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Why Dokan is Our Favorite Multi-Vendor eCommerce Plugin

If you’re looking to open a multi-vendor marketplace, it means you want to make money. Well, to be profitable, you need a multi-vendor plugin with enough features to help everyone involved—you and the vendors who sell on your site. They need to see how well their products are selling. You need management tools to key track of sales, orders, and refunds.

Marketplace success is a team effort, and plugins that build their multi-vendor features around the mutual commercial interests of both owners and sellers will be the most profitable. In short, you need a multi-vendor plugin that’s built for store owners and vendors—for us, that’s Dokan.

Here’s why it’s our favorite.

WooCommerce Integration

Dokan seamlessly integrates with WooCommerce, one of the world’s largest eCommerce open source platforms. Dokan works with WooCommerce; it doesn’t replace it. That means you get the robust features Dokan brings to your multi-vendor marketplaces plus integration for hundreds of supported WooCommerce extensions. You’ll open up a universe of customization for your store and customers. For example, you could add WooCommerce Multilingual to take sales international or offer WooCommerce Gift Wrap at checkout.

Dokan Features for Vendors

To keep your marketplace profitable, your vendors need access to the same tools and data you have as an admin. Without good sales data, they can’t make smart decisions about their store. They need the ability to do things like:

  • Determine which product has the most sales
  • Customize the look of their individual storefront
  • Check the status of an order

However, you can’t just hand over the keys to your site. Dokan excels in creating a clean, intuitive user interface that gives vendors access to their stores without compromising the safety of your site. Here are some powerful tools Dokan offers your vendors.

dokan vendor dashboard

Dashboard

Every store needs a “big picture” look at performance. The Dokan dashboard gives each seller an at-a-glance breakdown of how their store is performing. They can view:

  • Total number of page views their store received
  • Number of orders they’ve made
  • What products they have in stock
  • Total sales to date

Vendors can also manage their reviews, mark spam review, and reply to customer questions. Overall, the Dokan dashboard is a clean, functional tool vendors can use to increase their sales and your profit.

add products to dokan

Adding Products

The most basic task for a vendor is adding products to their store. The key is to make it as painless for your vendors as possible. Dokan’s product adding interface mirrors the actual product page, so it’s easy to recognize. Vendors can upload images and add product names and descriptions all on the same page. Vendors can also set their product prices and set a category pre-defined by you.

vendors can manage frontend orders with dokan dashboard

Managing Orders

The success of your fulfillment process will have a big impact on your profit. Late shipments decimate your repeat business. Shipping the wrong products will send your customer reviews from 4 stars to 1 star. Vendors need to know the status of their orders so they can respond to them. Dokan gives vendors access to all of their orders. They can see their order number, total amount, customer name, and delivery date. Dokan is one of the few existing multi-vendor plugins that offers frontend shipping tracking.

dokan analytics and performance reporting for vendors

Sales Reports

Dokan’s reporting dashboard contains powerful analytics tools to help vendors increase sales. For example, vendors can use their “Reports” view to see which of their products are top sellers. After determining the most popular products, they can order similar ones that appeal to their customers. Vendors can also filter by top-earning products to see which are the most profitable. Users can create custom date ranges for total sales, top sellers, and top earners to discover when sales are the highest for individual products.

vendors can customize their storefront with dokan

Other multi-vendor plugins like WC Marketplace, Yith, or WC Vendors provide basic reporting on overall earnings for your marketplace. But only Dokan offers each vendor a customizable view into their individual store’s success. Your vendors have a better understanding of their customers and the products they want to buy. By putting relevant sales and performance data into their hands, you’re letting them make better decisions about how to improve their stores. That means more time and higher profits for you.

Store Customization

Access to products and orders isn’t all that keeps vendors happy and profitable. They also need the power to customize their storefronts and express their individual brands. Dokan makes it easy for vendors to:

  • Create and update their contact information
  • Name their store
  • Add social profile links
  • Choose their method of payment (defined by store owner)

Overall, Dokan’s vendor stores are clean, easy to navigate, and responsive to mobile, tablets, and desktop.

Dokan Features for Marketplace Owners

Dokan is designed with marketplace owners in mind. Good analytics combined with automation make it a breeze to manage vendors and keep an eye on sales. Here are the best features of Dokan’s admin tools.

store owners can set individual vendor commissions with dokan

Customized Commissions

You get a commission for every sale made on your site. The percentage you collect from your vendors will significantly affect your product prices and profits. The higher your commission, the fewer vendors you’ll attract. The lower your commission, the lower your profit. It’s a delicate balance to strike.

Dokan gives you the ability to set commissions for individual vendors so you can customize your fees based on the value of a particular seller. For example, you can set a higher commission for vendors selling high-margin products (e.g., home furniture) versus those selling small-ticket items (e.g., T-shirts).

Payment Gateways

Successful multi-vendor marketplaces offer customers multiple payment options. If you expect to sell internationally, you’ll need secure payment gateways to support foreign currency exchanges and locally popular payment methods. Dokan offers PayPal, Stripe Connect, and Moip Connect. But its integration with WooCommerce also adds its popular payment options such as:

Payment gateways are also how you make payouts to your vendors. After a customer makes a purchase, Dokan collects the payment, and the vendor makes a withdrawal request from you.

You can use the same payment gateways to collect from customers and make payouts to vendors. Having a good selection of payout platforms makes it easier to meet the transaction needs of individual vendors. And it makes your marketplace a highly functioning online venue that’s more attractive to sellers.

Refunds

Dokan processes refunds through PayPal, a popular payment method that makes transactions easy to process. Here are the steps for processing a refund on Dokan.

  1. Customer requests a refund from the vendor.
  2. Vendor makes a refund request from the seller dashboard to the admin.
  3. Admin cancels the order.
  4. Refund is processed through PayPal to the customer.
  5. Refund amount is deducted from the seller’s account.

Only admins can process refunds, which have to be done manually. So, the bulk of the responsibility is on you. But Dokan’s admin dashboard organizes and displays all of the pending refunds for you, and you can process them individually or in bulk.

Vendor Review

Letting customers rate individual vendors and products increases trust and your site’s legitimacy. But smart marketplace owners give customers the option to review vendor and products separately. With this critical independence, you have better quality control over your vendor’s customer service. A vendor may have great products but horrible service. With a review system that aggregates the two, you’re stuck guessing.

sellers and products can be reviewed separately with vendor review on dokan

With Dokan’s Vendor Review Feature, customers leave individual vendor reviews, which appear on their storefront. Reviews improve the customer’s experience by speeding up their purchase decision. They can decide whether this is a vendor to trust or avoid.

Vendor Review also motivates each vendor to improve their ratings with better products and service. This self-policing of seller quality saves you tons of oversight and management time.

Pricing Plans

Dokan has five different pricing plans, from free to enterprise level. Store owners need different features at different stages of their store’s growth. First-time owners need a low barrier to entry—free and low upfront pricing helps. Beware. Some plugins offer low prices just to get you signed up, then sap your budget with charges for add-on features. Dokan’s pricing model starts you off with long-term planning in mind. It’s designed to change with you as your marketplace grows. Even first-time store owners on a limited budget can access Dokan’s Free Plan and still get:

  • Unlimited vendors
  • The frontend vendor dashboard
  • Vendor payment withdrawal system

The next step up is the Starter Plan at $149/year, designed for site owners who are just getting started with eCommerce. With the plan, you add some valuable features like:

  • Custom commission types
  • Reporting
  • Dokan customer support

You can lower your multi-vendor plugin price even more if you opt for a Managed WooCommerce Standard plan or above (Pro or Plus include it, too), which comes with Dokan and includes everything you need to get started and grow your marketplace.

Dokan’s Biggest Strength: It Stands on the Shoulders of Giants

Dokan has the most features of any multi-vendor eCommerce plugin available. However, its biggest feature may be that it integrates with one of the most popular eCommerce platforms in the world (WooCommerce) and the world’s number one content management system (WordPress).

Multi-vendor marketplaces are a numbers game. Quality products, reputable vendors, and effective marketing matter, but so does sales volume. Having a plugin that plays well with popular eCommerce platforms makes it easier to get started and stay profitable.

Get Your Marketplace Idea Up and Running in Two Weeks

With the Standard Plan of Managed WooCommerce from Hostdedi, you can get a new WooCommerce marketplace up and running in less than two weeks. In addition to including the Dokan Multi-Vendor Extension with all plans of Managed WooCommerce Standard and up, we also include $6,000+/year of other premium plugins such as IconicWP, AffiliateWP, Jilt Pro and Glew.io.

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Is Managed WordPress Hosting Right For Me?

It can be a bit overwhelming when it comes to choosing a web host for your websites needs, and even more so for a site using the ever popular WordPress CMS. When terms such as ‘managed’ and ‘unmanaged’ are being used, different bullet points will fall under each category. And when comparing host to host, it can even be daunting on deciphering what exactly falls under the ‘managed’ umbrella, as well as the ‘unmanaged’ umbrella.

This article aims to help clarify ‘managed’ and ‘unmanaged’ WordPress offerings at Hostdedi as well as identifying which you would most benefit from using.

Managed WordPress

Each host or company may define their own managed service level differently. Observing our own support comparison grid will give you an idea of the type of support and ‘managed’ features that you would get with Hostdedi’ Managed WordPress solution.

With a managed host, the traditional responsibilities of server administration are now handled by us at Hostdedi, allowing you and your team to get back to focusing on the business/developmental aspect of your site.

liquid web handling standard admin duties for managed hosting

Some of these tasks can include installing a web server, maintaining and patching OS upgrades, or configuring the networking. Instead of full-blown server administration with unmanaged hosting, you get to just focus on the website. However, this does mean that you need to be aware of the environment variables set forth by Hostdedi and will need to adjust site settings/ behavior to be compatible with the environment variables.

Check Mark Become a WordPress guru. Subscribe to Hostdedi’ weekly newsletter to get WordPress tips sent straight to your inbox.

Who Would Be a Good Candidate For Hostdedi’ Managed WordPress?

Someone who doesn’t have the required skill set to run a self-managed server right off the bat would be an ideal candidate for Managed WordPress.

Typical examples may include:

  • Web designers
  • Marketing agencies
  • Small businesses
  • The occasional mom and pop shop

web designers

Additionally, we offer premium plugins that are exclusive to our Managed WordPress offering. Some of these include iThemes Sync, iThemes Security, and TinyPNG. which include features like tracking and viewing google analytics data, or checking the SEO status of a post. TinyPNG is added to help with automatic image compression, resulting in faster site speeds.

WordPress also makes it easy enough to design and customize a site. Add iThemes Sync, and you now have one main dashboard to control and update multiple sites through one universal login.

No need to worry about all the nerdy and techy stuff when you have the Most Helpful Humans in Hosting on standby ready to help.

Unmanaged WordPress

Here at Hostdedi, we want to provide the best-managed experience possible, and we’ve incorporated what some would consider managed features into our self-managed services as well.

At the very minimum here’s what our introductory Hosting offerings come with:

  • Data Center(s)
  • Networking
  • Hardware
  • 100% Uptime
  • Application Infrastructure ( Control panel or software used to interact with the product )
  • 24/7/365 Support

Generally speaking, however, this particular self-managed service is ideal for folks who are all about their own customizations and have their own specific requirements for applications. Some don’t mind building the site and server from scratch. Sometimes there is a need for total control and working around host implementations is not doable, or restrictions are placed on the site.

Cloud Sites

Cloud Sites is essentially a pre-configured LAMP stack (offered as a platform as a service or PAAS) that can host PHP based sites, including WordPress.

cloud sites

This product encompasses both aspects of the managed and unmanaged services. It’s managed in the sense that we manage the networking, storage devices, databases, Apache and PHP servers, and the other included technologies. Where the unmanaged aspect would come into play is after the one-click install for WordPress is selected. But in regards to the application itself, it is not managed.

For example, a managed feature in Managed WordPress would be the automatic updating of plugins. In Cloud Sites, that feature is not available. The application itself is managed by the user, but the user is not managing the server, infrastructure, or the hardware.

Both of these platforms have their own separate limitations and have their own unique differences that your site administrator may like, whereas another may not. It really is a matter of determining the sites needs along with different host’s offering features.

The Difference in Managed Services

This is the beauty in ‘Managed’ Services. It no longer requires you to know all the technical and nerdy stuff that we thrive on. That’s not to say that some forehand knowledge isn’t required, but when it comes to the overall picture and what goes into running a server with tasks such as installing a web server, configuring vhosts, opening up ports that allow incoming and outgoing transmissions, installing and maintaining a database, and potential blacklisting are some of the areas that the administrator would solely be responsible for.

However, in some cases, an unmanaged host is the way to go because of potential host restrictions or environmental limitations. Make sure to look at the levels of support with each hosting provider you are checking out.

The grid below shows and highlights the levels of support per the classification of the services offered through Hostdedi. This is our definition of ‘managed’ and ‘unmanaged’ services.

Managed WordPress features vs other services

Final Words

As stated earlier, each host will vary and differ from one another when it comes to their defined managed meaning. However, our Managed WordPress offering is pre-configured out of the box with premium plugins that are not available through every host. These plugins would have extra costs to have installed to a site. These are now tacked on with every single managed WordPress offering. We provide the plugins as part of the default install to maximize the experience when hosting WordPress sites with Hostdedi.

Additionally, not only do we provide premium plugins, but we have also incorporated backups, a user-friendly management portal, automatic plugin updates, staging sites, and NO overage charges!

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Streamlining your WooCommerce Checkout Process to Increase Sales

The name of the game with eCommerce is making sales. Anything that gets in the way of a customer making a purchase is costing you money. Even collecting their email before they’ve made their purchase can cut your sales.

Today we’re going to start by looking at ways you can streamline your checkout process so that you can increase your conversions rates. We’ll also talk about which online payment methods might be right for your store.

One note before we get started today. You need to be A/B testing any changes to your eCommerce store. A/B testing is the process of showing some of your customers a new, possibly improved, version of a page on your site. Then you measure to see if the changes you’ve made improve your conversion rates.

Increase Sales by Streamlining Checkout

In 2015 Barilliance found that the global average cart abandonment rate was over 70%. Take a look at your sales, and realize that there was another 70% of people that had a product in their cart, only to leave. Maybe they even purchased from a competitor?

With the right changes in your checkout process, you could cut your shopping cart abandonment rate by up to 50%. That’s a significant impact on your bottom line. What could you do with the revenue that a 50% higher conversion rate would bring?

Fully managed WooCommerce hosting by Hostdedi comes with cart abandonment technology built in.

Is a Single Page Checkout Right For You?

One of the ways that you can streamline your checkout process is to use a single page checkout process, but sending someone directly to an on-page single window checkout experience isn’t right for every store. If you want visitors to purchase multiple products, then a single page experience is not for you.

Many people want to jump directly into a single page checkout experience because of these advantages:

  • A faster and simplified checkout process
  • Quick navigation
  • Fewer page loads getting in the way of purchase

Despite these advantages, you will note that Amazon still uses a multi-page checkout process for some of their products. Other types of products are purchased with “one-click.” Amazon doesn’t even let you see the checkout when buying a book for Kindle. When you click purchase, you’re taken directly to the completed order page with their single click checkout process.

Using WooCommerce One Page Checkout, you can get some of these same effects. WooCommerce One Page checkout allows you to put a shortcode on a page and in a single page, letting your customer select their products and fill in the checkout form. When they submit their order, it’s done.

Leveraging WooCommerce One Page Checkout eliminates the step of adding something to your cart because it is added to the cart and able to be purchased at the same time. With a straightforward shortcode and an ID for each of your products, you can list your products and get a single page checkout experience.

In addition to supporting all of the standard WooCommerce product types, WooCommerce One Page Checkout supports Easy Pricing Tables, Subscriptions, WooCommerce Checkout Addons, and many other extensions.

Another way to get a faster checkout process is by using WooCommerce Checkout on Popup. This plugin allows you to show your user a single page popup, with complete checkout information, when they add a product to the cart. While you’re not truly cutting steps in the process, many users will feel like the checkout process has fewer steps in it this way.

You can install WooCommerce Checkout on Popup by going to Plugins -> Add New and searching WooCommerce Checkout on Popup. Click Install and then Activate so that the plugin is ready to use on your store.

woocommerce checkout on popup to streamline woocommerce checkout

Once WooCommerce Checkout on Popup has been added to your site, you can find the settings under WooCommerce -> Settings. It will be in one of the tabs across the top of the page.

streamline woocommerce checkout by checking your settings

By default, the plugin presents the checkout popup as soon as the user clicks the purchase button on a product. To get the most streamlined experience, you’ll need to purchase WooCommerce Checkout on Popup Pro. The Pro version will allow you to send a user directly to the site checkout page inside the popup, instead of the popup taking them to the cart which then requires another reload to get to the checkout page.

global cart popup page

WooCommerce Checkout on Popup also provides your customers with the ability to access the checkout and cart in a popup from any place on your site via a global cart icon.

global cart icon

While one-page checkout can be great, it isn’t always the right option. Most times you should look at optimizing your checkout process in other ways first.

If One-Page Checkout Isn’t For You

For some WooCommerce stores, a single page checkout isn’t right. Maybe you have a bunch of different accessories, and people will continue to shop after they’ve added an item to their cart. In that case, let’s look at what you can do to streamline your checkout process.

Use the Standard WooCommerce Cart Page

The first place to start is to determine if you need the standard WooCommerce cart page. Your cart page is usually found at https://yourdomain.com/cart and is a step between adding something to a customer’s cart and the payment process.

Let’s look at an example.

The Sweet Setup, one of my clients, sells online courses, so we don’t need to worry about a bunch of items being added to the cart. Users generally purchase a single course at a time.

When you view their Ulysses course and purchase it, you are taken directly to the WooCommerce checkout. We bypass the cart phase because we don’t need it. To stop users from purchasing multiple copies of a course by accident we use Min/Max Quantities.

We used Min/Max Quantities for this because quantities for your products are viewable and adjustable on the Cart page in WooCommerce. Since we’re bypassing it and sending users to the WooCommerce Checkout directly, we saved support issues and time on potential refunds by making sure that you could only ever purchase a single copy of a course.

On The Sweet Setup, we add a direct link to the checkout that includes the product you’re purchasing. This works for my client because they write custom landing pages for each product and then include the correct link to send someone to the checkout page.

To build a direct-to-checkout link for your site, you’ll need the product ID. You can find this directly under the title of your product in the admin panel.

learn ulysses example for min and max quantities

Armed with the product ID, you’ll need a specially crafted URL with the add-to-cart parameter at the end. For The Sweet Setup, this looks like https://thesweetsetup.com/checkout/?add-to-cart=12709. For your site, change the domain and the product ID to match your site and the product you want to send directly to the checkout page.

If you’re using the standard WooCommerce purchase buttons, then you can use WooCommerce Direct Checkout to send all of the purchase links directly to checkout.

Streamline Required Fields at Checkout

A second thing you can do to streamline your checkout is to only ask for the fields you require at checkout. You’ll notice that The Sweet Setup only asks for your name and email and to create an account password. Standard WooCommerce has a bunch of extra fields for your address and asks you to think about the difference in your billing and shipping address. We don’t need an address to ship you a digital product, so we don’t ask for it.

We don’t even try to upsell any customers either but use Smart Offers to offer other products after customers have made their initial purchase.

Other clients I have need to know the Zip/Postal Code of their users so that they can charge taxes appropriately. In this case, only ask for the Zip/Postal Code and leave the other address information out of the equation entirely. Always ask for the least amount of information necessary.

Use WooCommerce Buy Now

One of the final things we do on The Sweet Setup to expedite the checkout process is use WooCommerce Buy Now. For signed-in users with at least one previous order, WooCommerce Buy Now will complete the current order using the customer’s most recent billing and shipping information. That means we can provide a single click purchase experience for our repeat customers.

Final Considerations on Streamlining Your Checkout Process

There are a few rules to remember to streamline your checkout process and increase your conversions:

  1. Only ask for the information you need
  2. Every step in your checkout process increases the chance of cart abandonment
  3. A/B test your changes

Regardless of the customizations you choose to make to your WooCommerce store, keeping these few rules in mind will help you get more customers.

Build a High-Performing WooCommerce Store

Create a store that converts traffic with Hostdedi’ Managed WooCommerce Hosting solution. It comes with cart abandonment technology to help you sell more, and the platform reduces query loads by 95%, leading to a faster store and more conversions.

Give it a try to see for yourself. Start your two-week free trial today.

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Return Policy Template Examples for Small eCommerce Businesses

TheraSpecs is an online eyewear vendor that makes tinted sunglasses designed to relieve the effects of migraines. Recently, facing a sharp spike in return rates, the company decided to extend their 45-day free trial.

“Even at 45 days, we found that customers who were on the fence were more likely to return their glasses because of the deadline,” Marketing Manager Greg Bullock explains.

TheraSpecs extended their free trial to 60 days. Those 15 extra days made a huge difference. Return rates stabilized, negative customer comments decreased, and most importantly, onsite conversion rates increased by 15 percent.

Bullock has this advice for eCommerce business owners:

Craft your return policy for your actual customer. Don’t base it solely on industry best practices, your competition, or what’s in your best interest.”

Good return policies strike a balance between bolstering consumer trust in your products and minimizing profit loss. Your return policy isn’t just a box to tick off—it actually says something about your brand.

If your policy is too strict, it engenders doubt in your products and you. Too complex, and it puts up roadblocks to purchase. Too technical sounding and you seem duplicitous.

Even Retail Giants Struggle to Find the Right Return Policy

In February 2018, L.L.Bean expired its famous lifetime guarantee, moving to a one-year return policy. In May 2018, Amazon announced it was changing its retail policy. The retail giant said it would ban customers who were abusing its liberal return policy and close their accounts.

The two famously customer-centric companies are trying to crack down on merchandise return fraud, which costs U.S. retailers an estimated $17.6 billion per year.

But will Amazon and L.L. Bean eliminate the cost of fraud, only to lose customers to retailers with more generous return policies? Only time will tell.

Keep Your Return Policy Simple

If you’re building or revamping your return policy, keep the terms and conditions simple. Even if you have to include some jargon and legalese to protect your interests, keep things as short as possible. Complex details, limitations, and extra fees confuse and anger customers, driving them away from product and checkout pages.

Best Buy’s return policy is a good example of terms and conditions getting out of hand. For example, the return and exchange periods vary by department. Some items have a return window of 14 days from the original date of purchase, while others have 15 days. Return day requirements also change with Best Buy membership levels (e.g., Best Buy Elite vs. Plus members).

Return costs also change by device—small electronics like cell phones cost $35, while DSLR cameras are 15% of the purchase price. Making customers do math is a huge purchase barrier. Restocking fees even differ depending on the brand of the cell phone!

Shipping costs are also convoluted, with Best Buy’s return policy making a distinction between free shipping for “Best Buy error” and customer-paid shipping for all other reasons. The policy even changes during the holiday shopping season. What’s a customer to do?

Best Buy has a confusing return policy

If Best Buy’s return policy resembles differential algebra, IKEA’s return policy is like third-grade math. You get 365 days to return an item for a full refund unless the item is “found to be dirty, stained, damaged or abused.” The returning customer only needs to present a photo ID and pay for shipping, pick up, or return it to an IKEA store. The company does change its policy to 90 days for pillows, quilts, and mattresses. But aside from that, IKEA’s return policy is easy to understand and follow.

IKEA return policy is easy to understand

Besides simplicity, IKEA’s return policy also benefits from copy that instills buyer confidence:

It’s OK to change your mind,” it begins. “If you’re not totally satisfied with your IKEA purchase you can return it…”. Note how the tone is empathetic, reassuring the customer it’s okay to be dissatisfied. It’s also customer-centric, addressing the customer directly. Contrast that with Best Buy’s beginning sentence—“We at Best Buy work hard every day…”—which puts the company first.

Be as Transparent as Possible

The quickest way to lose your customers’ trust is to have a return policy that surprises them with information they should have known before the purchase. Transparency is a non-negotiable quality in a return policy, and if absent, can negatively affect the most conscientious and ethical store owner’s bottom line.

You don’t need to intentionally hide extra fees inside small print disclaimers and asterisks to lack transparency.

Use Plain Language Your Audience Understands

Your return policy isn’t a place to drop your brand voice and adopt legalese—the words you use represent your brand just as much as the words on your homepage. Forever 21, a fashion brand that caters to teenagers and young adult audiences, doesn’t speak the same language as their customers when it comes to their return policy.

Forever 21 return policy is cold and language not meant for audience

Forever 21’s introductory sentence says it all … while saying nothing at all:

This Returns and Exchanges Policy applies to all purchases made through the website Forever21.com, the Forever 21 mobile applications, and any other website or application that directs you to this Returns and Exchanges Policy (collectively, the “Site”).

The copy is too dense and cold, creating distrust and alienation in the customer. The real problem is that the return policy page changes the brand/customer relationship. The inviting words of Forever 21’s home page (e.g. “The brands we love”) isn’t carried over to their refund page—a place where “arbitration” and “governing law” create a formalized, legal relationship. This discontinuity in tone puts the customer on guard, engendering the feeling that there’s something fishy going on here.

In contrast, MapleHolistics.com is a brand that understands that a return policy needs to sound personalized, reassuring and on-brand. Here’s a sample from the skin and hair product vendor’s return policy. Note the inviting tone.

If you select a product for your own use and are, for any reason at all, not happy with the results—we will either replace it with a more suitable product, or give you a full refund (maximum of 2 refunds per household). It’s your choice—a choice well made knowing that we are dedicated to providing outstanding customer service and quality care.

mapleholistic return policy uses on brand language and is accessible and simple

MapleHolistics.com uses a return policy that’s simple and transparent. It contains contact information within the policy copy, which lets customers quickly ask questions. The policy also uses graphics to reassure customers, adding “Guaranteed Money Back” badges surrounding the “Holistic Promise”.

For Some Stores, No Refunds Is the Best Policy

The best policy for your store may be offering no refunds at all. Alex Tran is a fashion blogger and reviewer who also sells fashion from her personal collection on her website schimiggy.com. Tran says she doesn’t offer product returns at all.

I sell both new and used goods and let my buyers know that that is the nature of my store and its policies,” she says.

Tran, instead, leans on product images and descriptions to inform her customers about the condition of her items and build purchase trust.

schimiggy.com return policy is simply no return policy

Tran’s return policy is only five sentences long and is located right in the middle of her shopping page:

RETURN POLICY: All items are described as is in the listings. Due to all items coming from my personal closet, all sales are non-refundable. Please read the full description prior to purchasing. Thanks for your understanding. If you have any questions, please feel free to email me.

The no-refunds policy works well for influencers like Trans who use their own closets to stock their product pages. Since she’s a product reviewer, Trans succeeds only as much as she maintains trust and authenticity with her audience. It’s a level of trust that naturally transfers to her product descriptions too, removing customer doubts about the quality and authenticity of the clothes.

Overall, Trans’ return policy is simple, transparent, and trustworthy, and so far, it’s been successful. “I’ve had my store for a year now, and haven’t yet gotten a return from a disgruntled buyer,” she says. “As long as you are transparent about your business practices, most buyers will understand.”

Return Policies Reveal Who You Are

To a customer, return policies that are unreasonable suggest you’re also unsure of your own products. A trustworthy consumer would rightfully feel distrusted if your policy was a major hurdle—“Why are they making this so hard to return? Do they think I’m a crook?” Reasonable return policies build trust in your brand while helping convert shoppers into life-long customers.

The vast majority of shoppers will spend more and buy more often from brands that have a generous, simple, and transparent return policy. So, make sure you incorporate these qualities when creating or updating your own.

Make Your Store Faster

With Managed WooCommerce Hosting from Hostdedi, you can easily start a new online shop. And with built-in plugins for building beautiful landing pages, cart abandonment technology, automatic image compression, and performance testing, your store will bring in more sales than ever.

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Cloud Migration: A Step-By-Step Guide To Moving Your Site To The Cloud

If you have followed the advice outlined in the previous articles in this series on cloud migration, you are well-prepared to migrate your site to cloud hosting. The information you need has been gathered and is easily accessible. You have informed those who will be affected by the migration. You have chosen a cloud platform and selected an appropriate cloud instance. Now it’s time to put your cloud migration plan into action. Read More »

The Only FAQ Template You Need is in This Blog Post

Imagine this scenario: You’re shopping for wireless headphones on an eCommerce website. You have some general questions. So, you head over to the site’s FAQ where you find out that algorithms called audio codecs help determine sound quality in headphones.

There’s a link in the FAQ to one of the site’s blog articles where you can “learn more.” You read the article. Now, you’re feeling informed and confident. Below the article is an ad for a pair of wireless headphones that supports the codecs you just described. You click and buy.

The scenario represents a common customer buying journey from consideration to purchase. One of those critical stops was the FAQ page.

What Does FAQ Mean?

FAQ stands for Frequently Asked Questions and is the section of your website dedicated to answering visitors’ common questions and concerns. FAQs are also key parts of a buyer’s journey to purchasing a product or service. By informing potential customers, FAQs help raise buying confidence and push consumers closer to purchase.

FAQ’s don’t just save time by preemptively addressing customer queries, as the headphones scenario illustrates, they can also:

  • Build shopper confidence
  • Improve your site SEO
  • Funnel customers to converting pages
  • Establish your expertise in a topic
  • Reinforce your brand personality

Useful FAQs help you grow your brand and make you more money. Here are some recommended FAQ templates, and tips for building FAQ pages that convert lookers into buyers.

FAQ Templates We Recommend

WooCommerce Product FAQ Manager: Developed with the eCommerce store owner in mind, this FAQ manager is optimized for WooCommerce. It is a customizable, responsive design, and allows users to search FAQs.

Ultimate FAQ: This WordPress plugin has more than 30,000 active installations. You can select from multiple layouts and styles. The plugin creates dedicated URLs for each FAQ entry, which might have positive or negative SEO consequences depending on how you use it. Avoid creating hundreds of pages with only a few sentences of text.

Accordion FAQ: This WordPress plugin, with more than 10,000 active installations, specializes in the popular “accordion and collapse” style of FAQ. With this design, users can see many questions at once. They can click to expand the answer for the question that interests them, then click again to collapse that answer and see more questions.

accordion faq template

The Sexy Toggle FAQ Accordion: Here is another method for adding the accordion-style FAQ to the site: with custom code. This page provides custom code for this style in HTML, CSS, and JS.

sexy toggle accordion faq template

Identify Relevant FAQs

Good FAQs are those that are relevant. While it helps to put yourself in your customer’s shoes, don’t use your own judgment to identify good FAQs. As an expert in your products or services, you may know your products too well to anticipate the questions visitors will ask. It’s best to go with third-party sources to find relevant FAQs—sources like these:

Email

Customer emails often contain good ideas for FAQs—even when the customer isn’t asking a question. If a customer praises you in an email saying: “My 3D printed iPhone case works great! I didn’t know 3D printing products were so durable. Thanks a million!” Don’t just revel in your greatness, look for FAQ opportunities. The customer expressed surprise at a particular feature: its durability. Turn that as a potential FAQ: “Are 3D printed products as durable as others?”

Comments

Read the comments your customers make on social media or directly on your website. If you allow comments on your product pages, go through them regularly for ideas. If a customer takes the time to write a comment, chances are that their inquiry, praise, or critique is genuine. If you don’t allow comments, consider changing your policy.

Support Tickets

Customer support tickets are the most obvious opportunity to identify common questions. But not every issue should spawn a new FAQ. Unique technical problems don’t necessitate an FAQ. Remember, they’re “frequently” asked, not just asked.

Surveys

Use customer surveys to quickly gather information for good FAQs. Use your social media accounts to get customer feedback or email your customers directly with questions designed to probe for FAQs.

Competitors

Cruise over to a few of your competitors’ FAQ pages and see how theirs stacks up to yours. But don’t just copy and paste, because your FAQs should be specific to your product or service. Use competitors to source relevant questions of a more general nature.

Site Search

To find relevant queries and topics for FAQs, find out what people are searching for on your site. You can set up site search through Google Analytics and turn on tracking for WordPress sites. Some Chrome extensions let you search a website for specific words. Use these extensions to search your own comments sections. You can even search YouTube video comments for specific words that might indicate a fruitful FAQ topic.

Writing Good FAQs

Writing your FAQs involves more than just identifying common questions and answering them. FAQs are an opportunity to build a relationship with a potential customer and present your brand in all its glory. Here are some tips.

Draft Your FAQs With the Customer in Mind

When drafting your FAQs, put your customer first. Answer the question from their point of view, use words they understand, and center your answers around their needs. An easy way to place your customer first is to compose your FAQ questions in the first person using “I”. Questions with “I” take the customer’s point of view and positions your brand as empathetic. Microsoft implements this customer-centric approach well in its Office FAQ section:

Use I statements and questions when drafting your FAQ questions

Keep your customers front and center by using the language they understand. Are you addressing questions for programmers or architects? Maybe you’re answering questions for tweens about a social app? Whatever the audience, write in a vernacular and tone that’s familiar to them.

If you’re a sole proprietor and will be delivering your service, consider answering your FAQs from your own perspective. Nicole Faith runs 10 Carat Creations, a service for solopreneurs who’ve outgrown freelancing and need to grow their business model. Since Faith works directly with her clients, she brings her own point of view to her answers and directly addresses potential clients. The effect is a closer connection to the customer and the services she provides. Here’s an example from Faith’s FAQs:

Do I need to know what I want my business to be?
You need an idea and a target audience. Know where your expertise and interests lies. You don’t need every detail planned out, but please understand the lay of the land in your space. For example, I can’t help you if you come to me wanting to be a health coach but you haven’t researched other health coaches and don’t know the first thing about your ideal client. I do most of the work, so all I ask is that you’re confident in your knowledge of both your craft and industry.

Faith’s answer is direct and builds expectations along with incorporating a helpful tone—saying “We’re in this together, but here’s what I expect from you.”

Be Clear and Concise in Your FAQ Answers

Customers dread paragraph-length answers in an FAQ. When your answers are wordy and long, it likely means they’re too complicated for one entry. If so, try breaking the concept up into multiple questions with shorter answers. Or keep things short by summarizing the answer and linking out to other resources, preferably on your site (e.g., blog post, landing page, help forum).

The Universities and Colleges Admission Services (UCAS) FAQ page is a stellar example of clear and concise answers.

use external links in your faq to keep it short

Note that UCAS also drafts questions in the first person and employs a tone and word choice that works for college-aged students and their parents. The tone is direct and reflects the seriousness of a decision with lifelong implications.

Let Your Brand Voice Shine Through

The FAQ page isn’t the place to get all stuffy if your brand voice is fun and helpful. Customers like consistency.

Know your brand voice and use it in your FAQs. Your FAQ page can help build your brand, like “modern bidet” company Tushy accomplishes on its FAQ page.

use your brand voice in your faq

Tushy uses its tongue-in-cheek marketing approach in its FAQ section to keep its brand voice consistent. Because customers may be uncomfortable researching the delicate subject of going to the bathroom, Tushy uses an informal tone and humorous double entendres in its FAQs to lighten the mood.

The Best FAQ Pages Use Multimedia

Many customers prefer an FAQ that presents the answer visually, especially when the answer involves a process on your site (e.g., “How do I change my account information?”). To graphically answer an FAQ, try one of these strategies:

  • Include screenshots of your user interface to demonstrate the steps in “Cancelling Your Order”.
  • Produce a short video and link out to your YouTube channel from your FAQ page.
  • Create a flowchart that illustrates your return policy process.

Visually representing information makes your answers more accurate, clear, and concise. Why list five steps in a process when one image will do it?

Ancestry.com uses multimedia components to guide customers through common tasks like “Resetting a Forgotten Password”. From their FAQ page, the company links out to support articles like the one below that help customers quickly complete the process.

ancestry resetting your password multimedia faq

FAQ Templates for Organization and Navigation

Good FAQ pages are organized and intuitive, whether they’re a simple bulleted list or custom-coded design. If you opt for a drop-down style FAQ format, WooCommerce FAQ plugins are easy to install and can be placed directly on your product pages.

The drop-down interface (see below) of these FAQ styles is easy to navigate and already familiar to most customers. The organization of your FAQs matters, too. Don’t make customers scroll and hunt your FAQ page—list the most frequently asked questions first.

place faq on your product page to increase conversions for relevant questions

Grouping FAQs Into Categories for SEO

Simple bulleted lists and collapsable interfaces are good, but what if you have many FAQs to answer? If that’s the case, build an FAQ page organized by groups, categories, or themes, and then link to other pages (ideally on your own site) to provide answers. This style of organization keeps your FAQ page from becoming encyclopedic in length and drowning the customer in information. Ancestry.com and Dropbox both employ this thematic organization.

ancestry.com organizes faq thematically for seo ranking and easy navigation

Ancestry.com’s FAQs are divided into six different broad categories, neatly spaced and organized on a single page. After clicking a category, customers navigate to a dedicated support page, which is also divided into topics and FAQs.

ancestry.com manages faq by sorting into six broad categories

Not only does this strategy make a better experience for your customers, it improves your website’s SEO. Web pages rank higher when they’re organized thematically and focused on a central keyword phrase, and the interlinked pages create an efficient site hierarchy that web browsers can easily crawl.

By sending customers to your blog articles or dedicated pages for answers, you also have the opportunity to convert them. To convert customers from an FAQ page, try some of the following strategies:

  • Have a call-to-action for every FAQ page.
  • Offer a downloadable PDF at the end of an article to capture emails.
  • Put an answer to an FAQ on a product page when it makes sense.

Strategies like these lead customers from your FAQ page down your conversion path.

Be Proud of Your FAQ. It Makes You Money.

Your FAQ page can do much more than merely answer customer questions. So, don’t hide it in some obscure part of your site. Be proud. Put it in your main navigation menu. Incorporate it into your homepage.

Almost every customer and visitor to your site arrives with at least one question, and there’s no better way of making a good first impression than being helpful and knowledgeable. Your FAQ page can be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Build a Faster Store

The best eCommerce stores convert visitors to leads by hosting their store on a platform such as Managed WooCommerce Hosting. Built on WordPress, the #1 CMS globally, the platform has been created to decrease store load times by reducing query loads by up to 95%. All of our plans come with premium plugins from IconicWP and Jilt for recovering abandoned carts.

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What’s New In WooCommerce 3.5?

Towards the end of last month, WooCommerce 3.5 was released with new features for users and developers. As a minor release, WooCommerce 3.5 is compatible with sites running WooCommerce 3.0 or greater. There should be no plugin or theme incompatibility problems, but it’s always better to test before upgrading your live site. Hostdedi Cloud users can take advantage of our dev site creation tool to instantly and securely deploy a testing site. Read More »

4 Ways to Optimize the Buyer’s Journey

Today’s buyer has access to an incredible amount of information. They are able to create a clear picture of the product they are looking to purchase by leveraging information from search engines, social media, and word of mouth. 

As a merchant, this changing information landscape gives you access to multiple channels through which you can access and communicate with customers. For some, this new scope may seem scary, with a fear that merchants will now have to work harder than ever to make their products as accessible as possible. Read More »

Hobbies That Make Money: How to Tell If Your Hobby Can Be Profitable

We pick up hobbies for a lot of reasons. Sometimes it’s passion, sometimes it’s catharsis, and sometimes it’s just for the sake of passing the time.

No matter why you picked up your hobby, you’ve probably had that one fleeting thought: “I wonder if I could make some money from this?” If you’re into a hobby, there’s a pretty good chance that there’s some market for your niche skills.

Related reading: How to Find a Profitable Niche >>

Hobbies that make money need ROI, scalability, and profitable niche

Before you do anything else, you need to figure out if there’s a market for your hobby. There are a few questions you need to answer to determine this.

What’s the ROI of Your Hobby?

Before you get too emotionally invested in turning your hobby into a business, will your hobby make money? ROI stands for return on investment. It’s how you determine if something is actually profitable.

What is Ecommerce? How to Get Started >>

If you plan on selling cross stitch designs, for example, you need to at least sell your designs for more than the cost of materials and your time spent making your products.

Is Your Hobby Scalable?

“Scalability” is a word you hear a lot in business but almost never in the general hobby world. The idea of scalability is that as demand increases, a business can grow to accommodate that demand.

How to Choose the Best Dropshipping Products: 38 Best Items to Dropship in 2021 >>

For businesses, this often means hiring more people. If you’re just starting out with your hobby, this probably isn’t going to happen anytime soon. But as demand increases for your product, how are you going to be able to meet demand? Can you speed your process up? Is there a way to automate cross-stitching? Is there something else that you can sell that is a one-time creation that you can sell over and over?

If you can’t find a way to scale your new business, you might run the risk of lost revenue down the road due to sold-out products or from closing commissions when you have more work on your plate than you can handle.

Are You in a Profitable Niche?

You probably already have a good idea what niche your hobby falls into. Most people already look for like-minded folks who share their hobby, whether that’s cross stitch, researching family trees, woodworking, local sports, or more.

A lot of entrepreneurs even combine their hobbies when starting their small business. Take, for example, cross stitch and cats, an example we’ll follow throughout this piece. How do you know if your niche is popular enough to make money from? You can look at keyword research, Amazon searches, social fandom, and Google Trends for guidance.

The Social Fandom of Your Hobby

One way to determine the popularity of a niche is to look to social communities like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Facebook is especially helpful here because Facebook allows users to create Groups that like-minded individuals can join.

We don’t have to search Facebook groups to know that cats are popular on the internet. The dozens of cat videos you probably see in your social feed every day is probably indicative enough of that.

But what about cross stitching? There are dozens of Facebook groups dedicated to cross stitching, some with over 20k members.

Sampling of the search on Facebook groups

And they’re not all grandmas who are interested in traditional designs. One group with over 11k members that boasts over 10 posts a day (making it very active) is called Snarky Craft Stitching with Subversion and takes a younger, more humor-oriented approach to cross stitch.

Whether your cat cross stitch designs are traditional or modern, it looks like there’s a cross stitch group that fits your style. That means there’s a potential audience for your product. The members of these groups might not be looking to buy finished cross stitch products, but cross stitch patterns are likely something they search for and purchase.

Keyword Research for Your Hobby

Keywords are the search queries people use to find whatever they’re looking for. There are two main things to consider for keywords: their volume and their difficulty (also called competition). These keywords can be used in your SEO strategy. SEO for ecommmerce is critical to gaining visibility.

Volume is the approximate number of people searching for a keyword over the course of a month. Higher volume means it’s a more popular search. Lower volume means not as many people search for it in an average month. The difficulty is how easy or difficult it is to appear high up in Google search results for that keyword. Typically, higher volume keywords are more difficult to rank for.

Everything You Need to Know to Develop an Ecommerce Marketing Strategy >>

Though fewer people search lower-volume keywords, they can still be valuable. People tend to narrow their searches after looking for big “head” terms because they don’t quickly find what they’re looking for. Those looking for cross stitching patterns probably aren’t going to find patterns just by searching “cross stitch.” However, they can look up “cross stitch patterns” or narrow it down further to “cat cross stitch patterns” to find exactly what they want.

Looking at the free keyword planning tool Wordtracker, we can see that “cross stitch” has high volume as well as high competition (also called difficulty). “Cross stitch pattern” has more than 22,000 monthly searches, but still a high competition number. If we look at “cross stitching patterns,” we can see a similar volume to “cross stitch pattern,” but a much lower competitive number.

volume-and-competition

From this chart, it looks like there’s interest in cross stitching patterns and there are certain keywords for cross stitching that aren’t very competitive. This means that there might be room for new entrepreneurs to enter the cross stitching pattern space.

If you want to narrow down even more, you can. When we look at the keyword “cat cross stitch,” we see that monthly volume drops to 40-480 monthly searches and competition becomes almost nonexistent.

attainable goals

This lower volume isn’t necessarily a bad thing! There might only be approximately 500 monthly searches for “cat cross stitch patterns,” but if you sell cat cross stitch patterns, your product is exactly what those users are searching for. If you manage to sell a $5 pattern to half of those people, that’s $1,250 per month for work you only need to do once (making the pattern).

The keyword “cat cross stitch” provides another opportunity. Not everyone searching for that query is looking for a pattern. Some of those users are looking for completed or commissioned cross stitch of cats.

If you offer custom cross stitch in addition to patterns, you could make even more. If you sell 10 custom cat cross stitch pieces for $100 each, that’s another $1,000 in monthly revenue just for doing something you love.

Google Trends tells you about the popularity of keywords over time. Using this free service, you can pit two or more keywords against each other to compare their popularity.

For example, the below chart shows “cross stitch pattern” compared to “embroidery pattern.” If you’re capable of creating and selling both, this chart might make you choose one over the other.

cross-stitch-popularity on google trends

Cross stitch edges out embroidery across the chart, which pulls five years of data. “Cross stitch pattern” isn’t currently at its most popular (the peak of its popularity was Jan. 2015), but it has consistently been searched for more frequently than embroidery patterns. That tells us that cross stitch patterns have a larger market than embroidery patterns and would be the better hobby to pursue.

9 Types of Ecommerce Business Models for 2021 >>

It’s worth noting that Google Trends doesn’t give you any insight into the competition or difficulty of certain keywords. It’s most helpful for looking into the general popularity of overall umbrella terms.

Searching for Similar Products

Keyword research and Google Trends will give you a good idea of demand, but won’t tell you how many competing products are out there. How many brands are out there trying to sell to the same people? Five? 500? 5,000? What does their product look like and how can you differentiate?

That’s an answer best solved by searching Google and popular marketplaces like Amazon and Etsy for the competition.

If you’re thinking about selling cat cross stitch patterns and commissions, Etsy is a clear starting place for your search. Etsy is a marketplace where people sell handcrafted and vintage goods, and it’s extremely popular with consumers and creators alike.

cat cross stitch search on Etsy

Cat cross stitch pattern” might see only 500 searches a month on Google, but there are over 8,000 results for that exact same search on Etsy. Amazon boasts over 7,000 results. That’s a crowded marketplace.

Those results could be discouraging, but it doesn’t have to be the end of your business. You might find it easier to stand out by creating your own website where you don’t have to fight the Etsy hordes.

Building a Website

You don’t have to sell your cat cross stitch patterns on Etsy or any other crowded marketplace. If you build a beautiful website that outperforms other sites, you could find yourself with more success. On Etsy, you’re one in 8,000. If you build a website with the goal of ranking for “cat cross stitch pattern,” you’re one in 94. That’s how many sites currently rank on Google for that keyword.

Make Your Move: From Marketplaces to Creating Your Own Online Store >>

It has never been easier to start an online store, or add a store to your blog, to sell the fruits of your hobby. You don’t have to be a developer and designer to build a functional website. Solutions like WooCommerce are affordable, easy to use, and offer thousands of themes that fit any brand aesthetic. And it’s really simple to add WooCommerce to WordPress.

And you don’t have to build your online store alone. Tools like StoreBuilder by Hostdedi create a unique and personalized online store for you in a few minutes. These managed hosting solutions offer support and a wide range of features, like cart abandonment software so you can email customers who didn’t complete an order. Plus, hosted solutions like ours are made to be fast and great for SEO.

Whether you’re looking for a little extra cash or to build a new career, a hobby is a great place to start. It’s something that you already know how to do and are passionate about. Michael Kittredge turned his candle-making hobby into Yankee Candle Company, a billion-dollar brand. Nicole Snow took her love of knitting and turned it into Darn Good Yarn, a million-dollar company. It takes time and perseverance, but earning income from your hobby is an attainable goal.

Create Your Online Store With StoreBuilder

With StoreBuilder, you can start and launch a WooCommerce store faster than any other solution on the market. Getting started is simple — just answer four questions and your ecommerce site will be created in minutes.

StoreBuilder uses industry insights to build a customized ecommerce site just for you. You don’t need templates, coding experience, or any technical web knowledge.

Learn how Hostdedi’s StoreBuilder can help support your ecommerce marketing strategies.

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