Daily ArchivesApril 21, 2022

While building ecommerce websites can be profitable for freelance web developers, many new freelancers struggle to learn how to get ecommerce clients.

If you want to find ecommerce clients, stop blindly sending cold emails. Instead, follow these steps to start building your ecommerce client roster.

Step 1: Build Your Online Presence and Portfolio

Whether you’re building blogs or ecommerce sites, prospective clients want to see samples of your work. Freelancers often neglect their own websites. Who can blame them? Paying gigs take precedence over non-paid work. But, if you want to find more ecommerce clients, you’ll need a professional-looking website and portfolio with ecommerce examples.

To attract more ecommerce clients, consider adding ecommerce-specific content. From case studies to blogs, add content to demonstrate your expertise and provide helpful resources to people wanting to open an ecommerce store.

Step 2: Market Yourself to Ecommerce Clients

After setting up your online presence, you can use your site and content to market yourself and find ecommerce clients. Consider using social media, paid advertisements, and freelance platforms to market your services.

Social Media

Use the portfolio examples, case studies, and content from your website to update your social media profiles. Your social network can be an excellent resource for potential clients. Even if someone isn’t looking to start an ecommerce business, they might know someone who needs help and can make an introduction for you.

Paid Advertising

From search to social media, digital advertising offers an affordable and easy way to find ecommerce clients. Advertisers face fierce competition for keywords related to ecommerce website building. You can decrease your advertising costs and increase conversions by focusing on a specific niche such as a location or type of ecommerce store.

Freelancing Platforms

Many ecommerce business owners look for web developers on freelancing platforms as an alternative to hiring an ecommerce agency.

Freelancing platforms for ecommerce website projects include:

Some freelancing platforms charge freelancers a commission, so you’ll want to check the terms and adjust your pricing accordingly.

Step 3: Nurture Leads and Close Deals

Not every visitor to your website or freelancing profile will be ready to start a project. Learning to nurture your leads helps you build a solid pipeline of potential projects.

Lead nurturing ideas include:

Email Campaigns. Set up an email newsletter or implement drip campaigns to keep prospects engaged. A regular email update can keep your name top-of-mind when prospects decide they’re ready to begin a project.

Retargeting. Retargeting ads help you stay in front of prospects wherever they go on the internet. If you’ve ever looked for something on Amazon and then your social feeds suddenly have several ads for that item, you’re familiar with retargeting. Put it to work for your business. Consider highlighting how you can solve major pain points for ecommerce business owners. Time to launch is a significant concern for many people. Use your retargeting ads to illustrate how fast you can build a site.

Personal Outreach. Personalization goes a long way in making prospects feel like you understand their business. After you’ve launched a new site or solved a problem for a client, consider sending personalized emails to some of the prospects in your pipeline. For example, if the new site you built for a client reduced their cart abandonment rate, email prospects a link to the site. Write something like, “We helped XYZ company increase conversion and decrease cart abandonment. What problem can we help you solve?”

Step 4: Deliver Top-Performing Sites

One of the best ways to grow your ecommerce website clientele is to deliver great sites quickly. From proprietary systems like Shopify or BigCommerce to open source solutions like WooCommerce, ecommerce business owners have choices for self-service ecommerce platforms. But most business owners don’t want to take the time to learn them. As a freelance developer, you can deliver value to clients by building sites quickly and making them easy for clients to update.

Word-of-mouth advertising is a freelancer’s best friend. Ask your clients for referrals. Referral projects often close faster because the client who recommended you can vouch for your skills and services.

How to Get Ecommerce Clients with Hostdedi

Figuring out how to get ecommerce clients is only half the battle. You also need to build great sites. StoreBuilder by Hostdedi helps freelancers build stellar WooCommerce sites in less time.

StoreBuilder gives developers a jumpstart on building ecommerce sites. Custom integrations and optimizations get your online store up and running in just a few clicks. With StoreBuilder, you bypass many manual WooCommerce configurations and installation steps.

Reasons Freelancers Love StoreBuilder

Preconfigured Premium Plugins. StoreBuilder automatically installs all the plugins you need to run an ecommerce site.

Fast Themes. StoreBuilder includes a selection of premium themes that are easy to customize and won’t slow down your site.

Simplified WordPress Admin for Easier Client Handoffs. StoreBuilder replaces the traditional WordPress navigation with a friendly and focused menu, so clients only see the section they need to manage their store.

Sales Monitoring. StoreBuilder allows you to offer enhanced analytics to clients. StoreBuilder monitors the store’s sales against historical performance to alert store owners when their sales start to trend downward.

As your freelance business grows, consider adding StoreBuilder to your development workflow for faster ecommerce sites.

Get started today with a 30-day risk-free guarantee.

Let’s say someone is visiting your site, and it’s slow to respond, hard to navigate, or just plain boring. There’s no way around it — they’ll go somewhere else.

But here’s the good news: WordPress has a ton of great plugins to help ensure your website visitors have a great experience.

Read on to discover the best WordPress UX plugins and how they can elevate your website.

What Is WordPress UX?

UX stands for user experience. It refers to how a user interacts with your business, or in this case, your WordPress website. It covers everything from the first page load to the checkout process on your ecommerce website.

Described another way, if a user interacts with it, it’s part of the user experience.

Why Should You Care About WordPress UX?

Have you ever opened a website to find that the page takes forever to load? Or maybe the images don’t load? Have you ever tried to make an online purchase, but checkout fails?

We all have at least once. Like most people, you likely left the website without achieving your desired result. That’s the kind of experience you want to avoid for your website users.

While WordPress UX plugins help you steer away from negative user experiences, they aren’t the only thing that can make or break your website. Quality managed WordPress hosting also plays a huge role. After all, if your hosting is not up to the task, your user’s experience will suffer.

Accessibility and reliability are why WordPress stands out above the rest. If paired with the right hosting plan and high-quality plugins, it’ll offer website visitors the best user experience and take your business to the next level.

WordPress UX: Top 10 Plugins

Now that you know what WordPress UX is and why it matters let’s explore the 10 of the best user experience plugins in the market.

1. Smush

Poorly-formatted images often cause websites to load slowly. That’s where Smush, the ultimate WordPress image Optimization plugin, comes in. Created by the awesome folks over at WPMU DEV, Smush makes optimizing images easy. It lets you compress images into the smallest file size without sacrificing quality.

You can even automate image optimization. So every time you upload new images, Smush will automatically optimize them for you. It’s simply ideal for speeding up WordPress.

Price: Free. Premium plans start at $5/month when billed annually.

2. The Events Calendar

If promoting events is your thing, a calendar that looks good and works well is a must-have. The Events Calendar is the most popular event planner plugin for WordPress for a few reasons.

For one, the plugin is easy to set up, and you can add events in just a few steps. Once created, website visitors can see the event calendar in a month, week, or day view. The premium WordPress version adds myriad features like advanced widgets, recurring events support, and top-notch customer support that helps you keep your website’s UX up to standard.

Price: Free. Premium plans start at $99/year.

3. Broken Link Checker

Don’t you hate it when you click on a link, and instead of seeing what you expected, you see a big ugly 404 Not Found message instead?

Broken Link Checker is a free WordPress UX plugin that ensures your users will always click on a link and see exactly what you want them to see. No more 404 errors. The best part is how easy this plugin is to set up. Just install and activate.

Price: Free. The Premium plan costs $29/year.

4. Tawk.To

Offering website visitors a live chat feature is a huge boost in terms of WordPress UX. After all, having the opportunity to engage with the company in one click instills users with a sense of confidence that encourages them to buy your service or product.

If you want to show availability when users need you most, consider using a plugin like Tawk.To. The live chat plugin connects you with users in a snap. Unlike other plugins, Tawk.To handles the chat service on its servers. That means numerous chat requests won’t bog your website’s server down, preventing crashes.

Price: Free.

5. WP Rocket

As we mentioned earlier, speed determines the quality of your website’s user experience. In that sense, having a fast-loading website is essential.

WP Rocket is a performance optimization plugin that helps you speed up WordPress. It lets you optimize every page on your website quickly and safely. WP Rocket integrates with many content delivery networks (CDNs) and plugins like Smush to optimize your images.

Price: Plans start at $49/year.

6. Really Simple SSL

Nowadays, there is no excuse for not having an SSL. In fact, most managed WordPress hosts include a free Let’s Encrypt certificate, and they apply it automatically to every part of your website. But what if your hosting provider doesn’t offer it?

You’ll need to install an SSL yourself. While Really Simple SSL won’t install an SSL for you, it will ensure that every page of your website has the reassuring padlock most customers expect to see in the address bar. Once your SSL is installed, all you have to do is install Really Simple SSL and click the activate SSL button.

Price: Free. Premium plans start at $169/year.

7. iThemes Security

While we are on the topic of security, iThemes Security is another important plugin to note.

WordPress websites are at constant risk of many different cyberattacks. With iThemes security, you can instantly mitigate these threats and ensure your sites remain secure and safe from malware and hackers. The plugin also offers IP blocking so you can ban repeat offenders.

Price: Free. Premium plans start at $80/year.

8. Forminator

While there are many excellent WordPress form plugins, Forminator is one of the best.

You can create any form for any purpose quickly and easily. You can even use it to create quizzes, polls, calculations, and take payments through Stripe and PayPal.

Price: Free. Premium plans start at $5/month when billed annually.

9. Akismet Spam Protection

Most people familiar with WordPress know about Akismet Spam Protection. After all, it’s included in any new WordPress installation. That alone speaks volumes of the quality of the plugin.

Visitors care about comment spam. Nobody wants to read their favorite blog and see the comments section filled with spammy links to unrelated products they are not interested in. Akismet Spam Protection is the best way to keep your comment sections healthy and on-brand.

Price: Free. Premium plans start at $10/month when billed annually.

10. WP Mail SMTP

Are undelivered emails affecting your website’s user experience? Get WP Mail SMTP by WPForms. With this simple plugin, you can ensure that every email arrives where and when it should.

Price: Free. Premium plans start at $99/year.

Pair Your Plugins With Reliable WordPress Hosting

A poor user experience can destroy your business in an instant. But given the number of available plugins in today’s market, it doesn’t have to be that way.

Once you have the plugins installed, leave the rest to Hostdedi. Our managed WordPress hosting plans give your website what it needs to offer its visitors a reliable, smooth user experience. Try it out today.

Magento offers advanced reporting features that allow you to track search events, product sales, and checkout abandonments. But it doesn’t provide insights into metrics such as customer demographics, devices, and behavior flows.

To access those insights, you need Google Analytics — a free tool that tracks online traffic across devices and platforms using a small snippet of code.

You can add Google Analytics in Magento 2 without an extension or custom code. You only need access to the Magento admin panel and a Gmail account to start.

Here’s how you can add Google Analytics in Magento using both a Universal Analytics (UA) tracking code and the latest generation Google Analytics 4 (GA4) global site tag.

How To Add Google Analytics in Magento 2

Google Analytics is a user-friendly tool that facilitates data-driven decision-making and helps you improve conversion rates. It’s no surprise that according to W3Techs, 56.5% of all websites on the internet use Google Analytics for online traffic analysis.

Here’s how you can get started with analytics for Magento in four simple steps.

1. Set Up a Google Analytics Property

Sign in to your Google account and open Google Analytics. If you haven’t signed up for a free Google Analytics account, you can go to the Google Analytics landing page and click on the Get started today button to configure Google Analytics.

Enter an account name to identify the account in the Analytics dashboard. You can use your company, website, or any other descriptive name of your choice.

Customize how you wish to share tracking data with Google by checking or unchecking the checkboxes in the Account Data Sharing Settings section. You can uncheck all boxes without affecting your ability to add Google Analytics in Magento.

Once you’ve made your selection, click Next to proceed.

Enter a name for your Google Analytics property, set the reporting time zone, and select a currency.

Currently, Google creates a Google Analytics 4 property type by default. However, you can also create a Universal Analytics property by following these steps:

1. Click Show advanced options in the Property setup section.

2. Switch the Create a Universal Analytics property toggle.

3. Enter your store URL in the Website URL box.

4. Choose between creating both a GA4 and UA property or a UA property only. You can leave the enhanced ecommerce reporting option enabled.

5. Click Next when you’re done.

Select your industry, business size, and options that best describe how you plan on using Google Analytics. When you’re done, click Create.

You’ll see the Google Analytics Terms of Service Agreement popup. Select your country, accept the data processing terms, and click I Accept to finish.

After that, you’ll be redirected to the Google Analytics admin area to configure your tracking code.

2. Copy Your Tracking ID and Google Analytics 4 Global Site Tag

The steps to access your tracking code or Measurement ID vary based on the analytics property type. If you’ve created a UA property, you can find the Google Analytics Tracking ID for your website in the Google Analytics admin area.

Navigate to the admin section and select the UA account and property using the dropdown menus. Then, go to Tracking Info > Tracking Code.

Copy the Tracking ID and head over to the Magento admin.

If you’ve created a GA4 property during the setup process, you can copy its global site tag by selecting the GA4 account and property in the Google Analytics admin and clicking on the Data Streams option.

In the Data Streams section, click on the data stream you’ve created for your online store.

In the Web stream details section, copy the code snippet inside Tagging Instructions > Add new on-page tag > Global site tag (gtag.js) and head over to the Magento admin to add Google Analytics in Magento.

3. Add Google Analytics in Magento 2

Log in to the Magento 2 admin panel and go to Stores > Configuration > Sales > Google API. Expand the Google Analytics tab, uncheck Use system value, and change Enable from No to Yes. Add your UA Tracking ID to the Account Number text area and click Save Config.

Optionally, you can also set Anonymize IP to Yes to hide visitor IP addresses and set Enable Content Experiments to Yes to use ecommerce tracking with A/B testing.

If you’re using a GA4 property, you’ll need to add the global site tag to your website’s <head> section. Inserting the code at the starting of the head section ensures that events are tracked even when users prematurely stop a page from loading.

To add Google Analytics in Magento using the global site tag, navigate to Content > Design > Configuration in the Magento admin. In the Action column of the Design Configuration page, click on the Edit hyperlink beside your preferred ecommerce store view.

Scroll down to the HTML Head section, expand it, and paste the GA4 site tag in the Scripts and Style Sheets section.

Click Save Configuration.

Make sure you refresh the Magento cache to update the changes on the frontend.

4. Verify Google Analytics Is Working

Open the Google Analytics dashboard and navigate to the Realtime section of your newly created property. You’ll be able to track live visitors on your site.

If you can’t see any live visitors on your dashboard, here are a few ways to troubleshoot Magento analytics tracking:

1. Disable all ads and analytics blocking features in your browser.
2. Verify the Google Analytics code in the backend is correct.
3. Flush the Magento store cache.

After following these steps, you should see real-time activity in the Google Analytics tracking dashboard as potential customers view products and initiate the checkout process.

Final Thoughts: How To Add Google Analytics in Magento 2

Google Analytics is extremely easy to set up and use. Although you don’t need to be an ecommerce marketing guru or Magento developer to add Google Analytics in Magento 2, you need technical skills to host and optimize a Magento store.

Managed Magento Hosting by Hostdedi eliminates the complexities of hosting a Magento store with Magento-optimized servers. All our plans include PCI-compliant hosting, auto-scaling, 24/7/365 support, and a 30-Day Money-Back Guarantee.

Sign up for a plan today.