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9 Steps to Export WooCommerce Products with WP All Export

WP All Export is a powerful tool that allows you to export WordPress data to a custom CSV or XML. You can edit WooCommerce products in Excel and reimport them, migrate them to a new site, or upload them to Google Merchant Center.

Keep reading for an in-depth guide to exporting WooCommerce products, including price, stock, categories, and product image galleries. Follow along by going here to WP All Import and selecting “WooCommerce Store.”

How to Export WooCommerce Products

At a high level, here’s how to export your WooCommerce products.

  1. Go to All Export › New Export and select “WooCommerce Products” to create a new WooCommerce product export. 
  2. Decide if you’d like to export to CSV, XML, or Google Merchant Center.
  3. Drag and drop to customize your export file.
  4. Run the export to generate your WooCommerce product export. 

Below we will go into more detail for each step.

9 Steps to Export WooCommerce Products

1. Create a New WooCommerce Product Export

To create a new WooCommerce product export, go to All Export › New Export and select “WooCommerce Products” from the drop-down. Create filters to set which products are included in your export, and decide if you’d like to customize the export or automatically generate your CSV/XML for easy migration to another site.

2. Set the WooCommerce Product Export Filters

Export filters allow you to decide which products to include in your export. You can build any combination of filter rules to build the exact file that you need. To create a filtering rule, select the element you want to filter by, the rule for the filter, and then the value to filter by. Add multiple rules with “AND” or ‘“OR” conditionals.

As an example, the below set of filters will only export products that are in stock in the category “Heart Shaped” and were created before November 5 2020.

For now, let’s remove them so that all of our products are included in this export.

3. Customize Your Woocommerce Product Export File

Click “Customize Export File” to continue to the edit export page.

WP All Export automatically adds some relevant fields to the export template to get you started. Drag them around to re-arrange them, drag them out of the template to remove them, and click them to edit their names and adjust other settings.

All of the WooCommerce product data is included in the Available Data section on the right. 

The “Product Data” section contains the most commonly used fields, like SKU, price, stock, and product attributes like size and color. Product variations are automatically detected.

The “Media” section contains all of the export fields needed to export WooCommerce product galleries and attached files. The URL, filename, and all image SEO data are all available for export.

The “Taxonomies” section is automatically populated with all of the categories and tags applied to the WooCommerce products in your export. 

4. WooCommerce Product Export File Types

Click “Export Type” to decide which type of export file to generate. You can choose from the following options: 

  • CSV File
  • Excel File (XLS or XLSX)
  • XML (Simple or Custom)
  • Google Merchant Center

CSV and Excel are the best to bulk edit your WooCommerce Products, or process them in Excel or Google Sheets. They also work well for migrating WooCommerce products to another WordPress install.

Other services and systems will sometimes require an XML feed, prepared with a specific schema or format. If you’re lucky, you will be able to use the ‘Simple XML’ option. This creates a simple, single-level XML feed of your product data that will work for the majority of uses.

If you need more customization options than the “Custom XML Feed,” you can fully customize the structure of the XML file (including nested elements), control the names and order of the XML elements, and easily add static data to the feed using this option.

Finally, the “Google Merchant Center Product Feed” option creates a feed tailored to easily upload WooCommerce Products to Google Merchant Center. WP All Export pulls all of the necessary information from your products in WooCommerce, with options to map categories and configure other options specific to Google.

5. Run the Export

Let’s set the export type to “CSV.” Click “Add All” to add all fields to the template and continue to the final step of the export.

The export should be complete in less than a few minutes. After the export is complete you have a variety of options on how to proceed.

6. Migrate WooCommerce Products

In the “Download” section, click “Bundle” to get a zip file containing the export file and the import template. On a different site, upload the bundle to WP All Import and your import file and all import settings will be preconfigured. 

7. Edit WooCommerce Products in Excel

Go to the “Export, Edit, Import” section to download your products. After editing them in Excel, click “Import with WP All Import” and the changes you made in Excel will be reflected in your WooCommerce products on the site. 

For example, you can export the stock and prices for your products, edit them in Excel, then bulk update them via the “Import with WP All Import” button. All of the settings are filled in for you.

8. Export WooCommerce Products on a Schedule

In the “Scheduling Options” section you can set your WooCommerce product export to run on a schedule. Run it every day, every hour, once a week, or whenever you want. WP All Export will run at the scheduled times and update your WooCommerce store with the latest version of your export file.

9. External Apps

WP All Export integrates with Zapier, which means that you can easily connect your export to hundreds of apps. You can automatically send your export file to Google Drive or Dropbox, email it to yourself, and more.

Finishing Up

As you can see, WP All Export makes it very easy to export your WooCommerce product data. Give it a try with these steps outlined above.

With Hostdedi WooCommerce Hosting, Better Is Built In

Hostdedi offers fully managed hosting for WooCommerce designed for fast, high-performing stores. Hostdedi also:

  • Offers high performance and site speed.
  • Dynamically scales and optimizes.
  • Secures your store with always-on monitoring.

Start your free two-week trial of fully managed WooCommerce from Hostdedi today.

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Hostdedi Introduces Sales Performance Monitor

Hostdedi is the First Managed WooCommerce Host to Deliver Sales Performance Insights with WooCommerce Hosting Plans 

SOUTHFIELD, Mich. August 11, 2021 — Hostdedi, the fully managed, high-performance digital commerce cloud platform built to optimize WordPress, WooCommerce, and Magento sites and stores, today announced the release of Sales Performance Monitor as a feature on all WooCommerce plans. 

“We wanted our WooCommerce store owners to have critical insights into the health of their online store revenue,” said Chris Lema, WooCommerce Authority and VP of Products and Innovation. “Merchants are often unaware when their online store is experiencing degraded services. Most monitoring systems will alert a merchant when their entire site is down but not capture issues with payment processors or site slowness. With Hostdedi Sales Performance Monitor, our intelligence engine will send merchants alerts on sales trends, giving them much needed visibility and allowing them to get back on track if store sales are slowing down.”

Included in the cost of the Managed WooCommerce Hosting plans, the added feature means that store owners can take immediate action to understand revenue trends, should shifts occur. The Hostdedi Sales Performance Monitor will monitor a store’s sales and measure them against a predicted model based on daily/weekly historical performance. When the store’s sales are slowing down or disappearing in a way that is “abnormal” to the specific store’s trends, the monitor will alert the owner.

“At Hostdedi, our focus is in the SMB space and the freelancers and agencies that serve them. That focus has meant doing the heavy lifting to create an elastic and dynamic platform for online stores. More than simply installing WooCommerce as a plugin (which many other hosts do), our Managed WooCommerce Hosting product is a total solution — bringing custom code, a container-based dynamic platform, partners for analytics, search and abandoned cart technology, and now monitoring for Sales Performance,” said Lema.  

WooCommerce is a pre-eminent ecommerce platform for online store builders and store owners today. It sits on top of WordPress which is well known and free. People choose WooCommerce because it’s an easy-to-use platform with flexibility that provides less limits.

“We’re combining the power of WooCommerce with the industry-leading digital commerce expertise of Hostdedi, and powering the online potential of our store owners with the expectation that they have a provider who is an expert in digital commerce hosting and a partner in their success. We’re excited to be leading the way through open-source innovation that provides tremendous value to the industry,” said Lema.

Hostdedi is at the forefront of continuous innovation for WooCommerce and the store owners and agencies who use the platform. For more information about Managed WooCommerce from Hostdedi, visit https://www.nexcess.net/woocommerce/.

About Hostdedi

Hostdedi has been serving SMBs and the designers, developers, and agencies who create for them for more than 20 years by providing a fully managed, high-performance cloud solution built to optimize WordPress, WooCommerce, and Magento sites and stores. As a company within The Liquid Web Family of Brands, we own and manage 10 global data centers, and collectively serve over 45,000 customers spanning 150 countries and provide unparalleled service from a dedicated group of experts 24/7/365. As an industry leader in customer service, the rapidly expanding brand family has been recognized among INC. Magazine’s 5000 Fastest-Growing Companies for twelve years.  

Learn more about the Liquid Web Family of Brands and StellarWP.

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Use an Entrepreneurial Mindset, Even When You’re Small

The 2020 pandemic has changed online shopping forever. The shift to ecommerce has been boosted by five years, and small businesses are scrambling to adapt.

While we hear about successful businesses that quickly pivoted to ecommerce, let’s not forget about those left in the dust. 

Studies show that 90% of ecommerce startups fail within the first 120 days. The main reason? Lack of an ecommerce strategy.

It’s not enough for aspiring entrepreneurs to be internet-savvy. After all, anyone can learn how to optimize their websites for speed. It takes an entrepreneurial mindset to run, grow, and build your ecommerce business to last.

In this guide, we’ll take a look at:

  • Successful ecommerce strategies.
  • The characteristics of a business mindset.
  • How to build an entrepreneurial mindset.

Ecommerce Strategy

  1. Be customer-centric.
  2. Optimize the shopping experience. 
  3. Leverage data to increase sales. 

Ecommerce Strategy #1: Be Customer-Centric

The most successful entrepreneurs often talk about bringing value to the customer

Instead of being revenue or product-focused, customer-centric companies consider their customers’ needs above all else. This is evident in their excellent customer service and cohesive consumer experience at every step of the buyer’s journey.

Millennial favorite Glossier found success by creating products that its customers wanted. The company built a loyal following and customer base purely through its ecommerce website and social media accounts.

Adopting a customer-centric strategy gives you a competitive advantage over other ecommerce businesses. It increases customer loyalty, eventually benefitting your downline.

Ecommerce Strategy #2: Optimize the Shopping Experience

If you want to sell more products, you have to make the shopping experience as seamless as possible. Some ways to improve the shopping experience:

  • Ensure your website is fast, accessible, and mobile-responsive.
  • Make the checkout process easy by not requiring buyers to create an account, saving shipping and payment information, and using form fields and auto-fill.
  • Offer various payment methods and expedited shipping.

Ecommerce Strategy #3: Leverage Data To Increase Sales

Today, data available to ecommerce platforms can be used to drive upsells and cross-sells through retargeting and personalized recommendations.

Ecommerce personalization and retargeting drive more conversions, sales, and revenue while enriching customer interactions with your online store.

Amazon is notorious for offering many recommendations. The company uses data to analyze customer behavior (for example, previous purchases and frequency of purchase) to segment similar customers and effectively recommend products.

Thinking Big: Characteristics of a Business Mindset

The ecommerce strategies detailed above won’t mean anything without an entrepreneurial mindset.

Having a business mindset empowers successful entrepreneurs to see the long-term big picture and adapt to the quickly-changing nature of ecommerce.

Every business owner’s journey is unique, but the best entrepreneurs often share a specific skill set that includes the following characteristics:

  • Innovative. Aspiring entrepreneurs with a business mindset think of the simplest ways to solve problems, resulting in process improvements or creating new products. Most people never thought we’d have self-driving cars or have the chance to be space tourists, but Elon Musk is making it happen with Tesla and SpaceX
  • Resilient. Mistakes are inevitable when launching startups, but the best entrepreneurs bounce back from failure and learn from their mistakes. Alibaba founder Jack Ma was rejected ten times from Harvard and rejected 30 times from jobs before he found success with Alibaba, China’s largest ecommerce website.
  • Lifelong learner. Many of today’s successful entrepreneurs have one thing in common: no college degree. Steve Jobs didn’t finish his degree but had taken calligraphy in college, which he later said was the inspiration for Apple’s typography. 

How To Develop an Entrepreneurial Mindset

It can be daunting or discouraging to develop an entrepreneurial mindset when you don’t have prior experience. 

The good news?

You can hone these entrepreneurial skill sets required to start your own business:

  • Provide value to others. Anyone can sell things online, but entrepreneurial success can be found when improving other people’s lives. When you focus on others, you see their needs more clearly.
  • Practice being decisive. Entrepreneurs constantly have to make quick decisions with the available data at the time. Practice critical thinking by looking through problems from different angles.
  • Remain curious. Continue seeking out new experiences and study what you don’t know. Take entrepreneurship courses and attend webinars. Learn from mentors and educators.

Final Thoughts: Using a Business Mindset for a Winning Ecommmerce Strategy

Anyone can create a startup, but without a clear ecommerce strategy, success isn’t guaranteed.

Business owners with an entrepreneurial mindset recognize opportunities and bounce back from failures. They differentiate themselves from their competitors by focusing on creating value and leveraging available technology.

If you’re an innovator looking to start a new venture,  let Hostdedi handle your business website. Set up a website in minutes with our ecommerce hosting plans, or try it for yourself with a free two-week trial of fully managed WooCommerce hosting by Hostdedi.

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How to Create a Business Plan: Ecommerce Business Plans

Proper planning is the key to success for any company and especially a new business. 

A 2019 study from Startup Genome found that 90% of ecommerce startups fail within their first 120 days of operation. Some of the reasons for failure include poor search engine visibility, a saturated market, and financial issues — all of which could have been addressed ahead of time with an ecommerce business plan.

It may seem like a daunting task. But learning how to create a business plan is the best step you can take to set yourself up for long-term success. 

In this guide, you’ll learn:

  • Why you need an ecommerce business plan.
  • What the elements of a business plan are.
  • How to create a business plan for ecommerce.

Why You Need an Ecommerce Business Plan 

An ecommerce business plan is just like the business plan you’d put together for any other business. It describes a company’s current status and eventual goals. 

If you’re figuring out how to create a business plan, you’ll need to consider all the details of building your business, including:

  • Products and services.
  • Financial models.
  • Operations.
  • Staffing.
  • Timeframe for achieving your goals.

Not every ecommerce brand launches with a formal business plan, but there is value in taking time to step back and study the market you’re looking to enter. That way, you can formulate a strategy to launch and grow a successful ecommerce site.

A solid business plan empowers you to:

  • Develop a strategy for growing your business.
  • Determine potential obstacles.
  • Identify the human, physical, or financial resources needed.
  • Evaluate the viability of your business idea.

Let’s go over the sections of a typical business plan. 

Elements of a Business Plan

  • Executive Summary
  • Company Overview
  • Market Analysis
  • Products and Service
  • Marketing Plan
  • Operations Plan
  • Financial Plan

Business Plan Template: How to Create a Business Plan for Ecommerce 

Writing a business plan is not as complicated as people assume it will be. Here’s how to create a business plan for your online business. 

Sum Up Your Plan With an Executive Summary

As the name suggests, the executive summary outlines the key points discussed in the rest of the ecommerce business plan. It is critical when you’re approaching potential investors with limited time. 

The executive summary is often the last section to be written, but it should be the first thing someone reading your plan sees. The executive summary’s goal is to encourage the reviewer to continue reading the rest of the business plan.

Keep it brief — an executive summary shouldn’t exceed one page.

Introduce Your Company With the Company Overview

The company overview introduces the business. By the time a reader finishes this section, they should know who you are and what you plan to do.

This section should provide an overview of your business in terms of:

  • Company and brand name
  • Brand mission, vision, and values
  • Business history: How did your company start?
  • Business structure: Are you a single proprietorship, partnership, corporation?
  • Business model: Do you purely sell products? Will you get into ads or affiliate marketing?
  • Value proposition: What makes your company unique?

Study Opportunities by Conducting a Market Analysis

In an industry as volatile as ecommerce, it’s no exaggeration to say that choosing the right market can make or break your business — you may continuously struggle to sell if you’re in the wrong market. As such, it’s important to do some market research.

This section of your business plan should discuss:

  • Market size: How big is your potential market?
  • Market share: What percent of the market have you captured?
  • Industry trends and growth: Explore other trends that may arise over time and other markets you can branch out to. A SWOT analysis can identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.
  • Competitive analysis: How do you fare compared to your competitors? What strategies are you going to adopt? Will you differentiate, segment, or offer competitive pricing?

For ecommerce startups, you should also include the following when doing a competitor analysis:

Get Into More Detail About Your Products and Services

You will mention your products and services in other parts of your ecommerce business plan, but you can dig into the particulars in this section. 

A products and services section is crucial if you sell niche products or provide a unique service.  If you sell a variety of items, you can include general descriptions of each here.

Convince Your Target Audience To Buy With a Marketing Plan

Once you establish that you have a winning product to sell to a promising market, it’s time to determine how you’ll convince customers to buy. This could involve working with bloggers and influencers, sharing branded quips with market leaders on LinkedIn, or by signing up as a retailer with Amazon. 

A marketing plan discusses your strategy to advertise your business and reach potential customers. Your plan will highly depend on the profile of your target market.

Your ideal customer is the foundation of your marketing plan. Visualize what kind of person you want to buy your products or services to create a buyer persona. 

Come up with a set of general demographic characteristics such as:

  • Age
  • Gender
  • Education level
  • Salary

You should also consider their specific behaviors — how do they spend their time and money? For instance, a stay-at-home mom has different interests and spending habits compared to a college student.

Additionally, most ecommerce marketing strategies include information on what Neil Borden calls the 4P’s:

  • Price: How much do your products and services cost? Why did you price it that way?
  • Product: What are the product’s salient features? Why should people buy it? What makes it different from competitors?
  • Promotion: How are you getting the word out? Are you going to do it through social media advertising? If so, what platform?
  • Place: What ecommerce platform will you use to sell your products?

How to Do SEO for Ecommerce Websites: Techniques, Tools, & Best Practices >>

Share Your Ecommerce Startup’s Day-to-Day With an Operations Plan

The operations plan details how you’ll run your online business. This section should demonstrate to potential investors that there are contingency plans in place if difficult situations arise. It should also define the specific nature of your ecommerce store, such as whether it involves dropshipping or print on demand.

Your operations plan should cover every aspect of the supply chain:

  • Suppliers and service providers: Where are your products sourced or produced? What about any raw materials that make them up?
  • Production: Are products made, bought, or will they be dropshipped? Are they physical products or digital products?
  • Facilities and equipment: Do you plan to have an office, physical retail space, or warehouse?
  • Sales channels: Aside from your chosen ecommerce platform, will you also be selling on social media?
  • Inventory: How much product will you have on hand? Where will it be stored?
  • Delivery fulfillment: What is your delivery lead time? Will you offer both local and international shipping?

How Do I Find the Right Dropshipping Suppliers? >>

Demonstrate Profitability With a Solid Financial Plan

The time or effort you invest won’t matter much to potential investors. Their top consideration is a business’s financial feasibility. 

Your financial plan is one of the most critical sections in your ecommerce business plan. With 82% of companies failing due to cash flow problems, potential investors want to know if a business will be worth their while. Digging into the financials will also help to determine how to fund initial startup costs.

Most financial plans include:

  • Income statement: This includes revenue sources and income statements which show whether the business was profitable or not.
  • Balance sheet: This provides a snapshot of your business’s equity, which is the difference between the assets and liabilities.
  • Cash-flow statement: This is similar to the income statement but provides a real-time report of your revenue and expense flow. More income than expenses indicates a positive cash flow, while the opposite indicates a negative cash flow. Aim for the former to keep your business solvent.

Final Thoughts: How to Create a Business Plan for Ecommerce 

An ecommerce business plan facilitates your business’s success by providing direction for where it should go. Writing an effective plan for your online store does not have to be complicated. 

If you spend time gathering information on your company, competitors, and future plans, then your business plan can be a roadmap to achieving your business goals. 

You handle the business plan, and we’ll handle your website. Jumpstart your ecommerce company with Hostdedi’s managed WooCommerce hosting packages and our online StoreBuilder today. 

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How To Boost WooCommerce Site Speed & Avoid Slow Queries

We all know the worst thing about shopping in person is waiting in line. As ecommerce has become the norm for many customers, the online shopping experience also has to meet certain criteria to keep customers engaged. Site performance and speed are crucial to user experience.

If you have noticed your WooCommerce site speed isn’t performing as well as you expected, there is a good chance your customers are noticing too. In this article, we’ll discuss the root causes of slow WooCommerce sites (as well as slow WooCommerce queries) and what you can do to fix them. 

Why Is My WooCommerce Site Speed So Slow?

Some reasons for WooCommerce site speed taking a hit include active plugins, themes, poorly written code, and content delivery speed. All of these factors can result in slow WooCommerce queries too.

👉 Why is My WordPress Site So Slow? >>

Having a significant number of queries or even duplicate ones can drain your site’s performance abilities. This can be caused by visitors navigating your site, tracking, or even social media extensions you’ve added to expand your reach.

If your WooCommerce site is a person carrying groceries at the bottom of a five story walk-up, each additional query is someone handing you another bag of groceries at each floor. Your WooCommerce site gets a little slower every time the database gets queried.

Here is what you can do about it.

How to Boost WooCommerce Site Speed & Queries

Look At Your Plugins

Quality matters more than quantity when it comes to plugins. However, it doesn’t actually matter how many you use if they’re running fast and you know what they do for your site.

👉 The Essential Guide to WordPress Plugins >>

There are plugins like Query Monitor that you can use to identify, analyze, and debug your query and PHP errors. Using an observability platform like New Relic APM is preferable because it is an externally hosted tool that allows you to monitor, analyze, and troubleshoot your WooCommerce site without contributing to your database’s resource usage. 

Make sure to:

  • Monitor plugins with New Relic APM or Query Monitor to find the cause of duplicate or slow queries.
  • Reduce slow queries by using caching like Redis Object Caching and Hostdedi page cache.
  • Create plugin stacks that are complementary and don’t create conflicts. After creating a stack, check performance and monitor for any issues. 
  • Keep your plugins updated. Remove any plugins you aren’t using. 
  • Avoid plugins that make AJAX calls on the front end of your database. This can add 500ms to 1 second of processing time. 

Check Your Themes

Many available themes do not actually work well for WooCommerce sites even if they look great. The code behind it and how well it translates to mobile are both factors that contribute to poor site performance.

If you’re using a free theme, you likely will not receive support from the developers. If it contains bad code, you may end up with a site that contains malware, redirects, or utilizes SEO that negatively affects your WooCommerce site ranking.

👉 15 Best WooCommerce Themes You Need Today >>

If you’re using a premium theme, it simply may just have bloated coding that creates slow queries. They can utilize templates which generate a number of queries to your database to display products, for example. The longer it takes to process your site content through your database, the slower your site loads. 

Make sure to:

  • Do research. Check if the developer provides support. Search for reviews. See what users have to say about their experience with it. 
  • Pick themes that are optimized, have few installed plugins, and aren’t full of bloated coding. 
  • Delete unused themes. Storing them in your database can cause admin panel slowdown and site speed issues. 

Give Your Code A Trim

Poorly written code that wastes resources will slow down your site and make it harder for visitors to access content quickly. WooCommerce sites generating slow queries may have some unnecessary elements in their code. Bulky code means it takes more time to process. Every millisecond adds up. 

Make sure to:

  • Minify your code. Remove extra spaces, lines, and characters. 
  • Use Autoptimize to optimize and aggregate CSS and JavaScript code and files. 

Make Sure You’re Using a Content Delivery Network

If you’re old enough to remember the days of images loading line by line, you likely appreciate the speed and accessibility of content delivery networks (CDNs).

Rendering your content quickly and reliably for visitors is a must. There are a number of options available, including some free ones, but it is important to choose one that meets your needs. 

Choose a CDN that:

  • Is geographically close to your customers. 
  • Offers 24/7 support.
  • Supports SSL.
  • Can support small files as well as larger payloads.

Improve WooCommerce Site Speed With Optimized Hosting

You’re using a WooCommerce site for its ease, convenience, and flexibility. When all of that is compromised by slow site speed, your customers are going to start looking elsewhere. 

Because your hosting provider is the single biggest factor for site speed, consider fully managed WooCommerce hosting.

Remove the fuss of thinking about updating plugins and daily backups. Focus on what really matters 一 selling 一 while still having all the flexibility of customization. 

With fully managed WooCommerce hosting from Hostdedi, you get:

  • A built-in CDN.
  • High-quality security and support.
  • The latest cart abandonment technology.
  • Performance testing at your fingertips.

And most importantly, you’ll get an ultra-fast site thanks to instant auto scaling and visual comparisons.

Try fully managed WooCommerce hosting with Hostdedi. Experience faster site speed with a free two-week trial of fully managed WooCommerce hosting.

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How to Find a Profitable Niche for Your Ecommerce Shop

One of the biggest reasons why small businesses fail is a lack of product strategy.

Too many online shops resemble marketplaces that sell everything. They figure this means they’ll be able to capture a larger market and more customers. However, when you try to sell to everyone, you end up selling to no one.

If you want to brand your online business or be an authority, you have to choose a product niche. Choosing the right niche establishes your credibility over competitors, ensures a more focused business, and opens you up to other income opportunities down the line, such as affiliate marketing.

What’s the result? Profitability.

In this guide, you’ll learn:

  • What a niche is.
  • How to find a profitable niche.
  • How to find a niche product.

What Is a Niche?

A niche is a profitable market segment with a focused audience. It is a subset of a large market defined by its own unique identity.

For example, the furniture market can be segmented according to use (i.e. office furniture, home furniture, or antique furniture), material (plastic, wood, or upholstered), or price.

The specific niche you choose can influence many aspects of your business, including:

  • What products you sell.
  • How much you sell.
  • Which suppliers you work with.
  • What kind of marketing strategies you should use.

Choosing the perfect niche is more complicated than it seems — you need to find a niche with products that are high in demand but low in competition.

Only when you find the right niche can you determine how to find a niche product. 

Below you’ll learn how to find a profitable niche.

How to Find a Profitable Niche

  • Brainstorm niches you’re passionate about.
  • Identify the problem of your niche market.
  • Look for profitable niche markets.

How to Find a Profitable Niche Idea #1: Brainstorm Niches You’re Passionate About

To start your search for a profitable niche, make a list of your interests and what you’re good at. This is just the brainstorming stage, so don’t worry about financial viability at this point.

The ideal niche is at the intersection of profitability and your interests. Business is hard work. If you’re in it for the long run, it’s best to create a business you know you’re going to enjoy.

Additionally, if you choose a niche you’re passionate about, you already have an idea of the basics, including: 

  • Who to sell to.
  • How to sell it.
  • What needs to be improved.
  • Where to get suppliers.

Who knows — you may even get to develop new products. 

How to Find a Profitable Niche Idea #2: Identify the Problem of Your Niche Market

Good marketers know the key to success and longevity in business is to identify an unmet or underserved need and create a solution.

Analyze your target audience and identify gaps in the marketplace. Your products or services should address a pain point that your audience is currently experiencing.

Here are some websites you can use to seek out that information:

How to Find a Profitable Niche Idea #3: Look for Profitable Niche Markets

Validate your business idea by checking on its value in the niche market. Otherwise, you’ll waste time and effort trying to sell something unprofitable. 

Remember: Not all markets are created equal. Some are more profitable than others. Choose a sector that has anticipated growth.

To start, read articles on ecommerce trends, and look through a list of profitable niches.

How to Find a Niche Product

Now that you’ve learned how to find a profitable niche, it’s time to look for products to sell. 

A suitable niche product should:

  • Have a relatively low amount of competitive products.
  • Be in demand.
  • Have the potential for long-term popularity.

Here’s how to find a niche product:

  • Check past and present trends.
  • Perform keyword research.
  • Study the competition.

To choose the best niche products, analyze past and current trends. Input keywords from the niche you’re eyeing in Google Trends to check their performance over time. 

For instance, the search term “weight loss pills” enjoys relatively stable activity because people will always be interested in an easy way to shed pounds.

Meanwhile, seasonal terms such as “candy cane” only see a surge in searches around Christmastime.

Avoid fads. “Bread baking” may have experienced a surge in search volume during the height of the pandemic. But its popularity has already dropped back to pre-pandemic levels, which indicates bread baking niche products will not be viable long-term.

How to Find a Niche Product #2: Perform Keyword Research

To find saleable niche products, do keyword research on popular ecommerce platforms such as eBay or Amazon

Amazon’s bestseller page is a goldmine for keywords you can break down into niches and sub-niches.

Let’s say you want to move into the beauty industry. On the bestseller page of Amazon’s Beauty and Personal Care category, you’ll find subcategories such as bath accessories, fragrances, hair care, and makeup. Explore these categories for new products to sell.

Look at the highest-rated items and their prices to validate what people are willing to pay for them.

How to Find a Niche Product #3: Study the Competition

Although you may want to break into a new niche, competition signifies a healthy business opportunity. 

Be wary of a niche that doesn’t have any competitors. They’re evidence of an existing market. Competition indicates people are looking for the kinds of products you want to sell.

When you study the competition, you can also identify gaps in their current offerings and the markets they’re targeting. Use tools like Ahrefs and SEMrush to research your competitors’ top content, traffic sources, social media, and sales pages.

Final Thoughts: How to Find a Profitable Niche for Your Ecommerce Shop

Contrary to popular belief, it’s relatively easy to make money online, but many small businesses fail due to a lack of a product strategy.

Learning how to find a profitable niche and how to find niche products is vital to building an online business. Use the information to stand out from the competition, establish your credibility, and create a focused business.

Have you found your niche? Get your online store up and running fast — check out Hostdedi’s ecommerce hosting plans today.

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WooCommerce Performance Optimization: 5 Things You Should Be Doing Right Now

Building a blazing fast WooCommerce store used to be a full-time job. Now, basic WooCommerce performance optimization is simply a matter of knowing what technologies and plugins to use to keep your store speedy and your customers engaged. Here’s an intro to five performance topics and related resources for successfully optimizing your online store.

Shouldn’t I start with caching?

When looking at WooCommerce performance optimization, it’s easy to gravitate towards caching. While caching is a necessary technique for speeding up a WooCommerce website, it’s important that what you’re caching is also optimized.

Protip: Optimize your online store before enabling caching to make troubleshooting easier!

Page optimization

How quickly a page loads can mean the difference between a sale and a bounce. It’s important to make sure that the visible area of the page loads as quickly as possible. That means that graphical flourishes, fonts, and tracking scripts should either be some of the last things to load or should load asynchronously.

Even if you defer the loading of certain parts of the website, it’s still critical that you pay attention to how a page loads. Are external resources being loaded? Are those resources fonts or something more mission critical like CSS? Make sure critical resources are loaded quickly and/or asynchronously.

A couple great plugins for this type of optimization are Async JavaScript and Autoptimize.

Database optimization

Optimizing database queries and table types is a great way to see big performance gains with minimal effort. 

Create a new Index

Indexes help the MySQL database server find information quicker. Think of it as the index at the back of an old encyclopedia, or a table of contents in a book. While too many indexes can actually slow down the database, some strategically created indexes can have dramatic performance benefits.

Consider applying this index to your WordPress website to see a lift in performance.

MyISAM vs InnoDB

Usually referred to as storage engines, MyISAM and InnoDB are two different table types available within MySQL. For WordPress, tables should be in InnoDB format to get the best performance from your database. Of course, before making any changes, remember to back up your database.

Need to convert your database tables to InnoDB? This plugin should help.

Image optimization

While it might be hard to believe, large images can dramatically decrease the performance of your website or store. It might be tempting to think that lazy loading images can fix the problem, but remember that every image within the currently viewable area of a website must load for your user to have a good experience. In-fact, image size makes an even bigger difference when a user is visiting your website from their mobile device because network conditions and speeds are different in every place on earth. Luckily there are great plugins that can help optimize your images!

TinyPNG, Imagify, EWWW, Shortpixel, and Robin Image Optimizer are a few great image optimization plugins.

Caching

WordPress used to be just a blogging platform. As WordPress has evolved into a capable platform for building stores, learning sites, etc, so has the need for caching. You can learn about this important aspect of WooCommerce performance optimization by checking out the caching in WooCommerce article on the Hostdedi blog.

Multi-threading

If you’ve ever been in a busy supermarket wishing they’d open up another checkout lane, you already understand the idea behind multi-threading. Because a PHP process works on commands in a linear way, a growing site will eventually grind to a halt as a single PHP process becomes overwhelmed. If you add more processes, the website is capable of responding to more requests concurrently, and the system starts to move again. WordPress hosts like Hostdedi use PHP worker processes to enable multi-threading for fast concurrent requests. For a more in-depth look at worker processes and how they work, check out this article. If you’re feeling extra cool, you can even try your hand at implementing workers using the official PHP documentation.

Remember to test your optimizations

As a final thought, remember to test the speed of your website before and after optimizations. While there are many resources for testing page speed, GTMetrix is a great place to start your journey. And remember, if you need help along the way, get in touch. We are here to help!

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75% Off 3 Months of Managed Hosting: Position Yourself for Your Best Year Yet with Our Best Deal Ever

In 2020, a year that has been so hard on so many businesses, we are grateful for the resilience and determination of the agencies, sites, and stores that rely on Hostdedi. 

Thank you for being our customers.

2020 Was a Game-Changing Year In Ecommerce

Let’s face it – 2020 was BANANAS. In this year alone, small businesses took massive hits in revenue, and nearly 100,000 closed their doors for good. Others have thrived.

Adaptability and resilience has been the name of the game for 2020. As brick and mortar businesses closed their doors due to COVID, ecommerce sales surged. Total online spending by May had skyrocketed by $52 billion, a 77% year-over-year increase.

This year was also an unexpected boon for ecommerce developers. In an industry already rife with demand, ecommerce development agencies saw an increase in demand for new websites. The total number of ecommerce sites, as of this year, now stands at over 24 million.

Where Ecommerce Companies Are Still Losing Revenue

The caveats to success in ecommerce are still there, however. Pages that load in more than three seconds deter 40% of traffic, and an estimated $18 billion in revenue per year is still lost due to cart abandonment.

Ecommerce is thriving, and the opportunity is growing rapidly. By 2040, it’s estimated that 95% of all purchases will be made online. That is astounding!

The problems with ecommerce still exist though, and now more than ever, it’s time to ensure your digital commerce site is speed optimized for conversions.

Positioning Yourself for Your Best Year Yet

No matter how wild it gets out there, Hostdedi is going to keep on giving you hosting you can count on. That’s been our focus throughout this crazy year – continue innovating, keep your sites online and safe, maintain fair prices, and keep providing the tools you need to stand up a new ecommerce shop, or maintain an old one. 

This Black Friday, we’re gonna keep on keeping on by offering our customers our BEST SALE EVER. This is truly one for the record books, folks. Hostdedi has never offered a discount this deep. 

We’re offering an unprecedented 75% Off 3 months of our most popular plans with code JOYFOR2021.

No matter what happens in 2021, you can count on Hostdedi to keep making it easy and affordable to start your own online business or migrate to a hosting provider who is a true partner in business.

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Doing Product Pages Right – Hostdedi Blog

How much effort have you put into your product page? Yes, I know you found information and images from the manufacturer and added them. Sure, you named the product and maybe if you were really working on good product pages, you took an extra picture of the product in use to highlight what it really looks like to your customers.

But I know most ecommerce sites don’t even go that far.

About 10 years ago I worked in retail and one of my jobs was to add products to our site, but only after everything else was done and if the boss couldn’t find anything extra for me to do. This was shortsighted and meant that they didn’t see much business from their online store. But if you don’t put any effort into your product pages, the natural outcome is little traction with your site.

It’s important to remember that your online users can’t touch your product. They can’t ask a salesperson a question or get specific feedback on how the product worked for someone they can talk to. Customers are reliant on the information you provide them to help them make a purchase.

Today we’re going to talk about how to design a great product page. Remember, from the product name to the reviews, your product page is a landing page. Its job is to sell your products to your customers.

Product Name

If your product page is a landing and sales page, then the first thing you need to look at is the name of your product. This is the title of your page and you should spend just as much time thinking about this as you would for any blog post you want to rank well in search engines. The more descriptive your product name is, the better it is, at least up to a point.

We’ve all seen ridiculously keyword-stuffed Amazon product titles. We want to use a descriptive product name, but not crossover into the realm of these overloaded titles.

Take a look at these Mpow headphones on Amazon.

If you’re looking for waterproof Bluetooth sports headphones with controls on the headphones, the title is a great match. I think it’s getting close to being a bit long, but just by reading the product name, you get a summary of all the features that the headphones provide.

When you’re looking at your product names use the Google Keyword Planner to investigate what terms are ranking well for your product. Use these terms to help you craft a well-optimized title that will bring customers to your landing page.

Description

When it comes to your product description, the first thing to ask yourself is “what questions will myom customers have”. A description that answers your customer’s questions poorly will mean they make a purchase they’re not happy with. Then they’ll want to return it, and you may get a poor review on the product.

According to Nielsen Group, 20% of missed purchases were because a product didn’t have the information a customer was looking for in the description. If users don’t see the information they’re looking for in your product description, they’re going to turn to Google. That means you risk having them find the product at a better price elsewhere. Making your customers search to get more information is just like losing the purchase and all future purchases from your customer.

As you write your product description ask yourself what questions the customer will have about your product? Your goal is to answer the questions and deflate the objections that customers will have so that they feel confident in their purchase.

Good product descriptions are jargon-free. They’re not heavy on marketing text, but are to the point and clear. If you’re talking about 5 different feature highlights, use bullet points so that readers can scan to get the information they need quickly.

If you’ve got many of the same types of products, say dishwashers, then take the time to standardize the language across suppliers. Don’t list measurements in inches for one product and then centimetres for other products. Standardize on one method, or if you deal with international clients let them choose what measurement they want to see. You can see a great example of this with Apidura Cycling bags. They let users change between inches and centimetres for their bag measurements. This puts their users in control.

Product Images

After your product name and description, it’s important to focus on the images you provide to your customer. Remember, they can’t touch the product. They can’t tell how big it is, or exactly what shade of blue it is. They are relying entirely on you to provide this information with your images.

There are two ways to go with product images. You can choose to use a backdrop with other stuff that matches the product, or you can go with a flat white version. Keep the style consistent including the dimensions used with the final images. I think the best option is to have a combination of both of these options.

Bellroy is a great example of both methods combined. They show you several images of their products on a flat white background. They also add it with known items, like physical bills and blank cards that are the same size as credit cards. You get to see high-quality uncluttered photos to judge colour and texture, then clean photos that help you get an idea of the size of items you’re looking at.

Bellroy also provides high-quality images for each color option for a product. You don’t have to guess based on a color swatch, you can see exactly what you’re choosing as you make changes.

While this may look like a lot of work, it’s just a bit of work and a small investment. You don’t need a fancy camera. Any smartphone in the last few years will do. If you don’t have natural light, then you will need to purchase a consistent light source. You can usually find the Godox SL60W for under $200. If you’re dealing with small products and want to have an extra clean background, then look at a softbox. You can find these on Amazon for as little as $30.

With a light source and a softbox, all it takes is a bit of practice. Take a bunch of test images from different angles. If you spend a weekend playing around you’ll improve greatly so that you can get good images for Monday.

If you’re looking for a great walkthrough on product photography, check out the video below by Peter McKinnon.

Once you’ve got the images, take a few minutes to edit them for color and contrast. Most people use a sized template so that every image on the site is the same size. 

If you’re not sure what this means, it’s like having a company letterhead you always use. In this case, it’s a Photoshop file that’s 2000X2000 and every image you take goes on the same template so that your site images look uniform. 

Then once you have your images on the template looking how you want them, save them out in a web format. Look to keep them under 700kb if possible. To help with this at the final stage you can use tools like Kraken to optimize the images as you upload them.

Putting some effort into your product images will help your store stand above the competition.

Adding To Cart

Next, your add to cart button. There are a few mistakes that many sites make with this crucial interaction. First, make sure that users can see the button without scrolling across all devices. It should be obvious and a contrasting color from the rest of your site so that it stands out. You can see a good example of this on MEC below.

Note that they have a nice product image, and the purchase button is in a vibrant green and stays with the customer as they scroll on a mobile device.

You also need to make sure that it’s clear to the user something happened when they add something to the cart. Luckily WooCommerce has this as a default with a banner being displayed to a user after a product has been successfully added to the cart.

The second most important interaction after your main purchase button may be the option to add a product to a wishlist. A good spot for this is just below the main purchase CTA. I have many wish lists on Amazon for when I’m ready to revamp parts of my office. I already have my desk video setup all picked out in a wishlist. When it’s time to purchase I just need to add all those products to my cart, and then checkout.

Showing your product in use can show how easy it is to use to customers that are concerned about that. Yes, it might mean some duplicate information, but highlight the benefits and deflate the objections with your videos, just like you do with your marketing copy. Some studies suggest that a good product video increases conversion to sale by 84%. Videos are also known to have higher click through rates in search.

You can see this if we head back to Bellroy. The first thing that comes up with their products is a video of their product in use. 

Just like good product photos don’t have to be a huge investment, decent video doesn’t have to be a huge investment. The light I recommended above is a great video light. Your recent smartphone is a decent video camera. Add a lavalier microphone to this setup for $50 and you’ve got a good video setup.

Pricing

When it comes to pricing, it’s pretty straight forward. Make sure you don’t hide any price increases from your users. If the blue version is more expensive, change the price when the user selects the blue version (don’t worry both WooCommerce & Magento do this out of the box). Just under the price is also a good place to add product availability information. Don’t let your customers try to add something to the cart only to find that the product isn’t available in their chosen combination of size and color.

Social Proof: Reviews

Did you know that user reviews are 12 times more powerful at convincing people to purchase than your marketing copy is? That means you need to employ ratings on your site. Display the overall rating, usually stars, at the top near your product title and description. Then after all the product information your customers want, display the reviews you’ve gathered from users.

It’s important to make your reviews filterable, and don’t censor bad reviews. I’ve often read the bad reviews for a product to find the pain points and then purchased because I don’t care about any of the major issues with it.

One great plugin to help enhance the reviews on your site is WooCommerce Product Reviews Pro. This plugin will let you add product photos and user videos to your reviews to supercharge your social proof.

Remember, your product page is a landing page and should be optimized for search engines and to convert visitors to customers. As I said when I talked specifically about mCommerce, make sure that you A/B Test the changes you’re making to your product pages to help ensure that they’re having the effect you expect. If you can put a bit of effort into your product pages, you’ll see big rewards in your sales.

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How to Take Your WooCommerce Site Mobile

While I’d like to assume that all ecommerce sites are thinking about their mobile shopping experience, my shopping proves otherwise. As a consumer, I’m regularly greeted with poor mobile purchasing experiences that leave me frustrated. From sites that take forever to load, to sites where it feels like I can’t find the products I’m looking for. Mobile ecommerce (also called mCommerce or M-Commerce) ranges from excellent to so frustrating throwing your device seems like the best option to end your shopping experience.

Today we’re going to look at why you need to take your eCommerce mobile process seriously. Then we’ll take a look at best practices for building a good mobile experience.

Why Does Mobile Ecommerce Matter?

It wasn’t that long ago that mobile sites were nice to have, but not required part of a web presence. Today, mobile use eclipses desktop usage of the web.

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Add to that the huge rise in mCommerce by users. In 2018 around 40% of shopping was done via mobile devices[^1]. Cyber Monday saw that number rise to 54% of traffic. Despite this rise, conversions for mobile devices often lag behind desktop purchasing conversions by a significant amount. This is often because site owners don’t take the needs of mobile users into account.

When it comes to browsing your site, a mobile user may spend 4 minutes browsing, while a desktop user is willing to put 5 minutes into the effort[^2]. 40% of mobile users say they’ll leave a site if it isn’t mobile friendly[^3] and this trumps loyalty to your store. 14% of shoppers say they don’t care if they favor your brand, a bad mobile experience will have them looking at your competitors[^4].

It continues to baffle me why store owners put so little effort into providing a good shopping experience for 40% of their users. They would never dream of making 40% of the people that walk into their store wear some blindfold that made everything harder to find, yet it’s too much expense for them to spend money on optimizing for their mobile shoppers.

When you’re not willing to spend time optimizing your mobile shopping experience, you’re telling 40% of your online customers that they’re not worth your effort. In return, they’re going to shop with your competitors.

mCommerce Best Practices

Now that we should all agree that serving mobile customers is a key to having a great eCommerce experience, let’s look at some of the best practices you need to look at when you’re building that ideal experience.

If you have an existing site, one of the best ways to find low hanging fruit is to use online testing tools like Google’s Mobile-Friendly test suite. Run those tests on your site and then use the results to identify the biggest issues. Budget regularly to fix these issues so that you can provide a better experience to your users.

Mobile First Design

One of the biggest trends to emerge over the last number of years in web development is mobile-first design. This is where you start with the stripped-down mobile version of your site and then add on tablet and desktop versions. While you’re doing this it’s worth questioning if your mobile site didn’t need a big popup for your email list, why does your desktop site. We know from Google’s documentation that they feel adding a popup covering mobile content is a sign they should not rank your site as high. By not including it on your mobile site you said that it wasn’t as important as other actions users could take. Why did it gain importance for desktop or tablet users? It’s likely that this content is just as in the way on desktop and should stay cut from those experiences as well.

You can see a well-executed example of an email list request below at the Twin Six site. Note the small green bar at the bottom, which doesn’t get in your way as you shop but is obviously pushing their email list.

Another key to mCommerce design is to make your pathways to purchase clear. That means aiming to get a user to the product they’re looking for in 3 actions. Then from finding their product, make it a clear pathway to purchase a product without needing to navigate upsell items or other things that put barriers in the way of purchasing.

For each call to action on your site, you need to take into account your market and which devices they use and where they can reach on your site. If you know that the mobile devices are big on your site and that you sell primarily to women, who often have smaller hands, then making sure that any buttons are in their range is crucial to making your site easy to use.

Which way is easiest for users to swipe to interact with your product images? How much content shows on the screen of your top few mobile devices? All of these things should be taken into account when you build out your mCommerce site.

Product Pages

When it comes to product pages, you need to think about what type of information users will be looking for. One-third of purchasing decisions include information from many sites that has already been gathered via a mobile device[^5]. Does your product page highlight the same information that users have gathered?

With a small screen, it can be hard for a user to see exactly what they’re looking at. High-quality images from all angles can help users look at each aspect of the product they’re interested in. High-quality images are easy to get today. With a bit of thought about lighting the phone, you have in your pocket easily produces excellent images. If that’s out of reach, hire a local photographer or work out a trade with them. My friend takes the menu pictures for a few local restaurants and gets free food for her and her party when she’s there. I’ve enjoyed a few wonderful meals due to her photography trade.

While some sites may produce decent images of their products, they then fall down on the mobile navigation of those images. Make sure that users can pinch or double-tap to zoom images. Make sure that swipe gestures work as expected. Frustrated users will head off to your competitor. 

It’s also worth looking at video demonstrations of the product. Can a user see the size of the product in the hands of someone? Can they see how many ports are on that computer they want to purchase, or how much room is inside the case? You can use this type of content to make your site more attractive to users, and it can even be placed on YouTube to bring in more sales.

Finally, when it comes to the purchase button, make it obvious. It should be easy to find and have a color that makes it stand out from the rest of your site design. It should be within the reach of your users on their devices without needing to adjust the grip they have on their mobile phones.

Cart

Once you have a user with products in your cart, you’re closer to purchase but that doesn’t mean a sale is guaranteed. One thing that many sites do poorly is to make their cart hard to edit. Many users will add a bunch of products to their cart and then decide which ones they’re going to purchase at checkout. It should be easy for users to remove items from their cart, and you’re going to get bonus points for making it easy to add products to a wishlist for a user.

When I visit Cotton Bureau I look through and add all the shirts that interest me to my cart. Then I look at the hundreds of dollars the purchase will cost and cut down what I’m purchasing to meet the budget I have. The only place I fault Cotton Bureau is that they don’t let me pass the shirts I decided not to purchase to a wishlist so I can see them and purchase them later.

One thing to avoid, according to the Nielson Group, is the dreaded “Update” button. Don’t make your users update their cart to have changes reflected in the totals. Unfortunately, the default WooCommerce cart does include this update button, but you can use Auto Update Cart for WooCommerce to remove it and improve the experience of your users.

You should also take advantage of device-specific features like Hand off which lets iOS, iPadOS, and macOS users pick up where they left off in their browser sessions. If coded properly, you can take advantage of this and send the products in a user’s cart to their other devices.

Checkout

When it comes to checkout, one of the first things to do is make sure that a user is not required to create an account at checkout. Even if you have a membership site that requires an account, work to secure the purchase first. Once a user has purchased you can provide instructions on setting up their account. With WooCommerce, as long as they use the same email all purchases a user has made will show up in their account once they create one.

There is always a lot of information to fill in at checkout, so make it as easy as possible. That means you need to label your checkout fields properly so that the proper keyboard is provided to users. If you’re asking for a phone number, they should see the numeric keyboard on their devices.

It’s also worth taking advantage of any facility you can to help users by filling in information. Don’t ask for the country they’re in, you can detect that with your site and fill it in for them. If you ask for the Zip Code or Postal Code before City and State information you can fill in City and State without having your user spend time on them.

If you can’t autofill their state information, make sure you don’t present it in a dropdown without any search. Huge dropdowns are terrible to scroll through on mobile devices. At the very least let a user search for their State/Province/Country inside your dropdown to save them time and frustration.

Most mobile devices have some facility to autofill form fields, make sure that your checkout process works with these systems. You should also take the time to make sure that any password or username fields on your site will work with the password management systems built into devices. 

When it comes to the order summaries on your checkout page, make sure that you present all the charges to your users. If you’ve grabbed the Zip Code, use that to estimate shipping and taxes instead of surprising users with it in a later step. If at all possible, show users their order total, and the CTA that completes a purchase on a single screen of their device.

For payment options, make sure you’re aware of what regions you’re selling into and what the preferred payment methods are. While you should offer the payment options your users want, don’t overwhelm them with every payment option you could add to your site. Look at adding Apple Pay, Google Pay, and then maybe your credit card processing. Feel free to test whether adding PayPal One-Touch or other payment gateways increase or decrease your sales, but don’t offer them a multitude of options.

If you’re offering your processing then make sure that your site works with built-in card filling systems. On iOS devices, you can open your camera and show it your Credit Card to have payment fields filled in. This can go a long way to making sure that a user isn’t frustrated at filling in a bunch of extra information. 

Now that we’ve looked at the whole purchase process, let’s take a look at a few other areas you need to optimize for an ideal mCommerce experience.

Build for Speed

Many countries don’t have fast mobile bandwidth so you need to make sure that you keep the bandwidth-limited and only display the content you MUST display to get a sale. Waiting trumps site loyalty with 14% of shoppers saying they’ll go to a different site if they have to wait too long. That means you need to run speed tests on your site and cut out any interactions or code that stands in the way of a user making a purchase.

Optimize Images

While I said above that you should have high-quality images, there is a point where your images are far too big for the web. A good rule of thumb is that images should be under 1MB, well under. This can be done by optimizing images and reducing their overall dimensions. 

Tools like Kraken have plugins for WordPress that can take care of this for you on image upload. For big sites that have a legacy of poorly optimized images, you can use command line tools like jpegoptim or pngcrush to optimize folders of images recursively. In early 2020 I used jpegoptim and pngcrush to deal with my clients 50K+ images build up over 10+ years. We saved 20GB of disk space and huge amounts of bandwidth monthly.

Minify CSS, JS, HTML, and Cache

In addition to compressing your images, you should be looking at minifying your CSS JavaScript and HTML. One of my favorite tools to do this is WP Rocket. I’ve found this to consistently provide huge speed improvements on client sites without huge amounts of time spent configuring the plugin. 

If you want to use WP Rocket with our Hostdedi CDN, we have instructions in our documentation.

Cut Tracking and Sharing

Another spot to easily optimize your site is with the tracking and sharing scripts you use. Yes, you need some analytics to see what your users are doing and to prioritize which devices need optimization, but you don’t need 5 tracking scripts and 3 social sharing scripts loaded on each page.

For most sites, social sharing buttons are a vast wasteland showing that no one is sharing your content. Worse yet, for mobile users, they often cover up portions of the content making the mobile experience terrible. I’ve left many sites because their social buttons make the content I was coming to consume unreadable.

Cut down everything you don’t need to keep the site functioning and provide a better experience to your users.

Keep Refining

Even if you go through all the suggestions above and improve your site, you’ll need to keep improving your mCommerce experience. In October 2020 Apple released iPadOS 14 which added Scribble support for the Apple Pencil. Yes, most sites should work with this without any changes, but did you test it to make sure?

Making sure that your site is optimized for mobile users is an ongoing task, just like optimizing your site for desktop users is. For each change, you make, try to do A/B testing so that you are making choices that improve user experience and site conversions. At the same time, make sure that you don’t optimize only for mobile and thus make users with other devices have a worse experience.

At the end of the day, mobile usage is not a fad. It’s here to stay and something you will need to make sure you account for if you want to keep making sales to your customers.

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