Woocommerce extensions can make a real difference to your WordPress eCommerce site, but not all are equally good.
Before we go further into this lets take a look at WordPress as a eCommerce platform. WordPress began life as a blogging platform years back. However, it soon transformed into complete content management system. It soon became a trusted platform, which today can power all kinds of website even true eCommerce websites.
WordPress is perfect if you want complete control over your site and it is great if you want to implement a eCommerce store. For people that plan on starting from scratch and avoiding fees as they grow will benefit from WordPress. Remember though that some technicalities will be encountered. WordPress is created to be easy for beginners but it is not always a walk in the park.
WordPress may not be perfect for everybody building a eCommerce site. If you are not a technical person and you want technical issues and hosting to be taken care of for you – then WordPress is not a good choice for you. Similarly, it would not be right if you are planning to use fully integrated inventory and payment systems from the start without the help from a developer.
Why WooCommerce?
Basically, WooCommerce is just one of the many eCommerce plugins for WordPress. However, it is very hard to find something that has the same potential. Introduced in September 2011, WooCommerce grew to become one of the World’s most dominant eCommerce extensions. At present, it has more than 1.6 million downloads around the world.
There are plenty of eCommerce extensions for WordPress to choose from. Among them, WooCommerce is a standout. If you are a newbie, the biggest advantage you can get from using Woocommerce is possibly its flexibility and ease of use. With WooCommerce you can play more with your products even if you are not a technical genius.
Lets take a good look at our top ten WooCommerce extentions.
WooCommerce Recover Abandoned Cart
The main purpose of WooCommerce Recover Abandoned Cart extension is to recover abandoned carts to increase your sales. Abandoned carts happen because of different reasons. Sending out emails and following them up is your best option of recovering abandoned carts. This is precisely what this extension does. It will monitor carts abandoned by visitors and members and capture them. It then sends out emails automatically. Mail templates are used in sending out notices at particular times, to recover abandoned carts. The cart link is included in the email. You can specify the number of email templates for follow ups.
The advantage of this feature is that the first mail can be sent without a coupon. If the buyer does not respond a follow up mail can then be sent with coupon. This will entice the buyer to purchase a product. Purchases are tracked through cookies. This plugin works for guests and members both. If it is a member who abandoned the cart, it will be captured automatically. If it is a guest who did it, he or she will be required to input an email address in the checkout page. Once it is done, the cart will be captured.
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WooCommerce Customer Relationship Manager
With WooCommerce Customer Relationship Manager, adding and editing your clients has never been easier. With this plugin, your mails and calls can be logged. With just a click, you have the option of sending out mails to your customers singly or in bulk. You may also filter your clients according to their products, status and others. Customers can be designated as prospect, lead or other designations you like for each of them. With this plugin, you can create a new customer and place orders then send a mail or call. Customers can be managed through dynamic or static groups.
When you add or edit customer, you only need to click on the “Add Customer” button. There are some fields that you need to fill up like birthday, Twitter and Skype address. If you like, you can create additional fields through the Advanced Custom Fields extension, which is added for free. If you want to know your customers more closely, you can utilize the integrated Google Maps, which will show the location of a particular customer.
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WooCommerce Products Designer
WooCommerce Products Designer is a print solution that is powerful. It aims to help clients customize and design shirts, business cards logos and other prints before order. The plugin is incorporated with unlimited fonts. You can manage fonts easily and any web font you want can be added or removed quickly. It also has cliparts libraries that will come in handy. By providing clients with beautiful graphics and clip arts, you can boost their creativity. A price can also be placed on each clip art to increase your final design price.
The plugin provide complete control over your customer uploads, which is done by defining the least amount of file extensions and dimensions. Image filters are also included to provide photo editing effects like invert, grayscale, emboss, sepia1, blur, sepia 2 and sharpen.
Other features of WooCommerce Product Designer include templating system, vectors integration, custom color palette, social networks integration, orders attachments, advanced design pricing, advanced PDF generation, high quality output, designs and order history and automatic updates.
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WooCommerce Mailchimp Discount
If you want your newsletter signup to increase by 25 to 50 percent, WooCommerce Mailchimp Discount will help you. Proven to increase newsletter signups, this plugin will lengthen your Mailchimp list through a onetime discount, once a customer subscribes to your listing. It incorporates a Mailchimp subscription popup to your site automatically. This can then be used for capturing emails. Once a user subscribes to your list successfully, he will get a coupon code.
Every time there is a new newsletter signup, WooCommerce Mailchimp Discount generates a coupon code automatically. The action is based on admin settings. The coupon code is then sent to the email address registered in your website.
The plugin comes with a robust admin backend for easy customization. You can setup discounts for customers that signup easily. You also have a couple of options, which will allow valid users to get a coupon exclusively. See this plugin live by clicking on the demo page link I have included above.
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Custom Thank You Pages Per Product for WooCommerce
As the name suggests, Custom Thank You Pages Per Product for WooCommerce plugin will allow you to specify a customized thank you page for every product. It provides a couple of link options. You can link to custom URL’s outside of your site or link with other pages that are within your WordPress website. If a client placed several items in the cart, he will be directed to a WooCommerce default page.
There are several ways in which you can use this plugin. You can make upsellpages for particular products. You can make a customized download for all products in your site or send your membership site to new user dashboards. In addition, you can also create a link to affiliate website through a custom URL.
To better understand the good features that are incorporated with Custom Thank You Pages Per Product for WooCommerce plugin, click on the demo link I have included above.
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Woof WooCommerce Products Filter
This is a powerful products filter plugin for WooCommerce. It will allow you to extend functionality, allowing website users to conduct their search according to categories, tags, custom product attributes, price or custom taxonomies.
Woof WooCommerce Products Filter comes with plenty of extensions. These include search by text, taxonomy range slider, search by SKU, image, color, labels, in stock checkbox, on sale checkbox and more.
If you are a PHP or WP developer youcan use WOOF to make your project more extraordinary using WOOF default and API extensions. If you are not satisfied with regular WooCommerce options or want to add better customer filters, you can try WOOF. In fact, the developers are so sure about this plugin that they are offering a test drive for WOOF. That means that you can use it for free. If you are not satisfied with the result, you do not have to buy it.
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WooCommerce PDF Invoice
You will find this plugin to be rich in features and very professional. It also has premium support so if you really mean business, WooCommerce PDF Invoice extension is the perfect choice.
Invoicing extensions such as WooCommerce PDF Invoice are not regular plugins. The documents must be compatible with accounting regulations and standards. The plugin itself should also be perfect. One defect can mean more expenses for you later on. Thus, countless hours were spent in reading accounting standards to develop a product that is the most professional invoicing extension for WooCommerce in the World.
The plugin allows for fully automatic invoicing. The invoices are automatically generated for each new order. It integrates closely with WooCommerce with the PDF invoice documents attached to regular WooCommerce emails. The plugin detects currencies automatically. When you buy this extension, you can expect it to work perfectly out of the box. Just activate and go.
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WooCommerce All In One Currency Converter
If you are using WooCommerce for your online store, this plugin is a must have. If you are marketing to customers from across the globe, you should not leave home without it.
With WooCommerce All in One Currency Converter, your users will be able to select their preferred currency. They can also set currency automatically through the geolocation function in WooCommerce. The currencies can be selected from the selections you have made in the plugin settings page.
There are two methods of conversion available in this plugin. You may convert currency for payment or complete conversion or do a conversion for user reference. This extension updates exchange rates every 24 hours automatically. If you so choose, you may also do the conversion manually. WooCommerce All in One Currency Converter is compatible with all payment gateways like PayPal. And just like all plugins created for WordPress, updates are done automatically for this extension.
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WooCommerce MultiStep Checkout Wizard
The importance of the checkout page can never be underestimated. In fact, it can be said that it is the most vital part of an eCommerce website. If your clients find it difficult to go through the checkout process, they may leave and not come back again.
With WooCommerce MultiStep Checkout Wizard, you can boost your conversion rate through a more simplified checkout process. The extension will create a checkout wizard by means of cutting various parts of the default WooCommerce checkout page. Thus, users would have a more enjoyable shopping experience in your store.
The plugin is incorporated with a responsive design. It comes with multiple styles and is WPML compatible. The extension can be fully customized through the options page. In addition, it also has vertical and horizontal orientation, cross browser compatibility and form validation for all steps.
People that have used the WooCommerce MultiStep Checkout Wizard loved how this plugin improved their checkout pages. Try it yourself now.
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Shop as Customer for WooCommerce
With this plugin, shop managers and store administrators will be able to shop at their frontend stores just like regular users. They will be able to use every functionality that works only on the cart or product pages but not on the admin order page. They will also be able move normally just like a customer.
Once you have installed Shop as Customer for WooCommerce plugin, the admin can switch to another user easily with a couple of clicks. He could then shop on the store as the user would see, with all plugins and functionalities that can only be seen by the user working optimally. Once a cart has been made for a user while shopping as a customer, the shop manager or admin will now have convenient buttons to email invoices to user for link to the order or payment directly.
With this plugin, you will be able to switch to any client quickly. You can use and view your store as a customer and switch back as admin quickly. This extension is compatible with plugins that are specific to users or cart and product pages. You may make and send invoices quickly and easily so there will be no issues with Admin Orders screen.
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How to Choose the Right eCommerce Extension for Your Needs
eCommerce extensions like WooCommerce abound on the internet. What really matters depend on what you want out of it.
It is very similar to buying a car. The most essential requirement is to get from one point to another. In the case of eCommerce, you need a way to sell your products. And you need a high converting shopping cart. That is the basic need.
But just like other purchases, there is more than meets the eye. To make the most out of your plugin, consider your budget. If you are going to buy something, you know that your budget ultimately decides things. The more budget you have, the more interesting features you will get. Conversely, there are affordable options available but be ready to do more work.
Consider how easy it is to use a plugin. Something that works and user friendly are quite different. Some developers emphasize features over design. This is something that you have to decide on. Do you prefer the best options and features with ugly buttons or stunning interface over ambiguous features?
Other things to consider when getting a WooCommerce plugin are customer support, transferability, customization, content marketing, security, custom web design and speed.
Please share your thoughts and insights. Good luck.