WordPress eCommerce Opportunities for WordPress Professionals for 2014

The Internet has significantly changed and reshaped the workforce profile in the last few years. It has opened up opportunities for work outside of the traditional 9 to 5 setup and the lure of “work from home” or “work anywhere” is irresistible. Because of this, more and more people are opting to liberate themselves from the office cubicle and pursue non traditional work opportunities because of the flexible work hours and the income potential it presents – most of which can be found online.

The global economic landscape is flat in the sense that anyone in the world, regardless of location or educational attainment, can become the next big business online. The challenge for most businesses is how to take their bricks and mortar mentality into the world of bricks and clicks.These people need experts who can help them build their dream business – online. For WordPress professionals, the opportunities to service this sector cannot be ignored.

According to comScore,

The comScore report found that retail e-commerce sales produced over $50 billion dollars last quarter. The study found that e-commerce sales have seen double-digit growth for 10 consecutive quarters. While growth this quarter was strong, comScore found that it was slightly down from the previous two quarters.

“The first quarter of 2013 was fairly strong for online retailers, with total e-commerce sales surpassing $50 billion for only the second time on record,” said comScore Chairman Gian Fulgoni.
“While the year-over-year growth rate of 13 percent remained healthy, it was a point or two below that of the preceding quarters.”

According to the report, sales growth was down one percentage point on a quarter-over-quarter basis. E-commerce sales growth was also reported to be down two percentage points since Q3 2012. Fulgoni surmised that the slowdown was caused by payroll tax increases, which took effect in 2013.

ComScore’s report found that digital content and subscriptions, apparel, sport/fitness, consumer electronics, and consumer-packaged goods saw the greatest amount of e-commerce sales growth this quarter. The report shows that all categories saw over 20 percent growth year-over-year.

Here are a few key strategies WordPress professionals can use on how to take advantage of the booming WordPress eCommerce business opportunities:

Think Local, Sell Global. – think of businesses and services in your local area that have the potential to go global

  • local retail stores in your community that can sell globally – eg. books, accessories, jewelry, hobby stores, food, specialty shops
  • personal and professional services – consultants, freelancers, financial advisers, coaching services, tutorials, accountants, DIY-ers
  • NGOs, events, charitable institutions, fundraisers, non profit organizations
  • niche businesses – realtors, travel agents, auto dealers
  • small to medium scale businesses

Master the eCommerce process and understand how each step functions. WordPress professionals need to be well-versed on how the standard eCommerce process works:

  • shopping cart – should be simple enough for the customer (eg. WooCommerce, easy digital downloads, gravity forms, etc.)
  • payment gateway
  • merchant account
  • merchant’s bank account

Study your client’s needs and specifications and how you can integrate, merge, or streamline their current business practices and processes to their website. Don’t be afraid to ask questions and provide suggestions on how to modify or improve how transactions are processed.

Price yourself right. – Building an eCommerce site is more than just choosing an eCommerce supported WordPress theme, adding a plugin, and hitting the publish button. Consider the scope and the size of the whole project, the after installation support, and any additional web admin and system maintenance support you might be asked to provide before giving a price quote.

One of the highlights of the comScore Q1 2013 report says that,

E-commerce accounted for 10.6 percent of discretionary dollars spent, the highest share on record.

There is no turning back to business as usual. eCommerce is here to stay and it’s momentum is on the rise and WordPress professionals have every opportunity to take advantage of it.

eCommerce WordPress Themes for the Shopping Season

It’s almost that time of the year where people are just willing to spend, spend, spend. What better time than now to set up your own eCommerce site or simply update your existing one and get your visitors into the shopping season groove – all within the comforts of their own homes. Check out these cool eCommerce WordPress themes to help usher in that holiday cheer.

Barberry Responsive WooCommerce Theme

Barberry Premium WordPress Theme is a modern, fully responsive, retina ready Woocommerce theme built on Twitter Bootstrap. This slick eCommerce theme features dynamic animations that will set your eStore apart from the competition. This premium WPML ready theme is also equipped with MegaMenu, Revolution Slider, Sticky Header, Catalog Mode option, CloudZoom, a powerful Store Management and Reports feature, a filterable Portfolio, preset Shop page templates, Shopping Cart, and so many other features to help you start your store right away.

Roe | Dok WooCommerce WordPress Theme

RoeDok Premium WordPress Theme is an ultra modern WordPress fashion template especially designed for fashion stores carrying clothing, accessories, shoes, jewelry and other fashion related items. Its modern design style is clean, streamlined, and organized as to highlight each product without looking cluttered. This responsive theme has powerful built-in features such as: Mega Menu for categorizing huge amount of products with multi-column (add up to 6 columns), several sliders (Flex Slider, Revolution Slider, Nivo Slider), custom widgets, ad space for promotion and featuring important announcements, boxed and wide layout styles, predefined page layouts, a drop down shopping cart, and many other awesome features.

Retail Therapy – Multipurpose eCommerce Theme

Retail Therapy Premium WordPress Theme is a bold and elegant ecommerce WordPress theme that features the Hero Widget aimed at being able to list items on sale, categories, featured products and recent products or collections. You can also feature specific categories in a three block layout and add a call to action button in your footer. The
typography is beautiful and easy on the eye. It comes packed with 12 page templates including: a portfolio template which can show your portfolio in a two, three or four column view, a services template including service icons to visually describe your services, a shop template to display your products beautifully, a team page template and share their social links, and a features template for a product or service company

Cosmetico Responsive eCommerce WordPress Theme

Cosmetico Premium WordPress Theme is a clean and beautiful ecommerce theme that looks sleek, professional, and very high end. This retina ready responsive multi purpose theme includes features like: Page Builder with 34 web elements, animated floating menu option, Slider Revolution, CloudZoom, WooCommerce, full or boxed layout options, 300+ vector icons, portfolio variations (full screen, ajax, pretty photo), custom widgets, grid gallery with black and white effect, and many other features that will surely make your online store look amazing.

Shirtbox Flat WooCommerce Multi Purpose Theme

ShirtBox Premium WordPress Theme is a responsive multi purpose WooCommerce theme with a unique square look applying the latest flat-design style trend. It is perfect either for an ecommerce site, an online boutique, or creative business website. Outstanding features include Revolution Slider, FlexSlider, and Camera Slider, Live Chat, WooCommerce Catalog mode and compatible with WooCommerce extensions (zoom magnifier, ajax search, wishlist), advanced top menu type, and many other features to help you get your eCommerce site up and running.

Bistro Store eCommerce WordPress Theme

The Bistro Store Premium WordPress theme is a clean, stylish, custom-designed, modern eCommerce WordPress theme built using the latest technologies in HTML5, CSS3 and Bootstrap 2.3.2. This flexible premium theme comes with custom page templates, unlimited sidebar and color customization combinations, is fully responsive (compatible all mobile devices like: tablet, mobile phone, laptops etc.), with an advanced theme option panel, built-in Revolution Slider, custom product sliders, custom single product and portfolio pages, is social media and search engine optimized, has a special offers module (daily deals), 10+ custom widgets, special footer modules, and even a social media friendly newsletter module.

eCommerce 3.0 – How to Structure Your Basic Ecommerce Store and Make it Work

The face of eCommerce is slowly changing as more and more people look to the internet not only for information but for physical goods as well. The convenience of being able to shop from the comforts of your own home or wherever you are is luring more and more consumers to buying online. Here are a few pointers Ezra Firestone shares about setting up an eCommerce store that works.

According to Ezra, in an interview by James Schramko, Ezra stated that,

“… one of the big things about eCommerce- what I call eCommerce 3.0 – what’s changing about eCommerce right now is the day and age of the store, of the faceless eCommerce store is dying. The eCommerce that just puts up products and list manufacture descriptions is dying. What’s working now is adding value to your market, writing your product descriptions, ordering your products that are selling best and shooting videos about them, creating buyer’s guides like keep bundling products together that people want, figuring out ways that you can serve your community and creating a face and a brand and owning the race course within your eCommerce store.”

A. Basic structure of an eCommerce store:

Home, section product detail (most important) blog/content, checkout, PPC landing pages, more info, social profiles

SEO structure

  • Home page – 3 main KWs + modifiers (descriptor words). Ex. modifiers = colors, type of material
  • Top 75+ modifiers = section keywords. Section has products under it
  • Next 500 keywords that can be productized = products
  • Google product listing ads are great for ecommerce
  • Remaining relevant KWs = blog posts
  • 700 words per sections – modifiers written in (unique sections + descriptions)
  • Weekly blogging = about product, other keywords, EdC, each post has deep link + picture
  • Obvious on page – reviews, social buttons, etc
  • Internal link structure
  • Don’t over optimize
  • Author of the store – find some way to create a relationship with your customers

SEO Title Tags for ecommerce stores

  • “Vintage Costume Jewelry”
  • Description: KW, Phone #, Sentence, Modifiers
  • Get rid of big link boxes in the footer

Every search has a unique set of channels

  • Users prefer to consume media in different formats (video, audio, text, etc.) The goal: occupy as all positions as much as possible
  • Channel to occupy
    • SEO, PPC, Comparison Engine, email, social media
    • Image for each product – make sure if you have ownership of images, watermark them
    • Video for each section pages + home page
    • PPC ads (image ads + text ads, retargeting etc.)
    • Amazon listing for all products
    • Google search results: above the fold = ads, shopping, 1 or 2 organic results
    • Blog/ed content

B. Three Things to Track

  • Goal Flow: Product Page – Shopping Cart – CheckOut Page – Product Sale
  • Events: Product Options – Messages – Button Clicks, Errors (most important)
  • Site Search: monitor how the big stores like Amazon do it

C. Check Your Pages for These Items

  • Header : Search, Contact, Security, More Info, Cart, Chat/Live Help, Opt in, Offer (ex. Zappos header)
  • Favicon, Social links, Video, FAQ, Video Customer Service
  • Testimonials (random display), Bestsellers
  • Footer: Trust Seal, Search, Opt in

    • Homepage : Main rotator or slider with 3 images, tabbed featured products

  • Section Page: Items on sale – show percentage saved, Images open in lightbox for quick viewing, Featured item or deal should be on top of the page
  • Product Pages: Get rid of left navigation, Tabs on the left, Display social buttons above the fold, Cross sell recommended items, Guarantee, Trust, Shipping, Videos, Multiple Images, Recently Viewed, Put features/benefits under Add to Cart
  • Checkout Page 1: Make it look as nice as the Product Page, Shipping Calculator, Proceed button at top and bottom, Image, Product, Guarantees
  • Checkout Page 2: Multiple Payment Options

D. Boost Your Conversions With the Following:

  • Create FAQ on Shipping
  • Follow-up script on cart abandonments by email. Offer a discount
  • Use in-page analytics to optimize Section pages. Put products clicked the most on top of the page
  • Thank you video
  • Post purchase survey
  • Follow up with review request

If you are currently running an eCommerce website you can use the information above to evaluate how your site is doing. If you are planning to put up one for the first time, use them as your guide to jumpstart your business in the right direction.

Ecommere – Tap Into What People Are Really Buying?

THave you ever had this brilliant idea of a product that you just knew was going to sell like hotcakes but then flopped in the end? Have you ever considered tapping into the enormous income potential the Internet offers in terms of ecommerce but just didn’t know where to start?

Here are some of the many important insights shared by Ezra Firestone, ecommerce, SEO, and online media buying expert, and successful internet marketer of various products, real estate and training courses online, during the recently held Traffic and Conversion Summit held early 2013. Ezra’s vast experience and knowledge of landing page psychology, ecommerce user behavior and social media marketing has led to the success of many of Ezra’s ecommerce and online businesses.

According to Ezra,

“Someone is looking for a product. You show it to them. You don’t actually have to persuade them to buy it. They’re already looking for it. They buy it from you and then you ship it to them and they have something in their hands that they got from you.

It’s just like it’s such a good business model and it just felt really good and I could tell my wife’s parents about it and so I was just really happy when I stumbled across ecommerce and I kind of just went full-fledged into it and my put my 10,000 hours in because I had found a business model that really resonated with me.”

Why eCommerce and why sell physical products:

Ezra shares:

  • There are more buyers out there for physical products vs. info products
  • Ecommerce has highest value per visitor
  • First visit transaction – people buy the first time they come
  • Higher conversion rates
  • Higher perceived barrier to entry – less competition in niche
  • All work upfront. Finding marketing is hardest part. Ongoing work is traffic + testing
  • Easier to sell to customers
  • Ecommerce is a baby – only 8% of retail sales are done online and it’s growing 15% every year

Tips on how to address the most common concerns people have about getting into ecommerce:

  • Finding markets and evaluating whether to go into a specific market or not
  • Find developers of top carts who have done redesigns.
  • Find markets that lend themselves to return customers. ex. gift market, gift baskets, etc.
  • Find markets that lend themselves to multiple item orders where people are going to order more than just one thing at a time.
  • Find markets that look for products that are difficult to buy locally and meet their needs
  • Seasonal business that have a high season where people are willing to just buy, buy, buy
  • Try to choose products that aren’t super heavy to lessen shipping problems
  • There are great opportunities in markets that are geared towards women

2 Ways to make more money on your eCommerce site:

Get more traffic

  • The most important page on your store is your product page – the page that is displaying the products that you’re selling. Study how you can get maximum value for your product page.

Increase your conversions

  • What value are you bringing to the products? What value are you bringing to the marketplace beyond just listing the products?
  • Do you have a video talking about this product and showing its features and benefits?
  • Do you have a really rich description that talks all about not just the features of the product? Most people are talking only about the features. Who cares about the features? What people care about are the benefits of the product.
  • What value are you adding to the market? Are there education guides, informational guides on the products. You can add to the market beyond just listing the products is huge for conversion.
  • Do you have a frequently asked questions video? Do you have a video on your contact us page introducing yourself?
  • Do you have a shipping information video right there on your product page? Everybody wants to know what your shipping policies are.

According to Ezra,

“Create a relationship with your customers. I think that adding value to the marketplace is by far the highest leverage conversion lever that you have. Second is congruency. I see this is so big and so many people don’t do this. When someone clicks Add to Cart, it takes them to a page that looks nothing like the website they were just on. It looks nothing like the store that they were just on. You’ve got to have your shopping cart process look congruent to your website.

Otherwise you will just significant decreases in conversion. When people implement this, they often see a doubling in their conversion rates and then the third thing and I think what everyone knows about, it’s super hot right now, is video. Product videos convert. Sixty-four percent of the people who come to your website will watch that product video for an average of two minutes. Product pages that have videos on them convert at 164 percent higher on average. They work. You have to be doing video.”

Doing a video blog and blasting it out there on social media and getting it out in front of your customers that way and building a relationship and building engagement. What that does for us is it creates repeat sales. It creates community. It creates repeat business. It’s the third part of the puzzle. You need to be visible so you need people to know you exist. Then you need to convert them into buyers. That’s conversion.

More next week.

Decoding WordPress Shortcodes

A shortcode is a WordPress-specific code that lets you do nifty things with very little effort. Shortcodes can embed files or create objects that would normally require lots of complicated, ugly code in just one line. Shortcode = shortcut. (WordPress.com)

WordPress shortcodes were introduced in version 2.5.They are a simple set of functions for creating macro codes for use in post content. It enables plugin developers to create special kinds of content (e.g. forms, content generators) that users can attach to certain pages by adding the corresponding shortcode into the page text.

According to WPBeginner,

“…a shortcode is a special tag that you can enter into a post that gets replaced with different content when actually viewing the post on the website.

…a shortcode looks similar to an HTML tag, but is enclosed with square brackets instead of angle brackets. This code gets replaced with some other code when the page is actually loaded in a web browser. The really cool thing is that WordPress allows you to create your own custom shortcodes to display pretty much anything. You could use it to output a Youtube video, show your latest tweets, or even customize it however you like.

An excellent article How to Use Shortcodes in WordPress by Lucy Beer demystifies shortcodes and breaks it down in chewable chunks quite nicely.

Simply put, shortcodes are useful because:

  • shortcodes are easy to use
  • shortcodes are easy to create
  • shortcodes simplify repetitive tasks

Commonly used shortcodes include:

  • buttons
  • content boxes
  • icon lists
  • columns
  • drop caps
  • quotes
  • pricing table
  • author info
  • contact forms
  • tabs

Today, WordPress developers are coming out with simpler and easier to use shortcodes that help even beginners to achieve professional looking websites without touching a single code. These shortcodes allow you to create custom design elements that are unique to your own website without having to use complex coding skills resulting in better looking and functioning websites.

Panda Recovery Strategies and How to Improve Your Site’s Quality Score


In our previous article, we explored the Panda Algorithm and the reason behind Google’s implementation of this update. Let’s continue with this conversation.

Effects of Panda on Your Website

Each website has a “Quality Score” assigned by Google. Sites that saw a sudden, massive traffic drop were probably hit without them knowing it but even new sites can also be affected by Panda, making it really hard to rank. A lot of older sites are losing rankings and don’t know why.

Google is out to reward “high quality sites” and penalize sites with a poor quality score. If Google thinks that your website is not adding value, your quality score drops. If Google thinks your site is outdated, it will be harder to rank. If you’re selling products online, it’s important to have a high quality score. Most eCommerce sites got hit because of the seemingly duplicate content of similar products presented in different pages. Unless changes are done to your site, it will remain penalized. Google is not only after your site, it’s also after your business model.

The Panda Equation and your Website’s Quality Score

So how will you know your ranking if your Quality Score is hidden from you as a webmaster? Here’s a formula that you can use to determine your ranking:

Panda Quality Score / 100 x old ranking factors = your rank

The equation used to determine your Panda Quality Score is:

[Static Elements] x [Quality Checks] x [User Experience] = Panda Quality Score

This equation tells us that there are 3 elements that Google uses to determine your website’s score. These elements can be improved upon to raise your quality score and restore your ranking as well.

Static Elements – make sure the content and information in each element is unique:

  • Privacy Policy
  • Contact Page – must include: valid author or multiple authors, mailing address, email address, phone number, author tags, shipping and warranty information (for ecommerce sites)
  • About Us
  • Terms of Service
  • Disclosure of Possible of Compensation (for affiliate or review sites)

Quality Checks – Check the quality of your coding. Broken, obsolete, deprecated, or outdated code, hidden text, overlapping text, and exploding images should be fixed.

User Experience – Improving user experience is now a major element to improving your site’s ranking. Stats on bounce rate, user engagement, and page depth or how deep visitors go into the site give Google an idea how involved a visitor is when they visit your site. The longer they stay on your site, the better for your website’s score.

Website owners need to evaluate their sites regularly to assess whether they have issues related to these three elements. Addressing these issues promptly will help keep their site in check and hopefully stay in Google’s good graces.

StyleShop – Elegant Theme’s 81st (And It’s an eCommerce One)

Elegant Themes has just released its 81st theme – the robust and beautiful eCommerce theme StyleShop – and it’s worth the wait. Say goodbye to the glossy mail order catalogues and get your glossy magazine fix with StyleShop Premium WordPress Theme.

StyleShop is glamorous and edgy and not your typical and functional looking eCommerce theme. You can tell the difference from the way the design elements have been seamlessly integrated into various sections of the theme. The attention to detail and the thoughtful process of making sure the user experience is pleasant and enjoyable is a trademark of Elegant Themes. The homepage is clear and easily navigable. It greets you with an impressive dynamic slider you would love to showcase your products with. It also includes a mini slider you can use to feature specials or specific product categories you want to bring attention to. You can also set up a mini gallery of your hottest, latest, most popular products as a teaser to the rest of your inventory. The great thing about this theme is the integrated WooCommerce plugin that handles the whole checkout process ensuring a seamless handling of transactions with popular payment methods.

Styleshop Premium WordPress Theme looks great on smartphones and tablets with its fully responsive design. It even has a side menu especially designed for smartphones to facilitate a faster shopping experience. This responsive theme can be easily customized with the powerful Theme ePanel that allows you to tweak and adjust design features as you please. In addition, the theme comes with lots of shortcodes you can use for more detailed control over the theme.

Features:

  • Responsive Design
  • Theme Options
  • Shortcodes
  • Page Templates
  • Perpetual Updates
  • Secure and Valid Code
  • Browser Compatibility
  • Complete Localization
  • Unlimited Colors
  • Unparalleled Support

StyleShop Premium WordPress Theme includes top-notch tech support provided by Elegant themes’ support staff to help you setup your site and get it running in no time.

Get StyleShop And 80 More Themes for $39

Elegant Themes Working On Theme #81 (Ecommerce)

For those who have been waiting for the longest time for a fresh ecommerce theme from Elegant Themes, the wait will soon be over. Nick Roach has just released a sneak peek of Theme #81 to join the 80 stylish themes in the Elegant Themes pack and it looks smashing.

StyleShop, Elegant Themes’ upcoming ecommerce theme is estimated to be released in a couple of weeks, so those of you out there who have ecommerce projects on the wings better hold your horses for this one. The teaser images are exciting – dark styled at the moment but a light colored version might just happen too, according to Nick Roach.

StyleShop’s menu system looks clean and streamlined, the huge homepage slider looks amazing, the mini slider has great potential for lots of shop promotions, the homepage catalog is accessible and perfect for virtual window shopping, the footer is widgetized, the whole theme is responsive, and yes, best of all is the WooCommerce integration. Applause, applause!

According to Nick Roach,

“We will be opting to streamline the theme for WooCommerce, instead of coding it for a disparate collection of plugins. We believe that WooCommerce is the best option at the moment, and has a promising future.”

So far, the overwhelming response to this theme is excitement, and truly, with reasonable cause. So mark your calendars and start your countdown, for in a couple of weeks, StyleShop will be having its grand opening at Elegant Themes!

Get 80 Premium Themes for $39

WordPress Theme Deconstructed

Last week we touched on the basic components of a typical WordPress theme. Below is a visual example of how the layout looks like.

The components are as follows:

The Header (header.php)

The header is the structure that traditionally sits at the top of a web page. It contains the title of the website. It may also be referred to as the masthead, head, title, and banner. In all WordPress Themes, the header is found within the header.php template file.

Most themes have a header image that displays at the top of the page. This image is generated by a graphic defined either in the CSS value for the property that represents the header area or through the use of a custom header feature in WordPress. In themes that don’t have the custom header image feature, you can easily define a background image for the header image using CSS. (source: CSS for Dummies)

Menu (navigation) – usually found within or above the header

There are two ways to display a nav menu. One is by calling wp_nav_menu() within a theme template file. The other is by using the Navigation Menu widget. Most themes will call a menu from their header.php template, but menus can be placed anywhere. (source: Justin Tadlock)

The Sidebar (sidebar.php)

In general, the WordPress sidebar features titles of the various sections within a list, with the section items in a nested list below the title.
According to the WordPress Codex and in terms of design,
a sidebar is:
“… a narrow vertical column often jam-packed with lots of information about a website. Found on most WordPress sites, the sidebar is usually placed on the right or left-hand side of the web page, though in some cases, a site will feature two sidebars, one on each side of the main content where your posts are found.”

(You can also check out our previous article “Adding Sidebars to WordPress” to read more about sidebars.)

The Content Column (index.php)

The content container in WordPress plays the most important role. It holds the WordPress Loop which dictates the generation of content on the page depending upon the request by the user.

Content consists of text, images, or other information shared in posts. This is separate from the structural design of a web site, which provides a framework into which the content is inserted, and the presentation of a site, which involves graphic design.

The Footer (footer.php)

The footer is found within the footer.php template file. Footers are more than just a place to put copyright information. The footer in a web design is the bottom of the page. It indicates the end of the page. The footer includes navigational links to move the reader into your blog’s content, but it does so much more. It’s the last thing some visitors see after they finish reading your blog post and comments and should encourage people to stay a little longer on your site. (Source: lorelle.wordpress.com).

More next week!