percent of what they see but only 20 percent of what they read, meaning that in terms of branding and sales, images are significantly bigger movers and shakers than bulk copy. And if that fancy fact doesn’t impress you, try these on for size:

Articles with images get 94% more total views
In an e-commerce site, 67% of consumers say the quality of a product image is “very important” in selecting and purchasing a product
In an online store, customers think that the quality of a product’s image is more important than product-specific information (63%), a long description (54%) and ratings and reviews (53%)

That’s why you should be putting a heavy emphasis on your images, if you’re not already, and that’s also why we’ve compiled a list of 6 hacks that will help you maximize the impact of those images.

Don’t miss: 5 More Time-Saving WP Image Plugins

#1. Sharpen Resized JPEGs

You may already know that you should be resizing your images before you upload them, but here’s one tip they may not tell you in WordPress 101: You can actually sharpen your resized JPEG images while they’re uploading. Why is that helpful? Well, if you recall, “The quality of a product image is very important in selecting and purchasing a product.”

Here’s an example of the difference between sharpened and unsharpened images in WP:

sharpenedjpeg

Stackexchange has a guide (and code) you can use to sharpen your images, which can be found here.

#2: Link Images to Categories

Navigation is an important part of a site, and that goes double for e-commerce. If you want to improve your site’s searchability, consider leveraging your category page in place of a traditional drop-down menu. This case study from Body Ecology showed a 56% increase in revenue by doing just that.

If you, too, want to use a dedicated category page, consider giving each category its own image to help boost its effectiveness. A plugin like Taxonomy Images should do the job nicely.

taxonomyimage2

And no extra coding is involved, so you’ll save plenty of time building out your category pages. WPBeginner has a guide for using the plugin, which can be found here.

#3. Create Dynamic Images

Sometimes you might want to get a little jazzy with your images, and a good way to do that is by including hovers or rollovers. A lot of designers or developers code dynamic images into the site by hand, but if you have WP you might consider using a plugin like WP Visual Slide Box Builder (or WooCommerce Image Hover for your product images), which allows you to quickly and easily create rollover images to impress your users.

When it comes to images, the details matter, too. If you want a way to include dynamic images while also adding an extremely helpful feature to your product pages, WooCommerce also has an Image Zoom plugin so that people can see your products more clearly when they click on it.

zoom-image

#4. Add OG Protocol for Social Media Images

If your site sells some cool stuff, chances are that users will be sharing your rad products on social media. That’s great news for you, but only if what they’re sharing looks as professional as your site. You don’t want your product images being blurry or squished when they appear in people’s Facebook news feed. That’s where Open Graph (OG) Protocol comes into play.

woocommerce-product
Social networks like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Pinterest automatically pull information from your site when someone shares your product page (or homepage). That info – which includes your page’s title, the URL, your description, and most importantly, your images – is snagged using OG Protocol, and you want to make sure that it’s grabbing the right info and images.

One way you can do that is by using a plugin like WooCommerce SEO. Torque Mag has a pretty simple walkthrough of the process that you can find here. You can also manually add OG Protocol to your headers (walkthrough found here).

#5. Overcome Image Blocking with Alt Text

Another thing you may not know about is image blocking, which is a setting in most email clients that allows users to block certain images in their email messages. Even if you don’t send your emails directly through your WP site, you can still hack your images to prevent image blocking from happening to your users.

jcrew-images-off

You’ll want to make sure that all of your images include alt text (not to be confused with your image title) and that it’s styled properly to ensure that all of your images are email-friendly.
Litmus has a guide to adding the right alt text as well as other tips and tricks for avoiding image blocking, which you can find here.

#6. Give Your Images All the Feels

Okay, okay. This isn’t necessarily WP specific, so maybe consider it a “bonus” hack and try not to get too mad about it.

Optimizing your images isn’t just about making mediocre pictures look their best. It’s also about choosing good images from the start so your “optimization” time is minimal. So what makes a “good” image, exactly? Well, images that create an emotional connection are a great place to start.

Speaking about a site in general, you’ll want images that are clean, well-framed, and well-lit (more on that here). More specifically for e-commerce sites, it means not only using still life photos of your products, but also incorporating action shots of the product being used in everyday life. Timbuk2, for example, shows their bags alone but also being carried by a real live human being.

ecommerce-product-photography
You can also encourage people to upload content of their own to create a sense of belonging. Amazon, for example, allows users to upload their own product photos in the review sections of each product page (WooDiscuz plugin does the same thing).

Basically, the more emotive and interactive you can make your images to start with, the more “optimized” they will be in the long run, whether you follow any of the other hacks on this list or not (but we hope you do).

Here are 5 other time saving WP image plugins you should check out.

written by

WordPress

Subscriptions are extremely convenient, especially if you sell products people buy on the regular.

The In and Outs of Working with WooCommerce Subscriptions

18 Jul

Building an e-commerce store is essentially no different from building a physical storefront, except that it’s so much better, because, you know, no heavy lifting.

But just like a physical storefront, your website needs to sell product, and a lot of it, to be successful. If you have a one-of-a-kind product that’s so in demand people will literally send robots to wait in line for it, then you don’t really need to worry about anything we’re saying. You’re already doing great.

However, if you sell anything other than Apple iPhones, you’ll need to figure out how to sell your products on an ongoing basis. One of the best ways to do that is to turn your individual products into subscriptions.

Don’t miss: The Subscription Setup Checklist for Newbies

Sweet, sweet subscriptions

When people think “subscriptions” they probably assume you mean subscribing to a magazine or a blog, which is certainly one way of offering cool content to your customers on a regular basis. But that’s not what we’re talking about.

We’re talking about commerce subscriptions, which allow customers to order the same products on a regular schedule. Commerce subscriptions have a few benefits over trying to sell individual products one at a time:

First, commerce subscriptions are extremely convenient for customers, especially if you sell products that people buy on the regular. Think: Dollar Shave Club.

box-bottom-82144d4

Source: Dollar Shave Club

Second, they are extremely convenient for your store, as you have the ability to scale as demands change. You also have a fairly predictable source of monthly income, which is always nice.

Subscriptions also work well to build brand loyalty, since customers are invested in your business on a continuous basis. All in all, if you can turn a product into a subscription, you should.

What sort of things can be turned into subscriptions?

Now you may be thinking, “My individual products don’t really work with subscriptions!” If that’s the case, maybe come up with a new product or service that does, because seriously, subscriptions are pretty much the best source of revenue for your business.

If you don’t want to spend time and energy developing a new product (fine, fine, we get it), here are some ways you can approach subscriptions without reinventing the wheel.

Offer a membership

Again, think about companies like Dollar Shave Club or Honest Company, which are membership-based commerce sites that make millions of dollars each year selling stuff you can find for a dollar at your local drug store. How do they do it? The power of exclusivity. Even if you sell something so extremely basic that everyone already has two at home, including a yearly membership that offers additional discounts to members is a great way to add income as well as provide a service for loyal customers.

Offer discounts for frequently ordered items

If a customer in any way will return to your site to reorder, offering a way to do it that both saves them money and makes you more money is a win-win solution. Amazon does this with their Subscribe & Save service, which lets customers select items to subscribe to and then set their quantity and schedule for delivery.

beauty_whykeeprunningout_bb._V390538485_
Source: Amazon

Box single items together

If you have individual items that you’re always trying to cross-promote, consider boxing them together and selling them as a subscription product. Think about companies like JustFab (valued at $109M) or BarkBox ($1.7M), which are made up solely of these box subscriptions. Even if your customers don’t like all of the products in the box, they’ll still buy the box because it’s a deal, and everybody loves a good deal.

Turn a service into a subscription

Or, if you’re a SaaS company and don’t deal with products, your company is ready-made for subscriptions. Think of companies like Dropbox and Salesforce, which are built around subscriptions for using their services (and also are worth billions, just FYI). If customers can in any way benefit from things that you offer, and you can charge those people on a regular basis for it, don’t hesitate.

Making subscriptions run smoothly in WooCommerce

So once you’ve (wisely) decided to make the move to subscriptions, let’s talk about the nitty-gritty of what you need to know to make them run smoothly in your WooCommerce site.

Setting up subscriptions (if you’re not really a developer, but are still in charge of the store)

The things you’ll need to know about when it comes to commerce subscriptions include:

Creating your subscription products
Creating discounts association with subscriptions
Integrating payment gateways with subscription products
Setting up shipping and billing periods
Creating subscription account pages
Inputting subscription shortcodes
Setting up subscription emails

Sound like a lot? Okay, it might be. BUT that doesn’t mean it’s not worth it. Much of the documentation for these processes is already developed, and once the processes are set up they essentially run themselves.

add-subscription-product
Source: WooThemes

Or you could, you know, ask the experts.

Setting up subscriptions (if you’re a developer)

Of course, if you are a developer and you’ve been saddled with the task of building on subscriptions to your WooCommerce site because your boss read this article and thought it was a nifty idea (we’re sorry), then here is what you need to know. Again, the documentation for this is already available, so you can follow it step by step.

Get the WooCommerce Subscription plugin.
Choose a payment gateway. This is probably a no-brainer, as you’ll most likely use whatever payment gateway you already have set up for the rest of your products. But some gateway APIs don’t always support recurring billing, so double check that your gateway is capable of it. Stripe is easiest out of the box, or just use PayPal, maybe? (If using PayPal, make sure Reference Transactions are enabled.)
Use filters to register gateway support. This is done by setting the ‘supports’ property of your gateway. More information can be found here (Step 1).
Set up recurring payments, fees, and billing periods. Basically, all the stuff in the previous bullet points. All of this can be done through the API. More information can be found here (Step 2).
Manage ongoing subscriptions. Subscription status will change over time as people renew, cancel, subscribe to new services, or change their subscription periods. You’ll probably want to use the WooCommerce Payment Gateway API in addition to the Subscriptions API to help manage these changes.

Sound reasonable? Don’t worry, once everything is set up, the API takes over and manages a lot of things automatically. You’ll still need to make changes and deal with any one-off issues that arise, but overall, it’s not as complicated as it seems.

Again, the overall process to setting up WooCommerce subscriptions is fairly well documented, so whether you’re a newbie developer or a code expert you’ll be able to navigate making the changes. For everything else involved with subscriptions, like how to set pricing and market to customers, the folks over at Zuora have some tips.

Be sure to check out our Subscription Setup Checklist for Newbies, too.

written by

WooCommerce