WordPress Tips

Close to 400,000 WordPress websites utilize WooCommerce to manage their online stores. Indeed, WooCommerce is one of the most popular ecommerce plugins. It costs nothing and offers a wide array of extensions enabling you to easily customize your online store. NOYO Web Development recommends WooCommerce for ecommerce websites.

This increasing popularity makes WooCommerce a driver of ecommerce trends. Previous trends included increased utilization of mulit-media product pages, personalization, and mobile shopping. Let’s take a deeper look into upcoming trends in WooCommerce and ecommerce.

Artificial Intelligence will Revolutionize the Customer Experience

Artificial Intelligence (AI) began revolutionizing customer experience (CX) last year, and this trend is expected to expand. Chatbots enable ecommerce websites to provide 24/7 customer service. Now with machine learning, bots are increasing in intelligence. They learn about your customers and their buying habits. The result is quicker resolutions to problems and increasing sales. WooCommerce offers several chatbot extensions such as Omise, which works with FB Messenger, and WooWBot, a stand-alone bot.

In addition, AI improves the customer experience with personalization. Technology provides us with a growing wealth of information on consumers, so the ability to offer customized experiences for consumers based upon age, purchasing habits, location, and language is easier than ever. Greeting a customer by name is so “old school” now. WooCommerce offers many advanced features for a personalized shopping experience for your customers. These include:

• WooCommerce Darwin Pricing Integration – The WooCommerce Darwin Pricing Integration plugin analyzes customer data to offer your visitors targeted coupon codes.
• WPML – Are you selling products around the globe? WPML will translate your product pages into your customer’s preferred language.
• WooCommerce Extra Product Options – Who doesn’t love options? The WooCommerce Extra Product Options extension lets you build forms with conditional logic giving your customers the ability to easily customize products.

Product Pages Will Feature More Details and Include Videos

Advancing technology and faster internet speeds have paved the road for virtual reality, video, and 360º content.  NOYO Web Development expects see this type of content used much more frequently in web design, particularly on ecommerce websites. Recent data shows that including video on product pages increases conversions. Take a look at these statistics:

• Online shoppers who watch a video are 1.81 times more likely to buy than non-viewers
• 4 out of 5 consumers find demo videos helpful-that’s 80%!!
• 4x as many consumers would prefer to watch a video on a product than read about it

Another powerful new feature for product pages is 360º content. WooCommerce offers the 360º image feature that enables users to add a dynamic 360º rotation of product images. The WooCommerce and WordPress platforms are also fully capable of hosting virtual reality content as well. Creative content developed for this feature will drive revenue and trends into 2019.

Mobile Purchases Will Increase

It’s well known that mobile surpasses desktop, and mobile commerce is expanding exponentially. If your online store isn’t fast-loading, responsive, and mobile optimized, 2019 could be the year that your competition edges you out. Fortunately, WooCommerce and WordPress offer an array of easy-to-use, beautiful, responsive themes designed specifically for ecommerce websites including these:

• WooMobify – if you need to create a mobile online store quickly, WooMobify is an excellent choice. The plugin is reasonably priced and easy to install.
• Flatsome – This highly popular WooCommerce theme features a drag-and-drop builder to design a responsive store that functions beautifully on mobile devices.
• MobileStore – MobileStore is a sophisticated theme designed specifically for WooCommerce users who want to create a superior mobile shopping experience.

Is Your WooCommerce Store Ready for holiday sales in 2018 and beyond? If not, contact NOYO Web Development today to learn how we can help you create an ecommerce site that leads the competition.

Check out our last blog: Mobile Optimize Your Site with WordPress