Looking for a reason to build a WordPress Ecommerce site for your small business? How about the fact it runs 34% of the Internet? Or that it powers almost 15% of the top 100 websites worldwide?
Small Business Trends talked with William Patton, Theme Review Team lead for wordpress.org – WordPress Developer and some other experts. Here’s 10 awesome tips for WordPress Ecommerce to propel your enterprise.
WordPress Ecommerce Tips
Balance Images With SEO
He started our conversation stressing the importance of balancing images with SEO.
“The first thing you need to understand about selling with WordPress is images are what people buy with,” he says. “You need to balance that with knowing search engines can’t see them.”
That’s why he suggests balancing the two together. You can’t neglect one for the other.
“You need good images and good descriptive text.”
As far as your pictures go, you can balance them with good SEO technique through title tags. Adding a keyword in your image title and alternate text areas works.
Use the Right Contact Methods
Patton says there’s three big ways customers will contact you.
“People want to get in touch by email, phone or Live Chat,” he says. “A lot of sites don’t provide at least one of those three things.”
Here’s a link to the Live Chat plugin. Depending on your target market, you might need a combination of these or all three. If you’re going to use the chat option, keep in mind you need to be responsive. This only works if you’re ready to answer questions and respond to queries quickly.
For e-commerce sites, it all comes down to one simple idea.
“People have questions they need answered before they buy,” Patton says.
Use Email Remarketing
This technique works well with a discount. Patton explains the thinking here.
“Try to offer someone a discount on a product to get a sale you otherwise wouldn’t have. That’s always better than not making one.”
You’ll need to look outside WordPress here. They don’t have a plugin. Try Mailchimp.
Pick Your Features Beforehand
A little design preparation goes a long way. You need to have a rough idea of what you want your site to look like. Otherwise you can get bogged down in the thousands of WordPress theme choices. You will be asked to make a few selections including layout, features and subject. The last one is an easy box to check. There is an e-commerce category.
Consider Color
You need to keep in mind that visuals are very important for online marketing. Brand recognition is fueled by color. If you’ve already got a logo and some marketing done, try to coordinate your theme.
Remember that research shows customers prefer lighter colors to darker ones. You should also consider purchasing a premium theme.
Make Sure You’re Mobile Friendly
These days you need to be mobile friendly or you will lose sales. Patton says this means paying special attention to the theme you pick. If it’s more than five years old, it might not have the necessary tweaks.
“Any sites focusing on redesigns really need to look into this.”
Target High End Clients
If you’re targeting high end clients, you’ll more than likely want to focus on Apple devices. An iPhone has more pixels working on resolutions and other smart phones.
“On the high-end versions, that can mean up to 1000 pixels in a very small space,” Patton says.
Long story short is you need to focus on really high-end resolution images. Get some info on how to do this here.
Target Slow Connections
Your target market might be customers in developing countries with slow Internet connections. Low-resolution pictures are better in this situation. They don’t hamper your mobile site from loading and possibly cost you a sale.
Pick a Good Host
After you’ve gone through what you need to do to put a WordPress e-commerce site together, don’t skimp on the host. Remember cheaper isn’t better. Inexpensive hosts tend to crown lots of websites on one server.
That translates into a slow web experience and lost sales.
Get Yoast
Yoast SEO is another must when you’re putting together a WordPress e-commerce site. With all the talk about mobility and the right themes, you can’t forget about content. Making sure you get traffic to your website is a marketing necessity.
This tool will analyze any of your blog posts and pages. It gives you advice on how to do everything from writing meta tags to choosing keywords. There is even a readability score coaching you on how to make your content more search engine friendly.
Don’t overlook this easy to use marketing tool.
Finally, take a look at how fast your pages load in WordPress. Here’s a tool you can use.
Image: Depositphotos.com