While finance experts are predicting the deepest financial crisis of this century due to the Covid-19 pandemic, that doesn’t mean it will hit everyone as hard.
Although the future might not seem very bright for some companies and individuals, we have to remember that all previous recessions have started a new era and new opportunities for business and innovation. If your company’s online business was not built on a well-designed strategy at this point, you might want to adopt some of these tools and tactics to stay in the game so that your market share would not be taken by an aggressive competitor.
Why is it important to think about it right now?
Companies who could not adapt to the new situation have already declared bankruptcy, reduced their staff, cut their marketing budgets, and so on. Those who do stay in the business will no longer be able to apply the “spray and pray” strategy – an average e-commerce conversion rate of 1% – 2% will cost way too much and businesses will have to apply their best strategies to get the maximum out of each visitor on their sites.
Here are 9 essential plugins that will help your e-commerce shop to stay in business during the recession when it lands. And in case it does not – even better, your business will benefit from more sales and you will be ahead of the competition!
1. Product Add-Ons
Product Add-Ons is a great plugin that is highly recommended to all WooCommerce stores. Upselling increases your revenue by 10-30% on average and Upsells are 68% more affordable than acquiring a new customer. With these add-ons, your customers will be able to personalize their purchases, for example, add a gift wrap to send it to their friends or family, include a personalized card, add a special print, and much more! It’s all up to you to choose how can you add more value to your products or personalize them. This plugin offers a flat fee for simple purchases or a percentage from a service fee. The price of the plugin is 49 USD and you can use a 30-day money-back guarantee trial period.
Price: 49 USD
2. Advanced Dynamic Pricing
The Dynamic pricing concept is similar to the Product Add-ons – once the customer wants to buy something, you can offer them additional deals so they would spend more. For example, buy 2, get 1 free and so on. You can also use this product to show a higher price to guest customers and a lower one to your loyal customers. WooCommerce Dynamic Pricing
also gives you the flexibility to set pricing for different products and services depending on the number of items in the cart.
Price: Free
3. CartBounty
Another great plugin to increase your conversion rate. If your customer has abandoned the shopping cart, the CartBounty will save and recover it for you. As soon as the customer abandons the cart – you will receive a notification about it and will be able to see detailed information about the products in the cart. Now you can try to convert the customer and use email marketing to offer them some irresistible deals, for example, a Free shipping coupon code if they complete the order in the next 72 hours.
Another great feature that this plugin offers is an Exit Intent pop-up that appears just before the customer tries to leave your store and invites him to stay and finalize the purchase.
Price: 48 USD
4. Name Your Price
Name your price might be one of the best plugins to add if you start noticing that your conversion rate is very low as one of the reasons might be your prices being too high. With this plugin, you can define the minimum and maximum price for each product and let your customers name their price. Even a few airline companies were using this strategy to fill their flights at one point and it worked very well. You can use this plugin for the products you sell or the services you provide.
Price: 21 USD
5. Table Rate Shipping
Table rate shipping plugin for WooCommerce allows you to specify shipping costs depending on the size, weight, quantity, and other specific details. This means that with this plugin you can sell and ship online anything starting from heavy, oversized items to frozen products and fragile items.
Of course, you will need to define the delivery details of each product or product group, but this also means you won’t be limited to what you currently deliver and your customers will get the best price as it will depend particularly on what they buy.
Price: 99 USD
6. Stripe
Stripe is a great plugin for WooCommerce newcomers. Yes, adding PayPal is an easy way to receive payments, however, not all customers have PayPal accounts and not all of them will want to create one. Most likely they will just abandon your shopping cart and go buy from one of your competitors. This is something you can’t afford.
That is why if you are a newcomer and you have not established other payment methods – use the Stripe plugin. It will allow your customers to use payment cards without redirecting them to other landing pages. Stripe will receive money on their account and then will send it over to your bank account.
Price: The price will depend on the various factors. However, it is always a percentage from the total invoice price.
7. Bookly
Bookly is a great plugin for businesses that work on appointment bases – spas, doctors, lawyers, hairdressers, and so on. It has an easy to use interface and it works very well on mobile devices.
This plugin is very useful even now during the coronavirus pandemic as for the safety of your customers you might not want them to cross each other. Thus, they can book their appointment without you hiring an extra person to manage appointments or by facilitating your staff’s workload. You can use additional add- ons alongside this plugin to receive payments before the appointment.
Price: 89 USD.
8. Ultimate Membership Pro
If your business doesn’t have a membership strategy – this might be the right moment to develop it. The numbers don’t lie. The success rate of selling to a customer you already have is around 60-70%, while the success rate of selling to a new customer is 5-20%. Thus, the Ultimate Membership Pro plugin is worth its name. This plugin has it all – free/paid membership options, coupons, restrict pages, add-ons, email notifications, and much more.
Price: 39 USD
9. Booster for WooCommerce
It’s time to go global! Of course, technically your e-shop is already accessible to people all around the world but if all your prices are in American dollars, it will be difficult for users from other countries to use it. By using Booster for WooCommerce you will automatically detect your customer’s country by their IP address and they’ll see products in their local currency, for example, UK – pounds, EU countries – euro, etc.
The prices are recalculated on an exchange rate value and you can update them manually. Thus, you will avoid the situations that customers are not sure what will be the amount they will be finally charged due to exchange rate fluctuations at that particular moment. A study from Penton Research and E4X found that, for example, people in Germany (48%), UK (42%) are very likely to abandon the purchase if they see the price only in USD.
Price: 49.99 USD / year
Conclusion
Don’t wait for the crisis to come, your sales to drop or competitors to take your market share! Start improving your WooCommerce store now to be ahead of these events!
