Black Friday and Cyber Monday are famous for offering great deals on some of your favorite products. This year looks to be no different with a wide range of tools, templates, and plugins all offering amazing discounts.

So if you are planning to launch your dream WordPress blog or e-commerce store this year or want to grow your business, this BFCM deal compilation is for you!

Are we missing any of the best WordPress deals and discounts of this year? Got products of your own that you think are worthy of being mentioned in the list? Please fill out our WordPress Black Friday Cyber Monday 2022 submission form. 

Let’s Get Into The Deals

Whether you’re a blogger, business owner, or web developer, don’t miss out on these exclusive offers to enhance your WordPress experience and save big on the tools, themes, and plugins you love.

We’ve organized the list into four primary sections for effortless navigation:

Featured Deals 

Themes & Page Builders Plugins

Hosting Deals

Plugin Deals

Top WordPress Black Friday Deals in 2023

Featured WordPress Black Friday Deals

Explore our curated selection of featured WordPress Black Friday deals. These exclusive offers bring you incredible discounts on top WordPress themes, plugins, and page builders, ensuring your website is set for success. Don’t miss out on these limited-time opportunities!

CartFlows – Up to 50% Off

CartFlows extends the capabilities of your WooCommerce store and turns it into a sales powerhouse. With a variety of innovative tools, it can help convert visitors into customers. You can create a series of pre and post-checkout upsells, add offers to the checkout page, conduct A/B split testing to know which version works best and display dynamic offers anywhere you like.

It’s very beginner-friendly, giving you lots of predesigned conversion templates and clear instructions for everything. You can also easily replace default WooCommerce checkouts with highly optimized and fully customizable CartFlows checkouts.

Deal: Up to 50% Off

Validity: 20 Nov to 30 Nov

Promo Code: Auto-applied

grab it now

Astra – Up To 50% Off

Take the world’s most popular drag-and-drop page builder to the next level with The Ultimate Addon for Elementor. With 100+ templates, 40+ widgets, and extensions, and over 200+ section blocks, it’s a great plugin for extending core Elementor functionality and delivering limitless options for creativity!

Astra is the best theme for any WordPress project. With 5-star ratings on 5,678+ reviews, this theme is popular in the WordPress community. It is blazing fast and SEO friendly, ready to assist you in every way for a great search engine ranking.

Astra is a great theme for online stores thanks to full compatibility with WooCommerce, several stunning eCommerce templates, and lots of layout and conversion options. It’s an amazing WordPress theme.

Deal: Up To 50% Off

Validity: 20 Nov to 30 Nov

Promo Code: Auto-applied

grab it now

Ultimate Addons for Elementor – Up To 50% Off

Take the world’s most popular drag-and-drop page builder to the next level with The Ultimate Addon for Elementor. With 100+ templates, 40+ widgets, and extensions, and over 200+ section blocks, it’s a great plugin for extending core Elementor functionality and delivering limitless options for creativity!

Deal: Up To 50% Off

Validity: 20 Nov to 30 Nov

Promo Code: Auto-applied

grab it now

PrestoPlayer – Up To 50% Off

Presto Player is a feature-rich solution for embedding videos and audio on your WordPress website. The player supports multiple video sources, player customization, email collection, and calls to action. 

With a sticky video player, video chapter, and analytics, you can optimize video content and its placement. Leverage video as an important component of your marketing strategy without slowing your website. It’s the least of what Presto Player can do!

Deal: Up To 50% Off

Validity: 20 Nov to 30 Nov

Promo Code: Auto-applied

grab it now

SureCart – Up To 50% Off

SureCart is a whole new way of doing eCommerce on WordPress. This complete eCommerce solution makes complex processes simple for everyone integrating all modern payment requirements. A one-time subscription, installment plan, or name your own price, you can configure everything. 

Its drag-and-drop tool makes designing and customizing payment forms a breeze. You get tons of features such as multiple payment options, checkout builder, shopping cart, customer area, real-time sales tax, EU VAT calculation, and much more. This is just the tip of the iceberg.

Deal: Up to 50% Off

Validity: 20 Nov to 30 Nov

Promo Code: Auto-applied

grab it now

SureMembers – Up To 60% Off

SureMembers is the best way to apply content paywalls to websites looking to create exclusive communities. You can apply restrictions on the entire website or a portion as small as a menu item. Whether it’s about selling online courses, building a private community, restricting products, or providing a private area to clients, the options with SureMembers are limitless. It seamlessly integrates with SureCart and CartFlows and makes a complete business solution.

Deal: Up To 60% Off

Validity: 20 Nov to 30 Nov

Promo Code: Auto-applied

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Ultimate Addons for Beaver Builder – Up To 50% Off

Ultimate Addons for Beaver Builder is a powerful way to get even more functionality out of Beaver Builder. It extends functionality with several unique custom modules and ready-made page templates. Invoke your creativity with its 50+ module presets, 60+ unique modules, and 300+ rows and page templates. It’s lightweight and works on all WordPress themes.

Deal: Up To 50% Off

Validity: 20 Nov to 30 Nov

Promo Code: Auto-applied

grab it now

Convert Pro – Up To 30% Off

Turn website visitors into subscribers with Convert Pro. It’s your go-to plugin for creating responsive opt-in forms for your website and building email lists. It makes it easy to create multi-step popups and trigger a form anywhere. With powerful design options, support for all popular form types, advanced targeting options, and behavioral integrations, you can turn your web pages into conversion powerhouses.

Deal: Up To 30% Off

Validity: 20 Nov to 30 Nov

Promo Code: Auto-applied

grab it now

Schema Pro – Up To 30% Off

Schema Pro is the next step in website SEO. Search engines use schema to understand what web pages are about. The more they understand, the more they trust the page. Your content can be a review, recipe, article, book, job posting, or anything. You can use the relevant schema for your content with 20+ options to meet your requirements.

Deal: Up To 30% Off

Validity: 20 Nov to 30 Nov

Promo Code: Auto-applied

grab it now

WP Portfolio – Up To 30% Off

WP Portfolio is the best WordPress portfolio plugin for photographers, freelancers, developers, and agencies. It lets you show off your work beautifully on websites with dynamic portfolio projects. Import dummy websites you have worked on, upload images and create videos to show off your creativity to your clients. It’s responsive and shows your portfolio beautifully, irrespective of the device.

Deal: Up To 30% Off

Validity: 20 Nov to 30 Nov

Promo Code: Auto-applied

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SureFeedback – Up To 50% Off

SureFeedback will change the way you get client feedback on website designs. By using sticky note-style comments, clients can leave focused feedback anywhere on a page design.  Your remote development team can also pinpoint changes or revisions anywhere on the page by just clicking and describing. The feedback will show on top of the live website, making it easily noticeable to all concerned. Simple, flexible, and direct.

Deal: Up To 50% Off

Validity: 20 Nov to 30 Nov

Promo Code: Auto-applied

grab it now

Top 2023 WordPress Black Friday & Cyber Monday Deals (Themes and Page Builders)

If you’ve had your eye on that perfect WordPress theme or plugin but hesitated due to the high price tag, your wait is over! It’s the ideal time to seize the opportunity with our curated selection of 2023 WordPress Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals.

WordPress Themes

Astra – Up To 50% Off

Take the world’s most popular drag-and-drop page builder to the next level with The Ultimate Addon for Elementor. With 100+ templates, 40+ widgets, and extensions, and over 200+ section blocks, it’s a great plugin for extending core Elementor functionality and delivering limitless options for creativity!

With 5-star ratings on 5,678+ reviews, this theme is popular in the WordPress community. It is blazing fast and SEO friendly, ready to assist you in every way for a great search engine ranking. Astra is a great theme for online stores thanks to full compatibility with WooCommerce, several stunning eCommerce templates, and lots of layout and conversion options.

Deal: Up To 50% Off

Validity: 20 Nov to 30 Nov

Promo Code: Auto-applied

grab it now

OceanWP

With OceanWP, taste the power of true freedom by designing a professional website for free. The theme is the favorite choice of thousands of developers, website designers, eCommerce store owners, and hobby users. It is a multipurpose theme that is versatile, complete, and flexible. 

Deal: Up To 50% Off

Validity: 20 Nov to 30 Nov

Promo Code: Auto-applied

grab it now

Blocksy

Blocksy is the most innovative, lightning-fast, and supercharged free WordPress theme designed to build your next web project visually in minutes. It is a fully responsive, translation-ready theme developed for you! The theme offers you complete control of the layout, header, footer, sidebars, single pages, and much more.

Deal: Up to 40% Off

Validity: Auto-applied

Promo Code: Coming soon

grab it now

Page Builders Deals

Elementor

Elementor is a famous page builder that uses a drag-and-drop interface. With it, you can create pretty much any kind of website that you can dream of. It comes with tons of advanced widgets, features, and other elements that make it well worth the cost.

Deal: Up to 50% Off

Validity: 21 Nov – 29 Nov

Promo Code: Auto-applied

Grab it now

Beaver Builder

Beaver Builder is another well-known page builder. You can create tons of different kinds of websites without needing to know any code at all. It has all the tools you need within an easy-to-use package.

Deal: 25% Off

Validity: Auto-applied

Grab it now

Best 2023 WordPress Black Friday Deals for Hostings

Good web hosting can make or break your WordPress website. That’s why choosing a quality web host is so important.

We recommend checking out some of these:

Cloudways

Cloudways is a managed cloud hosting provider that ensures great performance and hassle-free deployment of WordPress websites. It specializes in simplifying hosting and taking care of all the details so you don’t have to.

Deal: 40% OFF

Validity: Auto-appiled

Promo Code: 15th November 2023 till 1st December 2023

GRAB IT NOw

Hostinger

Hostinger is a popular hosting provider with solutions ranging from shared hosting to managed cloud hosting. It is particularly known for its competitive prices. Hostinger is a great choice if you need to get your WordPress project off the ground quickly!

Deal: Up To 80% off

Validity: 1 Nov – 4 Dec

Promo Code: BLACKFRIDAY

grab it now

Nexcess

If you are looking for a feature-rich managed hosting provider, you can’t go wrong with Nexcess. It is a well-known option for hosting WordPress and WooCommerce websites. Nexcess is a great host if you need a business-ready platform with auto-scaling and high page load speeds!

Deal: 75% Off

Validity: 15 Nov – 30 Nov

Promo Code: Auto-applied

grab it now

Best 2023 WordPress Black Friday Deals for Plugins

Get Ready to Elevate Your WordPress Experience with the Hottest Black Friday Plugin Deals of 2023! Whether you want to supercharge your SEO, turbocharge your E-commerce, optimize marketing, and enhance your website with other fantastic features, we’ve curated the best plugin deals just for you.

WordPress Black Friday Deals for Performance and Security Plugins

Performance is everything as visitors have little tolerance for slow websites. Along with a high-performance web host, we recommend using a WordPress performance plugin to keep everyone happy.

One of these should fit the bill:

Perfmatters

Perfmatters is a popular plugin that improves website performance by optimizing scripts, disabling unnecessary plugins, streamlining your WordPress database, and other useful tricks. This lightweight plugin introduces a lot of major and minor optimizations through a simple dashboard. All are designed to make your website faster!

Deal: 30% Off

Validity: 16 Nov – 1 Dec

Promo Code: BLACKFRIDAY

grab it now

Black Friday Deals for Email Marketing  Plugins

Automate your marketing with the most advanced WordPress email marketing solution. Check the following Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals on email marketing plugins.

Sendinblue

Sendinblue started as an email management platform and has grown into a leading email outreach platform. It is a powerful platform where you can manage email, SMS, and chat-based campaigns. You also get a feature-packed CRM and a great form builder that helps you create high-ROI marketing campaigns too!

Deal: 50% Off

Promo Code: BLUEFRIDAY2022

Validity: 21 Nov – 30 Nov

GRAB IT NOW

Black Friday Deals for WordPress E-commerce Products

BFCM is the perfect time to shop for e-commerce plugins and products because the sales season is about to go into overdrive.

We think the following plugins can help you make the most of the sales season:

Easy Digital Downloads

Easy Digital Downloads is a free WordPress eCommerce plugin. It is a comprehensive solution for businesses that sell digital products and makes it easy to set up a store and begin selling or promoting anything digital. The plugin comes with a simple storefront, compatibility with all popular themes, and a customizable cart too!

Deal: 50% Off

Promo Code: Auto-applied

Grab it now

AffiliateWP

AffiliateWP is your ticket to entering into the lucrative affiliate marketing business. OpPerate a store? Sell goods or services? Have products or services other people could promote? Affiliates can help. AffiliateWP is the ideal solution for setting up and growing an affiliate marketing component for your business.

Deal: 70% Off

Grab it now

StoreApps

If you already have a WooCommerce store, StoreApps is the perfect plugin for your business website. This suite of plugins helps run your store, run affiliate programs, manage coupons, discounts, and credits, offer upsells, create sales funnels and so much more.

Deal: 50% Off

grab it now

WordPress Black Friday Deals on Form Builders

Web forms are a simple, universal way to communicate with visitors. Whether it’s an opt-in form, inquiry form, or customer support form, the more attractive and intuitive the form, the more likely people are to use it.

That’s what these form builders deliver:

Formidable Forms

Formidable Forms is a feature-packed WordPress form builder plugin that supports conditional logic, on-the-fly calculations, and file uploads. The form designer has a great visual styler and dynamic fields that you can drag and drop into your form design. To save time, you can even use the included templates to build your forms!

Deal: Up to 65% Off

Validity: 14 Nov – 30 Nov

Promo Code: BF2022

Grab it now

Gravity Forms

If you are looking for a simple yet feature-rich form builder plugin, Gravity Forms is worth exploring. You can use the plugin to build and deploy forms on your website. Perhaps the best feature of the plugin is the integration with payment gateways such as Stripe and PayPal.

Deal: 50% Off

Validity: 21 Nov – 30 Nov

Promo Code: Auto-applied

grab it now

Black Friday Deals on Other Essential WordPress Plugins

This section covers the deals that don’t fit in any other section. Useful WordPress plugins we either use ourselves or have been recommended to use.

MonsterInsights

If you need a robust Google Analytics plugin, you need to check out MonsterInsights. It connects with your Google Analytics account and helps you make sense of all that data with its intuitive dashboard.

Deal: Up to 70% Off

Validity: 20 Nov – 02 Dec

Grab it now

MemberPress

MemberPress is the go-to plugin for converting WordPress websites into membership platforms. It is simple to set up, easy to configure and control, and makes short work of creating paywalls to limit access to specific users. You can also collect payments by connecting MemberPress with payment gateways such as Stripe and PayPal.

Deal: Up to 65% Off

Validity: Coming soon

Promo Code: Auto-applied

Grab it now

LifterLMS

LifterLMS is the ideal plugin for launching online courses and training websites. The platform works with popular themes such as Astra and includes everything you need to offer courses from within your own websites.. You can also use popular page builders such as Elementor and Beaver Builder to speed up development.

Deal: 50% Off

Validity: 15 Nov – 30 Nov

Promo Code: BlackFriday23

grab it now

Conclusion

We think all of the products in this list are worth a look. Whether you design websites for a living, for your business, or as a hobby, there’s sure to be something here to love!

With generous discounts and lots of potential, there’s every reason to avail of these WordPress Black Friday & Cyber Monday deals!

The post Amazing Savings on WordPress Black Friday Deals and Cyber Monday Offers [2023] appeared first on #1 Sales Funnel Builder For WordPress - Beautiful Checkout Pages & One Click Upsells.

CartFlows is undoubtedly the best sales funnel builder in the market, but you won’t be able to take full advantage of this plugin without integrating it with an SMTP plugin.

An SMTP plugin takes over the default method of sending email by replacing the PHP mailer with routed transactional email services.

Today’s article will show how easily you can ensure better CartFlows email deliverability with Fluent SMTP.

But first, let’s discuss why it’s so important to ensure better email deliverability.

Why Do You Need To Improve Email Deliverability?

If you are a business owner, you’ve probably sent a ton of emails for various purposes.

Needless to say, sometimes the purpose wasn’t served, and sometimes you got more than what you expected. But guess what takes you to a 100% guaranteed chance of failure? — Emails hitting the spam box instead of the inbox!

If that isn’t a good enough reason for you to take improving email deliverability more seriously, let’s look at a few more:

• Increased visibility: Better deliverability means better visibility. The more your users see your name, what you do, and your offerings in their inboxes, the higher the chance of them being opened.
• Enhanced trust: Consistent inbox delivery builds trust and credibility with your audience. They recognize you as a true brand, and at some point, they end up clicking on what you want them to.
• Personalized engagement: How successful you are going to be with email marketing entirely depends on how timely you can reach your audience. Hitting the inbox begins with ensuring proper email deliverability. If your emails don’t reach them in the first place, how can you expect to be on time?
• Enhanced data analysis: You can’t track email open rates, click rates, click-through rates, and other metrics without reliable email deliverability. Only if all of your emails arrive will you get accurate analytics.

All points become more crucial when it comes to sales funnels. Ensuring email deliverability will help you build trust, engage with customers more timely, and overall drive better conversion rates.

Choosing the Right SMTP Plugin for CartFlows

Now that you know what needs to be done, it’s time to finalize which SMTP plugin you are going to use.

Though there are a number of SMTP plugins available, FluentSMTP takes the crown as the best SMTP plugin.

Why?

The plugin is free and it always will be. It’s also packed with features.

With Fluent SMTP, you can use popular email services like Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, Amazon SES, MailGun, PostMark, Elastic Mail, PepiPost, Spark Post and others to send CartFlows emails.

You can connect to any SMTP server using the necessary credentials.

But if you’re still not sure, take a look at some of the amazing benefits of FluentSMTP:

• Easily log and view emails sent from WordPress
• Test email sending feature, which is very helpful before running a campaign
• Bulk resend failed emails
• Use multiple SMTP services at the same time
• Alternate email service feature to back up when primary service fails to deliver emails
• Visual report of all emails sent and with their status
• Auto-deleting feature to keep your database clean
• Notification for a detailed email summary

Improve CartFlows Email Deliverability With Fluent SMTP

Integrating FluentSMTP with CartFlows is as easy as it can get.

Here’s what you need to do:

Install FluentSMTP

Installing FluentSMTP on WordPress is as simple as installing any other plugin. You just need to click Plugins > Add New from the dashboard.

On the search bar, type FluentSMTP and Install it. Don’t forget to Activate the plugin as well.

Configure FluentSMTP With an Email Service

Up next, the fun part begins. FluentSMTP gives you many options to choose from when choosing the right email service provider.

To do that, click on FluentSMTP and go to the dashboard.

From the dashboard, click on your desired connection type.

We’ll select Sendinblue for this demonstration.

Once you have created your Sendinblue account, click on the SMTP & API button as shown in the screenshot below.

Now, click on Create a New API key and give it a name.

Don’t forget to copy the API code as you’ll have to use it while setting up Sendinblue in FluentSMTP.

Send a Test Email

Once you are done with setting up the connection, FluentSMTP lets you send a test email.

Click on Email Test from the FluentSMTP dashboard and fill out the boxes.

Click on the Send Test Email and check whether it was sent successfully.

If your email was delivered, you’ll be shown something like the screenshot below.

That’s how easy it is to set up email with Fluent SMTP!

The process is very similar regardless of what email provider you use.

Wrapping Up

That’s all there is to optimizing email deliverability with FluentSMTP. As you can see, it’s just a case of installing the plugin, linking it to your email service and testing it.

From now on, you can perform all your email marketing with full confidence your emails will arrive and stand a high chance of being opened.

If you have used FluentSMTP or CartFlows and have stories to share, let us know in the comments.

This is a guest article contributed by Sakhawat Showrabh

Sakhawat Showrabh is a digital marketer at WPManageNinja. His primary interests are SEO, Email Marketing, and blogging. When he isn’t busy with any of these, he’s either writing short stories and poems or planning his next adventure. You can connect with him on Twitter.

The post How To Ensure CartFlows Email Deliverability With Fluent SMTP appeared first on #1 Sales Funnel Builder For WordPress - Beautiful Checkout Pages & One Click Upsells.

The complexity and frustration often led many to abandon the idea of having an online presence altogether.

But what if I told you that I could create a professional website in just a few seconds by describing my business?

Meet ZipWP, the revolutionary AI-powered website builder that makes it all possible.

Understanding ZipWP: A Powerful Website Building Solution

ZipWP is more than your typical website builder; it’s a game-changer.

This platform harnesses the power of Artificial Intelligence to enable you to create your own stunning WordPress website in less than 60 seconds.

Yes, you heard it right – less than a minute!

From installing WordPress to selecting the perfect design, crafting compelling copy, and adding captivating images, ZipWP handles everything.

The Motivation Behind ZipWP

At ZipWP, our journey started when we recognized the common challenges people faced while trying to build a website from scratch.

The traditional process demanded technical expertise, extensive customization, and content creation skills that not everyone possessed.

Our vision was to empower anyone, regardless of technical background, to effortlessly build a stunning website.

With our passion for technology and a deep understanding of WordPress, we embarked on a mission to make website building an enjoyable experience for everyone.

How ZipWP Works

Creating a website with ZipWP is like having a conversation with a magical genie. Here’s how it works:

1. Describe Your Business: Instead of going through complex setup processes, you simply need to describe your business and website goals in plain English. No coding or technical jargon required.

2. Witness the Magic: Once you hit “Continue,” ZipWP’s AI engine takes over. It installs WordPress, selects the perfect theme based on your description, and even crafts unique, professional copy tailored to your business.

3. Review and Customize: Within seconds, your website is ready for review. You can customize the design, branding elements, and add your personal touch with easy-to-use drag-and-drop tools.

As we move ahead, you will be able to design eCommerce websites as well.

Excited to Experience the Magic?

ZipWP isn’t just an AI-powered website builder; it’s a game-changer that breaks down the barriers to website creation.

The fusion of technology, WordPress expertise, and the power of AI enables us to deliver a platform where anyone can create a professional website in under a minute.

Are you ready to witness the magic yourself?

Join our waitlist today and be among the first to revolutionize the way you build websites.

The post ZipWP AI website builder: A game-changer in website creation appeared first on #1 Sales Funnel Builder For WordPress - Beautiful Checkout Pages & One Click Upsells.

With the rise of online shopping, we can expect losses to go up further over the coming years.

Now that might not be a worrisome amount for big corporations, but for small and medium-sized businesses that amount might be the difference between success and failures.

If you are running an eCommerce store, you might just be on the right page.

If you own a business, a solid inventory management system should be your top priority. Otherwise, you will find yourself in a shortage of products at the time of an important sale!

Trust us, we have seen many cases where an eCommerce store has a hit product, but because of the lack of inventory management is struggling to fulfill orders.

Ultimately, it hampers the brand image and you lose out on potential sales.

Take a tour with us to see how an inventory management system can lead to improved accuracy, streamlined order management, prevention of stockouts, enhanced customer service, and increased sales.

What is WooCommerce inventory management?

WooCommerce inventory management refers to the process of overseeing and controlling the inventory of products within a WooCommerce-based online store.

It involves efficiently tracking stock levels, managing product variations, handling incoming and outgoing inventory, and ensuring accurate inventory data across different channels.

That means it is the number of products you have in stock.

Why do you need a WooCommerce inventory management system?

Here are some key reasons why you need a robust inventory management system for your WooCommerce store:

Improved inventory accuracy

By implementing a reliable inventory management system, you can easily maintain accurate stock levels. You will get updates in real-time into your inventory that will help you prevent overselling or underselling.

It will also minimize the risk of stock discrepancies and associated customer dissatisfaction.

Improved order management

Efficient inventory management enables you to streamline order fulfillment processes. With accurate information, you can promptly process orders, avoid backorders, and improve overall customer satisfaction.

Prevention of stockouts

Inventory management will help you to set up reorder points and automated alerts when stock levels reach a certain threshold.

This proactive approach helps prevent stockouts, ensuring that popular products remain available for customers.

Improved customer service

Accurate inventory management leads to better customer service. By having real-time stock information, you can provide accurate product availability, and estimated delivery dates, and prevent delays or cancellations.

Increased sales

Optimized inventory management can positively impact your sales. By avoiding stockouts and effectively managing product variations, you can meet customer demand, drive repeat purchases, and enhance customer loyalty.

Tips to improve WooCommerce inventory management

Now that we understand the importance of efficient inventory management in WooCommerce, let’s explore some practical tips to enhance it:

1. Create a detailed inventory policy

You ideally need a detailed inventory policy that outlines the procedures for managing inventory within an organization.

It should include the factors such as inventory levels, replenishment methods, order quantities, lead times, and safety stock requirements.

The policy should also align with the company’s overall business objectives and factors like demand forecasting, sales patterns, and production capabilities.

Develop an inventory policy that outlines your inventory strategies, stock thresholds, and order processing timelines.

2. Track inventory movements

Implement inventory tracking mechanisms to monitor incoming and outgoing stock accurately.

Utilize barcodes, scanners, or inventory management software to streamline the tracking process and minimize errors.

Here is a list of the business benefits of tracking inventory:

• Improved inventory accuracy
• Efficient replenishment
• Cost reduction
• Improved customer service
• Demand forecasting and planning
• Fraud and theft prevention
• Streamlined operations
• Data-driven decision making
• Regulatory compliance

3. Set up reorder points

Reorder points are predetermined inventory levels that trigger the need to reorder products.

They are typically set based on factors such as lead time, demand variability, and desired service levels. When inventory levels reach the reorder point, it signals the need to initiate the replenishment process to avoid stockouts.

Determine optimal reorder points for your products based on historical sales data, lead times, and customer demand.

This ensures that you replenish inventory at the right time, avoiding stockouts or excess inventory.

4. Implement a just-in-time inventory system

A just-in-time (JIT) inventory system aims to minimize inventory holding costs by synchronizing the delivery of raw materials or finished goods with production or customer demand.

Under JIT, inventory is replenished only when it is needed, reducing excess stock and associated costs. This system requires accurate demand forecasting, strong supplier relationships and efficient logistics management.

Consider adopting a just-in-time inventory approach where inventory is ordered and received shortly before it is needed for fulfillment.

This method minimizes holding costs and reduces the risk of obsolete inventory.

5. Use a warehouse management system

A warehouse management system (WMS) is a software application that helps manage and control warehouse operations. It provides real-time visibility into inventory levels, facilitates order processing, optimizes storage space, and streamlines workflows.

A WMS can automate tasks such as receiving, picking, packing, and shipping, improving efficiency and accuracy.

It may be worth investing in a warehouse management system to efficiently manage your inventory. It can help optimize storage space, streamline picking and packing processes, and provide real-time inventory visibility.

6. Conduct regular inventory audits

Regular inventory audits involve physically counting and reconciling the actual inventory with the recorded quantities in the system.

Audits help identify discrepancies, such as stockouts, overstocking, or inventory shrinkage due to theft or damage. By conducting audits at regular intervals, organizations can maintain inventory accuracy and ensure reliable data for decision-making.

Regular inventory audits can identify and rectify any discrepancies between physical and recorded stock levels. This process helps maintain accuracy and reduces the chances of stock-related issues.

7. Use a reporting tool

A reporting tool allows organizations to generate comprehensive reports and analyze inventory data. It provides insights into inventory levels, turnover rates, stockouts, lead times, and other key performance indicators (KPIs).

Reports help identify trends, forecast demand, optimize inventory levels and make informed business decisions.

Leverage reporting tools or inventory management software to generate insightful reports on sales, stock levels, and product performance. These reports can assist in making data-driven decisions and forecasting future inventory needs.

8. Be proactive: Take action before problems occur

Being proactive involves taking preventive measures to address potential inventory-related issues before they occur.

This can include proactive demand forecasting, identifying bottlenecks in the supply chain, maintaining buffer stock for unexpected spikes in demand, and implementing contingency plans to mitigate risks.

Monitor your inventory regularly and proactively address issues such as slow-moving or obsolete stock, stock discrepancies, or supplier delays.

Swift action can prevent potential disruptions and minimize customer dissatisfaction.

It’s easier to do this if you have a plan in place to guide your choices when the time to act arrives. You can do this by taking the best action plan template for your needs, and adapting it to cover the specific scenarios you expect to encounter in an inventory management context. Having a framework to follow avoids missteps.

9. Don’t forget about customer service

An effective inventory management system considers customer service a priority. It ensures product availability, timely order fulfillment, and accurate delivery.

By optimizing inventory levels, organizations can meet customer demands promptly, reduce lead times, and improve overall customer satisfaction.

Inventory management processes can be aligned with your customer service goals. It can help update product availability on your website, provide accurate shipping estimates, and proactively communicate with customers regarding any inventory-related issues.

10. Use technology to your advantage

Leveraging technology can significantly enhance inventory management. This includes utilizing inventory management software, barcode scanning, RFID systems, automated data capture, and integration with other business systems like enterprise resource planning (ERP).

Technology streamlines processes, reduces errors, improves data accuracy, and enables real-time visibility into inventory movements.

Leverage technology solutions such as WooCommerce inventory management plugins, integrations with third-party systems, and automation tools.

These can simplify your inventory management tasks and provide real-time insights for effective decision-making.

We have also got a bonus part where you can find the best inventory management plugins.

Top inventory management plugins for WooCommerce

So you now know why inventory management plugins are necessary for your WooCommerce store.

We are now going to list the top inventory management plugins so that you can easily manage your inventory.

They include:

• Stock Sync with Google Sheets for WooCommerce
• ATUM WooCommerce Inventory Management
• Smart manager for WooCommerce
• WP Inventory Manager
• WooCommerce out of stock manager

Stock Sync with Google Sheets for WooCommerce

Stock Sync for WooCommerce with Google Sheet is a popular inventory management plugin for WooCommerce. It stands out as one of the most advanced systems available, offering seamless two-directional sync with Google Sheets.

This powerful stock manager plugin allows you to make edits to various aspects of your store directly from your linked spreadsheet, ensuring automatic updates on your main eCommerce site.

The plugin not only streamlines inventory management but also keeps your customers engaged by providing real-time inventory updates on your website.

Features:

• Easily export products to Google Sheet
• Support for variable products
• Update almost everything
• Auto-sync with a two-directional path
• Manually edit or remove products from the sheet
• One-click manual sync button

ATUM WooCommerce Inventory Management

ATUM is a feature-rich inventory management plugin designed specifically for WooCommerce. It offers a comprehensive set of tools to effectively manage and control your inventory.

Seven key features of ATUM:

• Stock central
• Inventory control
• Purchase orders
• Multi-warehouse management
• Stock logs and history
• Low stock notifications
• Advanced reports

Smart Manager for WooCommerce

Smart Manager is a powerful plugin that enhances the management capabilities of your WooCommerce store.

While it provides various features for overall store management, it also includes inventory management functionality.

Notable features of Smart Manager:

• Spreadsheet-like interface
• Bulk actions
• Advanced search and filters
• Inline editing
• Import and export
• Variations management
• Sales analysis

WP Inventory Manager

WP Inventory Manager is a dedicated inventory management plugin for WooCommerce. It offers features to track, control, and optimize your inventory effectively.

Key features of WP Inventory Manager:

• Inventory tracking
• Low stock notifications
• CSV import and export
• Inventory reports
• Product variations management
• Out-of-stock management
• Stock history and logs

WooCommerce Out of Stock Manager

WooCommerce Out of Stock Manager is a plugin specifically designed to manage out-of-stock products in your WooCommerce store.

While its primary focus is on inventory control for out-of-stock items, it offers features to help you handle stock availability effectively.

Notable features of WooCommerce Out of Stock Manager:

• Out-of-stock product management
• Hide out-of-stock products
• Alternative product display
• Custom stock status messages
• Low stock notifications
• Email notifications
• Stock availability reports

Final words

Effective inventory management is crucial for the success of your WooCommerce store.

By implementing the right strategies and utilizing the available tools, you can streamline your inventory processes, prevent stockouts, and provide excellent customer service.

With the help of specialized inventory management plugins, you can streamline and optimize your inventory control processes.

Remember, efficient inventory management not only ensures smooth operations but also contributes to customer satisfaction, retention, and increased sales.

Take control of your inventory management today and unlock the full potential of your WooCommerce store!

FAQs

This is a guest article contributed by Tahsinul Hoque.

Tahsinul Hoque is a WordPress enthusiast and a writer with a keen interest in all things related to the web and technology. He enjoys writing about his experiences and sharing his knowledge with others in the community. When he’s not tinkering with websites or writing, you can find Tahsinul exploring new coffee shops and trying out new cuisines.

The post 10 WooCommerce inventory management tips to better manage your store appeared first on #1 Sales Funnel Builder For WordPress - Beautiful Checkout Pages & One Click Upsells.

Almost 39% of them use WooCommerce to run their stores.

That’s a lot!

Source: Statista

It goes without saying, but eCommerce is one of the most fierce business landscapes out there.

This raises the question:

What should a WooCommerce store do to differentiate itself from its competitors and be successful in 2023?

Considering that every product everywhere is at a user’s fingertips, the answer is faster load times.

Users know that once they search for a product, Google will offer at least ten places from where they can purchase it.

Being first to the market or offering a wide range of products isn’t enough anymore.

People want to get on Google, search for a product, click on a website, and purchase as fast and as seamlessly as possible.

The store that can offer that gets the sale. It’s as simple as that.

By the end of this article, you’ll know how to speed up the user experience and transform your WooCommerce store into a money-making machine!

Why speed matters for a WooCommerce store

The speed at which your WooCommerce store operates can make or break your business.

The importance of speed cannot be overstated, as it directly impacts:

• Search engine ranking
• User experience
• Conversions

Let’s delve into each of them a little.

Page speed and SEO

Search engines like Google consider website speed as a ranking factor. This means faster-loading websites will often receive higher positions in search results.

Throughout the years, different Googlers have mentioned that having a fast website provides a significant advantage in search engine rankings.

The fact that it’s been more than 12 years since Google started measuring website speed and incorporating it into their ranking algorithms proves it.

Moreover, in 2018, Google introduced the “Speed Update,” which also made page speed a ranking factor for mobile searches.

Then, in 2021, the Page Experience Algorithm and Core Web Vitals were implemented, further solidifying Google’s emphasis on site speed and user experience in search engine results.

Having a well-optimized, speedy WooCommerce store means you have a greater chance at ranking on the first page, which inevitably will attract more organic traffic and ultimately drive higher sales.

Page speed and the user experience

The faster a website loads, the greater the user experience its visitors will have.

Of course, the opposite is also true. Neglect your site’s performance and see how many of your hard-earned visitors will begin shopping elsewhere.

Studies have shown that even a one-second delay in page load time can lead to a significant increase in bounce rates.

A 2-second delay increases bounce rates by a whopping 103%!

Source: Think with Google

Moreover, Google’s research indicates that 53% of visits are abandoned if a mobile site takes longer than 3 seconds to load.

Source: Think with Google

By optimizing the speed of your WooCommerce store, you can capture and retain visitors’ attention, reduce bounce rates, and enhance overall user satisfaction.

Page speed and conversions

The end goal of your eCommerce store is conversion, right?!

Well, having a slow-loading website directly impacts your conversion rates.

For instance, a study conducted by Deloitte proved the strong correlation between page speed and conversions:

“Over a 4 week period, we analyzed mobile site data from 37 retail, travel, luxury, and lead generation brands across Europe and the US. Results showed that a mere 0.1s change in load time can influence every step of the user journey, ultimately increasing conversion rates.

Conversions grew by 8% for retail sites and by 10% for Travel sites on average.

With a 0.1s improvement in site speed, we observed that retail consumers spent almost 10% more, while lead generation and luxury consumers engaged more, with page views increasing by 7% and 8% respectively.”

According to imagekit, a 100-millisecond delay reduces conversion rates by 7%.

Now, you might be thinking:

7% isn’t that much.

Well, let’s do the math.

Let’s say your site generates $1,000 in revenue daily. 100-millisecond delays in page load times might cost you $25,550 in lost sales annually.

The bigger your store gets, the more significant the loss.

For instance, Amazon has calculated that a page load slowdown of just one second could cost it $1.6 billion in sales each year.

The bottom line is:

In 2023, every millisecond counts.

So if you want to attract, retain, and convert as many users as possible, compromising your site’s speed is a no-go.

Now let’s see how you can set some benchmarks before getting into the optimizations.

How to measure your store’s web performance

To ensure that your efforts yield desired results, you must set performance benchmarks before you begin optimization.

After all, you need to know where you are now so you can accurately assess any improvements.

Here are the top 3 testing tools which you can use:

PageSpeed Insights

At the top of our list is Google’s widely recognized PageSpeed Insights (PSI). For years, PSI has remained the preferred tool for testing site speed.

With an intuitive design, PSI is user-friendly for beginners and developers alike.

The report page is thoughtfully organized into sections, with the Core Web Vitals assessment taking the lead.

Our advice is to focus on passing Core Web Vitals since they assess how well your visitors perceive your website.

Google incorporated the Core Web Vitals into its ranking algorithms, so excelling in them will give you an extra SEO boost.

Following the Core Web Vitals assessment, we have PSI’s Performance score, along with the Accessibility, Best Practices, and SEO scores.

These scores are derived from lab data, making them valuable for testing and debugging purposes.

At the bottom of the PSI report is the Opportunities and Diagnostics panels. They will provide you with a list of improvement suggestions that, once implemented, will boost your Performance score and Core Web Vitals:

You will see that many of PSI’s improvement suggestions overlap with the optimization techniques listed later in this article.

WebPageTest

WebPageTest is another excellent tool for website performance monitoring, enabling you to conduct tests from various locations, devices, and networks.

This versatility empowers you to assess how your website performs globally.

Again, it’s a straightforward process – just enter your site’s URL, select the simple or advanced configuration, and the tool starts analyzing your store.

After it’s done, you will end up with a complete performance report that includes the following:

• Performance summary
• Opportunities and diagnostics
• Filmstrip
• Content breakdown
• Core Web Vitals
• Waterfall charts
• Domain breakdown

It’s all the data you need to assess how your store is performing.

GTmetrix

GTmetrix is another renowned tool for testing website speed. It shares some similarities with WebPageTest in terms of configuration.

GTmetrix offers a free basic version with additional options available when you sign up for an account.

When using GTmetrix, you have the flexibility to select from various testing locations, including Dallas, USA; Hong Kong, China; London, UK; Mumbai, India; Sydney, Australia; São Paulo, Brazil; and Vancouver, Canada.

GTmetrix provides extra features, such as creating a video that aids in debugging issues by visualizing how the page renders.

The AdBlock feature proves valuable if you utilize a third-party ad network and wish to assess the full impact of ads on your page load times.

GTmetrix performance reports are divided into different categories:

• Summary – An overall speed grade and Core Web Vitals report (based on lab data)
• Performance – Metrics sourced from Lighthouse performance data
• Structure – A list of specific issues affecting site performance
• Waterfall chart – All individual requests on your web page
• History – All past performance tests

And that’s how you set some web performance benchmarks.

Now let’s get to the nitty-gritty, speeding up your WooCommerce store!

How to Speed Up Your WooCommerce Store

There are many ways to speed up your WooCommerce store. The good news is that most techniques are very simple or use plugins or tools to do the heavy lifting for you.

Upgrade your hosting

One crucial optimization technique to speed up your WooCommerce store is making sure you’re using the fastest hosting provider.

Here’s a harsh truth you need to know about hosting:

Cheap options can make it work in the short term, but they will cause you problems in the long run.

Your choice of host significantly impacts the performance and speed of your online store.

Here are key points to consider when renewing or upgrading your hosting plan:

• Choose a reliable and high-performance hosting provider. Look for a hosting provider specializing in WooCommerce hosting or offers optimized hosting eCommerce plans. Ensure they have a reputation for reliability, fast server response times, and robust infrastructure to handle your website’s traffic and resource requirements.
• Evaluate server specifications. Look for features such as sufficient RAM, adequate storage space, and a powerful processor. A well-equipped server will enable faster data processing and response times for your WooCommerce store.
• Opt for SSD storage. Solid State Drives (SSD) are much faster and far more reliable than traditional hard drives. Choose a hosting provider that offers SSD storage.
• Consider dedicated or VPS hosting. Consider upgrading to a dedicated server or a Virtual Private Server (VPS) hosting plan. They offer dedicated resources for your store and reduce the risk of performance issues caused by other websites sharing the same server.
• Scalability and flexibility. As your business grows, the hosting provider should be able to accommodate increasing traffic and resource needs. Choose a hosting plan that allows easy scalability and offers flexibility to upgrade resources whenever required.

Remember, upgrading your WooCommerce hosting is an investment in the long-term success of your online store. So choose wisely.

Set up caching

Caching is pivotal in optimizing the speed and performance of every website.

It involves the storage of static versions of your pages, allowing them to be served swiftly without the need for extensive processing or database queries.

When a visitor accesses your site, the cached version of the page can be delivered quickly, resulting in faster load times and improved overall site performance.

One of the key advantages of caching is the reduction in server load.

By serving static copies of pages instead of generating them dynamically for each visitor, caching alleviates the strain on server resources, allowing the server to handle other requests.

This enhanced scalability ensures that the store can accommodate high traffic volumes without compromising performance.

When it comes to implementing web caching:

The process is relatively straightforward.

There are numerous caching plugins available specifically designed for WordPress and WooCommerce. These plugins offer user-friendly interfaces and a range of caching options to suit different store requirements.

For instance, NitroPack can automatically enable caching and 35 other optimizations for your store without writing a single line of code.

Keep WooCommerce updated

Updating WooCommerce is crucial for security, stability, and performance.

Regular updates provide security patches, bug fixes, and new features. By staying updated, you protect your store from potential threats and ensure a smooth customer shopping experience.

Updates offer access to new features and improvements, enhancing the shopping experience and providing tools to optimize your store’s performance.

Make sure to enable automatic updates and regularly check for new versions. Before updating, back up your store and test updates on a staging environment if possible.

Don’t forget to keep your plugins and themes updated too!

Optimize your images

Images are an integral part of any online store. We need to see what we’re buying so images are essential.

The higher the quality of the image, the larger the file size. If they aren’t optimized, they can significantly impact load times and the user experience.

In fact, according to the Web Almanac, images are the largest contributor to page weight:

To implement image optimization effectively, consider the following techniques:

• Compression. Use image compression tools or plugins to reduce file sizes without sacrificing quality.
• Resizing. Resize your images to the appropriate dimensions required by your website. By resizing images to their intended display size, you reduce unnecessary file size and improve loading speed.
• File Formats. Choose the appropriate file format for your images. Try next-gen formats like WebP, which strikes the right balance between quality and size.
• Lazy Loading. Lazy loading defers the loading of images that are not immediately visible on the screen. This technique improves initial page load time by prioritizing the visible content and loading images as the user scrolls down the page. Alongside optimizing existing images, consider the initial design and development phase of your WooCommerce store. When converting design files from formats like PSD to WordPress themes, ensure that the images are optimized from the start. This not only enhances the visual appeal but also contributes to the overall speed and efficiency of your WooCommerce store.

Choose an optimized theme

The theme you select serves as the foundation of your website, influencing its design, functionality, and overall user experience. Opting for a speed-optimized theme is essential for your store’s overall performance.

Optimized themes are often lightweight, with clean code and minimal unnecessary features or elements that can slow down your website.

When choosing a speed-optimized theme, consider the following factors:

• Theme reviews and ratings
• Lightweight design
• Page load speed
• Compatibility with plugins
• Regular updates and support

Astra is our top choice for a lightweight, optimized theme for WordPress and WooCommerce.

Replace or remove poorly coded plugins

While plugins and extensions add functionality and features to your store, poorly coded ones can introduce various issues that affect speed, security, and the user experience.

Identifying the culprits can boost your web performance, enhance security, and ensure a stable shopping experience.

We recommend regularly reviewing your plugins, researching their reputation, keeping them updated, and testing them in a staging environment whenever there’s a significant update.

Also, monitor your performance and promptly replace or remove problematic plugins to maintain a fast, secure, and reliable store.

Use the latest PHP version

Both WooCommerce and WordPress are built using PHP as their primary programming language.

PHP is an open-source language, just like WordPress, with a vibrant community of developers who regularly release new versions with improved performance.

WordPress hosting providers can sometimes lag behind adopting the latest PHP versions. They prioritize software compatibility and tend to run older PHP versions on their servers.

To check the PHP version used by your website, navigate to Tools > Site Health > Info > Server:

It’s important to note that using the latest PHP version is crucial for optimal performance and security.

Newer PHP versions often come with significant performance improvements, making your WooCommerce store faster and more efficient at the same time.

Optimize JavaScript and CSS files

JavaScript and CSS files play a significant role in the functionality and design of your website. But they can also contribute to slower loading times if not optimized properly.

Here are the top 3 optimization strategies you can implement:

• JavaScript Lazy Loading. With lazy loading, JavaScript files are loaded only when needed, such as when a user interacts with a specific part of your website. This approach reduces the initial page load time and improves overall performance.
• Critical CSS. Critical CSS involves identifying and extracting the essential CSS styles required to render the above-the-fold content of your web pages. By inlining critical CSS, you ensure that the necessary styles are applied quickly, enhancing the perceived loading speed of your store. This technique prevents render-blocking issues and allows users to start interacting with your site sooner.
• Code Minification. Minifying JavaScript and CSS files involves removing unnecessary characters like white spaces, comments, and line breaks. This reduces file sizes and improves loading times.

While this may sound complicated, most good quality caching plugins will take care of all of this for you.

Use a CDN

A content delivery network (CDN) stores copies of your website on servers distributed across the globe. When a user accesses your site, they receive the content from the nearest server based on their location.

For instance, your CDN has servers in London, New York City, and Beijing.

In this scenario, visitors from Europe would receive content from the London server, while visitors from Boston would get content from the New York City server, and so on.

A CDN reduces loading times by minimizing the physical distance between users and servers, resulting in a better experience for your visitors.

Faster loading times lead to increased satisfaction and engagement with your website.

Implement HTTP/3

HTTP/3 is the latest version of the HTTP protocol, offering notable benefits over previous versions like HTTP/1.1 and HTTP/2.

The primary advantages of HTTP/3 lie in its improved performance, enhanced security, better connection handling, seamless connection migration, and compatibility with modern Internet infrastructure.

What makes HTTP/3 truly special is the fact that:

• It’s built on the QUIC transport protocol which reduces latency, and provides faster and more reliable data transmission.
• It eliminates head-of-line blocking, resulting in improved responsiveness and throughput.
• It incorporates built-in TLS encryption, ensuring data privacy and protecting against eavesdropping and manipulation.
• It’s designed to be compatible with modern internet infrastructure, including CDNs and web proxies.

These enhancements result in faster website loading times, even when hosting resource-heavy assets like images, stylesheets, and scripts.

You can use the http3 check to see if your store is running on the latest protocol.

If not, discuss with your host and request a switch to HTTP/3.

Disable the Get Refreshed Fragments AJAX request

The “Get Refreshed Fragments” AJAX request used by WooCommerce to dynamically update the shopping cart can slow down websites, especially those on shared servers.

Many sites don’t even utilize this feature but it’s activated anyway.

In a test conducted on a WooCommerce store, the “Get Refreshed Fragments” request took a significant 0.76 seconds to execute, accounting for over 25% of the page load time.

Even though the request is small (just 1.1 KB), it can noticeably impact site speed.

To address this issue, you can disable the “Get Refreshed Fragments” request using plugins like “Disable Cart Fragments by Optimocha,” which is available for free.

If you choose to disable this request, we recommend enabling the option to “Redirect to the cart page after successful addition” in WooCommerce product settings.

This ensures that users are directed to the cart page after adding a product to their cart, maintaining a smooth user experience.

Clean up your database

The database is where all your website’s data is organized. It contains essential information like product pages, categories, tags, user data, reviews, settings, and more.

Transaction data such as order details, payments, and inventory are also stored in the database.

If your store’s database is not optimized, requests may take longer to process, resulting in slow server response times and a sluggish website.

To avoid this, it’s useful to clean up and optimize your WooCommerce database by removing unnecessary clutter.

To speed up and fine-tune your WooCommerce database, consider implementing the following six techniques:

1. Delete old revisions
2. Limit the number of revisions stored
3. Disable revisions altogether (If they’re unnecessary)
4. Clean up expired transients
5. Clean up your database tables
6. Disable non-critical features that tax the database

As usual, there are plugins and services designed to help optimize your WordPress database.

Next Steps

You now have 12 new optimization techniques to add to your web performance optimization arsenal.

Because we covered a lot of ground, here’s a quick checklist of all strategies we discussed:

• Upgrade your hosting
• Set up web caching
• Keep WooCommerce up to date
• Optimize images
• Choose an optimized theme
• Replace/remove poorly coded plugins
• Use the latest PHP version
• Optimize your JavaScript and CSS
• Use a CDN
• Implement HTTP/3
• Disable “Get Refreshed Fragments” AJAX requests
• Clean up your database

And at the risk of repeating ourselves:

Always back up your store before applying any change.

You surely don’t want your good intentions to break down your website.

Also, don’t forget to performance test your website before and after optimization!

Have you used any of these techniques to speed up WooCommerce? Have any others to suggest? Tell us your story below!

The post 12 Proven ways to speed up your WooCommerce store appeared first on #1 Sales Funnel Builder For WordPress - Beautiful Checkout Pages & One Click Upsells.

If you’re expending time, effort and money into your website, you want to keep it safe.

There may be billions of websites out there and chances of attack are low, but the ramifications can be so serious you have to take precautions.

That’s what this post is all about.

We’re going to discuss WordPress security, the threats, the common attack vectors and how to protect your website from harm.

There’s no such thing as total protection but if you follow this guide, you’ll have the next best thing!

Common security risks for WordPress websites

Learning about the types of WordPress security risks and how they work helps you take proper precautions to safeguard your site.

The intent of this guide is to make you aware of the risks, but not afraid of them. We’ll share 15 steps to protect your website later on.

Malware

Malware, or malicious software, aims to compromise the security and integrity of websites or systems.

Hackers attempt to infect WordPress websites using malware in various ways. For example, they exploit vulnerabilities found in WordPress core, plugins and themes.

When malware successfully infects a WordPress site, the attacker can freely manipulate the site elements, inject malicious code into ads, and alter links so they point to harmful sites.

There are several common types of malware:

• Backdoor – Provides remote access to the administrative system, so hackers can modify user permissions, steal confidential data, and take control of the website.
• Pharma hack – Infects a WordPress website with spam links that redirect to fake pharmaceutical websites.
• Malicious redirect – Hijacks buttons on ads or links and sends unsuspecting visitors to malicious sites.
• Drive-by download – Tricks visitors into downloading malware onto their computers simply by visiting an infected WordPress website.

Brute force attacks

Hackers attempt brute force attacks to gain access to a WordPress website by repeatedly trying to guess passwords and usernames with a hacking tool.

These cyber attacks are particularly dangerous for WordPress website owners who use weak or repeated passwords. Hackers only need patience and determination since they use bots that can cycle through possible password combinations in no time at all.

If the attacker successfully gains access to a website, they can easily steal sensitive information, delete data, and alter how applications respond to user requests.

Several known brute force attacks are:

• Reverse brute force attack – A brute force attack technique to guess usernames with a list of commonly used passwords to gain access to user accounts.
• Credential stuffing attack – Uses lists of compromised usernames and passwords from previous data breaches to attempt to log in to other accounts.
• Dictionary attack – Involves using a predetermined list of words from dictionaries and commonly used passwords to guess yours.
• Hybrid brute force attack – Combination of two or more brute force attack techniques to increase their chances of success in gaining unauthorized access to your account.

Cross-site scripting attacks

A cross-site scripting (XSS) attack exploits vulnerabilities within a WordPress website and injects malicious JavaScript code.

The goal is to steal sensitive information, redirect visitors to malicious websites, and launch phishing campaigns.

When users land on an infected website, the malicious script will automatically run in the background and gain access to their browser, including cookies and browsing session information.

There are three types of XSS attacks:

• Stored XSS – Injects malicious code into a website’s database but the code will only run when the affected database is loaded.
• Reflected XSS – An attacker places malicious code into a web application through user input to hijack browsing sessions and steal sensitive information.
• DOM-Based XSS – Utilizes a harmful script in a Document Object Model (DOM) application and attempts to steal the target’s personal information.

Distributed denial-of-service attacks

A distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack floods a targeted system or a high-traffic network with multiple compromised devices, known as botnets. Its purpose is to overwhelm and make the system or network inaccessible.

DDoS attacks can cause significant disruption to companies or businesses, leading to damaged reputation, decreased productivity, and lost revenue.

Hackers also use this cyber attack to distract a company’s security team so they can carry out other attacks like injecting malware.

There are three common types of DDoS attacks:

• Protocol attack – Exploits vulnerabilities in TCP/IP, ICMP, or DNS and then overloads the targeted website with a huge amount of traffic.
• Application layer attack – Targets web applications or web servers using automated scripts or bots that mimic usual user traffic.
• Volumetric attack – Floods the network’s bandwidth or resources with botnets, overloading it with huge amounts of traffic.

Structured query language injections

A Structured Query Language (SQL) injection is a WordPress security risk targeting SQL databases. If the attack successfully breaches a website’s database, the attacker will inject malicious SQL code or scripts into a login page or a search box.

An attacker can easily insert harmful SQL commands into the input field and trick the web application into executing them. These commands include inserting, modifying, and deleting the WordPress databases.

The most common types of SQL injection attacks are:

• Inferential SQL injection – Hackers exploit vulnerabilities in the website’s code or input fields using logical inference and timing techniques allowing them to execute SQL commands or inject malicious code.
• In-band SQL injection – Also known as a traditional SQL injection. It retrieves, modifies, or deletes data from the database by executing SQL statements to vulnerable input fields, such as a search bar or a login form.
• Out-band SQL injection – Uses different communication channels, such as an email or a DNS query, to extract valuable information or data from a targeted website’s database.

There are other threats out there, but those listed above are the most common.

Now you know the threats, let’s show you some effective methods to secure your WordPress website against them.

15 Tips to secure your WordPress website

The popularity of WordPress works for it and against it. It’s so good at what it does and so popular, it’s a natural target for anyone who wants what you have.

Fortunately, there are some simple, effective measures you can take to protect yourself from the majority of risks and take control of your data.

1. Use strong passwords
2. Install an SSL certificate
3. Regularly scan your WordPress website for malware
4. Choose a secure WordPress host
5. Enable two-factor authentication on website logins
6. Modify your WordPress login page
7. Automatically log out idle users
8. Use the latest PHP version
9. Schedule WordPress backups
10. Limit the number of failed login attempts
11. Remove unused WordPress themes and plugins
12. Hide the WordPress version
13. Disable PHP file execution with the .htaccess file
14. Turn off file editing
15. Log user activity

Let’s discuss each point in a little more detail.

1. Use strong passwords

A strong password is an essential security feature for WordPress websites as it helps protect user accounts and personal information from unauthorized access.

The stronger the password, the harder it will be to crack.

Follow these tips to create strong passwords for your WordPress website:

1. Use a combination of uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols to make it harder for hackers to guess the passwords.
2. Create passwords containing at least 15 characters to increase the complexity and strength.
3. Avoid using easy-to-guess phrases, such as the combination of your name and your birth date. Hackers can use multiple brute-force attack techniques to guess your passwords.
4. Avoid using the same passwords across multiple accounts, such as your WordPress account, web hosting, and email. Otherwise, you might fall victim to credential-stuffing attacks.
5. Use a password manager instead of storing your passwords in your local computer or web browser. Several popular password managers are 1Password, Bitwarden, and NordPass.

2. Install an SSL certificate

Establishing a secure connection is important as it helps protect user data, build customer trust, and improve the site’s visibility on search engines.

One of the best methods is to install an SSL certificate on your WordPress website.

Short for Secure Sockets Layer, SSL is a cryptographic protocol that establishes an encrypted connection between a web server and browsers. During the communication encryption process, SSL implements two security layers – the SSL Record Protocol and SSL Handshake Protocol.

The following is a brief overview of how SSL works:

1. When a user’s browser attempts to connect to your WordPress website, it initiates an SSL connection to a web server by requesting an SSL version and supporting cryptographic algorithms.
2. The web server responds to the request by providing its SSL version, selected chipper suite, and digital certificate.
3. The web browser verifies the digital certificate and authenticates the server’s identity. Then, it generates a random session key, encrypts it with the server’s public key and sends it back to the server.
4. The web server decrypts the session key using its private key. After that, the two parties exchange messages to establish the SSL connection parameters.
5. Once the SSL connection is established, the user’s web browser can securely communicate with the web server. Visitors can safely create an account and purchase a product or service from the website.

Most web hosting providers already include a standard Let’s Encrypt SSL for free in their plans.

You can also use your own SSL certificate instead using your web hosting control panel.

3. Regularly scan your WordPress website for malware

The total number of malware infections on WordPress sites remains consistent, with roughly 310,000 sites infected in December 2022.

Hacked WordPress sites will show several indications, such as poor performance and falling search engine rankings.

It’s crucial to take preventive action, like regularly scanning your WordPress website using a security plugin with a malware scanner, such as Wordfence, iThemes Security, and Sucuri.

For this tutorial, we will show you how to perform a malware scan using the Wordfence plugin:

1. Log in to your WordPress dashboard.
2. Install and activate the Wordfence plugin.
3. Complete the Wordfence installation process by choosing a plan and activating the license key.
4. Once finished, go to the Scan page under the Wordfence section.
5. Select Manage Scan and choose Limited Scan, Standard Scan, High Sensitivity or Custom Scan.
6. Return to the Scan page and click the Start New Scan button.
7. Once completed, you can see the scan log by clicking View Full Log or Show Log.

4. Choose a secure WordPress host

Web hosting providers play a crucial role in providing a secure experience. Therefore, choosing a reliable web host is important for your long-term success.

However, deciding on a suitable hosting provider can be challenging as there’s usually marketing and lots of technical jargon to contend with.

Consider the tips below to help you find the most suitable web host:

• Security measures – Find out what security measures the web hosting provider uses to protect their servers and data centers against digital and physical security threats. Look for one that provides firewall protection, security monitoring tools, and intrusion detection.
• Security features – Ensure the hosting company offers powerful features and tools, such as DDoS protection, a malware scanner, free SSL certificate, as well as automatic backups and updates.
• Reliable support – Check the level of support the hosting company offers in case you experience issues. Choose a web host with a reliable 24/7 support team and a dedicated security team.
• Reputation – Read client reviews and testimonials to see whether the web hosting company offers robust security protection.

There are hundreds of quality web hosts to choose from, take your time, perform your research and you should be fine!

5. Enable two-factor authentication on website logins

Having only a password to protect your website and important data is not enough to prevent sophisticated brute-force attacks.

By implementing 2FA, you must provide two different authentication factors to verify the identity so that you can access the website. They can be passwords or PINs, physical tokens, app codes or biometric data like a fingerprint.

If someone guesses your password or login, it’s much harder for them to access that second factor. Without your fingerprint, SMS code or other verification, the attacker won’t be able to access your website.

That’s the strength of 2FA.

The only drawback is that WordPress doesn’t have a built-in 2FA feature, meaning you need to install a plugin. Wordfence is one of the most popular WordPress security plugins offering a variety of security features and tools, including 2FA.

6. Modify your WordPress login page

Changing the login page URL helps secure your WordPress website from cyber threats like brute force attacks. This URL is where you enter your username and password to access the WordPress admin panel.

By default, all WordPress website’s login page URLs are the same – https://example.com/wp-admin. As a result, having this default URL can make you an easy target for hackers.

You can use a WordPress plugin, such as Change wp-admin login and WPS Hide Login, to enable a custom WordPress login page URL.

Changing the /wp-admin URL is a small change but one that can protect you from many automated attacks.

7. Automatically log out idle users

Hackers can target idle user accounts that remain logged on a shared network, such as public WiFi. It’s important to log out right after a period of inactivity, but sometimes we forget.

Open sessions are a marginal threat but the solution is so simple, we recommend using it.

There’s a great plugin like Inactive Logout to help handle the problem. It automatically logs idle users out and sends a custom notification telling them the website session will finish soon.

The basic plugin is free to use and simple to set up. There’s absolutely no reason not to try it!

8. Use the latest PHP version

Short for Hypertext Preprocessor, PHP is a popular open-source scripting language for server-side programming. It is especially useful for creating dynamic web pages and applications, as it lets developers write code that can interact with files and databases.

PHP is the core language for WordPress and enables functions like managing databases, handling user requests, and allowing developers to customize websites.

Therefore, updating your WordPress PHP version is crucial as you will get the latest features, bug fixes, and security patches.

Using the latest PHP version ensures the compatibility of WordPress with the newest technologies and helps deliver a better user experience.

Here are some tips to securely update or modify your WordPress PHP version:

• Check the PHP compatibility with the WordPress version. Before starting the PHP update process, check whether your WordPress version is compatible with the latest or specific PHP version.
• Create a staging site environment. If updating the PHP version on the live production site feels risky, consider creating a staging environment. This way, you can test whether the new PHP version works as expected while you can see if there are any conflicts with plugins or website performance.
• Temporarily disable plugins. Some plugins might not support the latest PHP version. We recommend disabling your plugins before updating. Then, you can activate them individually to see if there is any compatibility issue with the installed plugins.
• Back up your WordPress site. Create a backup of your WordPress files and database. You then have a copy in case you encounter an unexpected error after the update.
• Contact your host’s customer support. We highly recommend contacting your web hosting provider’s support team if you are unsure which PHP version to use. You can also ask them to update the PHP version for you if you like.

9. Schedule WordPress backups

Creating a regular WordPress backup schedule is another crucial task for securing your website. While we’re helping you secure your WordPress website, a backup can help in case they still get through.

Having a backup file is also useful if you change your design, mess up custom CSS or have some kind of accident when configuring your website.

The easiest way to back up your WordPress site is by using a plugin.

WordPress offers a variety of great plugins for backing up your website, such as UpdraftPlus.

Here’s how to schedule a backup with UpdraftPlus:

1. Go to Plugins → Add New, then search for the plugin.
2. Once the plugin is activated, navigate to Settings → UpdraftPlus Backup.
3. Go to the Settings tab. Then, set the Files backup schedule and Database backup schedule, such as Weekly or Fortnightly.
4. Click Save Changes to finish the process.

Many hosting companies offer an automatic backup feature. We would recommend using that as well as having your own.

That way you’re doubly protected!

10. Limit the number of failed login attempts

Limiting the number of login attempts on a WordPress website is important security mitigation to help prevent unauthorized access and protect user data. It’s especially useful for protecting your website against brute force attacks.

A WordPress security plugin like Limit Login Attempts Reloaded is a great tool for restricting the number of login attempts. It has a safelist of IPs and usernames, logging of blocked attempts, and is compatible with Wordfence and Sucuri plugins.

Setting up the Limit Login Attempts Reloaded plugin is relatively straightforward.

Here’s how:

1. By default, the plugin will set four allowed login attempts and lock any user who fails to provide the correct login credentials for 20 minutes. To change this number, head to Limit Login Attempts → Settings.
2. Under the App Settings section, change the values of the Lockout option. For example, you can change the allowed retries, minutes lockout, and hours until retries are reset.
3. Confirm the changes by clicking the Save Settings button.

One of the drawbacks of using this WordPress security plugin is that legitimate users might get locked out of the WordPress admin panel if they repeatedly enter the wrong credentials.

You can overcome that by providing an email address or chat address they can request a reset.

11. Remove unused WordPress themes and plugins

Keeping unused WordPress themes and plugins might pose security threats if they aren’t regularly updated.

This is another of those marginal risks but can also keep your database tidy and free up disk space so it’s well worth doing.

To remove unused WordPress plugins, follow the steps below:

1. On the WordPress admin page, navigate to Plugins → Installed Plugins.
2. Remove the unused plugin by clicking the Delete button. If there are multiple plugins, select them all by clicking the radio button.
3. Click the Bulk actions dropdown menu and select Delete. Click Apply to confirm the action.

As for deleting unused WordPress themes, follow the instructions below:

1. Go to Appearances → Themes.
2. Choose the unused theme and click Theme Details.
3. Click Delete to remove the theme. Note that you can only delete one theme at a time.

This is a useful housekeeping task as well as security so is well worth doing if you’re experimenting with different themes and plugins.

12. Hide the WordPress version

Different WordPress versions have different strengths and weaknesses. Hiding the version you’re using means any hacker is going to have to guess, making their attack less effective.

It’s another marginal gain but is so easy to do, it’s well worth doing.

You’ll need to insert a code snippet into the functions.php file. Don’t worry, it’s very easy to do.

Here’s how:

1. From the WordPress dashboard, navigate to Tools → Theme File Editor.
2. Go to Select theme to edit, and choose your active theme from the dropdown menu. Click Select.
3. Under Theme Files, select Theme Functions to open the functions.php file via the text editor.
4. Go to the bottom line and paste the following code snippet on the text editor:

function dartcreations_remove_version() {

return '';

} add_filter('the_generator', 'dartcreations_remove_version');

5. Add the following code to remove the WordPress generator meta tag, as it also displays the WordPress version:

remove_action('wp_head', 'wp_generator');

6. Finish the process by clicking the Update File button.

A potential attack will now not be able to identify your WordPress version, making your site slightly more secure.

13. Disable PHP file execution with the .htaccess file

The .htaccess file plays a vital role in ensuring your WordPress website works as intended. It contains rules that limit content visibility and control access to certain areas of the website.

The .htaccess file also lets you block malicious requests from unauthorized IP addresses and disable PHP execution on specific folders.

There are two ways of enhancing WordPress security using the .htaccess file. We will use the .htaccess file to disable the PHP execution in the Uploads folder since hackers often target it by uploading malicious backdoor scripts.

To demonstrate the steps, we will use the cPanel File Manager:

1. On the cPanel dashboard, click File Manager under the Files section.
2. Go to public_html → wp-content → uploads.
3. Create a new file by clicking the File icon on the toolbar. Type .htaccess in the New File Name field. Ensure the file’s location is set to public_html/wp-content/uploads.
4. Open the file via a text editor and paste the following code:

<Files *.php>

deny from all

</Files>

5. Click Save Changes to finish the process.

Another way to secure your WordPress site is by implementing the .htaccess rules or code into the wp-config.php file.

This file has WordPress core files and MySQL database details which often become hackers’ primary target.

Follow the steps below:

1. On cPanel’s File Manager screen, open the wp-config.php file in the public_html folder.
2. Scroll down to the bottom of the line and enter the following .htaccess rules:

<files wp-config.php>

order allow,deny

deny from all

</files>

3. Save the changes.

You have now denied access to upload files and execute PHP files. Two common methods of attack for WordPress websites!

14. Turn off file editing

All administrator users can edit theme code directly from the dashboard, which isn’t the most secure way of working.

Hackers can potentially inject malicious code or scripts into your theme and eventually take control of your website and we don’t want that!

Turning off the file editing feature is useful to prevent hackers accessing WordPress site code.

To do that:

1. Access cPanel File Manager.
2. Open the wp-config.php file located in the public_html folder using a text editor.
3. Add the following line of code:

define( 'DISALLOW_FILE_EDIT', true );

4. Save the changes.

If you want to re-enable the file editing, open the wp-config.php file and remove the code.

15. Log user activity

Logging user activity means keeping records of what logged in users are doing on your WordPress website.

While spying on people isn’t great, being able to trace exactly what someone did, where and when can help a lot when tracing an attack or nefarious activity.

Keeping track of user activity is also a great WordPress security measure for several reasons:

1. Detecting suspicious activity. Tracking all actions performed on your website is great for detecting any suspicious behavior that potentially risks your site’s security.
2. Identifying security vulnerabilities. User activity logs can help identify security vulnerabilities. For example, if the log shows multiple login attempts, it might indicate a sign of a brute-force attack.
3. Investigating security incidents. If a security incident occurs, user activity logs can help you investigate the causes and take the right mitigation to prevent similar incidents from happening in the future.

The easiest way to record user activities is by utilizing a WordPress plugin. There are various user logging plugins, such as WP Activity Log or Activity Log.

We will show you how to log user activity using the WP Activity Log plugin:

1. Install and activate the WP Activity Log plugin.
2. The plugin automatically displays a popup window asking whether you want to run the setup wizard. Click Yes to confirm.
3. On the WP Activity Log’s configuration wizard, click Start Configuring the Plugin.
4. Choose the Geek option to know all activities on your website in the Log Details section. Then, click Next.
5. On the Log In section, click Yes if you use a custom WordPress login page or No if you use the default one. Click Next to continue.
6. Choose whether you want visitors to register as users and click Next.
7. In the Log Retention section, decide how long to keep the activity log data. The minimum log retention time is six months. Then, click Next and finish the configuration.

The WP Activity Log plugin displays any log activity information from your site visitors, and you can see the log details, such as log ID, user, IP address, event type, and message.

Conclusion

Implementing WordPress security best practices can help minimize cyber attacks and boost your site’s reliability and credibility.

Your website may never be attacked or hacked, but you don’t know that. Just like car insurance, it’s better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it.

Considering securing your website takes less than an hour and uses a bunch of free tools, there’s absolutely no reason to not do it!

The post How to secure your WordPress website – 15 simple ways appeared first on #1 Sales Funnel Builder For WordPress - Beautiful Checkout Pages & One Click Upsells.

But building a relationship largely depends on crafting an effective email and needs to be in motion the moment a customer subscribes or opts in.

The very first email that must hit their inboxes is the welcome email.

Welcome emails are more than just sending a ‘thank you for subscribing’ message or using them as an ‘about us’ page.

So what makes a welcome email impactful? What should it include?

This article will take you through everything you need to know about welcome emails with inspiring examples.

What is an eCommerce welcome email?

A welcome email, as the name suggests, is a type of marketing email sent to new subscribers or new customers who’ve just purchased from you.

A warm welcome email sets the tone for your relationship with the customer and encourages healthy engagement.

Why are welcome emails important in eCommerce?

There’s nothing more sustainable for sales than the solid connection you build with each of your customers. Welcome emails help make this a reality.

Here’s how:

1. Customers expect it

Once your customers have made some effort to sign up for your newsletter or purchase from you, they expect you to welcome them.

Around 74% of customers expect brands to send them a welcome message as soon as they subscribe.

Since most customers would’ve already left your website, it only makes sense to send them a warm and personalized welcome email straight to their inboxes.

Utilizing one of the top email builders can help in crafting these personalized welcome messages, ensuring they resonate with your subscribers.

2. Better customer engagement

Welcome emails and eCommerce customer engagement work hand in hand.

You can garner higher open and click-through rates by incorporating a referral marketing tool to offer discounts like a first-time coupon code, referral offers, and more.

While you’re improving your campaign, there are also methods to enhance click-through rates using organic-like automated traffic that could help boost your SEO efforts and ensure better visibility on search engines.

In fact, welcome emails are known to have the highest email open rates of 91.4%. But here it is important to make sure that your letters are actually delivered. To ensure this, use an email service provider or SMTP server with a high deliverability rate.

3. Boosts loyalty

By creating a great first impression with your welcome email, you’re sure to turn new customers into loyal brand followers. But how do you do this?

Add incentives that inspire them to take action, including dynamic content for each customer and valuable insights around their purchases, to name a few.

4. Saves time

When welcome emails are a part of your outreach strategy, they help save time that would’ve otherwise taken to nurture and convert leads.

How?

Your welcome emails can be crafted to offer valuable advice about your products and offer exclusive deals that could move your customer rapidly down the sales funnel.

5. Helps segment customers better

Welcome emails offer an incredible opportunity to segment your customers for future communications.

For instance, you could add recommended products of multiple categories within your welcome email. Depending on what the consumers click on, you can segment them and send tailored emails.

6. Reduces spam complaints and unsubscribes by setting expectations

Since welcome emails let you familiarize your eCommerce business with new subscribers, you can set expectations on what their journey with your brand is going to be like.

If they’re uninterested, you could include an option for them to unsubscribe from future communications. This lets you control avoidable spam complaints that could hurt your reputation in the long run.

It’s time to visually understand the importance of welcome emails and what makes them stand apart.

15 welcome email examples and what’s good about them

Now let’s take a look at some email examples in everyday use for inspiration.

1. ColourPop

Since most of ColourPop’s subscribers are younger females, they’ve added a pretty touch to their welcome email with an attractive tagline. They’ve thoroughly understood their consumers and their lingo.

What did we like?

As mentioned, welcome emails are windows to establishing the much-needed customer connection. There’s no better way to set sail than by offering a discount code.

You can see how ColourPop does this as a CTA:

2. Clinique

Clinique did it best by being straightforward with setting expectations with the new subscriber/customer.

What did we like?

A simple “this is what you signed up for” in your welcome email goes a long way to establishing a strong connection and setting the next steps.

Clinique has also highlighted additional perks, such as ‘free treats’ and ‘free delivery,’ for its subscribers — which helps boost loyalty and repeat purchases.

3. Ikea

Helpful tips and product advice help your potential customers make buying decisions. One way to ensure tips and useful resources reach such customers is to tie them into your welcome emails.

What did we like?

Ikea does this best by sharing its recent blog posts and best-selling products to inspire new subscribers.

4. Kiehl’s

Kiehl’s tries to set its subscribers on the right path from the get-go.

What did we like?

Kiehl offers recommended products for subscribers to click on and check out. Also, don’t miss the inviting headline that piques the reader’s interest.

5. Lush

Your welcome emails must embody your brand’s tone and voice. Look at Lush, for instance.

What did we like?

We loved Lush’s welcome email tagline and the short message that follows while addressing newbies as ‘Lushies.’ It surely highlights the brand’s tone that’s known to be friendly and inviting.

The brand has also added a product carousel of its popular picks for new subscribers to explore.

6. SurfStitch

Personalization ads the soul back into your email communications. Addressing your new customer/subscriber by their first names is the best way to add a unique spin to your welcome emails.

Although simple, we noticed that not many brands do this.

What did we like?

SurfStitch shows you how it’s done with the below example of their welcome email. Instead of the routine “Hey you,” the brand addresses the customer by their first names:

7. Ralph Lauren

Acknowledging a new subscriber’s effort for signing up to your email list is the best thing eCommerce business could do. It helps nurture the leads and grow sales through loyalty.

What did we like?

Ralph Lauren acknowledges the subscriber and offers a 10% discount on their next order as a token of appreciation.

8. Charlotte Tilbury

The popular luxury beauty brand Charlotte Tilbury’s welcome email makes it sound like it’s coming directly from the founder herself, making the email unique.

What did we like?

The ‘backstage access’ and what the fresh subscriber can expect is like a drum roll about their upcoming journey.

This friendly tone would no doubt linger on the subscribers’ minds, and they would look forward to more such emails.

9. Vinomofo

Vinomofo packs a punch with its direct and full-of-slang welcome email paired with a high-quality GIF.

What did we like?

The brand subtly puts across its product’s benefit and ends on a click-worthy CTA like ‘Thirsty? Let’s do this.’

Vinomofo also created a product catalog and asked subscribers to follow them on their socials which most brands miss adding.

10. Flower Fix

Flower Fix brings much-needed warmth to otherwise generic welcome emails by adding a small and meaningful note from its founder.

What did we like?

The brand highlights the resources, such as workshops and expert tips the subscriber would get by staying on the list, along with a discount code.

11. Glossier

Glossier, the popular luxury beauty brand, has a worldwide fan following and a loyal customer base. Their welcome emails are very scroll-worthy.

What did we like?

We love emails with storytelling. Glossier starts off by putting across its biggest brand benefit — its products and a short story on its mission.

Also, notice how the image is a collage of the brand’s products in use by its real users.

12. Sephora

There’s nothing like belonging to a community of like-minded folks. For eCommerce brands, communities can build healthy conversations between customers and improve customer service where customers help each other out.

Sephora, being a world-famous beauty eCommerce store, uses the community dynamic with its welcome emails.

What did we like?

The tagline ‘Welcome to the family’ and words such as ‘beauty insider’ make customers feel welcomed into their community and are more likely to linger on for longer.

Also, the brand added how being a part of its community gives customers access to a whole range of incentives.

13. Tarte

Tarte’s welcome email is short, sweet, and hits the bull’s eye.

What did we like?

The brand has placed its reward right on top of its email and clearly stated what subscribers can expect from their communications. Notice how the reward is not just a generic discount code but is a unique redeemable code as a powerful CTA.

14. Bulk

Leading with a brand story is a great way to paint a picture of your products and the journey behind the brand’s foundation. Bulk used this tactic well.

What did we like?

Bulk leads the email with a picture of its founders and a personal note from them.

Before subscribers begin to question, ‘what’s in it for me?’, Bulk includes a bunch of perks like sneak peeks into product launches, early access and VIP-only deals.

15. Mode Chocolate

Your new subscribers are likely to hesitate before purchasing from you, especially if they’ve never heard of your brand. Mode Chocolate offers a subtle yet powerful assurance to its new subscribers/customers.

What did we like?

Along with the stunning user elements, Mode Chocolate takes its subscribers down memory lane by talking about the founders’ love for chocolates. Notice (although it’s hard to miss) the high-quality product image surrounded by its best features.

But what really does the trick is the bold statement made by the brand – ‘31-day money back guarantee’. This CTA is sure to turn suspicious subscribers into eager new customers.

Best practices for welcome emails

Here are five best practices for welcome emails that, when followed, are sure to attract more sales:

1. Structure your welcome email thoughtfully

As you might’ve noticed from the examples, each welcome email has one thing in common – an excellent structure and email copy with a perfect balance of words, pictures, and CTAs.

Ensure you make your offer compelling enough by adding high-quality images of your products, using a click-worthy subject line and a powerful CTA.

Most of all, make sure your email design will work on all-devices.

2. Don’t just send one welcome email

You don’t have to send just one welcome email to a new subscriber that covers everything under the sun, from your brand story to product recommendations.

You could treat sending welcome emails as a drip campaign and send multiple emails at different stages of the new customer’s journey. This keeps the journey smooth and natural.

For instance, you can send your first email within 24 hours of the subscription, followed by the second email that collects user preferences, and then tailor your offer in the third consecutive email.

3. Lead with personalization

Personalize your emails by referring to the subscribers by their names. Also try sharing relatable journeys, and tailoring offers by considering the point at which they subscribed to your emails.

4. Always have a clear CTA

The purpose of sending a welcome email is to nudge your subscribers to take action. CTAs help in grasping reader attention and converting them.

For instance, your CTAs could lead them to discover more of your products, apply a discount code or submit a response. Ensure your CTA is easy to spot and stands out from the email’s body for best effect.

5. Analyze and update your welcome emails often based on performance

Strive to improve your future welcome email campaign by regularly measuring and analyzing performance.

You could analyze metrics such as open rates, click rates, bounce rates, total spam marks, unsubscribe rates, forward or shares, campaign ROI, and more.

Conclusion

Welcome emails are often downplayed in eCommerce and are not deemed as important as promotional emails. But the truth is, welcome emails help set the stage for customer expectations and understand consumer interest which is necessary for a promising sales potential.

We recommend using them for every new customer!

This is a guest article contributed by Quinn Malloy.

Quinn Malloy is a copywriter and marketing professional based in Prague, Czech Republic. He works for CloudTalk, helping to create compelling messaging in support of the next generation of cloud communication. 

The post eCommerce welcome email examples to grow your sales appeared first on #1 Sales Funnel Builder For WordPress - Beautiful Checkout Pages & One Click Upsells.

We searched across the web to find some of the best deals to help you save big this Halloween.

We feature our own products complete with big Halloween discounts and products from trusted friends.

Purchase your favorite WordPress products like themes, plugins, page builders, web hosting, addons and extensions with great discounts over the holiday.

While you prep your spooky costumes and get ready for the tricks and treats, we at CartFlows want to bring all the treats to you!

Let’s get started with a CartFlows Halloween deal you dare not miss!

CartFlows

CartFlows is an essential plugin if you run a WooCommerce store. With powerful sales funnels, checkout flows, dynamic offers, visual funnel builders, and much more, CartFlows turns your website into a wicked selling machine!

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Halloween Deals From Our Spooky Friends

While preparing your candy and costumes, be ready for the best Halloween deals for WordPress, as we at CartFlows bring all the best deals to you!

PrestoPlayer

Presto Player is built to help marketers, course creators, and anyone who uses videos on their website deliver a viewing experience. Got paying subscribers? Add content protection so only they can view your videos.

Worried about your videos slowing down? PrestoPlayer lets you add multiple video sources, so the best is selected based on your viewers. There’s a lot more for you to explore with this advanced video plugin!

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Astra

First on the list is the most installed theme with over 1.6 million installs – Astra.

It’s a super-simple, yet highly flexible theme that can be a perfect fit for any type of WordPress website.

The pro version of Astra supercharges your experience with far more design and customization features to suit all your needs.

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Schema Pro

With the new Google updates in place, implementing schema markup has become an essential part of SEO. With Schema Pro, you can easily and effortlessly add different schema markups to your website, irrespective of the number of pages.

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Create attractive popups or opt-in forms that convert visitors into leads, subscribers, and customers. With complete design freedom, behavioral integrations, and advanced targeting features, you can be sure that you capture leads at the right time.

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Ultimate Addons for Elementor

Build even more interactive pages with the Ultimate Addons for Elementor. This plugin helps you extend the default functionality of your favorite WordPress page builder plugin.

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Project Huddle

SureFeedback is a WordPress plugin that makes it easy for designers and developers to collect and organize client feedback. Save time as a designer or agency with visual client feedback on your WordPress designs, wireframes, pdfs, and sketches.

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Hosting

Cloudways

Cloudways is a managed hosting platform that takes the hassle of web hosting out of running a website. It lets you focus on growing your business with WordPress and WooCommerce, without worrying about the infrastructure.

Deal: 30% discount for 2 months

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Nexcess

Nexcess is a provider of managed hosting services for content and commerce websites. It offers managed WordPress, WooCommerce, and Magento hosting with built-in auto-scaling so your website remains fast, irrespective of how popular it becomes.

Deal: 50% off

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Performance

Perfmatters

Perfmatters is a plugin for websites where performance matters. With this plugin, you can cut bloat and speed up your site without the technical headaches.

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Jetpack

Jetpack is a multi-purpose plugin developed by Automattic. It helps manage your website backups and improve the performance and security of your WordPress website with ease.

Deal: 50% off

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Security

iThemes Security

iThemes Security is an easy-to-use WordPress security plugin that works round the clock to monitor your website for security threats. It helps identify and stop attacks, saving time, cost, and reputation damage.

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Forms

Formidable Forms

Formidable Forms is a fully-featured WordPress form builder plugin that lets you build single or multi-page contact forms with the option to add conditional logic, calculations, and file uploads. It also comes with a visual styler, dynamic field choices, readymade templates, and much more.

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Ecommerce

Easy Digital Downloads

Easy Digital Downloads is a free WordPress eCommerce plugin that focuses on digital products. Its primary goal is to make selling digital products simple with an all-in-one solution.

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AffiliateWP

Grow your business through affiliates. AffiliateWP is a complete affiliate management solution that helps you build a full-featured affiliate system for your eCommerce business right on your website.

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StoreApps

Every eCommerce store has a different set of needs and a single solution cannot suit everyone. StoreApps aims to extend the capabilities of WooCommerce to solve multiple pain points of eCommerce merchants.

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SEO

Image Optimization

Smush Pro

The Smush Pro plugin compresses all your images and reduces their size without any visual quality loss. It works by removing unnecessary data, resizing images to the right size, and converts all images to the lightweight WebP format if required.

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Necessary Plugins

MonsterInsights

SEO requires working with lots of data. MonsterInsights makes it easy to access Google Analytics data with an easy-to-use, interactive dashboard, available directly on your WordPress website.

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MemberPress

MemberPress is an easy-to-use WordPress Membership Plugin. It will help you to instantly start charging your users for access to your content and control who can see what content and when.

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Conclusion

These Halloween WordPress deals aren’t tricky – they are much more of a treat! All the deals are for Halloween only so you might want to move quickly before they disappear.

Happy Halloween everyone and I am sure you will find a few awesome treats to make this festive season even more special!

Check out our Black Friday deals 2023 to get your desired WordPress products!

The post The WordPress Halloween Deals You Shouldn’t Miss in 2022 appeared first on #1 Sales Funnel Builder For WordPress - Beautiful Checkout Pages & One Click Upsells.

After some big feature releases this year, we want to finish strong with a new update for our sales funnel builder plugin.

Updates will include:

• A completely reimagined funnel building interface so you can work faster and more effectively.
• New pricing plans so you can start using CartFlows more economically.

We’re also releasing two new powerful tools that will let you automate your business and increase sales in your online store with minimal effort.

If this sounds good to you, keep reading.

CartFlows recap of the year

Since its launch in 2018, we have been steadily adding new features to CartFlows to help you increase revenue in the easiest way possible.

We kicked off 2022 with the release of CartFlows 1.9. It was a huge update that added the following new features:

Modern checkout

The checkout is one of the most important pages in your online store.

It’s the step in which your potential customer will decide whether to complete the purchase or not.

It’s important that checkout is visually appealing and also optimized for conversion.

CartFlows 1.9 improved these critical points. We created a new checkout from scratch in which everything was new, streamlined and offered a premium experience.

Among other things, we added new checkout templates and new animations to the data fields, turning it into something much more eye-catching.

We also added features more focused on improving conversion, such as a real-time email validation tool, Google address autocomplete and a new modern order summary box.

Check out this post if you want to learn more about these features and others such as the field manager or express checkout.

New onboarding

We know that getting started with a new tool can be overwhelming.

Although we have an extensive knowledge base to help you use CartFlows, there is no easier way to get started than with direct help in the WordPress admin panel.

User role management

Our goal with CartFlows is to make it easy for you to grow your business.

Growing your business means working with more people at some point.

Teamwork makes the dream work!

That’s why we also introduced the option to define which WordPress users have access to CartFlows pages.

• Don’t want your content writers to access funnels? Block their access to CartFlows completely.
• Hired a funnel expert but you don’t want them to change global settings? Limit their access to only flow/steps.

Role management is an easy-to-use tool that’s very handy for teams. Read more about this feature in the knowledge base.

New products

We are really excited about this!

We are launching 2 new products that will greatly enhance the way you manage your business. They can even help you increase your profits!

The best part?

If you already are a CartFlows Pro customer, you will get them both, for free!

Do you want to know what we’re going to include in your current CartFlows license?

Keep reading…

SureTriggers cross-platform automation

SureTriggers is a new plugin that will help you automate your business. It’s designed to save you time, money, and reduce the burden of working manually.

SureTriggers will connect plugins and online services you already use (and even different websites). It will share information between them and help them work seamlessly together.

SureTriggers comes with an intuitive drag and drop interface. No coding is required so the platform will be usable by all skill levels.

We will even include ready-made “recipes”, so you don’t have to create them, just implement them.

We like to make things easy for you, but if you’re our customer, you already knew that!

You can use SureTriggers for anything:

• Add an email entered in a contact form to your mailing list.
• Create another user account on a different website than where the user signed up (for example, if you sell your courses on one website, but your training platform is on another).
• Create more complex automations that include decision branches, so that the final result varies depending on certain conditions.

In the following video you‘ll see how easy it is to create these examples:

SureTriggers integrates with Airtable, Teachable, LearnDash, WhatsApp, Circle, WordPress, and many other platforms and services.

SureTriggers is an amazing tool for every business!

Because our mission is to help all businesses be more profitable we’ll offer a 100% free plan where you can run up to 500 actions per month.

A similar plan with Zapier would cost you almost $30 per month, but we offer it for free. We don’t want anyone to miss out on the benefits of an automated business.

We’ll also have a Pro plan with more powerful features, including delays, conditions, filters, branching, and more.

CartFlows Pro license holders will get a SureTriggers Pro plan with thousands of actions per month included (a similar plan with Zapier would cost over $1k per year). But,as a loyal customer, you will get it absolutely free!

In the software business this is unheard of. But we would be nowhere without your support and trust in us, and this is our way of saying thank you.

Modern Cart, increase your average order

Modern Cart is an addon for WooCommerce that makes the buying process much smoother and elegant.

It also encourages buyers to add more to their cart with in-cart order bumps. This will help not only reduce cart abandonment and also increase the average customer order.

When a potential customer adds an item to their cart, instead of the classic prompt from WooCommerce that simply recommends you to go check it, a slide-out (or a pop-up) will appear.

This will show:

• Cross-sells and upsells you’ve configured in WooCommerce.
• A progress bar indicating how much more they should spend to get free shipping.

Thanks to Modern Cart you can encourage your buyers to add more products and spend more.

Once they do, the well-designed CartFlows checkout will do the rest of the work. It will close the deal with the best user experience possible.

That’s why we have decided to include Modern Cart in the current CartFlows Pro plan.

They are two tools that work very well side by side, and that’s why we want you to use them.

New CartFlows plans

We are at a strange time right now, where everyone is raising prices. Competing offerings are already 2x – 10x the cost of CartFlows.

But we have never been one to follow the trend.

CartFlows always offered only a single premium plan at $299 per year.

This unique plan made the pricing really easy to understand, but meant the upfront cost was out of reach for some users.

That’s why, starting today, we’ve decided to make changes to our pricing structure to make CartFlows more affordable.

We are introducing not one, but 2 new, affordable plans.

Best of all, you can easily upgrade from one plan to a higher plan at any time.

You could start with a Starter plan and use the revenue boost you’ll get to pay for the upgrade.

We are pleased to announce that CartFlows will offer 3 premium plans instead of one:

1. CartFlow Starter (just $99/year) – Perfect for stores wanting to upgrade their checkout page.
2. CartFlow Plus ($199/year) – Ideal for stores that want to increase their average order value.
3. CartFlow Pro ($299/year) – A great option for stores that want to maximize their revenue and automate their income.

Remember that all of the above plans allow you to access technical support and upgrades for as long as your license is active.

Let’s see these new plans in detail!

CartFlows Starter ($99/year)

The Starter plan is perfect for stores wanting to upgrade their checkout page with high-converting dynamic order bumps along with all our powerful checkout related features..

The Starter plan is the perfect step up from our already awesome CartFlows core. The idea behind it is that merchants can use the included features to increase their stores revenue by 10% – 20% quickly and easily.

This revenue bump can make a huge difference in the lives of merchants.

The Starter plan Includes all these powerful checkout-related features:

• Modern Checkout styles
• One column checkout
• Two-step checkout
• Multistep checkout (coming soon)
• Visual checkout field editor
• Custom checkout fields
• Google address autocomplete
• Real-time email validation
• Cart abandonment
• Checkout takeover
• Product options

You’ll also be able to use order bump features in this plan. Something that can quickly increase your revenue by up to 10 to 20%.

These bump offers are dynamic (they will vary for each user depending on certain conditions). You can easily modify their location and style to adapt the final layout to your liking.

That’s a ton of powerful features for a very reasonable price!

CartFlows Plus ($199/year)

The CartFlows Plus plan is ideal for stores that want to increase their average order value by multiples, not percentages. It includes everything in the Starter plan, but also includes dynamic one-click upsells.

Dynamic one-click upsells have the potential to drastically increase the average order value of your store. And they are smart, very smart!

For example, if a buyer has already purchased the offer in your upsell, you can optionally show them a different offer.

This is just one of many smart conditions to make sure you are making the right offer to the right person at the right time.

The price for this plan is $199 per year.

If this plan sounds good to you, wait until you see everything the new Pro plan has to offer!

CartFlows Pro ($299/year)

The CartFlows Pro plan is great for stores that want to maximize revenue and automate operations.

On the surface it may seem like the same Pro plan we have always had, and you would be mostly right :-).

Except for one thing. Well two things.

In addition, all the powerful features to help your store sell more CartFlows Pro now also includes access to 2 powerful new products. Both will help you sell even more and completely change the way you manage your online business/website.

• Modern Cart plugin (which would normally cost $99 per year) – A tool that will encourage visitors to add more items to their cart.
• SureTriggers Pro (release expected this November) – An automation tool that will save you ~$800 per year when compared to Zapier.

This is a massive increase in value compared to the previous Pro plan.

Where other companies want you to keep paying more and more, at CartFlows we want to keep giving you more and more.

In comparison to our Plus plan, the Pro plan also includes all of our advanced funnel features including:

• A/B split testing
• Smart funnel routing
• Analytics
• Conversion optimized funnel templates

Bold new future

CartFlows is approaching its 4th birthday next month. This is a huge milestone and we couldn’t be more proud seeing all the businesses it made a huge impact on.

One thing that we have been working on for the past 12 months is completely reimagine what the CartFlows experience is and how we can optimize every aspect of it.

Everything about the user interface and user experience is going to completely change. We are making huge investments in design across our products and with CartFlows specifically, we will be introducing bold new changes that you are going to love.

Our mission is to help store owners sell more and we think you’re going to love what we have done!

Stay in the loop

If you want to know when these tools will become officially available, when we’ll launch the new CartFlows design, or if you don’t want to miss future updates of any of these products, subscribe to our newsletter and join the CartFlows Facebook group.

But most importantly, we recommend you take advantage of the new pricing plan. Get your CartFlows license and enjoy the new features right away!

The post Announcing new products, new plans and a bold new future appeared first on #1 Sales Funnel Builder For WordPress - Beautiful Checkout Pages & One Click Upsells.

In the vast world of eCommerce, live chat is gradually becoming a key element to conducting inbound and outbound customer communication.ive chat

Nothing can delight customers more than instant response and resolution whenever their needs arise.

Live chat offers remarkable speed and typically, a better resolution to customers as compared to other traditional support channels like phone and email.

As a result, live chat acts as an effective bridge between customers and businesses. It also influences customers positively to shop and visit the business again.

If you are an eCommerce business owner who is looking for innovative ways to increase revenue, you may consider implementing a live chat button on your website.

In this article, we are going to discuss how live chat can lead to higher customer conversion rates and increased revenue.

What Is Live Chat Software?

Live chat software allows visitors to contact you directly within your website. It serves as an instant messenger where your clients can get in touch with you and request assistance or information in real-time.

Live chat software allows companies to offer better customer and IT support, gather feedback, enhance user experience, and eventually increase conversion rates.

Live Chat Statistics, Trends and Insights

Live chat is an important tool for marketing and sales. Not only does it let you help with sales in real time, but it also lets you start a conversation with potential customers. By using live chat, you can effectively navigate eCommerce challenges and ensure a personalized and responsive approach that resonates with consumer demand.

Let’s look at some interesting facts about how businesses have benefited from live chat over time:

• 63% of customers said that they would be more likely to come back to a website that has live chat than one that doesn’t.
• 44% of people who buy things online say that being able to talk to a real person when they have questions is one of the most important things a website can offer.
• 38% of customers said the chat itself was the reason they bought something.
• Live chat increases sales by 48% per chat hour and increases conversions by 40%.
• 59% of customers are more likely to buy from a brand when their questions are answered in less than a minute.
• If customers can’t find quick answers to their questions, 53% of them are likely to give up on their online purchases.

Live chat connects the personal, timely service that makes visitors loyal customers in the real world with the scalability of software and the return on investment (ROI) of automation.

It has given businesses a new way to sell and market themselves. This is the true nature of “conversational marketing.”

The Benefits of Live Chat for eCommerce Stores

Live chat is a cost-effective way to improve the customer experience and reduce the abandonment rate. It is a way for the company to provide personalized service and build relationships with their customers.

Studies have shown that live chat has been successful in reducing customer abandonment rates and increasing conversion rates. Live chat offers an opportunity for customers to ask questions, get support, or even buy products without having to wait on hold or go through several different channels. If you run an eCommerce store, live chat can deliver some tangible benefits, including:

Instant Service

No one has the time to sit down and write an email just to ask what colors of a coat are available. Having a live chat option will keep people from leaving their shopping carts empty.

Research shows that 57% of customers leave their shopping cart when they don’t get a quick answer to their question.

Most of the time, these customers won’t wait to send an email. Instead, they’ll go to another store.

Serving Multiple Customers Simultaneously

When a customer calls your helpline, you can only help one person at a time.

Statista says that 12% of customers complain about how slow customer service is. But live chat can solve this problem because your agent can talk to more than one customer at once.

Deliver Personalized Service Based on Shopping History

Live chat lets you give your customers more personalized service. There are certain live chat apps that allow your agents to see what customers have talked about, bought, and looked at in the past.

If a customer has a problem, you can start a chat with them after looking at their history and help them solve the problem.

The customer history can also help you make suggestions and recommendations that are more relevant to that person.

Save Time With Automation

The most up-to-date live chat apps have powerful automation tools. They let you send automated messages and respond with one click using customized replies.

Speaking of automation, there are also very useful technologies for ecommerce like ecommerce scraper. They help merchants find information about search pages and products, and thus better understand needs.

The app can also help your customers track their orders and let you set up rules for how things should work. Most queries are repetitive, but automation can save time.

Customers usually ask about the status of their orders, how to pay, and how to return items. If you can set their answer to be sent automatically, and your team can work on other tasks.

Increased Conversion

If you help your customers out and fix any problems with your product or service right away, they won’t hesitate to come back.

In fact, 40% of people who buy online and use live chat are more likely to buy online again.

A support system that is easy to understand may also make customers want to buy more from you. Customers will ask their questions right away, which can increase conversions.

Lead Generation

Not everyone buys something on their first visit to an eCommerce store.

Some just want to look around and see what’s there. Others might not be ready to trust a new retailer they haven’t used before.

In both situations, collecting leads is a great way to improve lead nurturing and, in the end, encourage the customer to buy.

If you use chat automation, you can generate leads even when your store is closed. This can help your business stand out from the rest.

How Can eCommerce Live Chat Improve Your Conversion Rate?

Live chat software is a great way for eCommerce store owners to increase their conversion rate. Including live chat on your website can improve the customer experience and your conversion rate.

Here’s how:

1. Tell People Where To Go

Live chat is the most popular way for customers to connect with businesses today. This means that a lot more people are likely to trust it more than other, more traditional ways to get in touch.

Pay close attention to which pages on a site get the most questions or live chat conversations. Then use those conversations as a starting point for your on-page optimizations.

Live chat is also a great way to stop customers from having problems in the first place.

For example, if you see a lot of chats on your pricing page asking for more information about the packages, you need to make that page more detailed so that your visitors can fully understand your pricing model.

2. Help People Before They Ask for it

No matter how nice your team is, your customers will be much happier if they never need to contact you for help.

By looking at which pages the user visited and how long they spent on each page, you can give your support staff the information they need to start a chat.

You could ask the user if they have a question after they’ve been on the page for 30 seconds, scrolled a certain amount, or interacted with a module on the page (like a calculator).

Your checkout page is a good place to try this out.

It’s a place where visitors can often get confused. Data shows that many customers give up on making a purchase at this point.

3. Make It Easy for Visitors

If you’re on more than one social media platform, make sure that all questions and comments from customers on each platform are answered.

Many times, a customer sees something on a social media channel and tries to get in touch with the brand but that channel does not have chat support.

Because of this, many customers tend to stop caring about those businesses.

If you use multiple social media channels to promote your business, you should make sure you offer omnichannel support by integrating all of your social media channels into your support system.

4. Target Visitors on the Right Pages

We recommend businesses offer live chat on only a few pages where it makes sense.

You should ideally put live chat on the pages where you get the most questions or where you think people are most likely to be confused or nervous.

Your sales or price pages are a great example of this.

You may also want to think about the account management and preferences page, the user management panel, the first time you see your product or product dashboard, and the first time you see your documentation.

5. Offer a Pre-chat Survey

People generally don’t like to repeat themselves. By asking a customer for information and making sure your team reads it, you can give your customer service agent important information about the problem a customer is having.

You can save this information in your live chat system so that anyone else who talks to this customer can also see the information about their past questions.

Keeping everyone in the loop helps make sure that all of your users have the same experience.

6. Keep It Personal

People don’t want to talk to robots. Encourage your support team to match the customer’s tone and try to be as friendly as possible.

Modern consumers care more about getting along with and being able to trust the brands where they shop than about the products and prices.

Live chat is a quick and easy way to turn visitors into customers. In this situation, personalization is a big help!

How Much Can Live Chat Increase Conversion Rates?

Live chat is more than just a way to talk to people; it also increases the number of people who buy something from a website.

Live chat has become the most popular way to increase sales and conversion rates. 46% of customers who use the internet prefer live chat to email, and 16% prefer social media.

If a visitor chats with you first, they are 82% more likely to become a customer. Also, their accounts are worth 13% more than those where the business didn’t talk to the customer first.

Encouraging real-time conversations isn’t just nice to have, it’s also a great way to capture and convert website visitors.

One reply in live chat can make a visitor 50% more likely to convert, and another reply makes them 100% more likely to convert.

A simple conversation with six messages back and forth increases the chance that a visitor will become a customer by 250%.

Live chat bridges the gap between the personal, timely service that makes us loyal customers in real life and the scalability of software and the ROI of automation.

Measuring the Effectiveness of Live Chat

Live chat offers an opportunity for customers to ask questions, get support, or even buy products without having to wait on hold or go through several different channels. While it is considered as an effective channel, it is hard to measure the effectiveness of live chat in order to know if this investment is worth it or not.As data drives decisions, so measuring the effectiveness of live chat is essential.

You could measure:

First Response Time

When customers have a question or concern, they want a quick answer, preferably within seconds. On average, it takes 56 seconds for a live chat to respond to the first question.

So the goal is to talk to customers for the first time in less than a minute.

The good news is companies with live chat can cut the time it takes to answer the first question significantly.

Live chat agents should be online when your customers are, and they should be able to connect with them almost right away.

This means that if you can’t offer live chat support 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, you should turn off the feature or clearly notify when you’re not available.

Average Response Time

The Average Response Time (ART) is the average amount of time it takes for an agent to answer a question.

Since live chat lets the agent and the customer talk to each other in real time, it’s much easier for agents to quickly understand and solve customer questions.

If your ART is high, these things could be to blame:

• Agents don’t have enough training.
• Agents have too much work to do and might not have the right tools to help customers more quickly.
• It could mean that the product has bigger problems that can’t be fixed quickly.

Customer Satisfaction Score

CSAT scores let you know how happy customers are with your company or product.

In order to figure out a person’s CSAT score, they are often asked a single question or a set of questions in the form of a survey sent at the end of a conversation.

For instance:

How would you describe your experience on our website as a whole?

• Highly dissatisfied
• Dissatisfied
• Neutral
• Satisfied
• Extremely happy

If you find that visitors describe their website visit experience as highly dissatisfied or dissatisfied, you might want to take a look at the following reasons:

Let’s quickly look at why your score might be low:

• Long time to first answer.
• Agents took a long time to find a solution to a problem.
• I didn’t know enough about the product.
• Low first response SLA percent, which can be caused by making too many promises and not following through.

What Is the Best Live Chat Software for eCommerce?

There are a number of live chat applications out there, so choice isn’t something you’re short of.

We consider the following to be worth your time.

ThriveDesk

ThriveDesk is the lightest live chat software specifically built for eCommerce websites.

You can reach more customers for your online store with a variety of built-in capabilities including instant reply, file sharing directly from the chat widget, emojis, integrations with your favorite services, reports for your eCommerce sales tracking, and monitoring.

Pros and Cons

Tidio

Tidio is a customer communication software aimed at improving customer support and experience for businesses. The tool combines a live chat, chatbots, ticketing systems, multichannel support, and an NLP chatbot Lyro.

Tidio is made to be affordable to SMBs, which makes it stand out from most advanced support tools on the market. Tidio can help businesses increase conversions, improve efficiency, and automate customer service while offering fast and efficient support.

Pros and Cons

Gorgias

Gorgias is a one-stop shop for merchants who require customer support, customer service, and a live chat help desk all in one place.

The solution integrates seamlessly with Shopify, BigCommerce, Magento, and WooCommerce. It has a good list of features, such as email integration, autoresponders, ticket management, and intent detection.

Pros and Cons

Zendesk

Zendesk is one of the largest and best-known CRM service providers with a comprehensive live chat solution.

With a real-time chat facility, Zendesk enables you to initiate targeted and customer behavior-driven chats, send files, ask customers to rate chats, change the company logo, and a lot more.

Pros and Cons

WSChat – ELEX WordPress Live Chat Plugin

WSChat is a highly efficient WordPress live chat plugin that allows website owners to communicate with their customers in real time. The plugin provides a user-friendly interface that can be customized to match website branding. 

The WSChat plugin includes the ability to initiate chat sessions, the ability to view chat history, direct WooCommerce integration, integration with Google Dialogflow, live visitor monitoring and a whole lot more.

Pros:

• Easily installed and set up with no technical knowledge required.
• Can be customized to match the design of your website.
• Supports real-time chat so visitors can get answers to their questions quickly.
• Manage agent availability and provide offline messages.

Cons:

• The free version of the plugin has fewer capabilities than the premium version.

Intercom

Intercom has been one of the best live chat applications around since 2011.

It is branded as the conversational connection platform that supports the development of customer relationships through live chat. With proactive chat, self-service choices, and human help, Intercom offers improved conversational support.

Pros and Cons

Freshdesk

Freshdesk is a cloud-based customer support solution that helps you engage with customers through various channels.

It has some extensive features like campaigns, sales bots, integrated self-service, intelligent message routing, canned responses, customizable branding, and supportive integrations.

Pros and Cons

Olark

Olark is straightforward, highly customizable, and one of the cheapest options for small businesses.

With a bunch of automation features, you can change the colors, position, and shape of chat boxes, also add welcome text, and a customer support agent photo, including integrations with CRM software.

Pros and Cons

Drift

Drift is another live chat platform that focuses on generating and qualifying leads, and has a strong integrations library.

It is a powerful piece of software that offers conversation-like communication on websites including features like smart notification, email playbook, saved replies, enriched data, and activity history.

Pros and Cons

How to Set up Live Chat for Conversion

You should follow a proper strategy to gradually roll out live chat to your audience.

We’re going to walk you through the entire process step by step.

Step 1: Limit Chat Support in the Beginning

If you put a chat widget on every page and show it to every visitor, you could get so many messages that you’ll be overwhelmed.

Instead, choose the pages where live chat will be available first in a smart way.

Start small with a page that is important to your business and where letting customers chat will have the most impact. This could be your help center, pricing page, or checkout page.

Here are two things that might help you:

• If you only want to help existing customers at first, try only showing the chat widget to people who are logged in.
• If you want to get people to buy, start by only showing chat on your pricing page.

Step 2: Plan Ahead With Knowledge Base Articles and Saved Replies

A thorough knowledge base and a list of saved replies are two of the most important tools for speeding up chats.

Creating a collection of how-to articles and guides that show step-by-step how to do common tasks in your product. It should include videos, screenshots, GIFs or a combination of both. Did you know you can turn MP4 into GIF?

Saved replies can save you time if you are asked common questions.

Instead of typing the answer every time, send the perfectly written answer you saved for questions you knew they would ask.

Step 3: Make Sure Customer Information Is Easily Accessible

Being able to access information about your customers will help you have a better conversation, whether it comes from your CRM, a product analytics tool, or your help desk.

Customer information not only makes it easier for your support staff to help customers, but it also gives you an edge before you talk to a customer who is unhappy.

Step 4: Offer Chat Support Only When You Can

You should set the right expectations for your audience about when you’ll be available and how to reach you when you won’t be. A lot of business owners think that to offer chat, you have to be available all the time.

That’s not true.

Look at how many people are using chat at different times of the day and how many customer service agents are available.

When most customers are online and visiting the site, chat with them. When the number of chats is low, you can move chat agents to other projects.

Also, keep in mind that some problems need to be looked into more deeply. Your customer service team should know how to handle different kinds of problems through live chat.

Don’t waste your time or the time of your customer.

Step 5: Promote Live Chat As Your Preferred Support Channel

Start removing your phone number from pages where there is a chat widget. Promote chat as the best and quickest way to get help.

You have a lot of control over chat support, which is its best feature. You can plan to add chat depending on how many people you have on your team and how many people visit your website.

How busy your team is on chat is up to you alone.

As your team gets used to chat, you can let more and more customers use it

How to Offer Better Customer Service Through Live Chat

There are a few things we recommend to enhance the customer experience when you use live chat.

Train Your Support Team

You should ensure your support team is well-versed in all your products. Agents should also be aware of and comprehend the operation of the live chat platform.

Practice mock chats to improve your preparedness. Mock chats as initial training will assist your agents in becoming acquainted with some FAQs and issues that your customers face.

Make certain that your agents have strong writing and communication skills. A live chat agent must be better at writing than any other type of customer service representative.

Make sure your agents have an engaging and friendly personality. Encourage them to exhibit friendly personality traits that will help them establish a positive customer connection and effectively move to the solution.

Response Times

Make sure your response times are as short as possible. Train your live chat agents to have multiple conversations at once, and keep the conversations short but helpful. Typing skills are extremely useful.

If the chat cannot be answered immediately, inform the customer, so they do not feel ignored.

Remember that the longer a customer waits for your response, the more likely it is that they will leave a negative review.

Keep Chat Visible, but Not Distracting

Assume a customer decides they have a question, require assistance, or have an issue that needs to be resolved. What happens next?

They shouldn’t have to waste time searching and scrolling through your website in order to find a representative.

The live chat feature must be easily accessible, or it will be ineffective. The best way to accomplish this is to include a live chat popup in the bottom right corner of your page.

It should not appear in such a way that it interferes with their website browsing experience. This may cause visitors to avoid initiating chat even when they require it.

Provide Transcripts

A website live chat service that allows you to access transcripts of your chats with website visitors is a must-have feature.

You can send the chat transcript to the user in order for them to keep a record of their interactions with your company, as well as send a copy to your email.

Use the transcript to segment leads based on the conversation you had with them. Then, to nurture them, create the necessary email campaign.

This saves time, improves the effectiveness of your sales process, and shortens the time it takes to close sales.

By paying attention to common words, phrases, and questions, you can better understand your website users’ thoughts, problems, and behavior by collecting chat transcripts.

You can use this data to improve your product or service and create more effective marketing campaigns.

Perform Surveys

Using surveys cuts set-up and administration costs significantly. You have the option of conducting a survey before and after each live chat session.

A pre-chat survey can help the agent route the customer while also providing some basic information.

Use pre-surveys to get answers to your customers’ questions as soon as possible.

A post-survey gives you the information you need to improve your customer service.

Final Words

Live chat is an effective bridge between customers and businesses. By incorporating live chat in your website, you can appear more approachable to your audience and your company can gain a competitive advantage over others in the market.

You can also interact with customers as they move through your live chat sales funnel in real time.

Furthermore, sales chat software allows you to approach visitors and tap into their thought process by understanding their browsing behavior.

In short, live chat allows your customers to eliminate any customer support hiccups that may be delaying things for them.

It even allows your operators to provide a solution that allows customers to make a decision faster.

Use chat wisely and your business is sure to see positive results!

This is a guest article contributed by Parvez Akther.

Parvez is the CEO & Founder of ThriveDesk. He loves to help other entrepreneurs build startups by sharing his own experiences and knowledge.

The post How to Maximize Conversions With eCommerce Live Chat appeared first on #1 Sales Funnel Builder For WordPress - Beautiful Checkout Pages & One Click Upsells.