Having a suitable tool to launch your online store is essential to ensure that the results you get are as expected, and WooCommerce is one of the most powerful platforms on the market.
But what exactly is WooCommerce? What plugins can help you improve your online store? How can you make sure you take care of all the details?
In this post I want to explain what WoCommerce is and what are the WooCommerce plugins that can benefit your online store . Shall we start?
What is WooCommerce?
WooCommerce is a WordPress CMS plugin, the quintessential plugin for creating an online store with WordPress .
It is a fairly powerful ecommerce solution, because, by installing the plugin and doing a basic configuration, it already has enough power for most online sellers to carry out their activity.
WooCommerce offers more possibilities than most platforms, and it is the ideal tool to create a cheap online store . But, in addition, it has multiple plugins that will help you improve your ecommerce , offering you various solutions depending on the needs of your business. Would you like to take advantage of these improvements? Keep reading!
WooCommerce plugins to reduce the loading speed of the online store
Loading speed is an essential element to consider, both so as not to despair the user and to be taken into account by Google’s algorithm when positioning. And to improve this variable there are some plugins that can help you improve speed.
The first thing you should do before installing plugins to improve WooCommerce speed is to make sure you have adequate web hosting. You must hire a fast and quality hosting. To make sure that you have the right hosting, you should look for a hosting with features such as:
SSD Drives
Servers in the country where you offer your products or, at least, a CDN system
Once we have the basis for our ecommerce to load quickly, we can improve it even more with the following applications:
1. WP Super Cache
WP Super Cache is a powerful plugin to configure WordPress cache . Explaining an exact configuration of this plugin is not recommended, since each website has particular characteristics, such as the template used and the purpose of the website. A simple blog is not the same as an online store with a thousand products, so it is difficult to advise a certain configuration.
Although to take advantage of its basic operation you must activate the “recommended cache” button.
Once selected, you have to press the “Update status” button to activate the option. With this simple action we would already have the plugin activated and working correctly. This will considerably reduce the loading time for recurring users of your website, who will not need to load it again, they will simply access the cache files that the plugin has generated, viewing your website content almost immediately.
To clear cache, the “clear cache” button will remove the cache files that have been created by WP Super Cache.
2. Smush
The size of an image is decisive when loading a page. Therefore, it is convenient to optimize the weight of the images that you upload to your WordPress. With Smush you can optimize the weight of your images to less than half without losing quality.
To have the plugin working, it will be enough to have the automatic compression functions activated and, if you want to optimize even more, the “Metadata” option, which eliminates metadata related to the image, but does not eliminate the metadata from SEO.
WooCommerce plugins to improve the user experience of your online store
Visitors to your online store decide if they are interested in your website in the first seconds, and for them to become buyers they must perceive that your store offers them what they are looking for quickly and easily.
Improving the user experience will help you increase your sales, and to achieve this improvement there are some tools that are the most demanded in the WooCommerce sector.
3. WooCommerce multilingual
As its name suggests, WooCommerce multilingual is a translator plugin, it allows you to change the language of your site according to the language that users prefer.
It is especially useful for stores that sell products in more than one country. This plugin is capable of translating products and sending emails to clients in their language.
4. WooCommerce Product Zoom
WooCommerce Product Zoom is a plugin that goes unnoticed, but it is quite a useful feature for shoppers. There are many WooCommerce themes that do not come with the zoom feature.
Buying online has advantages, but also disadvantages, such as not being able to observe the product in detail as we would in person. With the product zoom, the customer can enlarge and see in more detail the photograph of what he is going to buy, something that he will surely appreciate.
5. WooCommerce Currency Switcher
This plugin is a real time currency converter. Choose the currency in which you want to buy and then the price of the product appears, which varies depending on the value of the currency at the time of purchase.
This plugin offers the value in real time, that is, it continuously updates the value of the chosen currency to the corresponding value of the selected currency. It will be useful especially if you sell in countries that have different currencies.
6. Chat tawk.to
Having a chat in your online store will help you to respond to your customers’ queries of any kind in real time and in less time than if they did it via mail. In addition, an online chat gives a user a closer feeling of treatment, since he interacts with another person in real time.
Tawk.to is completely free. Supports an unlimited number of users simultaneously. It has an easy to configure administration panel and has options that other chat plugins offer as premium, such as screen sharing and file transfer.
7. WooCommerce Product FAQs
If a customer has a question about a product feature, more customers are likely to have that question.
WooCommerce Product FAQs allows you to answer frequently asked questions about the products you sell in your store. If the customer has a section to find the answers, it is more likely that he will decide to buy. This plugin is easy to use and also offers a great value service to the customer.
WooCommerce plugins to increase customer acquisition and loyalty
8. SUMO Reward Points
When it comes to building customer loyalty, there is an old and well-known marketing strategy, it is customer loyalty through a points system. With SUMO Reward Points you can create a reward point system for your buyers.
For this plugin to work you must have the coupons activated in WooCommerce. Points are earned through in-store purchases, product review creation, and even social media promotions (share on Facebook, tweet on Twitter).
The points acquired can be redeemed in future purchases. These can be configured so that the discount is by percentage or a fixed amount of discount for every so many points. Additionally, rewards can be configured for a product type, including variable products or specific product categories.
9. YITH WooCommerce Wishlist
With YITH WooCommerce Wishlistfrece you will be able to offer users the possibility to save the products they want, and share them with their friends. This will help you increase sales, because customers can save the articles that interest them for later. The plugin is also compatible with WPML.
10. WooCommerce Waitlist
WooCommerce Waitlist is quite a useful extension. When items are out of stock, you can create a waiting list. With a waiting list, you can bring potential customers back by automatically notifying them that an item on their waiting list is back in stock. Customers can also view and edit their waiting lists at any time from their customer dashboard.
WooCommerce plugins to perfect the invoicing, payments and shipping of your ecommerce
A fundamental part of an online store is the payment system and the way in which your store accepts payments.
There are multiple POS payment gateway plugins, and they are well known, so I am going to focus on showing others that can help you with other types of tasks related to the payment system:
11. WooCommerce EU VAT Compliance
WooCommerce EU VAT Compliance helps detect the customer’s place of origin and apply the corresponding tax as the case may be. VAT is not the same for all regions, and that can cause problems when billing, so this plugin simplifies the tax bureaucracy.
12. WooCommerce PDF Invoices
Generate reports or purchase invoices for your client: with WooCommerce PDF Invoices you can achieve it in a simple way. You can download the created documents and it is available in several languages. In addition, you have the option to customize its appearance, since it has a customizable HTML / CSS template.
13. GoURrl WooCommerce
To offer a different alternative when making payments, there is a plugin that allows you to accept payments in cryptocurrencies. GoURrl WooCommerce allows you to accept payments in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, such as:
BitcoinCash
BitcoinSV
Litecoin
Dash
Dogecoin
Speedcoin
Reddcoin
Potcoin
Feathercoin
Vertcoin
Peercoin
This plugin has three configuration modes:
Show product prices in USD / EUR / GBP / others, and then use GoUrl Bitcoin / Altcoin Gateway, along with credit card / PayPal gateways.
In this option you set the prices of the products in USD / EUR / others, and they are shown in those currencies in the administration panel, but on the store side you show the equivalent prices in Bitcoins (BTC) for web users .
Here you set the prices of the products in Bitcoin / Altcoin directly.
Once the plugin is configured, its use is simple: when you get to the payment gateway, you simply have to select the Bitcoin / Altcoin option, and then choose the currency in which you want to make the payment.
