WooCommerce Subscriptions

WooCommerce is one of the leading ecommerce solutions available today. It is available completely free of charge to download and is open-source as well. Thanks to a combination of these characteristics, WooCommerce enjoys a healthy community of third-party developers who’re consistently developing and updating various plugins meant to add functionality to the core feature set of the platform.

By default, WooCommerce allows users to sell products (tangible and intangible) through its platform. These products should have a one-time price, which is set when the product is being added. However, there is no way to offer products that are based on a subscription payment model. Recurring payments simply aren’t built into the default features of the platform.

To enable users who want to be able to sell products or services based on a subscription payment model, there are several WooCommerce subscription plugins available. These plugins allow you to setup advanced subscription payment systems on your WooCommerce store.

In this article, we’ll be looking at some of the most popular WooCommerce subscription plugins available. We’ll tell you how to get these plugins, the features that they offer, and whether they’re good value (in case of premium plugins).

The Need for WooCommerce Subscriptions

As mentioned before, WooCommerce does not have a feature for accepting recurring payments. Recurring payments are a necessity if you’re going to offer subscription-based products.

And the market is certainly there for such kind of functionality, as the following kinds of products and services can be sold on a subscription payment model:

• Online courses or tutorials
• Donations for a cause
• Memberships
• Software products with limited licensing periods

Clearly, by not offering recurring payments in its default feature set, WooCommerce seems to be missing out on crucial functionality. However, as previously mentioned, there are some comprehensive subscription plugins available that do this job very well.

The WooCommerce Subscriptions Extension

The aptly named WooCommerce Subscriptions extension lets you create and manage products with recurring payments. That’s really just the tip of the ice berg, as there’s a lot more that this plugin can do.

Using this plugin, you can create subscription-based products that deduct payment from the customer at whatever interval you choose. So, for example if you want to offer a ‘product of the month’ subscription service, the customer will be deducted a set amount each month to be able to receive the product of the month of your store.

Similarly, if you want to offer a software product whose license needs to be renewed each year, you can do exactly that using this plugin. There’s a lot that this plugin can do, so let’s have a look at its various features.

Features

1.Free Trials and Sign Up Fees

If you want to offer a free trial to your customers to test out your product, you can do so with this plugin. It’s up to you whether you want to collect payment information before the start of the free trial.

If you’d like to charge an initial amount (sign up fees) to account for setup costs, you can do that as well.

2. Variable Subscriptions

You might have come across subscription products that have variable pricing depending on the number of features offered with them. Using the variable subscriptions feature of this plugin, you’ll be able to create products that are offered with a tiered subscription pricing model.

An example of this would be a software product, where paying more would get the user advanced features. What’s more, with this feature the customer can also choose their own billing schedule, and you can choose to offer discounts if the customer chooses to commit to longer payment intervals.

3. Subscription Management

This plugin gives store admins access to full-featured subscription management, allowing them to:

• Cancel or suspend a subscription
• Change trial expiration (in case customer asks for extension)
• Add items (for custom subscription options)
• Modify recurring total for future payments

4. Customer Subscription Management

Customers who’re subscribed to one of your products / services can manage their subscriptions in the following ways:

• Suspend or cancel a subscription
• Change shipping address or payment method (for future renewals)
• Upgrade or downgrade their subscription

5. Flexible Product Options

Subscriptions allows you to create downloadable, virtual or physical products. You can charge the renewal payments for your products on a weekly, monthly or annual basis. You can also set a per-person purchase limit for the product. Simply put, WooCommerce Subscription allows you to tailor your subscription plans exactly as you want them to be.

6. Subscription Coupons

You can offer your customers a discount on their recurring payments or just the sign-up fee with the coupons feature of the Subscriptions plugin.

7. Customer Emails

Keep your customers aware about the status of their subscription plan through emails. WooCommerce Subscriptions allows you to send emails when a renewal payment is processed, a subscription is canceled or when a subscription has expired.

WooCommerce Subscriptions Plugin Pricing

WooCommerce Subscription certainly adds a lot of value to your store, and in some cases can be absolutely necessary. The subscription payment model is quite popular as it allows you to calculate exactly how much revenue you store can generate.

WooCommerce Subscription is a premium plugin, and is offered with the following price plans:

Price Plan	Single Site	5 Sites	25 Sites
Cost	$199	$249	$399

 

$199 is certainly a lot of money to pay for a plugin, but then this plugin does come with a lot of built-in features. In case you purchase this plugin and aren’t satisfied with this performance and/or features, don’t worry – it comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee.

How to Use WooCommerce Subscriptions

Now that you’re aware of the various features and capabilities of the WooCommerce Subscriptions plugin, let’s look at how you can use it to create subscription-based products.

Creating a Subscription Plan

To create a new subscription plan, navigate to Products > Add Products from your WordPress / WooCommerce admin. On the Add New Product screen, select Simple Subscription or Variable Subscription as the product type. Variable subscriptions will be explained in a later section.

Set the terms for subscription including Sign-up fee, billing interval, billing period, length, price and trial period as per your requirements. After this, simply Publish the product to take it live.

Variable Subscription

The variable subscription product type allows you to have several variations of the same subscription product. Each variation of the subscription product has its own unique settings and values.

Each variation of a Variable Subscription can have its own:

• Product attributes
• Sign-up fee
• Trial period
• Recurring price
• Billing period
• Subscription length

Basically, it’s a different product but it’s packaged under a common name.

Setting up Payment Schedule

Whatever kind of payment schedule you have in mind for your subscription products, be assured that WooCommerce Subscriptions will be able to handle it.

The most basic setting you’ll have to configure when it comes to payment is choosing the intervals at which your customer will be charged for the subscription product. There’s a lot of flexibility when it comes to choosing the payment intervals. For example, you can charge customers on a daily, weekly, monthly or annually.

Want to bill customers after every 2nd month? Simply set the Subscription Price to every 2nd month.

Want to bill customers quarterly? Set the price to every 3rd month.

Understanding Trial Periods and Sign Up Fees

WooCommerce Subscriptions allows you to offer a trial period before the beginning of a subscription.

The trial period you set will be added to the length of the subscription. For example, if you create a subscription for 6 months with a 1-month free trial period, the subscription will expire after 7 months (assuming the customer decides to purchase your subscription after the trial period has ended).

Sign up fees are the fees that are charged initially upon beginning of a subscription plan. The total initial payment to be made by the customer will be a sum of the sign-up fees and the monthly price of the subscription plan. So, for example, a $5/month subscription plan with $5 sign-up fee will charge $10 for the first month.

If your subscription plan happens to have a free trial and a sign-up fee, only the sign-up fee will be charged upon the beginning of the trial period.

One Time Shipping

Normally, subscription products come with an initial shipping cost and recurring shipping costs on renewal orders. However, there are some subscription products that only need to charge for shipping once, at the start the of the subscription (mobile phones with a data plan, for example).

To handle such cases, WooCommerce Subscriptions offers store admins the option of one-time shipping, where the customer is charged for shipping only on the initial order.

To enable one-time shipping for a product:

1. Navigate to Products > Edit Product from the WordPress / WooCommerce admin
2. Select the product you’d like to activate one-time shipping on
3. Select shipping in the left menu
4. Tick the One time shipping checkbox
5. Click on Update to save changes

Please note that in order to avail the one-time shipping feature, your product must not have a free trial offer associated with it. The One Time Shipping feature is disabled if your product has a free trial. This is a limitation of the plugin itself.

WooCommerce Subscriptions Coupons

You can provide customers with discounts in the form of coupon codes. You can have discounts for sign-up fees and recurring payments. Please note that the coupon discount is applied to the total cost of the sign-up fee and the first payment. So, for example, a $25/month product with a $15 sign-up fee would cost the customer $40 initially. If a $10 coupon is applied, the upfront payment would come down to $30, and after that the customer would be charged the normal monthly fee i.e. $25/month.

If you want to discount all recurring payments, you can use a subscription-specific coupon to do exactly that.

Worth noting is that if your subscription period has no sign-up fee and a free trial, no discount can be applied since there’s no initial payment to be made in the first place.

Another limitation of the Subscriptions plugin is that there no way to create a coupon that discounts a set number of recurring payments.

Subscription Management

The plugin comes with a comprehensive set of subscription management options, allowing you to know the status of each individual subscription in great detail. Simply navigate to Subscriptions from your WooCommerce admin and for each subscription, you’ll find information for its current status, payment amount, start date, trial end date, next payment date and so on.

You can also search for a particular customer’s subscription by using name, address, email address or product name.

Alternative Plugins for WooCommerce Subscriptions

The WooCommerce Subscriptions plugin is quite comprehensive in its functionality. It offers everything you’d want from a subscriptions plugin, but it isn’t the only subscription plugin available for the platform.

Plugin	Price
Subscriptions for WooCommerce by WebToffee	FREE
Subscriptio	$49
YITH WooCommerce Subscriptions	FREE
SUMO Subscriptions	$39

 

In fact, there are several other plugins that are quite popular with WooCommerce users, and that have proven to be great for creating and managing subscriptions within the platform. Let’s have a look at some notable WooCommerce Subscriptions alternatives.

1. Subscriptions for WooCommerce by WebToffee – Free Subscriptions Plugin

The Subscriptions for WooCommerce plugin by WebToffee is a great free alternative that has many of the features as the premium $199 plugin. It allows you to create simple and variable subscription products, and you can create subscriptions out of different kinds of products (physical, downloadable or virtual).

The plugin gives you flexibility to set the billing period of your choice, as well as the interval at which the customer should be billed. The plugin is quite simple and straightforward to use, adding the ‘simple subscription’ and ‘variable subscription’ product types to the product dropdown so you can easily create a subscription product.

Some noteworthy features of this plugin are:

• Absolutely free to download and use
• Flexible billing intervals and periods. You have the choice of setting these in days, weeks, months or years.
• Option to renew subscriptions manually or automatically. Automatic renewals are dependent on the payment gateway you are using.
• Mixed checkout option, which allows customers to purchase a subscription product and a normal product in the same order, saving overhead costs such as transaction fees by combining the orders into one.
• Comprehensive subscription management.

In fact, this plugin is quite close in functionality to the premium WooCommerce Subscriptions plugin mentioned earlier. If you’re on a budget and want to offer subscription products on your WooCommerce-powered website, be sure to try this plugin.

2. Subscriptio – Cheap WooCommerce Subscription Plugin

With more than 4,000 downloads on CodeCanyon.net, Subscriptio is the most popular alternative premium subscriptions plugin for WooCommerce. Looking at its list of features and functions, it’s not hard to see why either.

Most of the features you’ll find in the $199 WooCommerce Subscriptions plugin can be found in Subscriptio. It allows you to create simple and variable subscriptions products, and of course adds recurring payments functionality to WooCommerce which allows you to sell subscription-based products like magazines, memberships, online courses and so on.

Flexible billing periods and intervals are offered by this plugin, as is the ability to setup manual, automatic or semi-automatic billing. Please note that fully automatic billing (automatic renewals) are only supported out of the box for PayPal and Stripe. You’ll need to configure other payment gateways in order for automatic billing to work with them.

Mixed checkouts are also supported, which means that subscription and normal products can be purchased within the same order by a customer.

What makes this plugin so compelling is that it’s premium, yet offered at a quarter of the price of WooCommerce Subscriptions. By paying $49, you’re entitled to future updates and 6 months of support from plugin developer RightPress. It’s worth noting that with the $199 WooCommerce Subscriptions plugin, you only get updates for a year, after which you have to pay again in order to continue receiving updates.

3. YITH WooCommerce Subscription – Basic, Free Subscription Plugin

YITH WooCommerce Subscription is a fairly basic subscription plugin for the platform, whose most prominent feature is perhaps its free price tag. We say basic because it allows you to create subscriptions out of virtual products only, which means shippable products are out.

Also, the billing periods and intervals are fairly limiting, as you only have the option of billing customers daily or monthly using this plugin.

So, with such basic functionality, why are we including it on this list? We understand that not everyone is looking for the most complete subscription plugin out there, and for such users the YITH WooCommerce Subscription plugin presents a basic and lightweight option. Its bare feature set means that it’s not going to be too taxing on the performance of your website. And if you’re only interested in offering basic subscriptions for virtual products (like online courses), this plugin might just be what you’re looking for.

4. SUMO Subscriptions

With a nearly 5-star rating on CodeCanyon, SUMO Subscriptions is definitely one of the most well-rated subscription plugins available for WooCommerce. It is advertised as being the “#1 most comprehensive WooCommerce Subscription Plugin”, a claim that invites us to look further into its features and functionality.

Starting with the usual features, SUMO Subscription has support for simple subscriptions, variable subscriptions and grouped subscriptions. But what caught our eye was a feature called order subscriptions. So, what exactly does this do?

Say that you order specific products from a store in the same quantity each month. This is a repeating order that is made every month from the same store. Wouldn’t it be convenient instead if you could setup a way to generate that order automatically? That’s what the order subscriptions feature allows a store’s customers to do. During checkout, the customer has the option of ticking the Order Subscription checkbox. If they tick this checkbox, they can then choose the duration and number of intervals for the subscription – just as they would for a normal subscription product. Certainly, an interesting and useful feature, both for the customer and your business.

Other than this novel feature, SUMO has all of the features that you would expect from a good subscription plugin. There’s a subscription management module, account management for customers, and automatic renewals (on PayPal).

It’s a good subscription plugin, and at $39 it’s quite budget-friendly as well. Our reason for placing it so down the list is because it hasn’t (yet) racked up many sales on CodeCanyon. Still, if you’re looking for a budget-friendly subscription plugin with Order Subscription feature, SUMO Subscriptions might be a good fit.

Why Subscriptions are Good for Your Ecommerce Business

A challenge for any ecommerce business is predicting its monthly revenue. Now, there are several techniques you can use to predict income, but by offering subscription-based products you can almost guarantee a certain amount of income for your business.

Subscription products can provide your business with a cushion, one which protects you against months where your sales fall off dramatically owing to any number of reasons. This is especially true for stores that are focused on selling a certain type of product (for example, it’s hard to sell kayaks or water sports equipment during winter).

Closing Thoughts

WooCommerce is a great platform for you to build your online store on. It is feature-rich by default and has a thriving plugin marketplace which ensures that there’s a pre-built solution for nearly any functional need that might crop up. What’s more, it’s free and fully customizable, so if you’re handy with the PHP programming language you can mold it into any shape or form.

As far as subscriptions functionality goes, you have quite a few options to choose from. Hopefully from this blog post you’ll be able to select a subscription plugin that will suit your budgetary and feature requirements.

Which subscription plugin do you use for your WooCommerce store? Please let us know in the comments below!

 

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WooCommerce Pricing

WooCommerce is the most popular ecommerce platform available today, powering over 30% of all online stores today. There are several reasons for its popularity, but perhaps the most important of those is that it’s open-source and complete free to use.  

Now, if you’re a store owner you might be thinking that WooCommerce is the best thing since sliced bread, since it’s free to use. Go deeper however into the workings of a typical WooCommerce store and you’ll find that it’s far from free. After acquiring WooCommerce (for free), you’ll need to face the costs associated with running a WooCommerce store.

Be in no doubt, there are several significant costs associated with running a WooCommerce store. Ones which, if you’re uninformed, can come as a surprise to you.

In this post we’ll be taking a detailed look at the various costs you can expect to run into if you’ve chosen to run your ecommerce business using WooCommerce.

Before Jumping on the WooCommerce Bandwagon

Before you choose to go with WooCommerce, we suggest you should start by creating a solid budget. This budget will serve as an important reference point when you’re building your WooCommerce store and will give you a perspective on the amount of money you’re spending.

In this post, we’ll construct a sample budget for a typical WooCommerce site. WooCommerce has a lot of flexibility when it comes to functionality and features, much of which comes from its thriving plugins ecosystem. Plugins can oftentimes be crucial to your business, but they’ll come at a cost. As such, it’s important to consult your budget and see if the plugin purchase upsets it or not.

Capabilities of Default WooCommerce

To give you an idea about the minimum amount of functionality you can expect from a WooCommerce store, let’s consider a barebones store (i.e. one without extensions). With this store, you should be able to:

• Sell products (physical, digital / downloadable)
• Calculate flat rate shipping
• Calculate taxes
• Accept payments through PayPal
• Accept credit card payments through the Stripe payment gateway
• Allow customers to manage their accounts

All of this functionality is available to you with default WooCommerce. If you had a feature in mind and it’s not here, you’re probably going to need a plugin.

A Look at Realistic WooCommerce Pricing

The above section was meant to give you an overview of the base functionality included with WooCommerce. Now, let’s look at the base costs involved with setting up a professional WooCommerce shop.

1. Hosting

Hosting is absolutely necessary if you’re planning to open an online shop. You’ll need hosting to install WordPress (and WooCommerce), and to store all your product databases and pictures.

Be on the lookout for discounts

Quality web hosting will cost you somewhere between 10 to 15 dollars a month, depending on your requirements. We recommend that you should purchase a hosting account that exceeds your store’s requirements. This way, you won’t run into any bottlenecks related to space or processing any time soon.

Saving a few dollars by opting for a cheaper hosting plan might lower your upfront costs, but it will create problems for you once the store starts getting regular traffic.

Tip: Some web hosts provide hosting plans where WordPress and WooCommerce come pre-installed. These plans will cost a bit more but can make things easier if you’re in a hurry.

Expected hosting cost: $10 – 15 per month.

2. Domain

You’re going to need a domain name for your online store so users can find it easily. Try to get a domain name ending with .com, .net, .co.uk and so on. The domain name should be easy to remember and pronounce (helps with word-of-mouth marketing as well).

Hosting companies allow you to register a domain name as well, but you can also buy it from other domain providers. Connecting a domain bought from another company might be a bit more time-consuming, so you can consider buying it from your hosting provider if you’re in a hurry.

Expected domain cost: $10 per year (can be more for in-demand domain names

3. SSL Certificate

Getting your ecommerce site SSL-certified is absolutely necessary in order to encrypt information transacted on your website. An ecommerce site that isn’t SSL-certified will have a (quite prominent) Not secure message displayed alongside its URL on the Chrome browser.

Typically, you can get it from your web host at no additional cost. If you’re purchasing the certificate from a third-party, expect to pay more than $50 annually.

Expected SSL certificate cost: $50 per year

4. Theme / Site Design

This is one area which most store owners fail to take into account when budgeting for a WooCommerce project. The user interface and design of your website will play a major role in how your visitors perceive you, so you have to make sure you get it right.

Thanks to abundant third-party developer support, there are lots of free themes available for WooCommerce. For site owners on a budget, this is great news. However, bear in mind that when you opt for a free WooCommerce theme, you’re foregoing support and the all-important theme updates. Because of this, our recommendation for site owners is to go for a premium paid theme, one which includes customer support and future updates.

Quikmart, a premium WooCommerce theme

When it comes to premium themes, there are certainly a lot of places to get them (ThemeForest and Template Monster, for example). You can expect to pay around $59 to $100 for a high quality WooCommerce theme. Even after you’ve deployed a theme, you might need to replace it for another. In fact, it’s not uncommon for most ecommerce sites to alter their design during the first year of operation.

If you want to truly make a statement by having a uniquely-designed website, you’ll need to hire a professional WooCommerce theme designer. These don’t come cheap, and you can expect pay hundreds if not thousands of dollars in this process. For small-to-medium business owners, this is not recommended.

Expected cost for premium theme: $59 – $100

5. WooCommerce Plugins / Extensions

This is the big one. If you require advanced functionality for your ecommerce business – functionality that isn’t quite available in default WooCommerce – you’ll have to opt for plugins. Now, plugins aren’t a big deal when it comes to overall costs, as long as you’re dealing with the free ones that is.

A lot of the times, you’ll need to take help from premium, paid plugins. These plugins come with support and future updates, which are always good to have if you expect to run a professional ecommerce store. But the thing is, premium plugins can end up being the most expensive portion of your yearly WooCommerce bill.

For example, WooCommerce Subscriptions (a premium plugin that enables recurring payments) costs a staggering $199 per year. Granted, the functionality it enables is quite impressive, but then it should be when you’re paying $199 a year. What’s more, chances are that you’ll be needing several of these premium plugins as your store continues to grow.

Marketing plugins, another popular category of extensions on WooCommerce, are also necessary but the good ones will cost you.

As such, we expect most small-to-medium WooCommerce stores to pay around $100-$300 in plugin fees on a yearly basis.

Expected cost for premium plugins: $100 – $300 (varies significantly depending on store requirements)

6. Security Considerations

If you’re running a professional ecommerce operation, ensuring the security of your store should be a top priority. This is especially the case if you’re running your WooCommerce site on a shared host (we’ll go into detail about shared hosting in a later section). In order to protect your site and the data it stores, you’ll need to opt for some sort of add-on security service.

Source: sucuri.net

Sucuri and Sitelock are solid in this regard, as they have a proven track record of protecting sites against hack attacks and malware. Of course, this extra layer of protection does come at a cost. Expect to pay more than $299 in additional security for your website.

You can talk to your web host for this as well, as most hosting providers have some sort of anti-malware protection available for a small fee.

Expected cost for website security: $299 per year

7. Developer Costs

If you’re well-versed with the WordPress platform, you probably won’t run into many troubles with your WooCommerce website. However, there may come a time when you need an expert to help with site maintenance or troubleshooting. WooCommerce’s popularity means that there’s no shortage of WordPress / WooCommerce experts around, but you can expect to pay a pretty penny for a good one.

Developer costs should also be considered if you’re planning to have custom functionality (which isn’t available through plugins) for your ecommerce website. Hiring a developer for this purpose can easily end up costing hundreds of dollars, if not thousands.

Expected costs for maintenance and custom functionality: Varies

Summary of WooCommerce Pricing and Costs

Pricing Factor	Cost
Hosting	$200/yr.
Domain	$12 / yr.
SSL Certificate	$50 / yr.
Theme	$60
Plugins (Optional)	~$200 / yr.
Site Security	$300 / yr.
Total	~$870 per year

 

Hidden Costs of WooCommerce – Online Transaction Charges

Up till this point, we have discussed the costs associated with setting up a professional WooCommerce site. However, there are still additional costs to consider – payment processing fees. Remember, this is a business after all and payment processing fees are just a cost that you’ll have to bear to run your business.

So, what are payment processing fees? Well, if you’re planning to take online payments, you’ll have to use some sort of payment gateway (like PayPal or Stripe). Both PayPal and Stripe are great payment gateways, but they do take their fair share of money.

Service fees for payment gateways or credit card processors vary, but you can generally expect to pay 2.9% (of sale amount) + $0.30 per transaction. So, for example if a customer buys an item worth $100, you’ll get $96.80 after payment processing fees. This might not seem like a big deal, but if you’re selling a large volume of products each month these transaction fees can quickly add up to a significant amount.

In fact, at the end of the year you can expect transaction fees to be one of the biggest costs you incur in the running of your ecommerce store.

PayPal vs Stripe for WooCommerce Payment Processing

PayPal is the default payment gateway for WooCommerce, and for the most part, it’s great. Its main competitor in this space is Stripe, which provides its own WooCommerce plugin for easy integration. So, with these two options available, which one should you choose? More importantly, which one will be cheaper in terms of fees and transaction charges?

Transaction Fees

As far as transaction fees go, both PayPal and Stripe deduct the same amount from each transaction conducted on your store. However, there is a small detail which you should be aware of.

For transactions of less than $10, PayPal charges 5% + $0.05. If your store mostly sells items that are priced below $10, this good be a deal breaker, because Stripe charges a flat 2.9% + $0.30 for any transaction made on your store.

Miscellaneous Fees

Stripe also comes ahead when it comes to miscellaneous fees, which the following table will demonstrate:

Type of Fee	PayPal Cost	Stripe Cost
Chargebacks	$20	$15
Charge cards from your site	$30/mo	None
Recurring billing	$10/mo	None
Fee to authorize a card	$0.30	None
Fee for additional cards	+1%	+1%
Fee for American Express	3.5%	2.9% + $0.30
Advanced fraud detection	$10/mo + $0.05 per transaction	Free

Judging from above, it’s quite easy to come to the conclusion that Stripe is the cheaper payment processing option. If Stripe is fully supported in the region you operate in, it’s a viable alternative to WooCommerce’s default payment processor – PayPal.

Ways to Lower Your WooCommerce Pricing and Costs

By now you should have a good idea about how much it costs to operate a WooCommerce store. If you find the costs to be higher-than-expected, don’t worry, this is fairly common among most site owners. However, if you’re keen on lowering your yearly WooCommerce expenditure, here are a few tips for lowering the costs of running your WooCommerce store:

1. Avoid Unnecessary Extensions

This one is simple to understand and implement. The fancy functionality provided by some premium plugins might sound tempting to you, but you have to realize that the associated costs can quickly become a burden on your budget. To avoid spending unnecessarily on extensions, you should make it your goal to understand the features and offerings of the WooCommerce platform.

Once you know how to take full advantage of this plugin, along with knowledge of its limitations, you’ll be in a better position to judge whether to spend extra on an extension.

2. Look for Free Alternatives to Premium Extensions

If you want the functionality of a particular premium extension but can’t quite afford it, consider using a free plugin instead. WooCommerce has hundreds of free extensions available, so it might be worth your while searching for the functionality you’re looking for within these extensions.

For example, the free WooCommerce Subscriptions plugin by WebToffee is an excellent alternative to the premium WooCommerce Subscriptions plugin ($199/year).

Granted, you won’t be getting much in the way of customer support or guarantee of updates with free plugins. But for some business owners, a free plugin means that they’re able to provide the functionality that their business absolutely needs. Also, you can always upgrade to a premium plugin in the future when your business starts to generate healthy revenue.

3. Look for Cheaper Alternatives to Expensive Plugins

If you’ve found a premium plugin that you like but don’t have the budget for it, consider searching for a cheaper alternative instead. You can find plenty of premium plugins which basically offer the same functionality, but at varying price levels.

When considering premium subscription plugins for example, you have SUMO Subscriptions ($39), Subscriptio ($49) and WooCommerce Subscriptions ($199/year). Now, all of these broadly offer the same functionality, but the price different amongst them is readily apparent.

Remember, always note down the requirements you have and then search for the cheapest premium plugin that satisfies those requirements. You might even come across free plugins that will do the job, but those usually don’t come with customer support or a guarantee of future updates.

4. Avail Discounts by Choosing Annual Hosting Plans

This one doesn’t just concern WooCommerce sites, but sites in general. Most web hosts are willing to grant you a healthy discount if you opt to be billed on an annual basis. This does mean a significantly higher upfront price, but if you’re planning to save in the long term, you can cut down hosting costs by 40 – 50%.

5. Try Different Plugins Using WooCommerce’s 30-Day Money-Back Policy

If you’re looking for plugins on the official WooCommerce Extensions Store, you should consider taking advantage of their 30-day refund policy. This should make up for the fact that you don’t get a trial period for testing the plugins. After all, it can be quite costly for your business if you purchase a $299/year plugin but find out later that it doesn’t do what you were hoping it would.

WooCommerce Pricing vs Shopify Pricing – How Does Woocommerce Stack Up Against Its Biggest Competitor?

The biggest competition that WooCommerce faces in the ecommerce space is from hosted ecommerce solutions. Hosted ecommerce platforms offer a compelling alternative to WooCommerce as they’re usually much easier to launch a business with and you don’t have to worry about site maintenance or security as it’s already taken care of.

Shopify is a leading hosted ecommerce platform and one of WooCommerce’s fiercest rivals. It’s the most popular hosted ecommerce platform, and its adoption rate shows consistent growth year after year.

So, if you’re looking to open an ecommerce store, which one will be cheaper? The answer to that question lies in the requirements of your business. Let’s look at Shopify’s price plans:

Shopify Price Plan	Price Per Month
Basic Shopify	$29
Shopify	$79
Advanced Shopify	$299

 

The cheapest Shopify plan which lets you build an online store is Basic Shopify. At just $29, it’s well under what you’ll be paying for a similar WooCommerce-powered store. For small business owners, Shopify is an easy recommendation.

However, if you’re planning to offer advanced functionality (like gift cards, coupons and so on), you’ll have to opt for the more expensive Shopify plans, at which point the cost per year will start approaching what we calculated for a decent WooCommerce store. Also, you’ll have to use plugins with your Shopify store as well at some point, and that’s where it will become even more expensive.

Really, choosing between WooCommerce and Shopify (price-wise) comes down to what you want to do with your store. If you want to offer lots of cool and customized features, WooCommerce will probably be cheaper and easier to work on (since it’s open source).

If you want a convenient and easy way to create a professional online store, then there’s no platform better than Shopify. It’s not customizable but then you probably won’t need to customize it since the core platform is so well-built. You also won’t have to worry much about security and maintenance costs since that’s all managed by Shopify themselves.

Final Thoughts About WooCommerce Pricing and Advice for Store Owners

WooCommerce is a great ecommerce platform, one which is easily customizable and can be very cost-effective if you’re careful with your budget. It can be extended in any way you want, so there’s no need of worrying about whether it’ll be able to keep up with your functional requirements (a common complaint with hosted solutions such as Shopify).

One piece of advice that we have for store owners who’re just starting out is to start simple. Many store owners start with a grand vision of being the best ecommerce store in their niche, but that’s often hard to achieve. It’s not bad to think big, but it’s also not a practical proposition if you’re launching a business by opting for expensive features. So, start with a simple store, one which is well-designed and offers online payments. If customer response is good, you can start incorporating features such as email marketing, abandoned cart recovery and so on.

 

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WooCommerce Plugins

WooCommerce is hugely popular in the ecommerce space, powering over 28% of all online stores globally. It’s even ahead of ecommerce solutions such as Shopify, which is a great ecommerce platform in its own right. Of course, a lot of its popularity is owed to the fact that it is absolutely free to download and use. Plus, it’s also open-source which means it can be modified in any way to accommodate a store owner’s requirements.

WooCommerce’s extensible nature has encouraged developers to come up with functionality-enhancing plugins for the platform. As such, there are hundreds of plugins available for WooCommerce which extend its functionality far beyond its core feature set. With the help of plugins, WooCommerce is able to compete head-to-head against accomplished competitors such as Magento, Shopify and BigCommerce.

One challenge that new store developers / owners face is choosing the right plugins to integrate with their WooCommerce store. For example, there might be 5 different plugins that cater to a single desired functionality.

In this post, we’ll be looking at different WooCommerce plugins – plugins which we consider essential, plugins which are best in a particular category, and useful plugins which you can get for free.

WooCommerce Plugins – Against the Competition

Before we dive into WooCommerce plugins, let’s see how the platform stacks up against competitors when it comes to the number of plugins available.

Ecommerce Platform	Number of Plugins
WooCommerce	2000+
Shopify	2400+
BigCommerce	500+
Magento	3300+

 

Free Must Have WooCommerce Plugins

Let’s start off with must have WooCommerce plugins that you can get for free. These plugins add vital functionality to your ecommerce shop, which can be useful in generating more sales and customer interest. As such, there’s no reason your WooCommerce store should not have these plugins.

1. WooCommerce Shortcodes

WordPress shortcodes make the lives of developers and admins easy everywhere by allowing them to insert snippets of text into pages or posts. These snippets, or shortcodes, are actually calls to functions. WooCommerce comes with its own timesaving shortcodes as well. For example, inserting the [checkout] shortcode into a page will display the checkout section once the page is published.

The WooCommerce Shortcodes plugin makes it easy to insert shortcodes into any WordPress / WooCommerce page. It places a simple drop down into the WordPress editor, which allows you to access all of WooCommerce’s shortcodes. This way, you don’t have to memorize or refer to documentation for the shortcode you’d like to use.

2. OptinMonster

One of the most important goals of any website’s SEO strategy is to have a healthy mailing list. Most websites simply put a generic subscription form and expect the emails to start coming through. In reality however, this doesn’t quite work. In order to create forms to convert, you need specialized tools, and OptinMonster is one of the best tools for the job.

First off, this plugin is absolutely free to use. It allows you to create beautiful optin form designs which are sure to grab the visitor’s eye. These forms are optimized for high conversion rates, and there are several types of forms to choose from as well (lightbox popups, floating bars, sidebar slide-ins, welcome gates and many more).

OptinMonster also helps you with visitors who simply choose to abandon their carts, using what its developers call Exit-Intent® technology. Basically, this detects the user’s behavior and prompts them with a targeted campaign when they’re about to leave.

Definitely get OptinMonster if you’re interested in growing your email list and in turn growing your store’s sales.

3. YITH WooCommerce Wishlist

Want to maximize your store’s sales? Then you need a plugin that enables wishlist functionality on your store. The YITH WooCommerce Wishlist plugin allows your customers to save / add products that they like to a wish list which they can access later. Customers can also share their wishlist with friends and family, further increasing the potential of a sale.

Wishlists can be extremely useful during holiday seasons, during which customers are making shopping lists and purchasing gifts.

4. YITH WooCommerce Quick View

As a store owner, it’s in your best interests to provide your site’s visitors with the best user experience possible. One way in which you can enhance the user experience is by providing product quick views through the YITH WooCommerce Quick View plugin.

This plugin enables visitors to quickly take a glance of important product details without actually navigating to the product page. This benefits the customer in that they don’t have to look at each product individually, and benefits you because they don’t have to leave the product listings or shop page.

The quick view even has a ‘Add to Cart’ button, so customers can add items to their cart conveniently as they’re browsing through the product listings.

5. YITH WooCommerce Ajax Search

Continuing with plugins focused on enhancing the user experience of your ecommerce shop, here’s the YITH WooCommerce Ajax Search plugin. This plugin will enable your search bar to display relevant products instantly as the user starts typing.

This plugin uses AJAX to fetch the search results without having the user press the search button, which in our opinion greatly enhances the user experience of your website. It means that there’s one less page between the user and the product they desire.

Remember, speed is of absolute importance in ecommerce. If the user can’t find what they’re looking for quick enough, they’ll simply choose to leave your store. Plugins like this Ajax Search one are designed to encourage users to keep using your site by assisting them.

6. WooCommerce Menu Bar Cart

A WooCommerce WordPress theme normally displays a cart link / button at the top-right portion of your website. If you’re unhappy with how this arrangement looks, or if your cart button is being obscured because of a color scheme issue, you can choose to display the cart button in the WordPress navigation menu with WooCommerce Menu Bar Cart.

This plugin works with any WordPress theme, as it basically integrates a cart button to the default WordPress menu. As long as you’re using the default menu, this plugin will be able to do its job.

7. WooCommerce Gift Cards

Gift cards are a great way of boosting sales and attracting new customers to your store. The WooCommerce Gift Cards plugin allows you to add gift cards to your store. When you add a gift card to your store, you can manually set its pricing, and as such you can have multiple gift cards that are priced differently as well.

A customer can purchase the gift card from your store and give it to whomever they want. The recipient then has to apply the gift card’s code at checkout, at which point the gift card’s value will be deducted from the total bill. A very useful plugin, and one which we highly recommend.

8. Custom Product Tabs for WooCommerce

If you want to shorten the length of your product pages, it’s always a good idea to group product information such as description, specifications and reviews into separate tabs. And that’s exactly what the Custom Product Tabs plugin for WooCommerce allows you to do.

With this plugin, you can conveniently divide different sections of product information into tabs. You can create custom tabs according to your products, so the information is neatly organized according to the way you want.

This plugin saves your visitors from the hassle of scrolling down for too long to find the information they need.

9. PayPal Checkout

If you’re using PayPal as the payment gateway for your online store, then you might want to consider having the PayPal checkout. Not only does it display relevant buttons on checkout to facilitate customers, but it also lends your store an image of trust, thanks to the recognizable PayPal logo.

The real reason why we recommend PayPal Checkout is that it greatly simplifies the whole checkout process for your customers. With this plugin, customers can skip the online forms and complete their checkout in a few clicks (or taps), thus helping to boost your sales conversion and reducing cart abandonment.

When a customer uses PayPal Checkout, their contact and shipping details are automatically fetched and passed onto your site so they do not have to fill any similar forms. This means fewer steps for them to do, which in turn helps improve sales conversion.

10. Stripe

WooCommerce can be integrated with dozens of payment gateways, but Stripe provides its own WooCommerce plugin to make the whole integration process easier and simpler to manage. This way, you don’t have to constantly jump between multiple dashboards, figuring out which information to use for integration into WooCommerce.

Even though Stripe’s transaction fees are basically the same as that of PayPal’s (WooCommerce’s built-in payment processor), there are a few areas in which Stripe charges less than PayPal:

• Chargebacks – $15 ($20 on PayPal)
• Charge cards from your site – No monthly fee ($30/mo on PayPal)
• Fee to authorize a card – Free (30c on PayPal)
• Fee for international cards – None (1% on PayPal)
• Fee for payments less than $10 – 2.9% + 30c (5% + .05c on PayPal)

Best Premium WooCommerce Plugins

Let’s take a look at the premium WooCommerce plugins that we recommend ecommerce site owners to have. These will cost you money, but they will make up for that in increased sales revenue for your ecommerce business.

1. Subscriptio – Subscriptions for WooCommerce

If you want to offer a subscription-based product or service on your WooCommerce store, then simply go for the excellent Subscriptio plugin. At more than $40, it’s certainly not cheap. But then again, it offers functionality that isn’t present in WooCommerce, and is only a one-time investment.

With Subscriptio, you get a full-featured subscriptions system to manage recurring payments for your services or products. Admins can also cancel any subscription anytime they want, and can disable this option for customers if it’s necessary. You can also setup free trials so your customers can try the service / product before they sign up for a subscription.

If you want to sell products like magazines, memberships, elearning packages or any other subscription-based products, Subscriptio is our recommendation.

Price: $49

2. WooCommerce Extra Product Options

If you’re in the business of selling customizable products, then you’re going to come across the product options feature. WooCommerce does offer the ability to add product options to products (such as size, color, material), but it’s fairly limited and cannot handle more complex products.

WooCommerce Extra Product Options plugins gives you a lot of flexibility when it comes to product options. As you’d expect, it allows you to add product options to products. But it goes further than that, and allows you to convert the usual product options dropdowns to radio buttons, image swatches (for color choices) or just color swatches. The following input fields are supported by this plugin:

• Checkboxes
• Radio buttons
• Select boxes
• Text areas
• File upload
• Color picker

If that isn’t enough, how about adding conditional logic to your product options. For example, if a certain material of a t-shirt is only available with a certain color, you can apply an IF logic to that color so that the material only shows when that color is selected. You certainly can’t do this with regular WooCommerce product options.

For businesses who’re selling highly customizable products, WooCommerce Extra Product Options provides crucial functionality that cannot be missed. And at $19, it isn’t a bad deal either.

Price: $19

3. WooCommerce Currency Switcher

If you’re gunning for an international customer base with your ecommerce store, you’re going to need to offer a way to switch currencies. That’s exactly what the WooCommerce Currency Switcher plugin allows you to do. For example, if you’re a hotel that’s frequented by tourists, providing prices in the customer’s native currency during booking can really facilitate the whole process.

This plugin is available as a widget and can be placed in any ‘widgetized’ area. For flexibility, it is also offered as a shortcode, and the plugin comes with a currency converter widget as well. You also have the option of automatically switching to a visitor’s currency based on their IP address.

This plugin costs $27, but if you’re content with dealing in just 2 currencies, it can be used for free.

Price: $27 (free for 2 currencies)

4. WooCommerce Advanced Bulk Edit

Editing products one by one can sometimes be frustrating, especially if there are lots of products that you need to make changes to. With the WooCommerce Advanced Bulk Edit plugin, this job is made a lot more convenient.

Basically, this plugin loads all of your products into an editable spreadsheet, providing an easy way for you to make quick edits to the products. What’s more, you can filter the spreadsheet using various options such as SKUs, attributes, titles, stock quantities and so on. By filtering the products, only the products that you want to edit will be displayed, further facilitating the editing process.

Oh, and you can also make changes on a ‘bulk’ level, saving you lots of time. There’s a lot that you can do with this plugin, and if you’re interested in trying it out, here’s a live demo that you can play with.

Price: $23

5. WooCommerce Bookings

The WooCommerce Bookings is the plugin to have if you plan on offering date or time based bookings on your website. This plugin has been developed by WooCommerce themselves, so it’s impressively comprehensive in its functionality.

If you’ve ever made a booking through Booking.com, then you’re going to be instantly familiar with the features offered by this plugin. With this plugin, you’re able to offer bookings that can be created for a customer-defined number of people (common in hotel room bookings). Also, you can offer discounts based on the number of people that are being booked.

There’s also the option of creating bookings yourself, through an interface that mimics your front-end bookings system. This way, your customers can easily ask you to create reservations / bookings for them over phone or email.

This is perhaps the only booking plugin you’ll ever need, so it comes at a hefty cost – $249 for a single site.

Number of Sites	Single Site	5 Sites	25 Sites
Price	$249	$299	$449

6. WooCommerce Advanced Shipping

In order to facilitate the customer and not surprise them with unexpected shipping costs, it is imperative that every professional ecommerce store displays accurate shipping costs during checkout. There are several plugins available for WooCommerce that help with this, but none is as comprehensive as WooCommerce Advanced Shipping.

With this plugin, store owners are able to display shipping prices to customer that change according to variables such as weight, zipcode, size, stock, and so on. In fact, you can set whatever condition you’d like for shipping prices with this plugin. There’s even an option to apply conditional logic while calculating the shipping prices.

Price: $17

7. XL WooCommerce Sales Triggers

The XL WooCommerce Sales Triggers plugin is all about encouraging your site’s visitors into becoming paying customers. It does this by employing several features which play on the psychology of the visitor, influencing their buying decisions as a result. These features are:

• Displaying a countdown timer (during sales) to create urgency
• Showing items left in stock to create a sense of scarcity
• Sharing purchases made by other customers in real time to promote trust
• Display potential savings on discounted products (in absolute numbers and percentage), further compelling the customer to take the deal
• Display satisfaction rate through Smarter Reviews (as opposed to simple user reviews and star-based ratings)
• Highlight your store’s best sellers to reduce anxiety (since the customer sees that others are buying those products as well)

These sales tactics are used by ecommerce leaders such as Amazon, eBay and Zappos to maximize sales by promoting buyer confidence and trust.

Price: $29

8. WooCommerce Product Filter

Product filtering can help make the user experience a lot better, as well as provide exposure to the various products on your store. With the WooCommerce Product Filter plugin, users will be able to find products faster through search and advanced filtering with specific criteria.

This extension is easy to set up and use, with a user-friendly admin interface and easy-to-understand configuration options. The filter widget is fully customizable, and you can choose different layouts and colors.

Remember, product visibility is crucial, and this extension can help you achieve that.

Price: $24

9. Improved Sales Badges for WooCommerce

The default sales badges of WooCommerce are all well and good, but what if you want something a bit more attractive and eye-grabbing? Improved Sales Badges for WooCommerce plugin provide well-designed sales badges (in SVG format for faster loading) that come in different colors and customizable styles.

Badges can be set on a per-product badges, and you can set special badges for holidays. Every visual detail counts when it comes to convincing customers to buying through your store, so this plugin might be worth your while.

Oh, if you’d like to create your own badges, the plugin allows for that as well.

Price: $18

Final Thoughts

WooCommerce is undoubtedly one of the most popular ecommerce solutions available. The fact that it’s free and extendable adds massively to its appeal. There are thousands of plugins to choose from, which might be confusing for platform newcomers.

Hopefully, with the plugins listed in this article you’ll be able to get a professional store up and running in no time. The premium plugins can certainly add to the upfront costs, but that is why we’ve listed lots of great free plugins as well.

You don’t have to install all of the plugins from the get-go, rather, you should install them once the need for them arises.

Do you know of a WooCommerce plugin that simply cannot be missed? Let us know in the comments below!

 

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Shopify Partners

The Shopify platform represents one of the easiest ways of creating a professional ecommerce website. Its simplicity combined with its powerful ecommerce features have made it greatly popular, with more than 600,000 online stores using Shopify across the globe. Easy as it may be, to get the best out of Shopify you will need help from experts from time to time, and that’s where Shopify Partners and Experts come in.

Now you may have chosen Shopify because you thought you’d never have to hire expert help because of it. That is a fair point, but in practice, running an online store does require expert help at some point.

Don’t get us wrong, setting up a Shopify website is incredibly easy. The backend dashboard is intuitively designed and makes adding products a breeze, for even novice users. And no matter where you are in the interface, the handy search bar will always be there to help you out in case you get stuck.

Why then, do Shopify Partners and Experts exist?

Source: shopify.com

Most of that has to do with the nature of ecommerce itself. The technical complexities of setting up a traditional online store were a significant problem, but with Shopify they’re mostly mitigated. No, the real issue lies with how challenging it can be to make an ecommerce venture successful.

And these challenges come in different forms: marketing, design, maintenance, search engine optimization and so on. And this is exactly why Shopify introduced the Partners and Experts initiative – to help make your ecommerce business successful.

In this article we’ll be talking all about Shopify Partners and Experts – where to find them, how to connect with the right ones, and how to ensure the success of your business relationship with them.

How does the Shopify Partner Program Work?

The Shopify Partner Program provides you with the opportunity of earning money in multiple ways, by working with the platform.

Shopify Revenue Share

First off, there’s a revenue-sharing program in which you get 20% of the money that Shopify earns from clients you referred to the service. Basically, what you have to do is to get a client and convince them to use Shopify for their ecommerce needs.

After approval, you’ll have to build a development store for the client to be considered for the revenue-sharing program. This is important, because if you don’t build the development store, you will not be eligible for revenue sharing.

Shopify Affiliate Link

The second way of earning money with Shopify is to refer an online user using an affiliate link. Anyone can sign up for the Shopify Partner Program and get their own affiliate link. This link can be advertised on your blog, website, or just about anywhere on the internet.

If a user clicks on the link and signs up for a paid Shopify subscription plan, you’ll get twice the amount of money they pay (the subscription fee) for the first month. So for example, if the user signs up for Basic Shopify ($29/mo), you’ll earn $58 in total, which will be paid in installments of $29 over two months.

Shopify Plan	Monthly Fee (Without discounts)	Partner Affiliate income
Basic Shopify	$29	$58
Shopify	$79	$158
Advanced Shopify	$299	$598

 

Even if the user does not sign up for a paid subscription plan, and instead opts for the 14-day free trial, you’ll still earn if they decide to upgrade to a paid subscription plan in the future.

Shopify Partner Program Eligibility

Bear in mind that in order to remain a Shopify Partner, you’re required to do one of the following activities every 12 months (after your development store referral):

• Development store referral
• Affiliate link referral
• Upgrade or refer an existing merchant to Shopify Plus

Failure to complete one of the above activities will result in the discontinuation of revenue-share payments.

What are Shopify Partners and Experts?

A Shopify Partner is someone (can be an individual or a firm) who has entered into an agreement with Shopify. However, Shopify Experts are different, and should have a proven track record of making Shopify stores successful. In fact, in order to be considered for a Shopify Expert, you need to show examples of 5 successful Shopify stores which you helped build.

Shopify Experts are divided into different categories, based on their proven expertise and track record with clients:

1. Setup Experts
2. Designers
3. Developers
4. Marketers
5. Photographers

Shopify has made sure to categorize according the critical areas which can help a store become successful.

Let’s take a deeper look at these categories, the kind of experts you’ll find in them and how to pick the right ones.

Shopify Setup Experts – Get Help in Setting up Your Shopify Store

Setting up a Shopify store is simple enough, but experts can help you get the most out of it. For example, if you’re migrating from an existing platform, the expert will be able to help you with product and media imports.

For some people, setting up a professional store using Shopify could be daunting, but experts have already done so they know what you’ll need to have a successful store that attracts visitors. Apps play a major role in a store’s functionality, and the expert will already know which ones will cater to your requirements best.

Hiring and working with a Shopify expert is simple, but be sure to have a set of requirements ready so they know what you expect. Mostly, a Shopify setup expert will build you store from scratch, populate it with products and media, install some apps and that will be it. The benefit to you is that there will be no unforeseen fees to worry about.

However, you need to keep in mind that launching a Shopify store from scratch can be quite time-intensive, and with Shopify setup experts starting at ~$65/hr, you can expect to spend thousands of dollars.

Shopify Design Experts

Shopify offers professional and beautiful-looking templates to all of its users. Even the free templates are very good, and will suffice for most small businesses. However, some store owners  want to have a Shopify site that looks great and unique. For this, you’ll need the help of a Shopify design expert.

The good thing about Shopify is that it lets you deeply customize a template, or create a new one using its Liquid templating language. But not every designer will be able to use Liquid, and that is why having a Shopify design expert is so important.

Expect to pay a Shopify Designer thousands of dollars if you’re looking for a completely new template.  But since this is a one-time cost, it’s not a bad investment.

Always communicate the following requirements to the Shopify Designer beforehand:

• Brand-focused design and color palette
• The design should be SEO-friendly (responsive, optimized for mobile devices)
• Intuitive navigation and user interface

Shopify Developers

Normally, a Shopify Setup Expert can handle most store-related tasks for you. However, if you need something developed especially for your store – functionality that isn’t available in the App Store – you’ll need the help of a Shopify Developer. A common scenario in which you might need the help of a Developer is if you’re trying to implement a POS system for your online store.

Shopify POS makes it easy to have a fully integrated POS system with your online store, but even then it’s not as straight-forward as you might imagine, especially if you’re planning on integrating retail hardware.

Cost estimates for development work are unpredictable, and will depend entirely on the nature of the functionality you desire. If it’s about a simple tracking code insertion, you can expect to spend less than $100. However, integration of an ERP to your store will easily set you back tens of thousands of dollars.

Shopify Marketers

The thing with marketing an ecommerce store is that, there are simply too many ways to do it. And yet, there are only a few ways that actually work. It’s not uncommon to see Shopify stores with beautiful designs and expert setup that have absolutely no traffic. And marketing isn’t just about getting traffic to your store – it’s about getting the right kind of traffic.

This is exactly what Shopify marketing experts are for. They differentiate themselves from traditional online marketers in their ecommerce experience – a strategy that works for a content website will not necessarily work for an online store.

Our standard recommendation when it comes to Shopify marketing, and ecommerce in general, is Logic Inbound. Our digital marketing agency in Seattle has a proven track record of executing successful marketing strategies for a variety of businesses, ecommerce sites included. And just to prove a point, Logic Inbound launched its own Shopify store, Hobanco.com, which grew to attract more than 6000 visitors a month in a short span of time. Check out the Hobanco case study here.

Before hiring a Shopify marketer, make sure that they specialize in the following:

• Search engine optimization
• Content marketing
• Google Shopping ads
• Facebook ads
• Product page optimization / testing

Shopify Photographers

This one might not seem important to new merchants, but high quality product images are hugely important in convincing visitors and building trust with them. The thing is, high quality product images are only possible if you have the right camera equipment, as well as a good photography studio. Of course, the chances of a merchant having these are minimal, and that’s why Shopify Photographers should be considered for the purpose of getting high quality images of your product lineup.

Shopify Photographers will usually work and charge you on a per-project basis, with the prices varying depending on the amount of products you want photos of. The complexity of the shots will also vary, as photos of a rice cooker will be straightforward whereas photography for clothing items might warrant the need for models and elaborate lighting equipment.

Picking the Right Shopify Expert

Now that you know the value that Shopify Experts can provide to you and your ecommerce business, it’s time to look at some of the factors you should consider before hiring one:

Portfolio

Always ask the prospective Expert to show you examples of their previous work. For Setup Experts and Developers, you might need to check out the complexity of the stores they’ve worked on, and if they’re on a similar level to the kind of work you’re expecting. If you find that the sites they have worked are relatively simple, simply continue your search.

For designers, check to see if their previous work shows a varied style. Most designers follow a single approach to design, so while they might be good at it, it might not be the right style for your requirements.

For marketers, always ask for success stories of their previous clients. Good marketers will have case studies ready for potential clients, with different case studies for different niches.

When it comes to Photographers, check their portfolio to see the kind of work they’ve done. Product photography can be surprisingly varied in nature, and it’s generally a good idea to hire a Photographer who has worked with products similar to yours.

Communication

Talented as a Shopify Expert may be, if they cannot communicate effectively with you, it’s probably going to be a bad experience for both parties. In order to communicate the specific vision you have, you need to be able to communicate fluently and without any language barriers.

A good Shopify Expert should ‘read’ into your requirements, and should be able to ‘get’ your business. Check out testimonials from previous clients (available on the respective Expert’s Shopify page) to see if there were any problems.

Conclusion

Shopify is one of the best and easiest ecommerce platforms to build your online store on. But ease-of-use does not guarantee success, and that is why you might need help from a Shopify Partner / Expert to get things going.

Logic Inbound is a full service digital marketing agency, with a focus on ecommerce. We would love to help you take your business to the next level, or if you’re just starting out, get its first customers through our proven marketing strategies. Feel free to contact us for a free analysis!

 

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