7 Valuable Tips for Growing a WooCommerce Website

growing a woocommerce website

Fortunately, this blog provides something most of them don’t know, which are seven valuable tips for growing a WooCommerce website. With these simple pointers, you’ll pique interest, increase traffic, and turn potential buyers into regular customers. If you need these tips but don’t have the time to implement them, we offer our biggest tool: our WooCommerce marketing services by Bear North Digital.

1. Improve Site Performance with Faster Loading Speeds

We also live in an era where our attention spans are at their shortest, ranging around 8 seconds before we begin to lose interest. If your web pages take anywhere near this long to load, your potential customers won’t even make it to your homepage before hitting the back arrow to find your competition. 

Almost 40% of new visitors won’t stick around past the five-second mark, which is why the Google algorithm ranks websites with a five-second load time or less higher than those that take longer. If you want your shop to be at the top of the search engine results pages (SERPs), choose a WooCommerce theme with an advanced and compatible template. These lightweight options lower load response times. 

However, even with faster templates, other factors slow down response times. Plugins are necessary for e-commerce platforms since they help manage your store and track your business. Some even provide functionality and features like fonts and color schemes but overloading your site on unnecessary ones adds seconds to your load times.

It’s good practice to read all plugin descriptions to determine which options promote load speed and which stand in its way. You’ll also examine which you could do without, deleting them for faster loading when growing a WooCommerce website. 

2. Create an Easier User Interface Across All Devices

Speaking of keeping up with the times, almost everyone has a smartphone that they spend more time on than a laptop or desktop computer. Whether they’re waiting on a platform for a delayed train, killing time at the barbershop, or bored in the backseat during a carpool, there’s a good chance they’ll pull out their phones to do a little online shopping. 

Almost 80% of all transactions occur via mobile devices like phones and tablets. However, if your website pages default to a desktop setting, your chances of making a transaction diminish drastically. These layouts are harder to read since viewers must zoom in and out of the tiny texts, losing their place and patience. 

While you don’t want to overdo plugins, find one that assists with mobile-friendly integrations so that it acknowledges what devices potential buyers are viewing your site. It’ll automatically adjust for an easy user interface. Since 84% of people who purchase using mobile devices have experienced these difficulties at one point or another, it guarantees your site will stand out from hundreds of others. 

3. Enhance the Aesthetics of Your User Interface

Image is everything, especially on an e-commerce platform when you want to draw attention to your merchandise. However, that means more than just creating a unique logo to represent your brand and an aesthetically pleasing color scheme. 

When potential buyers are scouring their search engine results pages, clicking on any relevant page that pops up, their first impression of the site determines whether they’ll stick around. For instance, if the text is in bulky block paragraphs with a tiny font, minimal white space, and little to no photos, it’ll seem more overwhelming than inviting. 

Instead, use videos and large photos to represent your products alongside descriptive, broken-up texts to space out your content. Moreover, using unique photos rather than generic Google stock images can help you rank higher in the Google algorithm and give your store a real and personal touch that customers appreciate. 

As you’re growing a WooCommerce website, don’t forget to optimize your images to ensure high resolution and use image sizes from 800 to 1000 pixels. Also, add description boxes to explain what’s going on in the images in case they don’t load properly for some viewers. 

4. Utilizing Emails to Draw Attention

Let’s say a customer finds your website, and your content intrigues them enough to click on a call-to-action or save something to their cart. That means they can see themself doing business with you, but it doesn’t mean they will. If they’re shopping around or putting a purchase on the back burner, you may not see them again, so send out emails to remind them of your online business.

Rather than manually tracking and sending out emails to each potential customer, incorporate marketing automation. This system sends out emails automatically in response to viewers’ actions. 

For instance, send out “new subscriber” emails to introduce yourself and welcome them to your site. You may also outline new products they may be interested in and entice them with promo codes or use seasonal campaigns to promote upcoming events. It’s also helpful during the ordering process since it provides order confirmations, the order number, and promotions for future buys.

If your orders aren’t getting that far due to abandoned carts, potential customers need a little nudge to make it through the final process. That means working through the problems holding about 80% back, like high shipping costs. Not only does using abandoned cart recovery remind them to check out their product, but you can also provide incentives like a percentage off to boost conversion rates.  

To send out or customize your emails, open your e-commerce platform and go to the settings tab. You’ll notice multiple templates and the option to create your own. Make one for each of the above scenarios and manage what actions will trigger when and to whom they go out.

5. Know Your Audience

Even with email marketing, you need to know your audience to reach them in other ways when growing a WooCommerce website. You may think getting the word out about your business is enough since it’ll pique interest, but if you don’t reach the people who would be most interested, you won’t optimize sales. Therefore, uncover your target audience instead of paying for dead-end advertisements. 

The best way to do so is by determining who would use your products the most. For instance, if you’re reselling college textbooks, producing cute headphone cases, or providing the latest technology, you’re more likely selling to teens and young adults. However, practical items like household products are more suited for older adults and senior citizens. 

Further break down your target audience by gender and location. Are you aiming for a male, female, or mixed demographic, and how far from your shipping area are they? The e-commerce platform makes it easy to understand the costs and shipment transition times depending on the buyer’s address. Use this to decipher your shipping zones and how far you’re willing to ship, especially if you offer free shipping. 

You can also look into common interests among your target audiences, new trends and challenges within their realms that they would be interested in, and spending patterns. These metrics not only help you stock up on the appropriate products that’ll improve sales but also point to the media channels your target audience is hanging out on. 

6. Reach Out with the Right Media Channels

After discovering your target audience, you can choose your platforms more wisely. When growing a WooCommerce website, many new shop owners spread themselves thin, trying to produce content across multiple media channels, believing they’re covering all their bases. However, this wastes marketing resources, funds, and time since most platforms won’t increase traffic to your site. 

For example, about two decades ago, Facebook was the hangout for high school and college students, while Myspace was popular among junior high preteens. Recent shifts now place TikTok and Instagram at center stage for millennials and Gen Zers, leaving Facebook primarily for older adults and causing Myspace to fall off the map. Knowing where your audiences are or are migrating to helps you reach out. 

You should also consider which platforms best highlight your products or services for your customer base. If you have plenty of photos of your team, merchandise, or organizations you’re helping, utilize Instagram and other platforms that put the focus on images. Otherwise, short posts and links to your online store may prove better content. 

7. Collaborate and Make Guest Appearances

Outside of using emails and social media posts to improve traffic, consider collaborating with popular influencers when growing a WooCommerce website. Influencers gain the trust of their audience by providing unbiased reviews of products while creating entertaining and informative content. Many also trust high-quality, long-standing companies like Nike or Amazon.

By making a guest appearance on popular Youtube channels, radio talk shows, or podcasts or allowing influencers to review your product, you’re introducing yourself and your shop to thousands of potential buyers. Whether it’s hearing their social media celebrity rave about you or realizing your products are what they need, their high following boosts sales. 

In 2021 alone, this marketing strategy helped shops like yours bring in almost $14 billion in revenue. However, ensure you’re reaching out to the appropriate influencers, meaning that if you’re promoting makeup, you should partner with Sephora or a beauty influencer with millions of views or subscribers. Also, ensure they’re not the face of your brand by making sure they’re not your only outreach source. 

You Don’t Have to Bear the Weight of Marketing Alone: Trust Bear North Digital!

As the world changes, so do the needs of your online store. Even after figuring out your target audience, how to grab their attention, and other factors that affect traffic to your site and conversion rates, you need to stay on top of them to track and keep up with changes. Between maintaining marketing strategies like these and producing products you’re selling, you’ll have two jobs running you ragged. 

Relinquish one of these to the best in the business for growing a WooCommerce website. Our experienced team uses a unique and flexible approach for each client, taking the time to understand their business to offer optimal strategies. We constantly test marketing methods and continue our employees’ education with leading marketing education providers. 

For top SEO strategies, social media and email advertising, and marketing plugins for WooCommerce, contact Bear North Digital. Call (218) 216-8692 for a free growth plan today.