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Hi there, hope you're having a great Friday!
This is Colm and Simon from CommerceGurus, with a handpicked weekly roundup of eCommerce articles.
There are lots of ways to turn people into repeat buyers. Setting up a loyalty program is one very effective method to achieve this.
A loyalty program is essentially a way to boost engagement and customer satisfaction by awarding customers points and rewards when they complete certain tasks.
Depending on your brand and your audience, using a WooCommerce points and rewards plugin can help you increase customer retention and boost sales.
In Maria's latest article she looks at the benefits of having a loyalty program and reviews 8 options to implement one on your store.
See why having a Loyalty Program can boost conversions
Chris Lema's recent blog post poses an important question: How do you know that your WooCommerce store is working?
Automated acceptance testing is one way to stay on top of things. You can run hourly tests such as checking that:
- The Main Shop Page Loads
- A Single Product Page Loads
- The Product Can Be Added to the Cart
- The Customer Can Move to the Checkout Page etc
If a merchant had these tests running, they would have known right away that they were having an issue, as they'd be alerted if the test fails.
The web host Nexcess now includes automated tests as part of all of their WooCommerce hosting plans.
It's an example of a really useful feature that only a truly WooCommerce-focused host would include.
Learn about Automated Acceptance Testing
Many months ago I mentioned a startup which I liked called BannerBear. It automatically created social media and eCommerce visuals for your website.
These are the images that appear when a post is shared on Facebook or Twitter. Normally you need to manually create them and add them via a plugin such as Yoast SEO or Rank Math.
BannerBear saved a lot of time by generating professional looking social images automatically.
Last week I came across a much simpler (free) plugin solution called Branded Social Images.
It doesn't have the feature-set of BannerBear but I expect we'll see more of these kinds of plugins in the WordPress space soon.
Take a look at the Branded Social Images Plugin
Pagely, the first WooCommerce managed host, (and recently acquired by GoDaddy) have always been at the cutting edge, and their new site design is no exception.
It was built using the new "Full-site editing mode" or FSE for short, which is still in beta but is progressing rapidly.
It's a totally different way of doing things and it's not without pitfalls. The lead developer on the project, Justin Sainton, writes about what it was like building a site using FSE.
If you're a WordPress developer this is a very interesting look at the future of site building.
See how the new Pagely website was built with FSE
Rodolfo from Business Bloomer has a useful WooCommerce snippet this week which may be of interest to store owners.
He explains how to disable a payment gateway (for example PayPal) if a specific product category is in your cart.
The first example is a traditional code snippet which you add to your child theme's functions.php file.
But he also includes an interesting "no-code" premium snippet solution for folks who may not feel comfortable tinkering with code and would like more control. It includes an easy-to-use UI which makes everything much simpler.
It includes lifetime support and updates and you can use it on as many websites as you like, for only $19.
Learn how to take control over what payment gateways are displayed in WooCommerce
Finally this week, I discovered a showcase of beautiful WooCommerce designs with over 160 sites to choose from.
I also previously wrote a blog post which explored 38 stunning WooCommerce stores so that's also well worth checking out.
Take a look at some beautiful WooCommerce stores
That's it for this edition. Simply reply to this email if you have any questions or suggestions, we read every message. Have a great week and best of luck with your projects!
Colm and Simon from CommerceGurus
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