Build a Fast WooCommerce Shopping Website
With COVID-19 shutting down many businesses, it’s forcing us to adapt. Curbside pickup is now. A WooCommerce shopping website is a new way to keep your business going, as eCommerce will be an even further norm for the foreseeable future.
Luckily, staying local and supporting small businesses is a trend that will stay too. One way a restaurant or small business can continue sales is to adapt to curbside and local pick-up. Now is the time to consider creating a website for your retail business that shows return on investment.
There are a few options:
- Make menus and lists available online or digital document format for a customer to order by phone or email for pick-up
- Offer gift cards to purchase now/use later
Why not take the time and add online checkout now? The good news is all you need is a simple WordPress website with WooCommerce installed and to focus on local search engine optimization (Local SEO).
WooCommerce Installation
You need a website for your business. If you have WordPress as your web CMS already, it’ll be easy to adapt and install WooCommerce. WooCommerce is a customizable, open-source eCommerce platform built on WordPress.
Get secure payments, configurable shipping options, and more out of the box quickly. The set-up does not need to be complex or have every available plugin or feature installed. You can keep it simple by adding a basic menu or products. You can add a merchant and transact credit cards online or make it where people place AN order and pay upon pickup.
Why Consider WooCommerce?
- Open-source, which means it is free and maintained by a volunteer community (like WordPress)
- A global community to help and grow your WooComemrce business
- Easy to use platform for end-users
- Many free themes or customized WordPress and WooCommerce themes can be designed to fit your brand needs
- Developer friendly – built with a REST API, WooCommerce is scalable and can integrate with virtually any service
Installing and configuring a WooCommerce shopping website is something you can do, or you can hire an agency like us! We are also happy to coach you along your path.
WooCommerce Set-Up Nitty-Gritty
Once installed on your website, you will need to make some modifications. The great news is WooCommerce has a wizard to walk you through the process.
- Remember to enable or disable tax calculations
- Do you want to offer coupon codes? These make for great promotions!
- Select your currency
- Want to get reviews? WooCommerce can collect these too for you
- Inventory? It can help you track it
- Payment options include credit cards, cash on delivery, and bank transfer, along with many others
- You can integrate Paypal, Stripe, Authorize.net, and many other merchants easily
- Customers can create accounts or checkout as a guest
- The ability to show a privacy policy is included
- Set your email templates to make sure order information is presented accurately
These are the main ones to get you going quickly, but as we said above, it is incredibly customizable.
Local SEO for Your WooCommerce Shopping Website
Aside from having a WordPress website with WooCommerce installed, you can also amplify how those two work together with local Search Engine Optimization. Some plugins help enhance your site and store in a technical sense and improve its chance of showing up in local search results. There are third-party plugins, like Yoast Local SEO, that add the local pick-up option that is not native to WooCommerce.
Both WordPress and WooCommerce have a well-written code for search engines. There are also free and paid plugins that can create structure XML sitemaps, schema, and integrate social media platforms in a few clicks.
Digital Advertising
Google My Business (GMB) is essential and it’s free for any business. You can add your hours, address, phone, website, menus, pictures, and more. Right now with COVID-19, GMB is setting up special attributes to highlight if you are doing delivery, take out, or pick-up to make it clear for visitors that are searching for you.
Managed Google Ads can be very affordable and targeted to your local area. Once these are properly set-up, you can manage your spending to rework your ad campaigns for higher conversion. You can use click to call, and advertise in local search with dynamic ads, video ads, and place them on other large websites. Once people view your business, you can collect info and start retargeting campaigns.
Facebook and Instagram have similar outreach and paid advertising to take advantage of as well. Both can be targeted to a geo-specific area and when managed properly can yield a nice return on investment.
All of these are essential to optimize your visibility in any local area.
Setting Up a WooCommerce Shopping Website
With the recent implementation of social distancing, statewide lockdown, and more people working at home, businesses have to adapt. The time is ripe to seriously consider how you can grow your business online and accommodate customers to easily transact business with you. Make it simple, and you’ll reap the rewards and be ready for the new future!
Contact PA, so we can start a discussion should you need help evolving your business.
