So you’ve got the products, you’ve identified your target audience and now you’ve got the website. Awesome!
But wait a minute …
How do you reach your target audience?
And once reached, how do you get them to land on your website?
Then how do you encourage them to make a sale?
What happens once they do make a sale?
What about referrals?!?
Take a deep breath – we’re here to show you.
Sometimes it’s hard to imagine the larger picture during the early stages of an eCommerce store and you don’t really think about ‘what’s next?’ But once the novelty of seeing your products arrive for the first time wears off, reality hits that you actually need to manage the online store for your business to succeed.
Many first-time eCommerce operators ask these very same questions, which is why there are thousands of plugins designed for your website to assist people just like you.
Our digital marketing team has years of experience working with eCommerce businesses and know exactly which plugins are an absolute must-have. So to help you cut through the noise, we have listed the top five plugins we think every eCommerce store should have.
Please note: this information is based on websites built with WooCommerce on WordPress.
#1 Yoast SEO
Yoast SEO boasts they are the ‘#1 WordPress SEO Plugin’, hence why they are our #1 on the list. Yoast is a great tool for boosting your website’s search engine optimisation (SEO … duh!), so even if you have managed to get some customers onto your website already, the correct implementation of SEO will super boost your ability to be discovered by more of the right customers.
Yoast will help you with keyword optimisation, checks the readability of your work, works with Google’s latest algorithm (such as Google Adwords) and much, much more.
#2 Messenger Chat
Customers don’t need to wait around for email replies any more. If you aren’t ready to respond to your customers immediately, you risk loosing them to a competitor who is ready. Messenger Chat is a chatbot plugin that implements Facebook Messenger on to your website, making communication with your customers quicker and easier than ever.
With the implementation of Messenger Chat on your website, you and your customers get all the benefits of Facebook Messenger Live without having to divert from your website. This includes conversing with customers in real time, responding to customer questions, automated responses and saves previous conversations. You can read more about the benefits of Messenger Chat on our blog post Why You Need Messenger Chat On Your Website.
#3 OptinMonster
This plugin is for those customers who get you all excited by adding stacks of items to their cart, only to abandon it and never to return to your website (let’s just pretend we have never been that annoying customer, awkward).
OptinMonster is an online lead generation software that remind customers what they are missing out on through popups and forms. With any luck, these personalised optimisation advancing strategies will turn your abandoned customers into engaged, paying customers. OptinMonster can also help you grow your email list, increase website visitors and your overall conversion rate. Sold!
#4 Automate Woo
Once you have bagged that sale and celebrated with a cheeky beer, it’s time to start thinking about referrals. Although it can be daunting when asking customers for referrals, most successful sales professionals will vouch their ongoing business is generated through word-of-mouth marketing.
Automate Woo does all the hard work for you and more. Not only can you set up automated referral emails and refer-a-friend add on incentives, but it will also send your customers thank you emails along with product suggestions according to their purchase history, create personalised coupon codes for your customers (be sure to check out our blog 5 Ways To Use Discount Codes Effectively), send SMS notifications and manages customer subscriptions.
#5 PDF Invoices
Managing accounts and billing can be painful and time consuming. You must ensure every invoice is accurate, legal, customised appropriately with your branding and logo, dated, states the correct invoice number and sequel, and is sent to the right customer at the right time.
PDF Invoices is an extension of WooCommerce and does all of this for you and more. It will automatically generate and send your customers (yes, you guessed it) immediate PDF invoices along with their order confirmation to ensure the sale runs smoothly from start to finish. Now for the fun part, getting paid – woohoo!
Please do not hesitate to contact our team to discuss which plugins are right for your eCommerce website. You can message us via our contact page, call us on 07 3367 3155, or simply chat to us on instant messenger by clicking the Messenger Chat icon on the bottom right hand corner of the page.
Chat soon!
